Night Laments for Home

I throw a dollar into the ocean and listen to the Atlantic beg for forgiveness

Image: the moon above the ocean at night. Photo by Marcus Dall Col on Unsplash

after “dream where every black person is standing by the ocean” by Danez Smith

if i had a dollar
for every time a man lay claim to sovereign states
I could buy an island,
A home,
A broken family of (tears),
Untreated alcoholism,
Redemption,
Love,
Liberation,
comfort; starvation.

If I had a dollar for every time
safety came and fled,
I would still have a dollar
for every time I felt safe
kept in the smallest crevices
of bittersweet nostalgia

Interlude: if there is currency, let it burn,
the house
never stood a chance against holy violence. Man has no might against scorned sunflowers. (let it burn, Allah.)

Every handprint on bodies, of land, of water, of flesh is passive currency
Leaving ancestral archives of — (what does redemption look like?)
The memory of water, leaves imprints on souls who never knew what
Home meant. (what does salvation look like?)

Home is where the lines are drawn
where the flags are (burned) placed in what should have/could have/never was.

I throw a dollar into the ocean and listen to the Atlantic beg for forgiveness

I beg for mercy,
I beg for smoke to suffocate what already was/has been/dreams that died a long time ago.
(Man takes but never asked,
Taken what was never theirs,

Called it sovereignty over domination,
Surrender over enslavement,

Compliance over bondage.
I miss home.)

I beg for an island, a home
I inhale the smell of saltwater and exhale a body

And another
And another

Until breathless
Until there are enough bodies to fill a ship, a country, a home, a graveyard
Until

I can hear the ghetto birds hover above me as my
my body lies awake, still taunting me
in reality, in dreams,
in life, in death do us part

(the dead speaks never when spoken to,
Their cries can be heard in the living
souls they embody, we embody, she em-bodies.)

I can hear the end
Time moves along, slowly inching toward its end because like all things
Time must die
Like i
Like the mountains and the endless plain beneath
And the wind
And the great oak
And the ocean
And I
And the black
And the black
And the black.

Image: pyramid jones leans half out of the camera frame with their head tilted back and eyes closed. they are wearing blue eyeshadow.

pyramid jones, the gardener (they/them) (b. Newark, NJ. December 1992) is an artist currently living and working in New Jersey. Their musical work seeks to flesh out ideas of (self) love and the nuances in mental health and class, while their poetry invites us to embrace new tellings of Black, Queer/Trans, Muslim histories and futures. Through both music and poetry, pyramid jones wishes to alter our perceptions of/around sexuality, gender, spirituality and love.

Image: Nyuma Waggeh is sitting on the grass in sunlight, laughing. They are wearing a blue suit with yellow ankara print. They have light blue and grey locs are wearing a tiara.

Nyuma Waggeh is a Gambian American immigrant. She is a recovering alcoholic who enjoys poetry, James Baldwin, children, & committing her life to activism. They identify as a queer Muslim and intersectional black feminist. She believes in radical liberation through education and creative expression. They are an aspiring educator/writer and love flowers. Pronouns are she/they.