(images by Mekhi Baldwin)

Audre Lorde’s contemporary and interlocuter James Baldwin talked about the passion of making love and breaking bread as equal versions of presence and purpose.  Last night during the LAST (sniffle) session of the first every Brilliance Remastered Webinar on a Sustainable Erotics of Community Accountable Scholarship we talked about how to make passionate and connected work our everyday practice and how to put spaces, places, times and reminders in our lives to bring us back to passionate purpose whenever we feel disconnected from the source of our transformative brilliance.

This may look like a group poem, but it is really a spell, blessing everyday forward and binding our love-filled Brilliance Remastered crew together forever!!!!!!!

Daily Bread

By the Sustainable Erotics Crew

connected to purpose like daily bread

giving thanks like daily bread

poetry like daily bread.

forgiveness like daily bread.

laughter like daily bread.

creating is my daily bread

loving like daily bread

making love like daily bread

loving my muscles like daily bread

(especially especially my heart)

smiling from the inside out like dailybread

celebrating me like daily bread

celebrating us like daily bread

embracing the now like daily bread

moving the body like daily bread, making new shapes

living in my body like daily bread

claiming my breathing like daily bread

shining my light like daily bread

affirming my being like daily bread

dancing like daily bread

sitting in silence like daily bread

listening like daily bread

listening to hear like daily bread

profound connection like daily bread.

sharing truth like daily bread

drinking water like daily bread

eating fruit like daily bread

good food like daily bread

deep breaths like daily bread

bubble baths and candles like daily bread

books on the bedside like daily bread.

feet on the ground like daily bread

walking with loved ones like bread (daily)

thanking my ancestors like daily bread

reaching out with love like daily bread.

showing affection like daily bread

touching things lightly like daily bread

being accountable like daily bread

being aware of surroundings like daily bread

immersing in the process like daily bread

questions rising like the bubbles of yeast in daily bread

speaking my mind even when my voice shakes like daily bread

thankful for another day’s daily bread

Audre Lorde and students at the AUDRE LORDE POETRY CENTER at Hunter College (property of Hunter College Archives)

Last night was the second session of our Brilliance Remastered Webinar Beyond the Feel-Good: A Sustainable Erotics of Community Accountable Scholarship.   Amazingness.  Last night we worked with Audre Lorde’s clarity that “the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the [person] who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.”  And for those of us remastering our presence in academic spaces it is important for us to clarify that within an economy that wants to tokenize our brilliance, BEING a sensation, a shining exception, a validated symbol is not enough.  We are doing the intellectual work we are doing for much bigger reasons.  Betta recognize!

Here

I am not just a sensation

I am inspiration

I am here to ignite a flame

I am here to change the world

I am not just a sensation

I am inspiration

I am here to sow seeds of magic

I am here to love

I am not here to settle

I am here to set the tone

I am not just a sensation

I am inspiration

I am knowing as an act

I am here to expand the limits

of what counts

as knowledge

I am not just a sensation

I am inspiration

I am here to unshackle brilliance

wherever it grows

I am here to make manifest

the dreams of my ancestors

I am not just a sensation

I am inspiration

I am here to imagine

I am here to create

I am here to dance

I am here to laugh to sing to share

I am not just a sensation

I am inspiration

I am here to be myself

I am here to be connected

I am here to engender vulnerability

and to make it possible

for those in the room to do the same

I am not just a sensation

I am inspiration

I am here to find a path to reconciliation

I am not just a sensation

I am inspiration

I am here to be accountable

I am here to hold others accountable

I am not just a sensation

I am inspiration

I am here to humanize

I am here to become more human

I am here to make meaning

I am here to be love

I am not just a sensation

I am inspiration

I am here to glow

I am here to know and to share

that to be young gifted and black AND queer

is a MARVELOUS thing to be

I am here to steal back the goodies

I am not just a sensation

I am inspiration

I am here to interrupt injustice

Yes I’m here to demand answers

and to ask more questions

and to ask and ask and ask and ask

I am inspiration

I am here to be like water

nourishing, remembering what you chose to forget

reflecting back to you your own image

I am inspiration

I am here to be a question mark

I am here to be an x that marks a spot

where love will outlive everything

I am here to make fertile the soil of our dreams

planting for a harvest I won’t ever reap in my lifetime

I am inspiration

I am not just a sensation, a temptation a distraction

I am unstoppable love in action.

