Click here to subscribe. After body slamming my fears, going through my phone and being comfortable with my own brilliance, I decided to restart my Patreon. There will be 3 tiers: $3/monthly You get access to poetry. $6/monthly You get access to poetry and short … Continue reading RUN. IT.
From this — I got this — For the 30 pieces I performed on my TikTok platform, the family was like, “But Sis, where the rest at? These titles are as follows: Day 1: MISSISSIPPI Day 2: We Whisper Loud Day 3: What Tish Coulda … Continue reading And Then This Happened…
This year was freeing.
I think I have been able to become more confident in my own poetic voice, and own that voice!
I am proud of myself and the work I am creating. I am bringing the joy back to my art, and along with that— power.
I no longer fear my pen, and I used to. I used to be afraid of how angry I would sound sometimes — but it’s necessary.
Audre Lorde said that there was purpose to anger! And there is.
There are pieces in this cycle of poetry that are angry, because I was angry.
There are pieces in this cycle that are fun and happy, because I was happy.
There are pieces that are introspective and poignant, because I was thinking at my life so far.
This year, I feel so much lighter than I have in succeeding years. I feel like my feet are under me as an artist, able to stand up to criticism and silence my own inner critic.
I’m maturing as a poet. Growing as an artist. And accepting criticism and compliments.
I finally feel like a poet— I hope that makes sense.
Plus! My first poetry anthology is released May 12, 2024. How amazing if that!
Thank you for going on this journey with me.
JBH
The old texts say
It is appointed unto man
Once l to die
and then the judgment.
what happens to writers
who leave the world
And in the contents therein
with their mouth full.
Their desks full of papers
And pens
And post-its….
Of jump drives, and
Missing chairs,and
Desks never cleaned out.
What happens to the work when the worker is gone?
When that writer
finally drifts away,
and moved to
Avalon or Valhalla
or Nirvana
or wherever it is
writers get to rest.
Our only regret
is that we had
Only one life to write
all the lives in us down.
In the quiet mind
Of the poet,
there is a graveyard
they forgot to write down.
Novels unfinished.
Thoughts and essays
That they never managed
To submit…
calls, answered from editors or fans.
Scripts that never materialized.
Yet it we could leave
One word for those
who endured our lives
as both person
and immortal vessels
filled with language
it would be this:
Remember.
Remember
how we tried to put
everything
into everything
Ran and out of time.
Remember that we loved
As this truly as we could
and our heart was broken
1000 times…
Remember we tried
to put fire into paper
and try not to burn ourselves.
Remember sometimes tears
Became the water you pull from,
In many a well.
We wrote to live.
We wrote to stay.
And for this great cause
Did we not throw
it all away!
if we could leave
But one love letter
What to you will
find in our wake,
Is tried to correct
every mistake.
to bring back those
who were lost
at the cause of war
Or famine
or evil…
to make the good
Loud and present, and
the fear understood.
We tried to put everything right
to organize
so you can fight!
we did our work
so you could do yours too:
because now our time is come
And this is all we have
to give back to you.
Our only regret
Is we had one life
to write everyone else’s
-JBHarris, 4.2024
I will be in the everywhere.
When I am
an ancestor,
when the weight of age
and body
are no longer
my trouble over these waters,
I will be in trees
and leaves
and grasses.
I will be thunder and storm.
I will be the truth
that is picked over
during dinners my hands
prepared and in the eyes
of my family,
and those we have heard of me saw me prepare.
I will be in the stares
of grandchildren,
creaking on the stairs
of old houses that
my feet once tread upon.
I will be cloud
and rain,
My truth,
will come from
their mouth
And I will be in dishes
Over glasses and
In the rumbling of laughter —
I will call
And I will be
called an answer.
-JBHarris, 2.12.2024
This will be in the upcoming work dedicated to my father, DADDY, I’M OKAY.
When I’m tired,
my mother tells
me to stop wiping
and holding my face
like my daddy did
when he was tired.
I think that,
even in those
neurons and synapses
That is my father,
reaching from the beyond
into me to let me know
that he still wants
to take care of me.
I want him so bad,
“Daddy, I’m okay.”
I know with you
being so far away,and
you being into the mystery, and
me eight years from
the point from
where your heart beat
For the last time,
I still want to say:
“Daddy, I’m okay.”
I won’t lie and say
There aren’t days
Where I ache for
your voice and
Rely on your grit—
It is impossible not to miss you.
There are days
I struggle to remember
all you were,
all that you are,
and what you meant to me.
