Here’s the thing.

Learn the rules. Learn them. But don’t let them paint you. Don’t let them etch their lessons in your skin. Don’t drink them in and let them consume you so that you don’t recognize the shape and feel of your own sacred body. Examine the psychology of your prisoners. The psychology of your victimizers. Hold the tension between essentialism and hybridity — swim in metiza —breath in the double consciousness and hold on to your borders while you unlearn and shed the stripes painted carefully and strategically on your soul and over your eyes — and when you can’t hold back the liquid fire seeping from the corner of your eyes—

BREAK them.

Shatter them across the canvas that will hold your revolutions. Grab hold of the guns mid air and force them to learn your language. Break them the way you fiercely kiss the love of your life

One

Last

Time.

Explode them across the sky and turn those suckers into something beautiful for brown babies to look at every night. Because of you there will be stars. Break them and never apologize for being too much, too soon, too hard because the world should never stop apologizing for not fitting you in to His walls.

Break them and create like they never could.

Because they could never create

So you just

Take — but dont inhale

And with your homegrown genius

You turn

It into something

They will never be ready for.

And dance under the stars you created

And let them shed light on your path

So you can hold wonder again in your palm

Learn them. Then break them.

Then play.