The Fugitive Griot
Limestone me shards sharpened
puncture enemy. flying from
flummoxed behinds
bush trap stalk the beast
lower into caverns
me know, land like heart
rivers like sanguine
alive like roots
etched on
my back
home been scorned
but gods swam wit me here
rugged n wild n
night trekkin’ to the place
sleep suspended in tree
hold my flesh. meat. soul. above
bastard predator
pact with soil,
breathing disobedience in my ear
mountain wanna contain
these rifts in valleys
wan’ me see beyond
the waterways out
scorched earth cuz
spirit’s never enslaved
bird / manwomanting / serpent tol me
mud bounce back leave no trace
abeng back &
forth
codes exclusive to da
shrill
airways
jumpin n hollerin
camouflage limbs
quick slice
like spirit say
down to da core
n back
under da cover of night
high john ride me
night flyer
roamin skies
kill or be traitor
leaves wanna dance wit us
wanna help we
get free.
The Griot’s Wayward Incantations…
The fugitive knows that there is no infinity in capital, only infinite manifestations of worlds in marronage. Then, more than ever. And now, more than thereafter, we’re beckoned to return and relish in the present, which emerges at the junction of our indigeneity and our future. Tethering the two together in a spontaneous dance to breach the surface of hardened regression. Even as the end, the finality of reality, shreds itself at the seams and we are cut and torn in the process, our sacrifices in séance shatter away accumulated bonds. Our double bodies transfix into the roots - and we strangulate the hold at the earth’s core.
In cacophonous glee, the fugitive resides. Somewhere in mid-stuporous possession, erotically savoring the sap of the interconnected underworlds. Never yielding, always possessing, pressing, their weight, only to be multiplied and resonated by the chorus of the ancestors. Heavy in fortified boundaries yet light on foot, trailing and desecrating bounty hunters. The fugitive, so rooted in the unfolding of their own tactical multiplicity, is. Period.
The vitality of our spirit is in the endless renderings of ecstatically navigated imaginations. In the midst of terror, racking through the spectral minutiae – apparitions of freedom which present themselves in glaring hellscapes of savage colonial greed and bondage. The fugitive is tasked with the nearly impossible, yet wholly reality-stricken, process of laying autonomous claim to their bodies, the land, and accompanying spirits. In these liberated zones is where indigeneity meets adaptation, acclimating to new climates, cementing the foundation of an ongoing transformation. Sustenance for the ungovernable. An eternal refusal.
The fugitivity of our time will be written in new constellations. The undercurrent - the deviants who amassed subversive networks loudly and in silence. Who constructed themselves in position and imposed, delightfully and maliciously, on what has always been mired in myth and magical negroism. The pillage of the master’s order and reclamation of the earth, and thereby, the multiverse, realigning ourselves to extraterrestrial life in our empathetic capacities. Story, telling itself.
The fugitive’s defense lives within their tenderness. If you listen closely enough, you can hear the ocean’s simmering lament, the plants billowing in shared pleasure, the winds howling in celebration, the birds’ riotous maneuvers, the soil preparing to purge. You can hear the earth exacting its life in destructive purpose. You can hear the earth harmoniously humming in your ear drums and caressing your skin in belonging. And if we are attuned to ourselves, we can feel our bodies fomenting rebellion.
The fugitive plots alone if required, but The Fugitive Griot is the continuation of the story of how fugitivity has has, is, and will undermine centuries of enslavement / colonialism / capitalism / eugenics. This is the story of destruction and life / life and destruction. Are you prepared to contribute your tale? If not in defensive formation, then in song, dance, memory, whisper, prayer, visual wonderings, or creative summoning?
War is creation, after all…