Silencing A Movement ( a poem about reclaiming your voice and the ability to use your voice)
When you try to silence voice you’re silencing a movement
Telling it to hush and learn how not to speak at all
You’re telling her that she does not matter
You’re taking away her ability to speak up for herself
For those who are so focused on being loud that others simply cannot be heard
You are speaking selfishly and far too noisily
When her voice cascades over the wrong doing of your heart
You will know how it feels to be silenced when you want nothing more but to speak
You will soon learn to honor the birth canal of which she speaks
Listen to her sing and speak and stand with conviction in her tongue
Watch her sway and step into a woman that day
Understand the inflections that speak loudly
As if to say, this is not a joke
There is a revolution preceding out of my mouth
I am the fire shot before the war
There is nothing pretty about this message
Nothing flamboyant or prissy
Today I am loud and boisterous
As if my voice was the host of a partying frenzy
And I will say whatever was burdened on my heart that day
And the day after that and the day after that
This is what it feels like to speak with a wealth of black diamonds laid upon my neck
Each one rare and beautiful
I feel like liberty on the worst storm in New York City, strong and unmovable
I am poet laureate to our cities
Your favorite song
The dance that moves all the way up your right thigh
You feel this don’t you
My mind is what cultivates this next movement
My words will be my stage
I will be salient, free
And buoyant
But
This poem is not just for me, but for little black boy, you, sitting in the class too afraid to speak
This is for the girl who walks awkwardly and hates confrontation
For the one who has been stained black and blue
The one with those tarnished parts they never wish to speak of
This is for Arie who will never be silenced
When she wants nothing more but to speak I will tell her
Do not hold back
Do not whisper
Speak with the unmistaken sound of freedom calling out our names (insert names)
Say it loud
Let your voice protrude out of the shadows
Let it spark the minds of those who sit in ignorance
Speak with conviction
Use your hands, evoke what you feel
Never let them believe that you don’t know who you are
When you feel your back folding into the wall
Stand tall
Do not cave in
Dare to be seen
You are a momentous treasure
Something that we all wish we could be like
Remember baby girl there’s something influential about our walk
Mommy taught you that
People will know that you can never silence this movement
You can never make this loud voice whisper when she has only dreamed of shouting
Tell them
Liberate me from this silence
Unmute my talk unchain this walk
Say it loud
Put all you got into it
Fight
When people say “You speak like you were born for this”
Tell them that’s because I am
Say “this is what happens when a voice has been unleashed after twenty years
Say I am black history experiencing freedom for the first time
I am Dr. King living to see 80 plus years
I am the dream you tried to stop me from dreaming
I am the Holocaust resurrected
I am South Africa pre-apartheid
Everything is black, wild, and free
Color me home
Say I am freedom’s song
I am a Child of God
I am light piercing the darkness
Say I am the descendant of Harriet, Sojourner, Frederick, Hemingway, Ellison, Zora, Malcolm X, Medger Evers, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison,
Spread your vowels with the stretch and yawn of your mouth
Let them no longer remember silence
Reflesh the bones of your feelings
Give it face
Let those words live again
Let them leap from your throat
As if this gaped mouth had the voice of Aretha
Sing baby sing
And remember when they try to talk you down to a whisper
You are a shotgun ready to pierce the silence, so speak
You are the mouth that will set the world ablaze, speak
Our voice will no longer sit in the back of our throats but will lodge out of the destitute land claiming freedom for ourselves
For the first time we will speak affluently and effectively
Withholding nothing
They will see that
I will not hold back the movement of this current or this unsettling wave
I will take this free will to forget silence and honor the movement, the glory of these words, and the birth canal of which we all speak
And I will say praise be to God for creating vessels with so much resilience about them