Queer Bodies Resist, Queer Bodies Belong, Queer Bodies Protect

From the age of two Told to fit into confines I didn’t know belonged to me My body mind soul black, golden, West Indian, Jamaican as it is Coerced into traditions, bible lines, patriarchal modes unwritten rules planted on this land by those colonial brutes Brutes who only knew to exploit Violate Indoctrinate Stolen land Her deep dark black roots exposed to the bare soles of shackled bodies indigenous to lands far removed Rivers running through her veins of time weep lost connections to the harmonious tunes of balance in her use Blood stirred thumping from the beat of drums and bodily movements in tune with the soul of the motherland now gushes from the river banks as wounds inflicted on those displaced, enslaved, beaten widen, deepen, protrude Forced against their will down these streams of eternal pain to the currents of resistant seas weary of their use to commit atrocities against motherly nurtured beings Foreign soils home to the Arawaks and the Tainos Stolen and Violated Complex bodies embodying cooperative systems of inhabitance Simplified to mere discoveries of so called white men Wiped out by disease and brutal conquest for their prized connections to knowledge hidden in the intertwined heart strings of the islands about which they moved This little piece of mother coined by them Xaymaca Land of wood and water Penetrated by tools meant to cut down her roots, shoots, blooms Sliced by whips black bodies fold under and Succumb to Colonial industrialized conquest Conquered Black and Brown bodies conquered Mother’s natural way of chaotic order abused All subsumed to the belly of a greedy few Gobbling Gobbling Gobbling Savages, who? Now 500 years later continued consumption of these bodies as fuel in the engines of the destructive capitalist crew leaves mother ailing on the brink of a fever inducing flu Her lungs collapsed, clogged with white fumes unable to move in unison to cleanse her poisoned tubes Her oceans swell to new heights, reclaiming land in her own right as tears from her now unfrozen past knows no bounds She sweats and screams in bouts of panic as upward shifts in her degrees remind her of the unbearable heat she holds so close to the core of her soul beneath Spirals of unfamiliar seasonal patterns result as her unwillingness to tolerate such stress dwindles threatening those black and brown souls who’ve grown to depend on her strength Black and brown folks like me who haven’t been able to heal from our ancestral pains to discover our earthly given truths Occupied by time conforming to a system built for those without the sun kissed blessings of melanin toning Chained to school desks that teach us the manners, dos and donts, of such repressive existentiality Pipelined to prison cells, keys thrown behind bars to rot, decompose Reminiscent of ancestral death Some break through Only to get stuck in someone’s else profit driven personalized conquest it’s all about the 9 to 5 drill Factory floors, computer desks Labor intentionally siphoned from our communities Robbed of the space to universally release, coalesce, resist Creative minds untapped, imaginative wars restructuring the imbalance unfought Meanwhile those within the margin of the margins fall victim to regurgitated systems of abuse LGBTs, Queers, femmes, trans, women, non-binary folks Of Color Defying the confines of the white men’s cultural exports misconstrued, misunderstood By kin of our own seeking to wield power over us in attempt to dissociate from realities stripping their bodies of skin belonging to all of us Displaced from our familiar homes, Locked out Beaten shunned by the community around us We reclaim the river banks Set up camp We make up the gully ranks But as mamas storms strengthen and barrel towards our lands revealing her vengeful anger It is the collective us, not the white them, that bear the burdens to suffer Winds flatten the land of wood and water Wood from our homes and farmland swirl and squeal Foundations of our civilizations Uprooted Water engulfs all in its path as boundaries between land and sea, river and bank, break through Displacing inhabitants from the Gully Queens to folks with mansions on hill tops Lands with our stories, history, resilience wiped out But connected in struggle to our guardian mother Our waves have been heating carrying resistive hums through generations and generations of kindred love Feet stomping, hands fisted We raise the vibrations of our hum as folks from all parts of our collective identity take to the streets, have community meals and Feed their souls starved of the need to deconstruct the pains of exploitation running through their veins Now The time for us is now Our waves strong enough, bold enough, expansive enough to engulf all evil And reclaim our lands for the sake of our health and the survival of our mother