We have to remember that one of the oldest lies America ever told was that Black people were less than fully human. Thomas Jefferson argued that Black people experienced love as little more than physical desire rather than the “tender” emotional attachment he believed white people were capable of.

It is difficult to deny someone’s humanity while they are standing in front of you singing about the person they cannot live without.

One Of Slavery’s Greatest Cruelties

When most people talk about slavery, they usually talk about chains, cotton, and plantations.

All of that is true. What is talked about less often is the emotional violence.

Families were separated. Husbands were sold away from wives. Children were taken from parents. Marriage offered little legal protection. Love existed, but it was constantly under threat.

One of slavery’s greatest cruelties was that it treated Black relationships as disposable.

And yet, despite every attempt to tear us apart, Black people continued falling in love. We got married. We raised children. We built families.

That persistence was an insistence that Black life was worthy of tenderness.

The Black Love Song Became Proof

By the middle of the twentieth century, Black music was overflowing with devotion.

Luther sang like loving someone was worth surrendering your pride. Stevie made love sound joyful rather than confining. Roberta Flack, Anita Baker, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, The Stylistics, The Chi-Lites, and so many others gave Black tenderness a public language.

Their songs made room for waiting on someone, missing them, wanting them home, and believing love might last. They became the records we danced to in living rooms, played at weddings, and returned to when ordinary language was not enough.

Whether they intended it or not, these artists were doing more than making romance records.

They were documenting Black humanity.

Their music contradicted centuries of stereotypes that portrayed Black people as incapable of stable families, lasting commitment, or deep emotional lives. Every promise to stay and every plea for someone to come home became evidence that Black feeling was fuller than America had ever been willing to admit.

What Are We Singing About Now?

Today’s Black artists still sing about love.

But love does not feel like the emotional center of Black popular music in quite the same way.

We sing more about status and luxury than love and commitment. But that shift is not the artists’ fault. Artists write honestly about the world around them.

The more interesting question is what changed in the world that changed the songs.

What happens when making it becomes more believable than falling in love? What happens when wealth feels attainable but trust feels impossible? What happens when the greatest dream becomes escaping the neighborhood instead of building a home inside it?

Perhaps music has not changed nearly as much as we have.

Perhaps our emotional priorities have.

The Revolution Was Always Human

We often remember Black music for its protest, its resistance, and its demands for justice.

And we should.

But resistance was not always loud. Sometimes it sounded like two people promising to stay together. Sometimes it looked like a family gathering for a birthday, a couple dancing at their wedding, or someone coming home to the same person after another difficult day.

These were not glamorous dreams. They were ordinary ones.

The history of Black America is filled with extraordinary struggles. Sometimes we forget that the dream was never to live extraordinary lives.

The dream was to finally have ordinary ones.

I want to hear people in love. Not lust. Not revenge. Not cheating. Not another song about money, murder, and drugs. I want to hear someone sing about choosing another person, about building a life together, about tenderness, commitment, and the kind of long-lasting love we used to look for.

And the more I think about it, the more I wonder what today’s music says about us.

Pain Is Louder Than Peace

The greatest songs have almost always come from conflict.

Heartbreak gives us stories. Betrayal gives us villains. Longing gives us tension. These emotions make for incredible art because they demand resolution.

Happiness doesn’t grab our attention in the same way.

It doesn’t scream at the top of its lungs. It doesn’t fall to its knees and beg for forgiveness. It doesn’t leave voicemails at two in the morning.

Happiness wakes up next to the same person for thirty years and makes coffee.

Maybe that’s why peace has always struggled to compete with pain as entertainment.

The blues taught us that suffering has its own language. Some of the greatest music ever written came from people trying to make sense of loss. But somewhere along the way, I wonder if we stopped treating heartbreak as one chapter of the story and started treating it as the whole book.

We Say We Want Love. We Reward Everything Else.

Listen to the talks we have about artists who go through a painful breakup.

People immediately start saying, “The next album is going to be incredible.” When an artist falls in love, gets married, or finds some measure of peace, people start worrying that they’ve lost their edge.

