Full Poem Text

• “Intro” by Discopoet Khari B.

  I never really understood the day workers
  Waking up when they’re compelled 2
  4 5 days of slaving 4 someone else
  8 hours a day
  40+ hours a week
  2 provide 4 a place 2 sleep
  eat and lay their burdens down
  vocalized blues …when I lay my burdens down
  & awake 2 another day of burden
  N the light of day
  wearing a mask of polite society
  all covered N coercive brand name habiliments
  from the finest modern day plantations
  designed 2 streamline & draw lines
  between the working class the elitists and yo ass
  If U really liked the light so much
  Y would U sacrifice so much of it
  4 a compulsory piece of paper
  & if said imperious paper was really not so important
  or U’d rather not B bound by medium of exchange
  made with malicious intent
  Y Rn’t U fighting
  4 more control of your day
  Maybe the day ain’t the truth
  Maybe the truth ain’t N the light
  Night is when the darkness falls
  The obligations dissolve
  & the doors of our preferred church open
  & N 2 the air music breathes
  & greets us like a best friend that’s been gone 2 long
  We do not care that the light is now gone
  It was merely 2 highlight our rich undertones
  By day we were babies
  At night we R grown
  Our chance 2 reright
  all the things that were wrong
  We float like a tone from a vibraphone
  We R the fire and the brimstone
  That is the reason we R reclaiming our throne
  Our job is reorient where lost minds have gone
  The moon N the sky is not reason 2 moan
  Because it’s the night that 2gether we own
  Let us rest when we’re dead
  the night is 2 glorious 2 waste N bed
  The dark 2 expansive
  not 2 C what’s ahead
  Ase

  Darkness is a decision 2 B made ~Josh Ishmon

• “should i tell (blk)” by Kristiana Rae Colón

  what should i tell my children
  what should i tell my children who are
  what should i tell
  what should i tell my
  should i? should i tell my children?
  what
  should i tell my children drumming buckets outside the red line of what
  it means to be trapped on garfield with senegal’s rhythms
  quickening their bloodline and their limbs
  loose strings on their timbs
  what should i tell my kings selling loose
  squares loose squares loose
  squares and loose dreams
  what shall i tell my lucid dreamers of
  what their hued skin means
  in a neoliberal wonderland that refuse to
  see color
  what root might i lyric into medicine
  for my mother what penumbra
  under hoodie might obscure
  the beauty of my brother’s smile to
  the neighborhood watch
  what should i tell my daughter
  bout why the neighborhood watched
  from its porch when she cried out
  what should i tell the supernovas
  folding into flesh of what it means to
  be sheathed in shade
  what do i tell a solar flare
  of how exquisitely he’s made
  what do i tell a fugitive slave’s great-
  grandson bout how to make it through
  eighth grade when every lamppost
  is plastered with his ransom
  how do i tell soil
  that she’s handsome
  plant seeds in her starlight water
  what should i tell daughters
  carrying whole zip codes on
  her back of how to unroll the
  scrolls of her shoulders
  what do i tell my son when Chicago’s
  summers grow colder
  what should i
  what should i tell my children what
  should i tell? should i tell my children they are
  what should i tell my children
  headed back in a spaceship
  that pulled up 600 years ago
  bout what i been on since they left
  what bedtime story will ocean sing
  to lullaby bones blanketing her depths
  what should i what should i what should i
  Black
  what should i what should i what should i
  Black

• “goodnight” by Kristiana Rae Colón

  the sauce from evening supper scrubbed from every silver tine of forks glistening in the drainer, costumes drying on the line, soil of my basil pot is moist, the floors swept clean, every corner of the house is sprayed + saged + prayers gleam from the front door to the rafters to the back door to the street. I’ve labored through the day so every soul I greet within these gates has found a place to breathe + eat + dream + drum +

  draw their map to freedom. Poems anxious in my hands demanding that I free them in the night, but hands that lift

  • type + scrape the day crave stillness when the light has tucked herself away
  • the sun has done her shift, inviting stars to guard the dusk,
  • moon to supervise the switch. My spine a wire hanger tangled on an empty rack, a ripped guitar string strummed undone from the fretboard of my back: and here, inside the womb of black

    only one spell remains. Tell me
    where does a supergoddess rest when her magic
    trick is labor made invisible? Who mends
    the capes ripped tripping marching smoke rings
    around city hall? Who bandages the knuckles
    of medics on the frontline? Who hears
    her stomach rumble as she serves your plate
    at lunchtime but forgot to eat again… who hydrates
    our warriors? The night

    : a berry plump with the black nectar of rest. The night

    : a bed of stars where daughters tuck a racing head. The night

    : dark silk sewn to armor tender hearts. Night

    : a river black to wet the lips of weary gods

    good god
    good (night)
    good god good
    . (night)
    god
    (night)

