My uncle was a master at speaking to one person as a way to speak to the whole room. It makes the room feel like they overheard something secret, something special, something profound or [as was often the case with Buddy Boy] deeply profane. I think it is an ability branch that Black folx unlock in old age, after you’ve beaten life and god gives you a few more years to play around with. New game+

Will you close your eyes and dream with me?

1.

Take a container
Fill it with joy
Love
Warmth
And the all erotic energies of excellence

Watch as the dark energies
Gather and coalesce
And disperse
Like bits of precious Black oil,
Black because it has survived,
In purest water of this world.
Always slightly separate and unstable.

2.

Like your brother I found god in stones
I could feel him and her and they
In the granite mountains that blocked out the sun 30 minutes before sundown
I could feel its dark energies in the crystals of my collection
Geodes reflected its tripartite soul
My original trinity that died on Sunday when I learned about idol worship

3.

How do you midwife the birth of a collective story capable of being embodied en mass from the dream fragments of organizers, activist and witches? How do you lead the people through the journey of embodying the lesson of our Black foremothers? How can we lead by fathering ourselves? How can I forgive my father for how we fathered me? How can I praise him for how he raised me? How can I forgive my grandmother for how she fathered him, alone in the burnt down New York apartment after running from the strange fruit of her mothers and fathers in the dreary south? How can I thank them for changing, for learning to love me and teaching me that it is never too late to change?

4.

I don’t want to be an organizer. It’s tiring. Emotionally draining. Thankless.

But I’m good at it and my heroes are organizers.

My friends are organizers. My family are organizers. So I became an organizer.

I realized in talking with you that they don’t tell stories about the kind of person I want to be. We don’t tell stories of the dream weavers, analytical cartographers and love evangelist. You are the first love evangelist I’ve meet [we’ve never met] and I’ve only recently heard any of your stories. I had decided that I’m not the type of person who evangelizes love or who weaves dreams but I was grateful that they, that you, exist.

You unlearned me of that notion. You reminded me of the power of my dreams, the deft way my fingers stroke the keys of my computer and weave analysis with longing with desire with love with memories…with dreams. You reminded me, as Erika and April and my sister named Alexis too had reminded me, of the dopeness I try to hide. Of the genius that emerges when I wander. Of the joy I love to bring into the world. Of the dreams I am capable of birthing. Of the dreams I am entitled to wish upon the universe.

5.

I lied before when I said I don’t want to be an organizer.

I do.

I want to organize dreams.

I want to build co-ops of the dream worlds we enter at night.
I want to reclaim the land that is stolen from us every sunrise.
I want to organize freedom schools that teach this land as our collective birthright.
I want to organize pilgrimages to our collective dreamscapes a mile over yonder,

In the land of our overgrown spiritual offerings,
Over yonder,
Over there,
Over reaching
Our
We
Of
Of
Of
Us
Ours
Ownership
No hesitation required
Our offerings to each other
Our “intuitive technology”
Our oracles of ontology
Giving birth to the beautifully mundane

Giving birth to us.

Will you help organize this midwife academy with me?
Will you lead-follow-lead me on this journey?
Can we invite the reader to this somatic tale?

6.

Open the container of dark energy.

Do you see how the fire erupts when it touches the air?
Can you see our community dancing in the flames?
Can you feel the heat of our liberation in its intensity?
Can you smell our chains burning in its ardor?
Do you see how the pure water holds bits of it and keeps it from exploding?

Can we teach each other to do that?

7.

My uncle would say that this is God’s favorite number.
I think she and my great grandmother put it all 7 in the casino in heaven
but that’s another story.

Will you all open your eyes and dream with us now?