by Jezebel Delilah X
Don’t forget about love
When the bell tower is bloodied with disappointment
And revolution is splayed-legged, stillbirth pushing through contractions
When necks are crooked downward, shoulders hunched in,
Curving towards the sternum,
Feeding into gaunt rib cages,
Hearts opulent with struggle,
And high on pain
When our children are dragged, iron clad and bullet riddled away
Our ankles are swollen, our eyes maroon, our knuckles busted and shredded from concrete,
When we see our schools torn down, our community halls demolished, our civil rights ripped from our fingers,
When we visit prisons and hospitals more than libraries, and we’re more familiar with serial numbers than books
When our tears stain our bath water, and even if we scrub our skin sheer, filth still clings to our bodies
Don’t forget about love
Don’t forget about the blue-black hands seducing midnight moans
Our thighs – soft and fat, encompassing the faces of our lovers
Don’t forget about teeth, smiling under pink gums, chewing raw kale, glistening in the dark, scratching lobed bellies
Or lips puckered around whiskey straws, Lips puckered around nipples, lips pushing apart labia, Lips teasing smiles
Don’t forget about the love that we made with each other, the love that we created for each other
The movements, the intellectual orgies, the grunt and sweat of our work
The organizing we did, the hands we held, our chins kissing the heavens,
The codes we created in secret, in bedroom frenzy, in back alleys and dark bars, under lifted skirts and button broken blouses, behind the eyes of officers, husbands, employers, through the tenderness of hours writing, creating, inspiring, archiving, rioting, healing, and praying
Don’t forget about the communities that blossomed through outreach, through perseverance, through loss, through fat fisted determination
Through songs sang by elders, written by children that lived long before them
Through poems written on newspaper, on our bedroom walls, in math textbooks, on our backs, between our thighs, on the tripe of our bellies, and sole of our shoes
Through hip hop, blues, ragtime, soul, and folk, banjos, trumpet, trashcans, and djembe drums, through crime and wails and moans and whispers, through messages passed through gutters and dressing room, shouted in front of town halls, across cotton fields, and carved into prison steel
In our agnosticism, don’t forget about the church, what it once was, what it should have become, what it can still be
The pregnant chapel where we learned to read
Where our little girl voices, grew into rally chants and war cries
Where we marked the day we stopped flirting with usher boys
And began kissing their sisters,
When we willingly embraced their thick baptismal waters dripping down our chins and learned to love vaginal metaphors
When we realized that our skits for Jesus, slowly transitioned to impassioned orations at the picket lines, in supermarkets, in college classrooms, on the block in front of the liquor store, before sex, after sex, to our parents, in front of politicians and judges, in front of the mirror, to the gods
When we loaded our guns and replaced our lipstick with liberation
When we realized, that for some of us, wearing lipstick was liberation
Please don’t forget about love
When we remember the books that were burned
The altars crushed with shiny black pilgrim boots,
Necks slashed with conquistador swords,
The heads of children bobbing on poles facing the Atlantic oceans,
The skulls of children, creamy white, decorating the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean
The weapons written with words,
The weapons manufactured over centuries,
The weapons that so many of us have forgiven
Like imperialism, and Heaven, and Money
And when you remember how our thighs were jerked wide, our hips sore, our bones broken, our backs disfigured with horse-whips, the acid agony of rape breeding, or babies stolen by missionaries, babies stolen by slave blocks, babies stolen by the police, babies stolen by the streets
And when you remember how our homes were dismembered, and how our men were taught to hate us, and the many ways we were taught to hate ourselves
And worship what was foreign, a foreign god, foreign capital, foreign capitalism, foreign hierarchy, foreign legislation, architecture, education, medicine
And how we almost believed that liberation
Was a college degree
And that war happens to protect our freedom
Despite the fact that soldiers, who look just like us, fights an enemy, who looks just like us; except for that enemy speaks the languages we forgot, we gave up, we lost, the languages that were stolen
And that our bombs cause their land to regurgitate the bones of our ancestors
Don’t Forget About Love
That exists in the folds of our skin
In the pockets of flesh that bulge and stretch outward
In the fat that came from food we shared across mirthful tables, food that was stretched and strained to feed blood related strangers and accumulated family, food that we grew in our backyards, that we found in dumpsters, food ripe with heritage and swapped across cultures and generations
In the breast that drift sideways, that are heavy with life, that have been suckled by babies and lovers, that fill palms and spill over, that gleam above low-cut tight red dresses as we dance, that are pushed flat with binders and ace bandages, that crown puckered nipples under naked sunlight, that have been chopped and prodded and poisoned with chemical radiation – and that were always so beautiful regardless.
Don’t forget the laughter, that vibrated against clitoral skin, that danced out of disheveled bed sheets, that drizzled bawdily across paper stormed office tables, wittingly over blogs and zines, righteously in classrooms and project apartments, intimately between mothers and daughters and infants, and those deceptive chuckles that masked tears and heartache, that covered up hunger and abscess, that serenaded death
And don’t forget the dead, that loved us enough to die, that didn’t want to die, whose lives were stolen, don’t forget why their lives were stolen, how their lives were stolen, the role you played in their lives being stolen, the ways you benefited when their lives were stolen, and love them.
Love who you once were, and love what history has turned you into, and the woman that’s cradling your face when your body is aflame with illness or desire, love her also.
Love your bones, be they broken or jellied or strong, because in some way, you are still upright, then the world has worked so hard to see you face down
Love your self determination, your motivation, the ghetto accent that some times slips out, that’s always there, that your parents never gave you a chance to develop, because in that accent, is the great great great great grandmother you fantasize about knowing, the bosom you crave to crawl into, the womb that birthed you.
Love those buildings that were destroyed because you, and your sister created them, and you create them, but even better, with more fortitude, and more community support, because the foundation is there, and you are strong.
Those children, be they in shallow graves, prison cells, college classrooms, strollers, libraries, shooting balls into hoops, or wearing short skirts – don’t forget to love them, because they are you.
And when this list is too complex, and your fingers feel too swollen to write, or build or fuck or cook, love you. Because you were the first. And this earth is the land that you plowed, and seeded. And the feathery blackness hidden beneath cement, that our ancestors were buried in, that’s you. And the sky, telling secrets, and the clouds keeping secrets, that’s you. And the Gods we pray to, in temples, churches, backyards, empty glasses, and ejaculating into our wombs – that’s you too. So love yourself, because you are not only your own survival, you’re mine.
**Jezebel Delilah X is a fierce fat femme Faerie Princess Mermaid Dragon, Hot English Instructor, and contemporary urban hippie activist who uses literature, performance, storytelling, and flirting to advance her politics of radical love, socioeconomic justice, anti-racism, and community empowerment. She is co-host of East Bay Open Mic, Culture Fuck, a member of the performance troupe, Griot Noir, and a part of Deviant Type Press.