We’ve become so used to consuming their struggle that happiness almost feels disappointing. Sometimes it seems like we love an artist’s pain more than we love the artist.

We’re asking people to suffer because we prefer the songs they wrote while trying to survive. That’s an impossible expectation to put on another human being.

What Does That Teach Us About Love?

Music has never only reflected culture. It also teaches culture. It gives us a vocabulary for our emotions. It tells us what desire sounds like, what grief sounds like, what celebration sounds like. It even shapes what we imagine is possible.

A generation can only imagine what it has repeatedly been taught to imagine. The stories we hear over and over shape what we expect from other people.

If our music spends more time imagining betrayal than devotion, trust becomes less familiar than suspicion. Revenge sounds more exciting than forgiveness. Being emotionally unavailable gets mistaken for confidence, and vulnerability is treated as weakness.

I’m not arguing that every song should be a love song. Nor am I pretending the past was some perfect time when everyone sang about healthy relationships. It wasn’t. Heartbreak has always been part of music. So has desire. So has lust.

The difference is that, once upon a time, the emotional range felt wider.

Today, I wonder if we’ve narrowed it too much, and I’m worried about what happens to a generation who listens to music that makes being emotionally unavailable sound cooler than being vulnerable.

Maybe the Love Song Never Left.

I don’t think people have stopped wanting love. I think we’ve become less convinced it’s possible.

It’s easier to imagine becoming rich than becoming emotionally fulfilled. It’s easier to picture a luxury apartment than a healthy relationship. It’s easier to believe someone will break your heart than keep their word.

Music doesn’t create those beliefs on its own. But it can certainly amplify them.

I tend to return to older records more often these days. Not because they’re better, but because they tell me that Black music once spent just as much time imagining tenderness as it did imagining struggle.

Black music will probably always sing about survival because survival has always been part of the Black experience. What I worry about is whether survival has become the only story we believe.

Black people deserve more than just survival. We deserve the chance to build a life.

And somewhere inside every great love song is a refusal to believe that survival is all we’re here for.

At first, that feels backward.

Love is supposed to be one of the most natural parts of being human. Wealth, on the other hand, is difficult to obtain. It demands long hours, sacrifice, education, opportunity, and, often, a great deal of luck. Surely love should come easier than money.

But the older I get, the more I think hooks was right.

You can work overtime and earn a promotion. You can save for a down payment. You can build a business. You can buy a larger house. The path is never guaranteed, but there is at least a formula to follow.

There is no formula for love.

You cannot force someone to trust you. You cannot schedule intimacy. You cannot make another person choose you simply because you have worked hard enough.

Perhaps that is why so many of us spend our lives chasing the things that can be measured instead of the things that cannot.

Survival & Love Do Not Naturally Belong Together.

Survival teaches one set of instincts. Love teaches another.

To survive, you learn vigilance. You learn how to anticipate danger before it arrives. You learn self-protection. You learn independence. You learn to keep enough emotional distance that disappointment does not destroy you.

Love asks almost the opposite of us.

It asks us to trust another person with the parts of ourselves we spend the rest of our lives trying to protect. It asks for vulnerability instead of control, openness instead of suspicion, and generosity instead of scarcity.

Neither lesson is wrong.

The tragedy begins when survival becomes the only lesson available. Because the skills that keep you alive are not always the same skills that allow you to be deeply known.

Black Survival Was Never Optional

For Black Americans, survival was never simply a personality trait.

It was a historical requirement.

For centuries, Black families lived under conditions that made ordinary life extraordinarily fragile. Husbands and wives were separated. Children were sold away from their parents. Communities were dismantled through slavery, racial terror, segregation, economic exclusion, and countless other policies designed to make stability difficult and security uncertain.

Generation after generation, we learned to adapt because we had to. We learned to be cautious. To endure and sacrifice. And maybe, just maybe, we would someday learn how to trust and know comfort. Those lessons helped us survive, but every education leaves something out.

There is no time for tenderness because we are too busy surviving.

We do not stop wanting love, but love requires things that history repeatedly interrupted, like time, safety, and trust.

Survival is Not the Dream

This is why I find myself thinking differently about the music we celebrate.

Listen carefully to what so much of our culture asks us to admire.

The mansion. The private jet. The diamond chain.

They’re easy to dismiss as vanity, and sometimes they are. But I also wonder if they’re carrying another message entirely. Maybe they’re less about showing off than proving something—to yourself, to your family, to history.

Proof that the struggle meant something.

Proof that you made it farther than you were ever expected to.

There is nothing inherently wrong with beautiful things. Black people have every right to enjoy comfort after generations of being denied it.

The danger comes when survival becomes the destination instead of the bridge. When the conversation ends with making it out rather than asking what kind of life awaits us once we’ve arrived.

A person can become extraordinarily skilled at escaping poverty while still struggling to imagine intimacy. We can become experts at building careers while remaining beginners at building trust. We can learn how to accumulate wealth without ever learning how to receive love.

Those are different educations.

One does not guarantee the other.

Survival Was Never the Destination

Perhaps this is what bell hooks was trying to teach us.

Material comfort matters. Economic security matters. Justice matters.

None of those things are insignificant.

But none of them answer the deepest human question.

To survive is not the same as belonging. To achieve is not the same as being known. To accumulate is not the same thing as being loved.

For generations, Black Americans had little choice but to become masters of survival. History demanded it.

The challenge now is different.

If survival was the lesson our ancestors were forced to learn, perhaps love is the lesson we must choose for ourselves.

Because surviving was never supposed to be the final destination.

It was only supposed to get us there.

It’s like arguing with somebody who hurt you while they keep insisting they didn’t do anything wrong. At a certain point, the original offense almost becomes secondary to the denial itself. Because now you’re not only dealing with the wound, you’re dealing with the gaslighting.

That’s what race conversations in America often feel like.

People say slavery was a long time ago. Segregation ended. We had a Black president. Why keep bringing this up?

And my answer is simple: because you still won’t admit what happened.

Not fully.

Not honestly.

America wants credit for progress without accountability for the damage it causes. It wants reconciliation without confession. It wants everybody to “move on” while refusing to clearly state what we are supposedly moving on from.

You cannot heal what you refuse to diagnose.

You cannot repair harm you refuse to name.

And that refusal is where the tension lives.

Because I think a lot of white Americans hear acknowledgment as condemnation. They think admitting racism existed, or still exists, automatically makes them monsters. So instead of confronting the truth, they defend themselves against it. They hear “racism” and immediately start protecting their identity instead of examining their behavior, their history, or the systems they benefit from.

But accountability is not the same thing as eternal punishment.

Sometimes you did participate in something wrong. Sometimes you inherit something wrong. Sometimes you benefit from something wrong. That does not mean redemption is impossible. But redemption requires honesty first.

That is the part America struggles with.

There’s a difference between saying “bad things happened” and saying “we did bad things.” One is passive. The other requires responsibility.

And honestly, Black people are not even asking for endless guilt. Most of us are asking for honesty. Draw the line in the sand. Tell the truth about what happened. Admit slavery happened. Admit segregation happened. Admit that racial hierarchy was intentionally created and maintained. Admit freedom was not applied equally. Admit the contradiction existed.

Then maybe we can actually move forward instead of having the same argument every generation.

And yet we are still asked to fight for things citizens are supposed to already have.

Housing. Safety. Fair wages. Equal education. Equal treatment under the law. Access to healthcare. Access to wealth. Access to peace.

That contradiction is hard to ignore.

When people hear the word “slave,” they only think about chains and plantations. They can’t fathom the true atrocities that occurred because most were never told, and if they were, the truth is almost too gruesome to believe. The more muted explanation of slavery was just forced labor. But it was more than that. It was exploitation. It was ownership. It was building wealth from Black bodies while denying Black people humanity.