• “morning song” by Kristiana Rae Colón

  that night
  was a plum wine woman with black
  lacquered lips blowing cherry swisher
  smoke over the breaks of lake michigan
  we climbed inside the night’s
  mouth and she was humboldt park lagoon
  humid: desire thick as thigh muscles
  but we too cool to move through it
  we too blue raspberry italian
  lemonade on taylor to name
  this nascent mango
  nectar love we too unapologetically
  tender to be impatient with our touch
  night’s nipples were two kola nuts
  pitching a tent under a linen blouse wove of stardust &
  we nestled against her pulse to warm skin
  cooled by late summer night sweat
  licked couplets under earlobes, tongues etched
  calligraphy on each other’s neck
  & this
  was a beginning, not timid but
  just dipping in the dark spring of our pleasure just
  dripping iridescence in oceans of forever knowing it
  don’t have to last but we solar power centered so
  when our chests connect dawn recharge our
  desire, each rotation wind us up stack tinder on the
  fire, we burn the night to ash
  blacken our bare bodies in it collapse expand implode
  [we] rode griffins [backs] from babylon to kemet
  [ & back]
  eden’s serpents marvel
  at the knowledge we deposit at each other’s root
  bodies burn the temple marble black like thutmose & hatshepsut
  ancient cosmic throbbing naked
  bake the earth a crust
  magma syrup from volcano
  with every loving thrust
  the dome of night a temple
  we painted til the dawn
  sunlight spilled down cave of throat
  became our morning song
  & this
  was a beginning, not timid but
  just dipping in the dark spring of our pleasure just
  dripping iridescence in oceans of forever knowing it
  don’t have to last but we solar power centered so
  when our chests connect dawn recharge our
  desire, each rotation wind us up stack tinder on the
  fire, we burn the night to ash
  blacken our bare bodies in it collapse expand implode
  [we] rode griffins [backs] from babylon to kemet
  [& back]
  ancient cosmic throbbing naked
  bake the earth a crust
  magma syrup from volcano
  with every loving thrust
  the dome of night a temple
  we painted til the dawn
  sunlight spilled down cave of throat
  became our morning song

• “Villainy” by Discopoet Khari B.

  When asked
  The task
  Of casting
  The light by which the villain is casted
  R your visions fast masked by
  the last trash news report flash
  of dark faces splashed across the screen
  Embossed by brown fiends lost in a system
  That never fostered their dreams
  Or yours either
  Neither time nor statistics
  Has altered an intrinsic, color-specific
  prejudice toward darker tones
  Mystically minimizing years of wrongs
  inflicted on the very ones we bemoan
  as the unfortunate savages
  born 2 a life of crime
  Ignore the signs and historical timelines
  where’d we find that the facts R far different
  Stories bent 2 misrepresent those whose ascent
  has meant the descent of every environment
  they have descended upon
  Spaces where they circumvent nature
  With artificial implements reinvented 2 cement their hold
  On the land and dominion of man
  Confident in their control of the content
  they insure that it’s imperative we’ve spent
  most of our lives disoriented by their relentless narrative
  a dubious, degenerative deception
  a distance beyond my alliterative pejorative interjection
  that paints the evil doer as the hero
  & the hero as the wretch
  But N the stillness of the dark
  Has ever led U 2 think
  That the bad guy
  The villain
  The terrorist
  The author of evil
  The master of misery
  The scourge Carpathia
  The sorrow Moldavia
  The propagator of genocides
  The ravager of all countrysides
  Has been some shade of pink?
  K. 3/14/18

• “Brutal Imagination” by Jacoby Cochran

  My Name is Zero.

  I was created in the brutal imagination of the cosmos… From the moments humanity woke up they have feared the darkness. It makes sense if you think about it. The unknown often sprouts fright and terror. But It is also quite sad when you think about it. To make sense of the abyss we projected our monsters and demons, plagues and curses, fright and terror onto the darkness. It was in this basic anxiety that I began to take form. You see when an anxiety simmers long enough eventually it will grow flesh and walk outside of your body. I am that flesh. anxiety made actual, paranoia personified. In the beginning I was neutral, dissuaded, over time empathetic, understanding, even accommodating. but now a world obsessed with darkness and blackness to hide from itself is unrecognizable.

  now the anxious world needs no greater villain than a trickster, master manipulator, prince of Darkness. Somehow a biological bias became a bottomless bayou for the worse of ourselves never coming to terms with our primordial fear. Now Dark bodies are the stand inn.

  My name is Zero! But my essence is from a long history of great deception. You know my transatlantic track record, my lynch mob lineage. When called on I am your trickster, master manipulator, wizard of dark magic with just few tricks, turning household items into guns. A shapeshifter transforming 12 and 17 year old boys & girls into thousand year old beasts and ghouls.

