1.

Breath comes around the mountain 

Fresh from the ocean and refusal

Finding its way inside me and lasting with the sunlight 

a migration a gesture of becoming

 

2.

Black breath a discontinuous embrace 

That lives on the tips of fingers and palm

Breath of a woman I’ve never met

Breath of a plantation I’ve never seen

This ancestor 

Touching her fingers to her lips to warm her hands 

Cupping her anguish with her palm to save her children

Deep breath sound to repair and slaughter 

 

3.

Give me a day to be the trees 

To give you air and go limp folding into your love

A day to be bark, leaf, stipul, vine

To receive you all, from the rope and fire

To let you into my curves and long life

Your breath not lost, I’d save it and give more.

I would gather you like love and memory 

Dear strange fruit 

To be the trees for you is my prayer

 

4.

Sipping the gasp that fallows the end of a whispers

A shallow breath 

Rapid

Pushed out through the water 

Empty it out.  All of the breath

Distillation is what is needed now

for new heav of refusal 

A new breath rushing in fillingl the belly new encounters of freedom

Yes

Now

Liberation 

 

5.

Breathe across ocean space 

Become black again and again in the glory moments of sound

It's an everlasting black breath

Taking breath in

Breathtaking 

Taking our breath 

Our breath 

From the noose

From the chock of vipid arms 

From sutt 

The dungeon 

 

Capitalism is the long asphyxiation