Patchwork Poetry 🎋
Ancestral reconstructions for when there are no words left
جذورنا
calling upon the origins of us, the earth in which we began
entangled roots hidden in the dirt
dirt out of which new things will grow
some parallel life from my father's father took a left
grabbed a fistful of soil and instead of leaving, stayed
dropped limbs, leaves, bark, wood, crumpled rock, fallen tree
steam, ruin on earth and flash lit bodies
village eats ash for a week, boys terrace bones
I did not know this earth had jaw enough to hold
the death of ten thousand times ten thousand beings who came before us
scattered debris of too many lives to count
hands muddy from sifting through rubble
I did not know they made sky so famished
the mispronunciation of your bodies by the displacements of the moment
lineages that have been scattered, splintered, and stripped away over generations
reconciling wounds and violations
Isis searching the mouth of the Nile to reclaim the bones of a severed Osiris
putting the dislocated parts back in order so she could breathe life into his skeletal body
crafting as a survival guide, a weapon, a tool
gathering the fragments of severed pieces back whole, mend them, weave them homeward
relational ways of awakening lost and forgotten ancestral wisdoms
unspoken residue from old ways weaving themselves anew
history failing us, unraveling, stories unveiling our truth
resisting cultural amnesia
keeping it alive somewhere in your body
our bodies are living records
embodied research
keepers of memory recalling the past
savoring it in your mind & your senses
speculation as healing & homecoming
crucial reassurance that imagining better tomorrows infiltrates the present
giving language and form to futures not yet articulated and pasts not yet remembered
our past blessing our future, an all-encompassing bridge
the spirits of the fault line
creating tomorrow with yesterday's ashes
the new gods that scream through cracks of unspeakable worlds to come
warning you whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful
نتذكر
Collage/Blackout/Erasure/Cento/Patchwork Poetry
reconstructed during winter 2024 with the words of: