Prayer 4 My Insomnia

1

In the morning, the time that still wears night as a masquerade.
It’s not, it’s morning, and you can tell by how the air sits heavier,
Wetter, fresher, newer.
Purged the 11:59 instances of violence here, the
23:59 instances of violence worldwide
And exhaled one
In the morning.

And at 1 AM is when we plot. We, loosely because
It can often be that which exists in each of us, the we
That turns to us, puckering salt from sullen cheeks as we sob into stasis together.
Our crises are now existential and still we soothe our selves back together in cluttered cribs.
That we is up at 1 ready to orchestrate the revolution.
That we is ready to slide and slide, on Monday,
May mean telling the white lady at work in the HR mediation that, no,
Coronavirus is not “intersectional” and, no, that shouldn’t go in her work email,
Whereas slide on Thursday, could just as easily mean hitting
Send on yet another email because, consequences be damned
Your building will be organized, and ain’t a damn person in that mug paying rent this month.

 Or the next one... or two… or 

III

In the morning is when your conqueror’s brand manager rolls over,
Checks their phone, realizes they have a village to pillage at 7,
A town to douse in chemicals then usher into the mouth of the wolf
That now snores at the foot of their platform bed at 8:15,
A people to make orphans, to ruin any memory of their mother’s song,
Or how her hair smelled drenched in the saltwater,
Or what it looks like for someone beautiful to smile at you without seeing despair reflected
In the gleaming whites of teeth.

 Your conqueror has a people to bend,                                           then break
Then bend those pieces until they break
And then bend               those pieces                                                        until they break
And then             bend those pieces         until they                                                                              break
And then, bent at the waist, with all the energy held hostage in every country’s grandest museum,
BELLOW                        at this collage of the wicked.

 You curse their very existence!
For leaving splinters in your fingers.

 SIX A.M.

The time in the morning that is most a lie,
The time in which we are told to produce.
We don’t have to necessarily make anything,
Just be productive—do… something.
Send an email, write a poem, call your mother, sweep the floor, spruce.
So, of course, you get high.

 Get level, you say. Come down, and
Get further away from the surface of your world.
Your responsibilities and anxieties;
Your guilt for not calling your mother;
Your guilt for not calling your mother last time because you attended a work meeting;
Your guilt for not working for a place that cares about your mother, a Black woman;
Your anger for not being able to work for a place that cares about your mother, a Black woman, and Afford to live in Oakland.

 And, far away from now, you sip sweltering cups of sunrise, alone in frosted woods.

And this moment, the last of which before your alarm sounds,
Is the moment in which it’s realized that healing, a prayer,
Happens in morning.