Leslé Honoré Poetry

Hold your head high
Especially when the winds are heavy
Especially when the lies are loud
Especially when the traps are set
Especially when the envy has armies
Especially when the truth is banned
When the imaginary moral center
Of the self proclaimed moral party
Slides off to reveal the evil
that was always there
Like white sheets
off nightriders bodies
Hold your head high
You who have lived
When the world has conspired
for your Erasure
Year after year
Decade after decade
Century after century
And has Failed
Hold your head high
Dance in the rain
You walking miracle
You are the resistance
You are the victory
You are the history
And present
And future
You anointed
You the wildest dream
Dreaming still
For the dreamers yet to come
Hold your head high
You are
Living
Breathing
Hope





Photography by Tonika

We so magic
We carve out Glory
from the boulders
heaped upon Us
Heavy with hate
We activist
We artists
We royalty
We genius
We great
Look at the beauty We create
Look how We make permanent
Our resistance
Our dignity
Surrounded by your mediocrity
Look how We photosynthesize
The barriers
The limitations
The lies
The bigoted rage
And make light from shadows
Flora from fear
Hope with pen and paint


The Talented Tenth
By The Art of Kadir Nelson



,

On our backs
With our blood
With our souls
With our hands
On our shoulders
With our strength
With our tears
With our ancestors
With their legacies
With our hopes
With our will
With our prayers
With our courage
With our scars
With our lives
With our might
With our genius
With our light
With our magic
In spite of your hate
The children of enslaved
Have already made America great




Photo
Gordon Parks
Untitled, Chicago, Illinois, 1953

Get yo hands off Our King
Get yo white washing
Emasculating
Rewriting history
Lie telling hands off Our King
Get yo hands off his legacy
His words
Our dream
Get yo hands off Our King
Get yo misquoting
Yo paraphrasing
Hiding a knife behind yo back
Get yo hands off my King
Get yo wire tappin
Bait settin
Operative trainin
Bomb throwing
White hood wearing
Trump voting
trigger pulling
ASSASSINATING
Hands off my King
He wasn’t a pacifist
Cheek turning
Boot licking
Kneegrow
He was a Man Marching
Blow taking
Suit wearing
Revolution Preaching
Black Woman loving
Black Children Raising
KING !
Get His name out yo mouth
No He is NOT rolling over in his grave
When We scream
BLACK LIVES MATTER
When We flood the streets in protest
When We shut down your highways
And Your stores on Black Fridays
When We organize and fight against
Your pseudo liberalism
That likes its kneegrows
Quiet
Calm
Ball dribbling
Touch down making
Joke telling
Shucking and jiving
HE ISNT ROLLING OVER
HE’S APPLAUDING
SO GET YO HANDS OFF OUR KING

No is a complete sentence

You don’t own us
We don’t owe you
Explanation
Deference
Labor
Comfort
Access
Which is why every climb
we make
whether it is in title
Or status
Ultimately in power
you try to dismantle
Our agency

We are simply saying no
and We will continue to say no
and it will continue to get under
your skin
into the very cells of your body
because you hate
how it reminds you
that you don’t own Us
anymore
you can no longer eat
Our flesh
when We have fought for
Our freedom
You can no longer wear
Our teeth
as your dentures
You can no longer stuff
your furniture with
Our hair
or your babies into
Our Bodies
or stretch
Our very skin
to make the leather
for your shoes
you no longer own Us
And that gives you the blues

Which by the way
Are ours too

Signed,
The 92%

For my beloved birthplace
For the hills I would drive into
To escape
To dream
To marvel at the coasts’ beauty
To call out to God
This is a forced poem
Because the words are buried
By tears
By grief
By Agony
The is a forced record
To mark our collective
Pain
This is a devastated poem
A drought poem
A destruction poem
A F*** you to deniers of
Climate change poem
Hydrants are unable to keep up
With this extreme demand
Our souls are unable to keep up
With this extreme demand
Election
Carter
Bourbon st
PCH
Mourning
We are mourning
Winds of mourning
This country
Mourning
Our heart break
Is 0 percent contained

We take a lot from New Orleans
We take joy
And jazz
And dance
And dreams
For some of us
It’s a retreat
It’s a party
It’s a place to be
someone you want to be
But don’t know what courage is
Unless you are in a 300 year old city
That has endured and rebuilt itself
More than you can imagine
Your fete
Is our home
Our family
Our roots
Our soul
Our voice
Our heart
Our blood
Stop asking us to turn our tears
Into glitter you can paint
Your flavorless life with
While you dance on our graves
People are still living
Working
Learning
Loving
Families who have
lived in the fish bowl
Before mosquitoes
Are still
digging their feet into ancient soil
Gripping roots
Trying to not to be washed away
Enslaved away
Jim crowed away
Katrinaed away
Gentrified away
Terrorized away
Let us grieve aloud
Let us grieve in private
In mourning
Grieve with us
We aren’t flying away
Give us a moment
To let our wings rest

