for Jaamil/Jeremiah....

Reflecting on

Perspectives on Black Male Revisited:

Black Masculinity, Illegibility, Materiality, Constructs, Creative Space

& Imaginative Experience

curated by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

last evening at 

Gibney Dance Center's

Sorry I Missed Your Show

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko
producer, curator, poet and performance artist
(bottom photo courtesy of Kelly Strayhorn Theater)

Brother of Names and Spirits, I am
not sorry.
I did not miss your show.
I saw your show.
And I see your show.

And I see their show.
Black flesh pressed against concrete.
Holes, from arm to eye, inked black
on this white chart, entry points and exits.

They see animals, their dumb property, commodities.
Let us merge with earth, strong and vulnerable, and
with animals, raising sacred animal powers in images
of magickal readjustment.

And, yes: your Geranium Essential.
What place does healing oil have
in a National Conversation On Race?
It has the place of pleasure.

Pleasure exists in truth, banner flowing
over neighborhoods and continents.
Hold it not tightly.

Please
let it take breeze, currents, sun.
It is pleasure, after all. Or...what is it?
It is Trickster, indefinable
Trickster
of Names Shapes Faces
with amplitude, yes, even enough
for "wading, wading."

You ask us to prophesy
"an infinite space
of limitless creativity,
empowerment,
safety,
and
evolution."

This needs safe space for a sister's tears
--and yours. Let our bodies cry.

Let this conversation open when
and where we enter:

Where do we find pleasure? And where,
a shout for joy?

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

*****

Here, for your consideration, are three questions offered by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko during last evening's Sorry I Missed Your Show:

How do we redirect/reimagine sources of trauma as sources of pleasure, healing, freedom and modes of creative thought and/or experience?

What is your relationship to Blackness in terms of identity, representation, and gender politics, and in what ways are you considering this position into the future?

How do we institute new pathways of thinking where illegible and/or complex queer and black bodies do not become continual platforms of colonized rage.