That relationship never fully disappeared. It just changed clothes.

Now the labor is cultural. Athletic. Creative. Emotional. Economic.

We create the trends, the language, the music, the dances, the aesthetics, the humor, the innovation, the cool. Then corporations monetize it. Industries are built on it. Entire platforms survive because of it. America consumes Blackness constantly while remaining uncomfortable with actual Black people.

That is not citizenship. That is usage.

A citizen participates in the rewards of the country they help build. A citizen has access to the nation’s promises. But Black people are still too often left fighting for scraps from a table we helped construct.

Even success becomes temporary. Once something we create reaches a certain level of value, it is absorbed, repackaged, sanitized, and sold to the mainstream until we no longer recognize it as ours. Then we start over again. We invent. America extracts. Repeat.

So yes, legally, we are citizens.

But there is a difference between having citizenship papers and fully belonging to a nation.

America loves Black culture. It has always depended on Black labor and Black creativity. What it has struggled to do is value Black humanity with the same enthusiasm.

Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt is being celebrated decades after its release with a special edition vinyl release through Target. Under normal circumstances, this would simply be a celebration of one of the most important albums in hip-hop history. A piece of art that changed the trajectory of rap music. A young Black man from Marcy Projects telling stories about survival, poverty, ambition, and the cost of chasing the American Dream.

But these are not normal circumstances.

Target is currently facing a boycott from many in the Black community after walking back diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. A company that once proudly positioned itself as a supporter of Black creators, Black businesses, and marginalized communities is now being challenged by some of those same communities.

And in the middle of that moment, Jay-Z appears. Again.

And that “again” is what is concerning.

Because this conversation is not really about Target. It is about the complicated relationship between art, capitalism, and cultural responsibility.

The truth is, nobody escapes capitalism clean.

Every single one of us participates in systems we disagree with. We boycott one corporation and buy from another with similar problems. We criticize billionaires from phones made through questionable labor practices. We demand ethical consumption inside a system that makes ethical consumption almost impossible.

Contradiction is a feature of the system.

So the question is not: “Is Jay-Z a hypocrite?”

We all are.

The better question is: what responsibility comes with becoming a cultural symbol?

The story of Jay Z is almost the perfect American mythology. A young Black kid from the projects. A young man who was never supposed to make it. Someone born into conditions created by generations of inequality who somehow survived those conditions and became one of the wealthiest entertainers in history.

There is something powerful about that. There is something worth celebrating about a Black man entering rooms this country never intended him to enter.

The question we have to wrestle with is: at what point does beating the system turn into becoming part of it?

Now, Jay-Z has, without a doubt, continuously contributed to the progress of the Black community throughout his career. He has funded causes, supported criminal justice reform, invested in Black artists, created opportunities, and constantly pushed conversations around ownership.

But Jay-Z’s philosophy has always been rooted in Black capitalism: ownership, seats at tables, building wealth.

And the question that sits beside that philosophy is:

What happens if the table is the problem?

Because this is not the first time Jay-Z has found himself in this position.

When the NFL was facing criticism after Colin Kaepernick’s protest and conversations about race, policing, and the treatment of Black athletes, Jay-Z partnered with the league. The argument was that change happens from inside the room.

But many wondered if the room actually changed, or if the room simply needed someone like Jay-Z standing inside of it.

When the Barclays Center was being developed in Brooklyn, Jay-Z’s image and relationship to Brooklyn helped sell the dream of what it could become.

But development has consequences.

The same culture that makes neighborhoods valuable is often pushed out once everyone else realizes the value.

And now Target.

A company attempting to repair its relationship with Black consumers gets attached to one of the most influential Black cultural figures alive.

Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe Jay-Z truly believes partnership creates progress. Maybe his involvement is much smaller than people assume.

But there is a pattern, and that pattern makes me question: why do these institutions always seem to need someone like Jay-Z at the exact moment they are losing trust with the communities Jay-Z represents?

That does not make Jay-Z a villain. That makes him complicated.

