“you picked the wrong time of year to perform. Did you forget my body is a receipt?”, I write as part of a caption for a picture on Instagram on June 22nd 2021. I @ an org in Madison I used to be affiliated with until last summer.
I @ them because there’s an active protest that started last summer wherein many past members of that org (BIPOC and white allies) revoked the org’s right to use our images in any way shape or form specifically because of the org’s treatment of Black people.
I @ them because last summer they wrongfully evicted me from their house on Langdon – (which I was staying in because I came back to the states from Germany because of the pandemic & I had nowhere else to go) and when I asked the leader why they were wrongfully evicting me in a county that had a hold on evictions because we’re in a f*cking pandemic, he looked me in the eyes and said, “because you’re staying in our housing and you’re speaking out against us.”
All I said was that they were institutionally racist.
I @ them because on Juneteenth 2021 they posted a performatively anti-racist Juneteenth square with a lil caption just as performative as those black squares last summer, as if their ig ain’t as white as it is because we are still actively protesting them.
I @ them because while they’re posting performative shit on Juneteenth 2021 I was performing shit I wrote on Juneteenth at the Juneteenth FC Madison game.
The poem reads,
a dear friend messaged me on Facebook
“i stand with you brother.”
black skeptic i am, i reply to her
“so you’re coming to the protest?”
my question: a test i knew the answer to.
“no.”
you stand with me in platitudes and know nothing of with-ness
you may be standing
but it certainly is not WITH me
and before you ask, yes, the poem is a real interaction I had with somebody that works within that org i @‘d in my caption on instagram on June 22nd 2021.
The caption sits under a photo of my freshly inked arm- a tattoo I got on June 8th 2020 of a poem (translated to english by Daniel Ladinsky) written by Hafiz
my then-all time favorite poem: The Sun Never Says
even after all this time
the sun never says to the earth
“you owe me”
look what happens with a love like that,
it lights the whole sky.
I got this poem tatted on me directly after leaving a meeting with the org I @‘d because I needed to remind myself to take the high road- even with racists. To not let myself be poisoned by the poisonous. Or caged by those who would imprison me like an animal in a zoo- calling me beautiful while simultaneously being the reason why I’m broken.
I say “broken” they say “tame” and that’s the difference between hearing it from the horse’s mouth and hearing it from their trainer’s.
Why Black pain so visible- so visceral- so very known of – and why white people still ain’t believe us enough to do anything about it?
I don’t want to be ‘appreciated’ if it’s prerequisite is me being palatable, tame, or safe. Those are just code words for “good nigger”.
And I been a “good nigger” too long.
Last summer I decided to try my hand at being the sun. why? because it lovingly sears and scalds and warms the earth and her waters- and you can not burn the sun.
Indeed- you can not burn the sun, but you can etch it’s ethos into your skin: an eternal receipt of the day your world changed.
(+check out Raid.r podcast for an episode of “The Art Kid Speaks” ft. Me)