The arrogant, seal them up.

Let the simple whisper as they yell.

May the liars lay mute.

May the stupid not caste votes.

May the evil wander aimlessly and unsuccessfully and may the good who do evil be called to court.

These prayers I lift to you are filled with haughty, arrogent, simple-minded, liars who believe they honor you and center themselves. They believe I should center them. Serve them.

I am not interested in their platitudes, only their apologies and prostration. Make them prostrate low.

David cursed his enemies. These are their children. Bless them with epiphany and remorse. Forgive them when they confess aloud their foolishness and strife.

Shield me. Command me. Hide me and raise me. That they might know who you are to me and who I am to you.

10.20.2024

Prayers was originally published in Broken Levee on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From withdraw to building.

From building to exhausting.

From exhausting to presenting.

From presenting to praised.

And then — the endorphins.

Like soothe to an itch to be revealed.

Balm for the bottomless demands of the superficial.

Not quite Gilead.

It doesn’t last as long — but its accessible.

As sex

As praise

As a deck of cards or mobile game you keep deleting

As a sweet tooth

A saturated meal delivered to your door

As a like or a follow

As a job

If you exhaust yourself enough, you can make a career out of it.

As an entertainer

Or “leader”

Or gambler

Or overweight scroller

Or influencer seeking love

All for a price.

heavier size

less freedom

declined health

money spent

endless stroller

empty wisher

self-loather

All in search of…

Endorphins was originally published in Broken Levee on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There he goes
He who saves
He who heals
He who prays
He’s so wise
He’s so brave
He’s so righteous
And us...
We, who lie
We, who crave
We, who die
We depraved
We, all high
We’re enslaved
and underserving.

Jesus was scared
Got away from the crowd
Good thing we couldnt figure him out
Alone, but not alone
His life was laid bare
Staring at him
Daring at him
To preserve self—the only time it'd be a sin
But he didn't
He obeyed
Didnt break
Kept his cool
People whispered
As Him and his skin tore open like blisters
Thorns and flesh bruised and festered
Torturous humans justified by conjecture
Alive, for hours, not dead
Lied on and denied
Left unfed
Mom in stead
Her and his agony bled

~ סֶלָה ~

There she goes
She who "saves"
She who steels herself
She who preys
She acts wise
She acts brave
She’s not righteous
She’s always late
She who lies
She who craves
She’s addicted to lewdness, yet she prays
She’s depraved
She’s not right
She’s infectious, depleted inside
She’s confused
She connives
She’s a mess, and she’s trying to hide

I have a couple things to confess
Sins on my skin to undress
An itch in my body to cease
When Im low it returns like disease
In my head I know what I can do
I can write
I can make old things new
I can sing
I can dance
I can woo
I can pretend I am strong
Look right when Im wrong

So everyone says to ‘dust off’
She who can never be lost
I bared myself once to be seen
And questioned who really believed
"Let me know how I can help"
Is a trap I’ve already been dealt
It means "you’re capable of helping yourself"
It means "dont ask for anything else"
Who can help me get a good nights rest
Or stand in the mirror undressed
Who can help me clean what I possess
I’m so blessed I feel under duress
Fixing my back
Fixing my knee
Fixing my ear
Fixing my teeth
Fixing the hormones that cause me to bleed
Fixing the boils on my scalp and beneath
Fixing my city
Unfixed from home
Fixing my family
Fixing my hope
Fixing anxiety
Fix my unclean
Fix my ambition
Fix why it bleeds

Can I disappear?
Past in the rearview
Presently, there is nothing to adhere to
I’m exhausted by everything here
Peers and pretenders—well meaning offenders
Nothing but fog in the stream
Compassless dream
Fork in a stream
Wake up in a loop,
like an urn with ash unburned
left eschewed
Singe from a cross
Unburdening myself
Unable to address the depth
I turn my head and look left
and consider asking...

Dismas 1 was originally published in Broken Levee on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I tried to remember him. His image in my mind was of a bouncing ball of Black joy on his mother’s hip;

Waiting to be handed off to “aunties,” singing in choirs with a babbling coo, and interrupting “the adults” with joy

Unraveling the thickening air of culture and tradition clashing with America

Innocence disrupting systems, though we understood neither, his instruments were unawareness and abandon.

His small hands folded over complexion after complexion, soiled with the sweat of perfume, cologne, old Bibles, peppermints, and an audience ripe for good distraction — amen.

He pattered his arms like drumsticks in the lap of his mother, finding rhythm in praise and lullaby in worship.

There he is. His smile. His sisters flowing over, perfected ribbon and clip in hair, to usher him back to a pew, a home for the remaining hours barracaded by elders and ushers, parents in waiting. His brothers focused intently on being engineers of a holier agenda.

He was safe.

I found him, there, in my memory and remembered how seemingly everything about small children were round: their bottoms, their heads, their eyes, their puckering lips, and the world around them.

Their smells, soft.

Their commands for attention, royal.

