Spirits 

We rose again.
With moon, again.
Howling with the winds, 
into the night again 
To spook the _______		 	

my father said never to answer a
disembodied 
voice calling your name

So i call their names and let the wind 		carry it

 And maybe they will answer and maybe they will be 
Spooked

And never return

Because i own their names now - those names they will
Decorate my tombstone
And my children’s
And their children’s

Because the _________	spilled my grandmother’s blood

We rose again,
With moon again

		Disembodied voices

Calling names that were not meant to be our own

-



Guerrilla

I shoot my gun into the dust, 
every hour

In the cover of darkness 
i shoot,

In the light i shoot,
In the mist I shoot again
In their minds I shoot again.         

In the storm, is it a thunderclap
My bullets, gunpowdered eyes, my bullets
In their minds        

What is time
the pop pop does not chime on the hour, 
What is time

Except to mark the end, and our lives, our lives are now our own

And darkness, darkness my friend, you have shielded me,

My bullet in their minds, a terrorist, me/them

A white flag, I shoot,

Military garb, I shoot
Green, red, White, blue, yellow, shoot

My bullets
Endless,
Terrorist, me/them, who shot first

Whose God ordained this
Who convinced you/them/terrorist that you could swallow the darkness whole

You never asked my name…

No escudo, escudo, escudo
Escudo
Could erase Pindjiguiti 

I shoot
Or get swallowed whole
So Shoot


My gunpowder eyes are corrosive 
No escudo, escudo
Could erase 
Erase the centuries

I will shoot
And rip flesh from flesh from and 
in death the darkness you feared will swallow you whole

I will
… Karaba my namesake

Whole. Whole.
Not even your light can escape.




The Moon Is Ours 
after José Carlos Schwarz

Sometimes I want to chase after the sun
But beneath it I am not known

Do not let them fool us, the moon, the moon is ours
Near the moon
We do not burn.
Oh, we do not burn.

I would like to reclaim myself
All the things that glow
And radiate through me
Be my own moon again

That cannot be taken away
We cannot be taken away
From ourselves 

But how do we reclaim dead things
Buried, and now rooted in the weeds
That drain and drain

I have never witnessed the galaxies
In the sunlight - in it we have never known the heavens

I only know myself here
Between dark and dying
Unwanted and yet desired
My flesh only
Only
Darkness that i am

But the moon
The moon
Has always been ours,
The stars

And when the veil drops 
When the ancestors roam
We will dance
And praise
And dance
And raise them from the dead

So leave us, finally, with our darkness
With our moon, our stars
That are unknown in your burning lights

Sometimes I chase after the sun
But in the sunlight,
I do not know myself.

Do not let them fool us, the moon, the moon is ours
Near the moon
We do not burn.

Oh,
Our moon.

We will not burn.

*Photo by Lukas Robertson from Unsplash