And maybe that is the uncomfortable part.

We want our heroes to be simple.

We want them to be successful but untouched by success. We want them to be wealthy but not compromised by wealth. We want them to be powerful but somehow disconnected from the systems that create power.

That might be impossible.

Which is why you can critique Hov, but you can’t cancel him. To question Jay-Z is not to erase everything he has done.

It is to acknowledge that the people who carry our culture also carry a responsibility to that culture.

During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, every single Black person did not stop riding the bus. Every single person did not agree. But enough people understood that collective pressure could create change.

Movements do not need everyone’s participation to work; they just need enough people to make it work.

So when a movement gains traction, when a corporation starts feeling pressure, when people begin realizing their collective power, it feels different when someone with Jay-Z’s influence appears on the other side.

Does one vinyl release destroy a boycott? No.

Will Black people suddenly return to Target because Jay-Z released an album there? Probably not.

But symbols matter.

And Jay-Z knows that because Jay-Z is a symbol.

The greatest contradiction of Jay-Z is that he did exactly what America told him to do.

He escaped poverty. He created wealth. He became an owner. He won. He beat the game.

But the question isn’t, can a Black man win inside this system?

The question is:

What does winning require you to become?

He doesn’t follow the rules. He sings from the side or blows from below. He almost never plays the note straight on. It’s inventive. Literally creating a new cool in front of our eyes. It’s a kind of freedom when he plays. He trusts his ears more than he trusts rules.

I want to write poems that way.

I don’t believe the goal of art, black art to be specific, is to follow instructions. I think the goal is to make something that feels uniquely yours. Something that sounds like you. Something that couldn’t have been made by anyone else.

Jazz feels like that.

When I listen to people like Miles, Monk, or Billie, I hear perfection, but not in the traditional sense. I hear a decision. I hear risk. I hear someone choosing to go left when everyone else would’ve gone right and committing to it.

That commitment is what makes it sound so convincing.

It’s not that they didn’t understand the rules. They actually know them well enough to change them as they go.

And I think that’s where a lot of artists get stuck.

We learn technique. We study form. We try to get it “right.” And somewhere along the way, we start playing from the head instead of from our heart.

Instead of asking, “Does this feel good?” We ask, “Is this correct?”

But who decides that?

Poetry, like jazz, is made up. The rules came after the art, not before it. Poetry has always been a spoken language. A way to record our history. And then someone else came along and tried to change it, write it, name it, define it, and teach it.

But the origin was always instinct.

That’s why so much of Black art feels the way it does. It comes from improvisation. The ability to make something out of nothing.

And that doesn’t mean technique doesn’t matter. It does. At some point, you have to understand what you’re doing. You have to build control over craft.

But I don’t want to gain control and sacrifice the feeling.

I don’t want to write poems that are technically perfect but emotionally flat. I don’t want to sound like I studied poetry.

I want to sound like myself.

I want to write poems that feel good in the mouth. That beat against the bones. That skips across the page. I want to write poems that hit the notes from the side instead of dead on.

That’s what I mean when I say I want to write poems the way Miles plays jazz.

I want to inherit the spirit of how he played.

To trust that if it feels right, it is right.

I think a lot about audience when it comes to my writing, especially poetry. Some writers are writing for other writers. They want to impress literary magazines, MFA programs, critics, or their peers. So the writing becomes complicated. Full of references you don’t know and words you can’t understand.

And there is nothing inherently wrong with that, if that’s your goal.

But there is another kind of writer. The kind that tries to communicate something to everyday people. The kind that is trying to tell the truth, clear enough, so that a human being can join the conversation.

That is a different goal entirely.

I think that’s why writers like James Baldwin still reach people today. Baldwin was sophisticated. He was intellectual. He was precise. But even when he took the long road to make a point, you knew he was trying to communicate something specific. He wasn’t hiding behind language. He was trying to use language to get closer to his audience.

The same thing happened with Langston Hughes. Early in his career, Hughes was criticized for being too simple. Too direct. Too casual. Newspapers called his work “trash” for lacking depth or complexity. James Baldwin even agreed.

