Black people are the most creative people in the world.
Over and over again, we have been required
to create something out of nothing
Worse. To create something out
of less than nothing, out of deficit. Out of loss .
So, we never build on neutral ground,
our surfaces are always embattled.
We never sing a soulless song;
our harmonies are always insurgent.
We never dream a solo vision;
our hopes are always wrapped around one another
like our aunties fingers braiding spirituality into
rows on our head or our uncles voices leaping
one over the other to retell the story we all know by heart.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention
And our many needs urge us daily into the making
But our inventions don’t always whir and clang;
Often they spin and shout;
our inventions don’t always extract and calculate,
Often they embrace and comfort.
This is why our style cannot be replicated,
our swag can not be duplicated
Our joy cannot be simulated
Because our every breath is a radical act of creation.
It is dangerous, it is wild, it is exhilarating to live
and to love and to keep living and keep loving
in defiance of those who would have you dead.
Black people are the most creative people in the world;
Our most marvelous creations? Ourselves.