Last night was the last session of  the Brilliance Remastered Webinar Eye to Eye: Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars!    I know that I’ll be missing the weekly webinar wavelength sharing love exchange until the next unit of the webinar (Beyond the Feel Good based on Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic) starts in July.   But I also know that we created something powerful and I have a whole new clarity about the collaborations in my life and some exciting new collaborations that pranced right into my life from my dreams this month!

Using the Mothering Ourselves Manifesta we acknowledged the fact that collaborating allows us to evolve out of the language of struggle into the language of creativity we are not making “something out of nothing” we are honoring what is present in our lives and our communities and mobilizing our creativity to make something out of ANYTHING!  This week’s group poem celebrates that clarity. Enjoy!

Something

by the participants in the Eye to Eye Webinar on Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars

“We can make something out of anything.”  From the Mothering Ourselves Manifesta distilled from Audre Lorde’s Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger

We can make something out of anything.

We can make home out of movement

We can make a movement out of feet stuck in the same mud.

We can make reality out of dreams

We can make family out of distances

We can make eternity out of the shortest stolen moments

We can make mothers out of brothers

We can make mothered mothers mothering abundant out of would-be martyrs suffering  in silence (ourselves)

We can make love out of heartbreaking laws.

We can make delicious banana fritters out of overipe fruit we forgot.

We can make ourselves anew in order to recognize & show up for our brillance…

We can make  difference be the springboard for greatness…

We can make our own cool, cultured collabos!

We can make it ALLL. Right!

Yesterday was our third Eye to Eye Webinar session on love, faith, difference and communication entitled “The Only Language I Know.”  We shared our poetic clarity about how we communicate differently based on our experiences, our approaches, our fears and our longings and how sometimes words seem to fail us all together.  Our group poem represents our visioning process of creating a space where there is room for everyone we are, and who we are not, and who we might become together.

Just Saying/See You There

By the Brilliance Remastered Eye to Eye Participants

After Audre Lorde’s “At First I Thought You Were Talking About…”

I speak the language of roots up, all the way everything must be changed.

She speaks the language of measurable deliverables.

I speak the language of rainwater-clarification-process-matters.

They speak jampack big words together like a train

I speak the language of here right here at home.

He speaks the language of inevitable uprise class struggle like science.

I speak in things felt a knowing of my bones

He through well thought out equations elaborate logic models

I speak in hope

Him pragmatism

I speak “like me”

She speaks I like you, but not always

She speaks me first. She speaks my kids first. She speaks secrets

I speak 69 years. He speaks FaceBook

I speak plan with flexibility.

They speak plan and stick to it.

I speak student wants and needs

They speak stick to what we need to see only

I speak possible risky let’s do it

they speak practical hedged bet sacrifice

I speak concepts & ideas are real, they are tangible, touchable.

They speak “huh, what you what you talking bout sistah?”

I speak seek the relationship

They speak: seek the product(s)

I speak the language of the academy sometimes

he speaks shyness, grammar of booze and sex

sometimes I speak no grammar language

But I know that:

“Black girls are from the future”[1]  and that

“Everything we do is insignificant. Yet it is incredibly

important that we do it.” [2] And that

Children are full people who have something to say

And that trusting is like tree roots and we reach down, tangled up

And that everything we need is already within us

And that I am who I am doing what I came to do

And that our silence will NOT save us.