But that was the point.

Langston Hughes wrote for tired people riding trains home from work. He wanted people to see themselves inside the poem. He was less concerned with sounding impressive and more concerned with being understood.

I recently read that the average American reads at around an eighth-grade level. If that is true, then writers should probably ask themselves a difficult question: Who exactly are you trying to talk to?

Because writing is communication.

And communication only works if people can understand you.

And I felt that.

D’Angelo, Badu, Maxwell, Lauryn, Saadiq. These artists were making music that felt familiar but sounded different, at least for the time. I don’t know when I first heard the phrase Neo Soul, but I remember it was everywhere, from mouths to magazines to radio. It’s a convenient label, and it makes sense for the artists who fit the sound. But I never knew or cared if the artists themselves liked the term until I listened to Saadiq’s explanation. Then I thought, “of course.”

The word neo makes it seem like they were creating some futuristic spin off of soul or reviving it. But that can’t be true, because as long as there are Black people, soul music can’t die.

Then I remembered reading when Nina Simone rejected “jazz.” She said, “I don’t play jazz. Jazz is a white term to define Black people. My music is Black classical music.”

And I felt that.

She was right. She was classically trained. She studied Bach and Chopin. She wanted to be a concert pianist. But the music industry placed her inside the jazz category to make her more digestible.

Even the word “jazz,” the genre I love, is a cultural shorthand for Black music. It cuts the complexity of the music to something easier to market.

Saadiq is saying the same thing as Nina.

Neo-soul is a marketing device. Record executives needed a way to describe and sell the next generation of modern soul, gospel, funk, and jazz music.

It makes sense from a business standpoint. Genres help stores organize vinyl. They help radio stations define formats. They help streaming platforms build playlists.

But the business of genre conflicts with the cultural reality of how Black music evolves.

Black music can’t fit in clean categories.

It’s too fluid.

Blues becomes gospel.

Gospel becomes soul.

Soul becomes funk.

Funk becomes hip-hop.

Black music, like Black people, will always evolve into what is most needed for the times.

D’Angelo and Badu weren’t inventing a new genre. They were continuing a musical conversation with Marvin, Curtis, Stevie, the church, and slaves.

There’s no such thing as new soul. It’s soul.

Capitalism is trying to convince you that it’s new, but it’s not.

Early blues songs were marketed as “race records.”

Later, they were renamed “rhythm and blues.”

Then elements of the same sound were repackaged as rock and roll.

Every time the music evolves, the industry invents another genre to sell you.

What Nina was saying and what Saadiq is saying decades later is that white people can’t define Black music because they didn’t make it.

If Saadiq says it’s soul, it’s soul.

If Nina says it’s classical, it’s classical.

Why?

Because we made it.

And we said so.

And because it is.

Art does not exist outside of that.

It moves inside of it.

Even the decision to make something “just for art’s sake” is a position. It is a choice to disengage, to escape, to focus on beauty as opposed to conflict. And even that has meaning. Even that says something about what matters and what does not.

Sometimes that conversation is loud. Protest. Resistance. Truth-telling.

Sometimes it is quiet. A love poem. A memory. A moment of beauty.

But even love is political.

Who gets to love openly? Who gets to be seen? Who gets to be heard? These are not abstract questions. They are defined by culture, history, and power.

Art persuades, even when it is not trying to.

It tells you what is worth noticing, what is worth feeling, and what is worth remembering. All art is influential. Art is propaganda, and all propaganda is political. There is no way to separate art from politics.

The two are always part of the same conversation.

my girlfriend is in love with Michael B Jordan
and it makes it harder
to watch his movies.

if she had the chance to meet him,
I wonder
would she forget about me?

not that a girl can’t have a crush,
but the way she looks at him
she never looks at me.

I ain’t no movie star.
no superhero.
no uncrowned king.

no Hollywood smile,
flash bulb white on the cover of Men’s Health
magazine.

why would she confess her fantasy to me?
just because it’s impossible
doesn’t mean she wouldn’t cheat.

