This past Thursday I was blessed to spend a morning with the brilliant young activists at North Carolina’s Youth Organizing Institute Freedom School. In the wake of horrifying violence by police against unarmed black people broadcasted on video we write about Revolutionary Mothering, the act of keeping each other alive.
We wrote about the ways that young people keep each other alive as peers and engaging in revolutionary mothering acts of sustenance and love for each other on a daily basis.
Some days being able to keep each other alive feels like Science Fiction.
Some of these poems, which we generated through an activity where the participants listened to stories about who they had been and what they had done they had been in the dreams of people who loved them, expressed the urgency of love in philosophical terms. Some expressed the urgency of love in zombie apocalypse terms and in direct confrontation of the violence of the moment. Here are some of the poems (curated into we stay/we slay by yours truly).
We Stay
ocean brings us life
power lives in your bones
markings lead us to freedom
Abuela calls on
the daughters of Oshun
to tell us to breath
sometimes you can feel
not through the phone, but inside
your heart, what is real.
time and space will not
make strangers of us again
i won’t give you up
she is your best friend
wanting to be together
never letting go
dreams and ambitions
goals to make it together
be lit forever
soaring through the sky
our happiness blocks all the hate
our love is a bond*
*bond: spiritual link made by love and can’t broken (definition from the poet)
We Slay
The zombies burst in
Samaiyah and Sajdah are
Ready to kick ass!
The purge has started
Jasper and Courtnei run out
2 hours later they have blood on their hands
Mafia lightning
Striking scars against yellow
The cats deadly glare
Lane just hit the gas.
Panicked, frightened, with much stress.
His friend shot his head.
The most beautiful things can
Be the most deadly
The ocean is very beautiful
And soothing but
It killed Nathalia and Joana
We freeze our zombies
You and me are wolves-always
Oh, Rahssan Rahssan
P.S. If you are looking for a place to write through the complexity of staying/slaying in this moment, check out this Thursday’s online workshop Nobody Mean More to Me Than You.
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