Us, subjects — responsible for protecting the treasures they sensed they were.

When do they stop being round headed, round-eyed reminders in need of correction and protection?

When does it not bother us that we will no longer see them dance, or smile, sing, or run recklessly into life?

How are we so powerful? Far along? And yet we cannot, like religion, find power in all our rules and systems. How do we draw power from our nature and the world around us if our nature is fear?

How are we not hollowed when we lose our seeds? Our core? Fruitless.

Things without cores become less and then nothing at all.

Let us mourn who we are.

Women with shaved heads mourning in black, mourning in Black.

“What is hair without joy?”

“What is joy?” …without the bouncing ball, drumstick arms, wide and round everything like a ready seed.

Where are our fathers?

Shattering in a place foreign to them because the world does not allow them the strength to visit grief. To be protected.

And we. We are weaving complexities of modernity around the simplest commandment: love.

Beneath the weave,

Pulling apart the strings of being colored, cocooned in prayers —

we try and hide our children from lwa, brushing away 232 colors of judgement from their faces like crumbs from millet, kissing their flesh with a story to soothe our truth: that we cannot hide their shine for our fear — knowing that God, by any name, cannot be served by a lamp beneath a basket.

Yet from our earth, their light spills from beneath a grassy knoll, a high hill, and we are fighting for the cities where they dwell, in hopes that as they live and live more abundantly, they would shine. And shine bright.

Burn the darkness.

Mark it.

Mar it.

Exorcise it.

Swallow it in their bright.

Yet as they take their lamps and venture out of sight, we call their names but I am fighting to remember their smiles?

For Thalmon Silien

You can support his memory by donating at https://gofund.me/c4446293.

— ruthnie angrand

The Children was originally published in Broken Levee on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I hope one day you see
the magic in your smile
as a form of resistance,
warding off demons and
raising your joy.

It is a hex to those who settle and sliver from flesh but hate the soul.

It is a rage.
A chaos.
A disorder.
A tangled fragile thread too precious to cut
Too thinly veiled with freedom to disrupt
Too far gone to save
Too righteous to throw away
so we put it in a drawer and invoke magic — prayers — in tongues to undo what colonies of hate have wrought at our door…
 — in our drawers
 — to our families
 — to our men
 — to you.

You are not far enough removed from the monsters that enrage you; make you so ungentle to yourself.

I worry when I touch you that you will touch me back with what you have; what you have has not set you free.

You are a slave to the hurt you have been given.
Indentured and unsure of which direction is freedom.
Seeking a light — but your eyes glimmer, your words warm, your smile beams.
You are the light.

I am a foreigner.
Speaking in tongues.
What do you want?
Who are you?
Why are you afraid to see that you are at the helm of great, bend like steel, and cannot be wound up so much so that they hide behind American steel to weigh you down.

Take your mother…
Hide your father in the dark.
Terrorize your family with death and threats and maddening fear making this seance of instability seem immortal — steadiness brings you to tears.
They cannot take you.

It takes an entire station of them to sedate you yet you do not stay broken. Like daybreak, your smile resurrects the freedom you cannot find but wear like the sun of the morning; free dripping down your bronze toes and curling crowns of clouds of wool atop your mane.

Jesus resurrected.
They told you you were not him.
You are too broken.
Like Him, you are too, broken but resurrected in a movement to save others, lovers, and not yourself.
Jesus left them no room to speak.
You speak to them and in your light, make room.

I am afraid.

If you cannot see yourself how can you see me?
You are looking for something magical without and not within.
Somewhere I cannot bring you to.

Yet here I am.
Reflecting back to you: praying, bleeding, to others shrinking (but not shrinking)protecting myself until you see yourself and your joy and your smile.

Look at me, holding up your scorched sand until you see yourself.
Be free.
If you cannot see it, there is no love out of air that can craft us a home.

You are lost and you are not.
Open yourself.
Look.
I am here.
I am not there and cannot be.
I am where you are.
I cannot be there until you are.
You are master. Monsters are your birthright.
Tame yourself.

I am a greater seance.
Tethered to desire.
With a spark for you.

I see you.
Mysterious.
Magical.
More…

Love Crafted was originally published in Broken Levee on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

the everyday me
is seen through one lens
awkward smiles that hide and pretend
past guiltless white shirts that mask constant forgiveness
cropping out men, friends, searching for them again
bearing long locks and short crops
light beaming through eyelids; through dark lids
pink lips provision soft words
high cheeks provision they’re heard
brown skin has paid for their worth
butterscotch sweet humility, my curtsy bows me to the earth
whatever width my hips or pursed my lips
I am in this skin barely
my heart’s girth cannot bear me or to measures my eyes ambition
tempered by whip and steel, harvesting in God’s hearth,
on stage, on perch,
Everyone watching as I shape, shake, break and remold beyond hurt.

They measure me by the damage I have unearthed.
I ensure they only see The Work.

r.angrand

The Work was originally published in Broken Levee on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.