I guess a man can have his impossible too,
but Kelly Rowland and I
were not destined to meet.

I love my baby.
she’s everything to me.
but she’s in love with Michael B Jordan.
and it makes it harder
to watch his movies.

“One writes out of one thing only — one’s own experience. “ - James Baldwin

Inspiration doesn’t just fall out of your head and onto the page. You experience something, and that something stays with you, fighting against everything else you know, until it grows too big and has to come out somehow. That is when that something is pulled out of you and onto the page.

Writing isn’t a miracle; it is a process.

Everything depends on how much of your life you can capture.

The only real concern for any artist is to organize the chaos of living. It can be a sweet song or bitter tale, but it has to be true; it has to have happened. Maybe not you, but to someone.

Because something is always happening to someone somewhere and it is your responsibility to tell that story.

The problem is that black writers are too busy dodging dangers in our lives to write about them.

We can’t write and survive at the same time. The food is scarce, the water is poisoned, the cops are knocking, and the bills don’t take no breaks. I can’t look at the page if I’m looking over my shoulder.

How can you write when you’re starving, afraid, worried, tired?

The truth is, you must.

By any means necessary. You have to write while you’re running from what’s trying to get you. I know we are tired of having to persevere.

But there is no other choice.

which hand would you prefer?
the one in my pocket
or the one on my heart?

from now on
you can call me anytime past 9pm.
nights and weekends.
daylight savings.
i’ll drop whatever plate i’m holding
to hear you speak.

you sweet honey trap.
i could watch the moon set
in your bright brown eyes.

tell me you’ll remember this night forever.
pressed lips lit under parking lot lamp posts
laugh with me again.

i haven’t heard you say a bad idea yet.

the details don’t matter.
don’t get distracted.

time is running out and
there’s nowhere else to go.

Society at large no longer rewards authenticity in art. We reward virality, click-throughs, and marketability. Artists have learned to cut the truth telling out of their work and sell a version that pleases people rather than provokes them. It’s not that good art can’t make money; it’s that chasing money makes it harder to make something good.

Popularity is the new currency, and it’s killing the soul of the work.

The Audience Is Trained to Stay Numb

Most people don’t know their taste is manufactured.

We think we’re choosing what to watch, read, and love but most of the time, we’re just following the breadcrumbs left by ads, algorithms, and corporations that profit off our boredom. Media companies don’t want you aware; they want you available. The more passive you are, the more predictable you become and predictability is profitable.

Today, entertainment is sedation disguised as choice.

Most Artists Are Just Performing Now

Artists are forced to produce what they do not love just to make a living.

They start with passion, but somewhere along the way, the algorithm, the audience, and the rent start to overpower that passion. The market trains them to chase clicks and not craft. And once you start creating to survive, it’s easy to forget when you had to create to live.

That’s the tragedy of modern creativity. It’s the reason why the music, the poetry, and the theater feel empty.

To survive, many artists create work they do not admire. It’s a slow compromise. After a while, it becomes harder to tell what’s real and what’s performance.

Liberation Begins Where the Market Ends

Art has never asked for permission.

We’ve been tricked into thinking that if it doesn’t sell, it isn’t valuable. But some of the most urgent, moving, impactful work cannot be monetized. Capitalism rewards obedience, not originality and it’s suffocating our culture.

Make art that says what needs to be said not art that says what can be sold.

I know rent is due on the first,
no matter who is the president.
I know I still gotta work.
Stack this money.
Pinch my pennies.
Nickel and dime my way out the grocery store.
I know my girl don’t care who the president is
as long as we still going out tonight.
I know babies still cry.
My homies still die.
These parking tickets ain’t gon pay themselves.
I know I’ve been Black for a long time,
I know I don’t see the difference.

I know the president don’t know me.
Ain’t been to none of my family’s funerals.
Don’t buy my food.
Don’t pay my bills.
Life been hard since I got here.
Gon be that way when I’m not here.
I hear sirens every day,
see violence every day.
I’ve been waiting for a change 
for a long time.
We been singing ‘bout change 
for a long time.

