sleepwriting

freed from a marathon nursing session (another growth spurt already, my little love?) i perused the bookshelf for what i remember not and happened across a journal that my sister gave me as i was about to embark on my first trip to VN twenty-five years after our phamily left to meet relatives that have haunted our childhood. as with all my journals, it is sporadic, inchoate, inconsistent. when you grow up with two older siblings and a bratpack of cousins you learn to destroy your diaries as you go along.

i came across this undated entry from sometime in 2001 in the house on 25th St where i lived with 10, jujubee, and sometimes el. (i usually cannot remember dates, i still chronicle my history by where i was living at the time.) back at the turn of the century, i used to write creatively & perform while procrastinating on mind-deadening grad school.

this entry was a dream that i had. an electrifying gathering of many and i was giving a toast or a speech. i was me, but i was not. i think i might have been a man. did i dream this or was this something i heard and remembered in my subconscious? perhaps from another lifetime. so powerfully had i been moved in my slumbers, i roused and in the liminal space between twilight and dawn, i scrawled this down. only one other time in my life have i been so productive in my dreams, and that was to solve a particualrly sticky algebra problem. and now since my speechmaking days are a distant memory, i share this with you because many are the corny, trite or trying-too-hard things i've written--especially in the spoken word zeitgeist era (though i've always considered myself a poet not a spoken word artist; i like iambic pentameter, sestinas and portmanteau) that will never see the light of day nor tarnish your coracles, but this is actually good. this is not the truest thing i have ever said or believed (only my sister knows that) and yet there is something sterling about this that gives me that frisson of third eye clarity that i get when i speak from my heart. which happens not enough mired in the mundacity of everyday life. maybe one day when i write the novels i have brewing in the back of my mind, i will use it. [ed. note: the ellipses represent either dramatic pauses or lacunas where my dream skipped a groove or the roaring of the adulating crowd moved to testify like when the warriors were in the playoffs] :

as far as the spirit can see
are many peoples
many waters
many lands
many faiths
many nations

our common belief unites us
our common belief in true freedom, justice & equality
our belief makes us sisters & brothers
this belief makes our numbers multitudes
it is our reason for living and our reason for dying...

we have learned much from each other...
our ancestors give strength, spirit & knowledge to the world...

my sisters and brothers, we are Hope...

and in every particle, every patch of this earth
there is another
who yearns to be free
the earth herself will resound with our fierce hope

my sisters & brothers
stand up and raise your fist
join in this toast salute
and roar together to fill your body & soul
let the winds carry our voices to every ...

may our words be fertile
may our actions be collective

say with me
free the land
free our people!