In this world of grief and strife
it sometimes makes memory
so hazy,
that I have to struggle
to remember your voice.
I have now crossed
a threshold in this life,
I have been without you
more than I had you.
I understand if God be for me,
I will have more years
in front of me,
and that holds
the unique paradox
that I might forget you.
And yet Daddy, I’m okay.
I’m okay because
for whatever reason
you fit to give me
rock —and to speak to it,
to demand
I’m not let go of it!
That you endowed
this pretty Black girl
who is now
a strong Black woman
with enough in her
in 17 summers
to summon
when the storms of life rage!
Daddy, I’m okay.
I’m gonna be okay
until it’s okay
speak okay
Until a way is made!
And Daddy, I’m okay…
You can rest now.
I am reminded
there is no time limit
on how long
A father will
love his daughter—
even from million miles away.
I take solace that even on my dying day,
I’ll still be your babygirl.
Daddy… Immabe OK.
-JBHarris, 4.2024
The most contagious lie
on the Internet is
that Black women
are undesirable —
unwanted,
not beautiful,
not trustworthy—
needing to be in our more natural state.
The road to perdition
is always paved
with eyelashes
and weave,
and HR approved hair colors.
It is the steady robbery
of person and self
And the marriage therein
that tells you that
the world can only end
where you begin!
the road to perdition
Is paved with stilettos
that echo hallways
we are not supposed
to be in,
the shunning of
our own selves
from our own selves
into places meant
to be margin.
Our place supposed to be uncomfortable.
Pleasure and purity
Never being ours—
walking these narrow roads
with a few gates, and
even fewer allies, and
no light, and
we were supposed
to just endure that
with smiles in our faces
because Black girls
are made for hard times.
And the only way
to find redemption
among this back door
To Hell’s Jericho Road
is to abandon all hope
of all ye who enter here [the World]
as Dante said,
but at the same time l—
who put us here?
it was Oracle Malcolm,
who told us
who looked like him,
“Who told you to hate yourself?”
and if a Black woman
does not hate herself,
Then,
how can she truly be Black?
But if Blackness holds
everything and
everything is inside Blackness
that means we hold
all power in our very hands!
You see perdition
Was never ours,
It’s was never
ours to be sent,
This road we were
Given is not ours to cement!
It for the cause of those
Who do not know who
They are and will never accept
Who we are
That we continue to forfeit
Our own selves for their selves!
But understand
The key to our CELL,
is never FOR SALE.
The road to Perdition
They say
Is paved with
good intentions.
But at the same time
Heaven is within us
so perdition is never made
for us, and is a holding spot
for those who don’t know
who they are …
besides the darkest trick the devil ever played was to to make the world believe he doesn’t exist, but
Black
women
always
have.
-JBHarris, 4.26.2024
Say Sis-
Did they pick you yet?
Have you now found the courage
To keep trying to out do
Me with whose pussy is better contest?
Have they picked you yet?
You’ve dyed your hair
Gotten the contacts
Gave up contracts
Time
Body and
The most excellent delicate
Whimsical kiss
That Ntozake Shange
Spoke about.
Have they picked you yet?
From all the fighting
On the Internet
From placing your heart
As a useless bet
On countless crap tables
From a man who
Said he would love you forever?
Sis, did he pick you yet?
Did he pick you yet
After all the money you put on his books —
After all the dirty looks —
And from all the right hooks—
Did he pick you yet?
Will your suffering
Finally be enough
To make him come home
Or perhaps—
Raise him from the dead?
Have your eyes
Become so affixed
To the front that
You can’t see what’s
In the back of your head?
Have they picked you yet?
Have they picked you yet
Internet forum
From boardroom
To classroom
Most intimate bedroom talk
To playground,
Have they picked you yet?
The oracle
Nikki Giovanni said
If you find a woman not
full of herself, she’ll be starving,
And clearly you have
Lost both sight and appetite
Feeding on whatever
Is in reach.
Have they picked you yet?
Are your breasts not big enough
The BBL unpaid
Not light enough
Not sweet enough
Did you not make
Him Cum when he
Called enough?
Have they picked you yet?
Us on this side of freedom
Crossing the portion
Of Jordan cannot be affording
The laziness of stopping
Due to your insistence
That you are right
When rail to make
Sure all is not lost.
We will no longer pay this cost!
We are tired of
Having to fight the
World and you too
When you look like me
And I look like me
And I am you.