SO I am seeking the place where the language of risky radicalism

meets the pragmatism of those who have seen the consequences

the place where afrofuturefearlessness meets blackbloodsoilhistory

the place where we feel whole meets

the place where we are allowed to be prisms of light

the place where faith meets shaking legs

the place where level headed realists can meet starry eyed dreamers

the place where good intentions meet critical implementation

the place where longing meets listening

the place where yes meets i know

the place where why meets when

the place where–as white people–we remember without expectation of forgiveness

we account for what has been lost and stolen

the place where but i have _______ friends, so I couldn’t be __________

meets self introspection

the place where bourgie balancing meets grace

where press and curl meets this is my natural curl

the place where longing children meet absent parents

the place where wholeness meets brokenness

where miracles equal a mere embrace

the place where courage (like jumping into a cold river)

meets self-determination (where are the rocks at the bottom)

the place where the long night meets the pale kiss of morning

the place where water and sky are indistinguishable

the place how i was raised meets raise UP!

the place where can’t get right GETS RIGHT

the place where hope meets salvation

where the souls of the living dance hot and fast in love, light

and treating each other right

the place where the love you always wanted meets the love you always had

See you there.

like water, like sunlight, like stone

Yesterday was the second session of the Brilliance Remastered Eye to Eye Webinar on Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars.
We talked about what is at stake our collaborations, nothing less than the world we want to live in and create together.   We supported each other in holding ourselves to a standard where our collaborations themselves embody the values we have for our future, and where the impact of that collaborative work on US is not sacrificial, but also consistent with the nourishing vision we have for our species on the planet.

We made ourselves poets with this similie standard for what our collaborations can feel like, what our futures can feel like, what our days right now can feel like.

Be Like: A Poetic Vision for Collaboration 

by the participants of the Eye to Eye Webinar on Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars

like breathing, like recognition, like gratitude

like manna from heaven, free and plentiful for all

like eye contact, like risky breath, like skin

like ease, like willingness, like welcoming

like food on the table, like real justice for all, like freedom

like deep earthy soul bearing funky togetherness

like sisters I never had, like a family we are making everyday

like the joy of decoding a secret language

like celebration, like faces touching, like cherished communion and congratulation

like everyday cheer for your graduation from another insight-filled day of being you

like a shower, refreshed remembrance that I don’t have to be everyone

like a rub on the back looking at me eye to eye

like face to face, foreheads pressed in affirmation

like life sustained, like clean water, like no more premature deaths

like being excited and grateful you exist

like love, like love, like loving

like coming home at last

Audre Lorde and mentee and friend Jewelle Gomez

Yesterday was the first session of the webinar Eye to Eye: Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars!  We gathered to talk about my VERY favorite essay by Audre Lorde and how we can create the collaborations we dream of beyond the individualism, tokenization and internalized oppression that often gets in the way of the collaborations we most urgently need and deeply want!  Our first group poem comes from a line from Carson McCuller’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter  appropriated by Barbara and Beverly Smith as the title of their collection of letters between Black Feminists in Conditions 4 and then again by Audre Lorde in Eye to Eye:  “I am not meant to be alone and without you who understand.”   This longing to end isolation, to build community and to be seen and understood in the context of our vision is the grounding desire (aka LOVE) that inspires our collaborations.  Name your longing!  Who and what are you meant to be with in this life?

Not Meant to Be Alone (A Poem for you Who May Understand)

created by the participants in the Eye to Eye Webinar on Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Scholars 

I am not meant to be alone and without the love of black women bourgie, broke, booklearned, backbreaking or otherwise.

I am not meant to be alone and without black men at the age the prison eats up in my life, at my table and on my team

I am not meant to be alone without those who try to answer my intellectual and spiritual questions

I am not meant to be alone and without someone to call to say silly black feminist nonsense to

I am not meant to be alone and without my reflection: black women educators…

I am not meant to be alone and without my family created & given

I am not meant to be alone and without the listening of my family even when my ideas are radical and dangerous

I am not meant to be alone and without my mama

*

I am not meant to be alone and without inspiration

I am not meant to be alone and without warmth, roots, the world

I am not meant to be alone and without purpose

I am not meant to be alone and without books

I am not meant to be alone and without good poetry

I am not meant to be alone and without a good party

*

I am meant to be here

I am meant to be with each of you

I am meant to be with more rad women of color

I am meant to be with my ancestors and yours!