Jimmy Carter
man of God
father
husband
noble peace prize recipient
author
builder of homes
navy officer
negotiator
peanut farmer
And the 39th president
of the
United States
The latter being the least impressive
If he taught us anything
He taught us this
That our titles
our jobs
our career friends
Do not alone define us
Our failures do not end us
Our lives should be lived
With an unwavering duty
to each other
That the good we do
For good’s sake
The arms we link
The communities we create
That is the legacy no one needs an
Office
To make

“My faith demands — this is not optional — my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can, with whatever I have to try to make a difference,” -Jimmy Carter

Rest now, you good and faithful servant
Thank you for your lifetime of service

The 3rd verse

In Memoriam
For
Who taught us to ride the night winds
Who taught us to love
Who taught us to fly

How are there words left
To write on paper
To type into souls
To speak into existence
Now that you are gone
How are there words left
For anyone
to redefine themselves
After the world brushes us with
Hate filled ink
How do we whisper
Cotton candy love
Bellow
Revolutionary calls to action
Wrap our arms around
Our Blackness
With tenderness
With pride
With the challenge
To love ourselves and each other
In defiance
Deliberately
And find
Deliverance
Without you illuminating
The darkness
With blinding truth

With ease I say
With the foundation immovable
With the Poet
Who was the mortar
To the bricks in the movement
That she taught us to lay
And sometimes throw
With precision
With disruption
With hope
If we have nothing left
But what she has already given
Then we have everything
Then we are everything
Because her pen
Has tattooed her love
Into our cells
Where it will divide and multiply
Infinitely
Into forever’s forever
With our gratitude dancing
On every horizon
Every kiss of sun
Every cool breeze
Every burst of red on green leaves
Every snowflake falling like diamonds
Melting on tongues
Which is to say
Eternally

“I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal I cannot be comprehended except by my permission
I mean . . . I . . . can fly like a bird in the sky . . .”

Happy book birthday to Brown Girl, Brown Girl ✨✨

This powerful and hopeful picture book—inspired by the historic election of Vice President Kamala Harris—celebrates brown and Black girls and is magnificently illustrated by a Caldecott Honor-winning artist.

Brown girl, brown girl, what did you see? 
A world that sees my skin before it sees me. 

Based on a viral poem by Blaxican poet and activist Leslé Honoré () and illustrated by Caldecott Honoree Cozbi A. Cabrera (), this moving journey through the past, present, and future of brown and Black girls is a celebration of community, creativity, and joy—and offers a reminder of the history that inspires hope, and the hope that inspires activism.

Out today from

I went home
Let the humidity hug me
Let my ancestors whisper to me
And ran with abandon
Into the arms of my community
We wiped each others tears
Held each other longer
Rocked in each others arms
Swaying away the fear
Heart to heart
Over and over and over again
Like a holy ceremony
A sacrament
This is our body
This is our heart
This is our soul
This is our power
Our courage
Our unity
Our Savior
Speaking to each and every one of us
As we encouraged
As we spoke life
And hope
And love
“Do this in memory of me “
This is our homecoming
99 years of defiance
Of making a way out of barriers
Of black excellence
Pressed down
Shaken together
Running over
This is our beloved mother
Born from what some called waste
From what some called less
From what some called incapable
This our hollowed ground
Our resistance
Our revolution
We are more than the battles
More than the pain
We are 99 years of uncommon
Favor
Unexpected progress
Unlimited hope
Unparalleled resistance
We will not be discouraged
There is work to do
We will not turn to hate
There is love to plant
We will not give into despair
There are victories yet to win

I got quiet
I got still
I got deep into fear
And then I got home
And got reminded

Deo Adjuvante Non Timendum

Hail all hail XU

We aren’t walking with our feet today
These are our mothers’ feet
Born without the right to vote feet
Theses are our ancestors’ feet
Enslaved and freed feet
Jim Crow feet
Great migration feet
Black belt feet
Segregated feet
Warrior feet
Union feet
March on Washington feet
These are
Ida’s feet
Fannie Lou’s feet
Coretta’s feet
Mamie’s feet
Betty’s feet
Gloria’s feet
Rosa’s feet
Dorthy’s feet
Myrlie’s feet
Kathleen’s feet
Shirley’s feet
Viola Ford Fletcher’s feet
We are walking with their feet
Their sacrifices
We are walking
We are marching
We are waiting in lines
To cast our ballots
For our ancestors wildest dreams
So we can dance
With victory in our feet