No matter who’s in office,
I still gotta eat
can’t lose sleep 
I gotta live longer than two terms,
Lord willin.
Yeah, I’ma complain before I pay the bill
but I still gotta pay.
So what if I scream?
Ain’t nobody listenin’ 
to me anyway.

I have tried and failed—
at love with you.

How about you tell someone else no
for a change?

Find them outside your white door,
instead of inside of your
burnt bed.

I am not hard to please.
All I want is the air in your lungs.

My eyes are brown as dirt.
Look at me
like laying in grass
against your back.

There is only one woman I love
to kiss in the morning,
as soon as the sun
rubs open my eyes.

I wrap myself around your body
and cover you back to sleep.

Pretty is so easy for you.
It’s a trap you set,
and I fall for it
every time.

I try to escape
but can’t.

There’s spit on my hands.

I’ve tried to love you,
but it makes you
more unsure of me.

I have to leave.

Again.

I’ll be back this afternoon.

looking back at my life
i could burst into tears

anger and absence
no father to show me the ropes
they try to hang me with

Gospel CD connoisseur.
Rap wanna be
tough gritty black-eyed past
Michael Jackson moonwalk
music across the living room carpet

little Black boy gon dance
till he can’t no more
till they clip his knees
clench his fist
lock his wrists
on the side of Myrtle Ave
over the hood of a black and white
on the steps of his front porch

somebody got to sing about me
somebody gotta talk to the Lord
tell him
my momma knees too weak
to keep praying ‘bout me

last time i saw my baby
my eyes
lost her thrifted red leather jacket
in the night

i hope that love won’t find me again
the kind that leaves as quick as money does

i was born the same day
they killed Martin
does that make me king

if i die
will i live longer

give my limbs to my mother
tell them i went to college
got a degree
wrote poetry
been Black for as long as i can be
always been
down for the cause
always been
for my woman
for my people
never tried to fight for nothing
that didn’t belong to me

I feel horrible. She doesn’t.
I sag on the bed
like a wet durag
fished from a pool of piss 
and left on my pillow to dry.

Authors Note:

“The first two lines and the title are adapted from Richard Brautigan’s poem I Feel Horrible. She Doesn’t..”

I take you out to eat your favorite grilled cheese
at that Brooklyn bar
where the servers never smile.

I buy you clothes in your favorite color,
shoes that match your makeup,
gold to dress your neck.

I call you twice a day, every day.
Stay up late
just to see your face
before I fall asleep.

I stop my world from spinning every time you call.
I yelled at you once—
never again, not for years.

You kissed someone else
and couldn’t look me in the eye.

I sleep in your bed.
I get along with your dad.
I write poems
for you to decorate your wall.

You don’t know
if you can spend your life with me?

Baby,
what else do you want me to do?

I’m trying to remember the name of old songs
I used to love from mixtapes,
gospel albums, musical and movie soundtracks.

I’ll hum the first four notes in my head,
spit half a verse over and over again
until my tongue skips to the top of my memory.

On tonight’s walk around the neighborhood,
on the train into Newark Penn Station,
on the bus to Port Authority,
in the car on my way to get black coffee,
I am so often alone
most days these songs
check on me like old lovers do.

Words stuck like a hook in my lip.
I can almost pick the name out of my teeth.

I remember your soft chin
was a felt needle on my shoulder
when we danced,
when we swayed,
when we rode back from the theater late 
that night.

I remember licking your lips,
cold last winter,
wind rubbed against our closed eyes.

It seemed so simple then,
a favorite film,
a soundtrack we both knew the words to.

Years later, walking past the theater,
the lyrics find me in the fall.

I think I see you—
I don’t—
but how nice it was
to think we could sing along to love again.

To let the record skip back to song one,
let the music play matchmaker,
score our own movie.

If I remember the name,
will I forget how it feels?