You see me as problem
To solve,
As the one to save
When truth is
When you try
To bind me to you —
All I have is rage!
All I’m trying to do is live my own life.
It sent to my own self.
With all of myself.
Bringing all of
my selves with me!
The healed versions carrying the wounded versions because my own self is such a treasure.
Did he pick you yet?
Otherwise we will be
In this contest
You blocking the door
Never wanting more
And I refuse to
Stay here with
You forever and a day!
Queens don’t cast
Their crowns to
Neither fools
Nor swine…
So I’ll ask again
Before you run
Out of time —
Have they picked you yet?
-JBHarris, 4.22.2024
Fun fact: the name Zachary is from Zachariah which means the Lord remembers.
Note: This is my first husband’s real first name and I never took his. He is remarried to another woman, has children with her, and makes no attempt to have a relationship with his children. As you read this work, with this backstory, it will make more sense.
He left us on
Constructed wings
Of wax to wain
Leaving us to watch
To see
the sea
Welcome him.
There is no love lost
When the man you loved
No longer exists—
If he ever had.
The name
The Lord remembers
Corresponds to
The same Icarus
Who left me with
The daughters
Held in body
And heart.
The same one
Who now has
Made his tribe
Complete with the
Sons be craved
So that his line
And its curses
Might not die
With him.
Tied to you by time
As my ancestors were
The language and land
Foreign because I
Never was supposed
To be here alone.
To rage, rage against the
Dying of the light!
I swallowed the salt water
For my children to breathe.
Pressing –
Swimming –
Towards the Son
With the
These two
Cleaving to me
To make their
Mother a mermaid
to bring them to
Dry land
To make the milk and honey.
My fins are feet
and feet are fins
The traversing between
The world given
And the world that is.
And taught my daughters to swim.
Their father is Icarus.
Their mother is Yemoja.
The death he wanted
Was his own —
And he can watch
from the bottom of the sea.
-JBHarris, 4.2024
America is a plantation:
It just depends on where you sit.
And from where you sit,
It is the speed at which
they will give you bullshit.
The fact there are
Skinwalkers among
the safe places and
Spaces of Black people
should be a not shock to you.
Because —
You know —
They lied and betrayed Jesus too.
Understand that
Skinwalkers have always
Been among us!
Ever since Massa
Found one’ah us
Willing to betray
all that he is,
All that she was
in order to get a little bit more
Of where they got theirs from—
understanding all that they have is stolen.
You worship the oppression
and wonder why your life
is in ruin—
at the same time
Want protection from
who rescued from your
Own doin’!
You have to understand
that there is no room
For you at the inn!
That you have found yourself
Among thieves and robbers
and the same time
you wanna clobber us
For all that we have garnered
and say that we are lazy!
Have you been so far
From your mother’s table
From your father’s arms
You no longer recognize
I am you?
because I recognize that you are me.
And in that same breath
In the same life’s brevity,
I understand the same documents
That you worship?
They will hang you with.
They will use your blood
to keep the flag red, white and blue.
Red for the Blood shed
Here, there, and everywhere abroad.
White for ten same
Colored people who
Stole it and erased
All others,
Chaining the remaining as
If we had no mother,
Treaties as broken
As the husks of cicadas.
When you are
Hallowed out
Wiped and rubbed clean
Of blackness and its cause eternal
Blue is what you succumb
And remain
Once they hang you!
It is not my job to make you comfortable—
But to remind you of
All that is within you
That your rescue has
Always been in the room
But you continue
To your doom
but you must understand
because White father has
told you that black is bad .
And yet —
When the house burns down
You realize that we
are all you ever had!
But at the same time,
I had you your broom
Back to you!
there is no one willing
to stay here with you!
The plantations are burning!
Massa is dead!
And we have long time
before we go to bed,
so we have to keep going.
You sweet ‘round this porch
because this is what you wanted!
What you have worked for!
To be the best one
Outta all of us
And I say—
By that game you’ve won.
So, gone head and sit down some.
Rest a spell!
You gon need it for the
War yet to be won.
Because trust and believe
They’ll put your
Black ass at the end
Of a gun!
understand that you
Cannon fodder for
The cause of whiteness
because you have decided
To sacrifice all of yourself—
For all that they are!
And when the house burns down
Stay in there!
Because there is no more room
and we can’t share the air.
You have to understand
that you did this to you,
So sweep around that
front door like Massa
Told you to!
I will not be a mammy of a burning house.
-JBHarris, 4.17.24
I Breathe Fire 