Zyon Gray aka Gray the Poet spits some incredible poetry.
“to the un-trained eye I’ve died and re-incarnation is served in hormone cocktails..”
“excuse you for transcending deception…this is my immaculate conception of self…I am he…”
Check out part III’s teaser, here.
(Source: mekhimorphosis)
I tell her: “Mom, when God planted my assignment inside your womb, it was a mistake. Wrong. So I crawled into your womb to fix it. And to find God. I looked. God was missing. I looked harder. Dad was missing too, nowhere near your pleasure palace. But I found my assignment, and read it. — “girl”, “lesbian”, “butch”. THe labels never fit. I changed everything, planted new seeds based on faith, belief, hope. Faith in my hope and belief that I’m no butch-lesbian-woman but someone else. I put the seeds inside my own womb. Then I gave birth to my self. Transition. Now you’re looking at a god, flesh wounds and everything.
(Source: mekhimorphosis)
I was an undergraduate when José Muñoz was just beginning to make a name for himself. His book DISIDENTIFICATIONS: QUEERS OF COLOR AND THE PERFORMANCE OF POLITICS was all the rage in my circle and off they went, my Queer friends, to put Muñoz’s theory into practice. I never could get behind disidentifying. I wanted all the identities at once. In some respects, I still do. I much enjoy telling the world, when it gets up in face, “Yes. I am that, too. And what?” When I think about being a poet, however, I have to question which aspect of my multidentity is responsible for that being. If I were not Black, I would still be a poet but I do not believe my being a poet would be possible if I were not a homosexual. My sexuality was the catalyst for childhood introspection and, having to keep a major part of myself hidden, forced me to hone my powers of observation. I had to be aware of everything around me, to protect myself when I thought no one else would. As the images and language began to commandeer the synapses, an outlet was needed. Poetry. I think all poets must have an experience that makes them see themselves outside the center of things. For me, it was the gift of homosexuality–for which I am eternally grateful.
(via For Southern Boys who Consider Poetry)
Poet, Activist and educator, Yosimar Reyes sits down with DebugTV to explain his thoughts on the intersection between queerness, the Latin@ community as well as the working class and immigrant communities. He discusses how many QPOCS operate under multiple layers of oppression.
In addition, he talks about the dynamics between sex and power for queer folks. Check it out.
Side Note: That picture in the beginning is too cute…eelllllaaaaaaaaa.
Yosimar Reyes “For Colored Boys that Speak Softly”
*two snaps and a silent praise dance*
(via @violetamichel)
By Gabe Moses
Forget the images you’ve learned to attach
To words like cock and clit,
Chest and breasts.
Break those words open
Like a paramedic cracking ribs
To pump blood through a failing heart.
Push your hands inside.
Get them messy.
Scratch new definitions on the bones.
Get rid of the old words altogether.
Make up new words.
Call it a click or a ditto.
Call it the sound he makes
When you brush your hand against it through his jeans,
When you can hear his heart knocking on the back of his teeth
And every cell in his body is breathing.
Make the arch of her back a language
Name the hollows of each of her vertebrae
When they catch pools of sweat
Like rainwater in a row of paper cups
Align your teeth with this alphabet of her spine
So every word is weighted with the salt of her.
When you peel layers of clothing from his skin
Do not act as though you are changing dressings on a trauma patient
Even though it’s highly likely that you are.
Do not ask if she’s “had the surgery.”
Do not tell him that the needlepoint bruises on his thighs look like they hurt
If you are being offered a body
That has already been laid upon an altar of surgical steel
A sacrifice to whatever gods govern bodies
That come with some assembly required
Whatever you do,
Do not say that the carefully sculpted landscape
Bordered by rocky ridges of scar tissue
Looks almost natural.
If she offers you breastbone
Aching to carve soft fruit from its branches
Though there may be more tissue in the lining of her bra
Than the flesh that rises to meet itLet her ripen in your hands.
Imagine if she’d lost those swells to cancer,
Diabetes,
A car accident instead of an accident of genetics
Would you think of her as less a woman then?
Then think of her as no less one now.
If he offers you a thumb-sized sprout of muscle
Reaching toward you when you kiss him
Like it wants to go deep enough inside you
To scratch his name on the bottom of your heart
Hold it as if it can-
In your hand, in your mouth
Inside the nest of your pelvic bones.
Though his skin may hardly do more than brush yours,
You will feel him deeper than you think.
Realize that bodies are only a fraction of who we are
They’re just oddly-shaped vessels for hearts
And honestly, they can barely contain us
We strain at their seams with every breath we take
We are all pulse and sweat,
Tissue and nerve ending
We are programmed to grope and fumble until we get it right.
Bodies have been learning each other forever.
It’s what bodies do.
They are grab bags of parts
And half the fun is figuring out
All the different ways we can fit them together;
All the different uses for hipbones and hands,
Tongues and teeth;
All the ways to car-crash our bodies beautiful.
But we could never forget how to use our hearts
Even if we tried.
That’s the important part.
Don’t worry about the bodies.
They’ve got this.
(Source: genderqueerchicago.blogspot.com)
New bklyn boihood blog post by Khi Baldwin @theGAQ (.com) read the full article and check out the videos by clicking here!
limchoy lee’s bio says that she is currently interested in “recoding the symbols used in shaping attitudes towards women of color in the media”. She goes on to say that she is “most interested in complex social situations and the transparency of the lines separating one point of view from the other.” In order to accomplish this, much of lee’s approach in her work has been to use opposing images - making the viewer think about the contradiction; and in turn question both perspectives.
Take for instance her video “Feminist or Womanist”. In this video she takes strip club and music video footage and chops it up with Staceyann Chin saying: “Am I a Feminist or a Womanist?” from her poem of the same title. The viewer is forced to think about Chin’s poem while looking at these hyper-sexualized images of Black women in the media. To me, Chin’s poem is about having to choose between one thing or another; to fit into a box - Girl or boy, Buddist or Christian, Straight or gay, etc. She says:
“The truth is I’m afraid to draw your black lines around me, I’m not always pale in the middle, I come in too many flavors for one fucking spoon. I am never one thing or the other. At night I am everything I fear, tears and sorrows, black windows and muffled screams. In the morning, I am all I ever want to be: rain and laughter, bare footprints and invisible seams, always without breath or definition. I claim every single dawn, for yesterday is simply what I was, and tomorrow even that will be gone.”……
follow the link to read more//view videos.
Ring the bells that can still ring;
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
Kirya Traber presenting her poetry at bringing the noise for MLK in 2008.
(via fuckyeahslampoems)
Speaking of poetry, here’s a dope poem by SKIM called “your eyes” performed on def poetry jam in its last season on air.
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