  I’ve travelled the known world and met my maker, my demise, my rebirth, while recycling these old tricks. And you know what I have learned. At every corner darkness remains the most oppressed. the most vilified . the most likely to be seen as zero. Look around it’s not hard to spot. Everywhere you turn its the light vs the dark. Light Luke vs dark darth . Every wicked witch from the West to east Salem wedded to black as judgement. Voldemort mastered the dark arts. Scar was darker than Mufasa. Check Hulu. Dagger emits a white light of hope as cloak grows blackened phantom limbs and haunts the heart with despair. Even death in all it’s naturalness became your caricature sketched in black hood and sickle. Must I continue. It doesn’t take a “Black Mirror” to see me. Open your eyes and you will see me.

  I’ve been astroprojected out of thin air in Union South Carolina and plastered over raw flesh from Oakland to Cleveland. I have been stopped, frisked, and choked out in Staten Island and snuffed out in Waller county. I have swallowed 16 shots in under 16 seconds on Chicago side streets. I have been told I am ugly and advertised lightening cream from Nairobi to mumbai.Yes darkness celebrated worldwide on futbol pitch for profit, they call us King James and queen bees, long as we bring said profit. but when darkness makes waves & paddles across oceans of water and sand, too close to shores in refuge called alien. Then Caged for profit. Don’t forget I have been shamed in folklore, made evil queen in fantasy, I am the boogie man in every bedtime story, the character whose heart is always black as night.

  But hell isn’t that what a good villain does. Doesn’t a good villain only exist to reveal the hero. To be dominated, demoralized, and defeated. Is that what we have made of the darkness.

  Nothing more than to be dominated demoralized and defeated.. This is the problem, humanity never dealt with its real fear. Even those who reached to the stars for answers stigmatized the darkness as it constantly revealed back at us that we are in fact not the center of the universe.

  I am tired of being your trope, figment, a mistaken identity. I am tired of being the comic book villain covered in deaths shadows living as a remixed sample. This anxiety has me present at every locked door, dirty look, every lash, every underhanded you’re cute for a dark girl, every pseudo science justification. Inferior, Savage, Slave, Criminal, Terrorist, GangBanger are the wingless birds that pluck away at me as I remain chained to the boulder of your naive binary logic. How quickly humanity forgets it was the darkness that birthed it not the fire.

  for my entire existence I have been shackled to this role and I am tired. Its exhausting, the shackles and the waiting. Waiting for My only desire to be realized and I freed from this existence. Free me and yourselves from this paranoia. Free a world that has you questioning the magic in melanin. Has you using dark as
  synonymous for fear. You must let go of this anxiety which has consumed us All. All I want for you is to redefine the darkness realign with the darkness we were born in the darkness. The damage has been done And for long enough I have remained silent, but it is clear you can not evolve if you do tear down these systems that require the light to be at war with the dark. remember the sun has never been at war with the dark sky. They are one in the same. You are the children of the sun and the dark sky. End the war inside of you and let me go. (Repeat)

• “Absence vs Everything” by Discopoet Khari B.

  In the absence of exterior light
  Sunlight, moonlight, lightning bug, light bulb
  What do U C?
  How quick we R 2 say nothing
  2 feel a perceived absence
  2 think that everything might B gone
  when nothing has moved
  when everything still exists
  when there is evidence 2 the contrary right behind our eyes
  When I close mine
  There exists an eclipse
  Dark and demonized
  But nothing has ever attacked me
  No harm has ever befallen me there
  Au contraire
  It’s where I go 2 meditate
  2 find peace beyond the perceived
  2 reach and witness my dreams
  subconscious thoughts and the play of aspirations
  I never knew I had
  When I close my eyes
  from that darkness
  colors emerge
  shapes begin 2 form
  Forms begin 2 move and
  I C
  I can C
  N the black behind my eyes
  without the sunlight, moonlight
  Lightning bugs or light bulbs
  I can C
  Even when I am not sure of what I am Cing
  I am clear that I am Cing something
  Dependent on the light of the day
  Dependent on the light of the bulb
  I have been conditioned 2 ignore the luminescence N my soul
  I have accepted absence N the absence
  of that which is only outside of me
  4 an absence of what is inside
  & I have wrongly dreaded the black
  when it was always the black
  that held my everything
  What provides sight N our dreams?
  My black
  The black
  Our black
  is full of matter
  Black lives matter
  My black matters
  Black matter
  Dark matter
  The latter is fatter
  & badder than any unflattering fluorescence
  scattering the everything
  U already held & were on the inside
  Sliding down a ladder N2 sadder times
  Based on an illusion that shall B shattered within these lines
  Splattered N2 1000 pieces, 1000 times
  Scattered across an infinite universe
  2 return back 2 the black
  it’s always been N the absence of nothing
  My black is something
  else
  Full of everything
  U’ve never accepted
  U saw
  So I challenge U
  2 close your eyes
  & look again
  K.
  3/14/18