Freedom is as freedom does.
It was not in 1776, when Benjamin Franklin still bought, sold and owned people
And Madison, and Jefferson and Washington too-
And somebody whose name I don’t know in Maryland
Owned my mother mother mother mother mother Esther.
I come from old growth Blackness
Born out of the thicket of American lies and contortions.
So I know
Freedom is a somebodiness from the underside that trips lies up
Is when
Somebodies refuse to crumple under a snooty nose or crooked law,
Is when
somebodies stand proud, nourish -body and soul- all the way across all the accidents of birth, like: body, place, desire, tongue, spirit; and across all the magic of becoming after being knocked down, stepped on, or born low. Freedom knows a thin or thick wallet ain’t nothing to a forest of hearts. Freedom is a mighty witness passed down and quilted from rags. It’s in Michael Harper’s debridement, Sterling Brown’s stoics, Sonia Sanchez’s blue black blues. It’s when ancestors (chosen)
Teach me,
Insist we,
Trying to be,
Moving free
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