I am meant to be with the love, support & freedom of my beloved communities despite our differences

I am meant to be at home, but able to have conversations with the rest of the world too

I am meant to be in different forms of schooling/learning spaces other than the academy

I am meant to be a supporter of friends and family

I meant to do work that is community accountable

*

I am meant to be with my closeted cousins in the Caribbean who are scared because I am loud

I am meant to be with those hurt by organized religion learning again their undeniable worth

I am meant to be with those who choose stability, without judgment but with open quit-your-job-invitation arms

I am meant to be with people of color who have been battered by the academy but who can learn to love themselves and each other again

*

I am meant to be with those seeking to practice freedom

I am meant to be with clean water and good food

I am meant to be with peace of mind

I am meant to be with deep loving conversations with strangers

I am meant to nurture and be nurtured by people who carry similar visions

I am meant to be with my own superpowers, awake and necessary

I am meant to be with you.

This Sunday in the Angry Intellectuals: Channeling Rage for Transformation Webinar we honored the fact that our anger is sparked by deep love and a profound desire for transformation.  We realize that our anger requires transformation from each of us and from the world around us.   At the end of our session, as we practiced recognizing the distinction between hate (the impulse to destroy…an impulse we reserve for the interlocking forms of oppression we indeed wish to destroy) and anger (the creative energetic impulse for transformation that we are bringing into our communities with intention), we created this group poem about what we would transform.  And how!

I Would Transform

A group poem by the Angry Intellectuals

i would transform the need to be right into a desire to be in community

i would transform fear of honesty into courage to be held accountable.

i would transform punishment into healing.

i would transform color-blindness into full color.

i would transform ownership into profound communalism

i would transform whiteness into the presence of unconditional love and accountability.

i would transform supremacy into relationship/community.

i would transform self-righteous white women into anti-racist warriors

i would transform individual solutions into collective power, into unstoppable contagious collective power

i would transform SCAF (Egyptian Military Leadership) into sons and fathers in their homes, taking care of their own families and communities

i would transform those who are now police into profound listeners in the face of violence

i would transform schools into places of critical consciousness and liberation

i would transform the academies tendency to overwork, underpay, and devalue revolutionary scholarship into valuing these ways of knowing and these people.

And that doesn’t seem like a radical enough transformation!

i would transform hierarchical organization structures to co-created spaces of accountability.

i would transform exclusion to equity

i would transform isolation and borders into abundance of love

i would transform ICE and immigration policies into organizers rooted in care- using all their radical energies to reunite families.

i would transform racist teachers who seem to hate kids into hologram designers for spaceship child safety seats

i would transform bullies into bootdancers

i would transform the public school system to satellites of black feminist schools across the country.

i would transform homophobic church leaders into humble hip hop hooray cheerleaders for love in all forms

i would transform rent into the most alive soil ever

i would transform my landlord into a rose garden curator

i would transform the property manager into  a beloved son embraced in the middle of the dig deep get it done committee

i would transform legal recourse into delving deep for life-giving resources

i would transform street harassers into corner poets singing love to mother earth

i would transform scarcity into abundance and communities to hold us.

i would transform fast breathe speech and thinking into patient grounded inclusivewisdom.

i would transform the instinct to devalue in the face of anxiety to the impulse courageously honor

i would transform the feelings of betrayal into the gratitude for new knowledge

i would transform defensiveness into deep breaths of listening

I would transform self pity into confidence

i would transform doubt to determination

i would transform fear into freedom

i would transform guilt into action and growth

i would transform forced silence into song.

i would transform myself