Detroit
a poem
Detroit was a beautiful reminder that one of the most powerful intersections and anchors of our movements for justice is art. It has always been the responsibility of the artist to not only tend to their own soul and express their relationship to and understanding of life and the world as they know it, but to feed the soul of their communities and people. The arts have always been a way for the people to be in full sovereignty and agency of culture, world views, their experiences, and all things beautiful and worth being in loving struggle to protect.
Thanks to ALL of the folks in Detroit who helped CELT initiate and catalyze our framework development process ( more to come, Please stay woven with us! ). Thank you for your time, and sharing your deep love for your community and Mama Earth with us!!
photo options here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VveYcHniV2wYy3QHjugCfDCrhBJdc2RD
Detroit
The Land
Listen to her
The Living archive bearing the scars of unresolved histories
The Land
The Living archive bearing venerable fruits with
Many seeds and Many dreams and brilliance as legacy
Pushed and passed through many hands and portals
Into a Black and bright future filled with
Gardens, bare feet, stories
The Children's laughter and
Songs replacing slave codes and redlines
The Water
Listen to her
The Waters run blue in The Detroit
Sacred waterway, midnight gateway
The end of the underground railroad
Black jubilee and futurist backbone
Wash us clean of their exploitation
Wash us clean enough to remember
The covenants in our bones that are encased in her waters
Built from stardust and what we call earth
Living beneath fingernails
Overgrown lots, tumbledown brick
Elder and holy, Haunt ecology
Black Spirituals etched in water and impressed into soils built Black
Tangible deep poetic feeds humid ebullition
Hands to the sky
Head and belly to the earth
Litanies of generational prayers
The interpose of song and hidden passageways that gave way to “freedom” and
Liberation, the activation of memories and symbiotic mutualism
We ask the buildings and the streets to help us remember
The great migration had us following our north star and so
We caught and landed Motown and had Black Bottom swinging
Lottie the Body going off the Brass Rails
Lightning Thunderclaps Motown’s soul & Motor City’s blues
The sway and swing of Black Resistance
Bring us back to the Pulse of honey bees in the Pippin Peppers
Collard greens and Black Eyed Peas
Ease our pains as we reconcile with the soils forced to bind us
Restore our knowing that they too hold Black Bodies in future dreams
A future beautiful as cottonflowers, let the soils and the people reconcile and
Be the living archive of an unimaginable future, the venerable fruit.
