Chains

It's starting to feel like all I can write about anymore is being sad;

like, “why doesn’t Vexare make music anymore” kind of sad,

like, "what happened to that Jada & that Will" type sad,

like, will we make it out of here alive?

I think about my mortality

perhaps more than is healthy.

These sullen trees around me bore strange fruit of color and I can't stop staring at them.

I creep closer to one for a gaze inward-

and see the peaceful being occupied & detained in Tibet.

I see Tigrayan citizens massacred by the millions.

I see no justice for

Breonna Taylor,

or Philand0 Castile,

or Tamir Rice (who was twelve years old),

or Mike Brown,

or Emmett till (who isn't even allowed to rest),

or Anthony Thompson Jr,

or Lauren Smith-Fields,

or…

or…

or…

I see a failure to notice the war being waged on our skin…

I see a failure to notice a war being waged on the basis of skin.

My elders have been telling me, perhaps even for years,

that I need to find Joy and enjoyment.

But how?

Even as I'm performing I'm thinking about it.

Even as I disassociate behind a controller,

or a show

or the wheel of my car.

I smile on my mask as the truth isn't even in the moment.

At times like these I think of a poem that reminds me of that I'm missing:

it goes "The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom."

Well, as I'm gripped by the Universe and shaken to death,

as I'm returned to my cage to peer out at the expanse of human suffering,

as I think of this pillaged & loathed prison of flesh I'm stuck in,

all I’m left to do is sing, ever so softly, for just one reason not to be so sad anymore.