Cameron Village (or u scared)

Cameron Village (or u scared)

Raleigh, North Carolina

(After Audre Lorde’s “Generation”)

i.

(how?)

How our faces are broken

splinters into rage over ages

rages into splinters of ages of always

facing the breaking of truth

how we remember to live

is a question

we grow into

if we’re lucky.

ii.

(what if?)

what if love could sing in every key

what if every touch every open every close

was

a sacred reminder that love

was all we needed.

what if it is not our held hands

our open mouths our ready boots

what if it is our simple joy

that makes us golden

makes us gay.

iii.

(u scared)

We are seizing your limited power

Cameron Village

your crept up promise

that children will beat the hope out of each other

and sell it to their parents for silence.

Who would come to your latched city of falsehood

Cameron Village, to hear

your warning that that love is not welcome

your indecent and rehearsed rejection

slippery with the spit of slave names

to hear you warn us

that you know what we know

that you have drunk a river of nothing

just to protect your even more nothing

your unquenchable failure.

iv.

(what we know)

You know what we know

even one even two even three glimpses

of what we know how to do

which is love

is danger

that if anyone saw who we are

what we have

they would batter your doors with return receipts

they would dig up your parking lot to farm

they would never buy your sham semblance of somewhere to sit

you know that you know what we know

and we know

that

if anyone saw

the love that we have

they would never buy

anything

ever

again.