Black joy

Black joy

Joy is the will

Is the dimple that has endured

A dance so deep in a dark cheek

A wound without a scar

Without a trace

The humour of hurt

Is the hell of being healed

Joy daps death

Lives in the grin

Singing from the blood

Bathes in a smirk

Testifies tenderness in a tear

It is a smile silhouetted against the face witnessing the want

The flower in the grenade

A rose in the concrete

A pirouette bеside a barricade

Is the buttеrfly in the battlefield

Is disarming

The swing set in the middle of a gunfight

Is dodging a bullet

Hopscotch and double dutch

A fierce gaze, the side eye, the shade

The sass, the snap, the head nod

Is the turn up, the swag

Joy is righteous and ratchet

Joy twerks and taps, jooks and jives harlem shakes, electric slides

Dutty wines salsas on twos and rumbas

Joy is rhythm and repetition

Rhythm and repetition

Hums in harmony

Is the blues

Is a song in a cotton field

Or central bookings

On a crowded subway

Joy is a song anywhere

Joy bes in the trap

Is a dilla beat in the middle east

Is fly

Is finger-licking good

Is pasteles with black beans

Or a patty and coco bread

Is fried chicken

With bbq sauce

Or buffalo sauce

Or hot sauce

Or any damn sauce

Joy

Is a recipe passed on

A language that survives

Savoury and sweet

Toe curling

Knocking boots

The fight and the fury

Is making love to make up

Is the glow

Is an entire day in a lover's arms

A carton of ice cream and a bed of books

Is illuminated in the aftermath

Is wrinkled lips, a pouted kiss, the shivering hips

The theater of our thunder

Joy

Joy is a story traveling

A rocking chair on the front lawn

A wind chime in a window

Is a barbeque in the backyard

Subwoofers in a hoopty

Melanin gathered in a room

Is the entourage

Is getting your friends in the club

Joy

Joy is all about vibes

Is a roof over your head

Is clothes on your back

Is free 99

Is having the rent when its due

Or having no rent at all

Is no debt or no credit check

Joy is shooting dice in a stairway

It's getting a hand in spades

Or a double six capicu in dominoes

Is hoops in a crate

Is opening a fire hydrant in the heat

Joy

Is a six-block willy through traffic with no handlebars in the rain

Is the catwalk

Is the voguing

Is the coming out

Is the crackhead with a dime bag and a dream

Is a fresh pair of white kicks with the check

Is bottle caps glued beneath dress shoes

Is three dollars in the tank

Is catching rain water in a tin cup

A firefly in your palm

Buying sunflowers for yourself on a cloudy day

Is a moon in the sky as if in a school play

Is your father in the audience

Joy is skipping school or recess

Is a screen without static aluminium foil antenna

Is when the belt buckle snaps or the switch breaks

Or your mom gets too damn tired joy

Is waving down the ice cream truck

A fresh line up and a clean doobie

The perfect coil to a curl or a loosened nap

And an afro pick is the gift of gab

Is rapping yo ass off

Is roasting or wrestling a sibling to tap out

Joy

Is yo mama jokes until it's yo mama

Is the first foot out the jail, the homecoming, the graduation

The step show at the probate

Joy, joy, joy

Is hugging the self, what conquers the heart and captures the blame

Is the madness of our meaning

Is the maturity of our memory

Is the irony of our forgetting

Is a helicopter four days after the hurricane

On a roof with no water or food

Is a mother picking her daughter up from foster care

Is smoking a joint and a cop car switching lanes

Is food stamps on the first of the month

Is no snitching

No snitching (no snitching)

Is loyalty, perseverance, protest, resilience, resistance

Is the food after the funeral or the parade

The blessing and the curse

The call, the response

The prayer, the pulpit

Is evidence of things unseen

Is the hallelujah, the amen, the holy ghost

Is speaking in tongues

Is when the santo say you don't need no cleaning

Is genetic heirloom

Is the portable promised land

It is the diaspora, it is the diaspora, it is the diaspora

Making it overseas or making it over the mason-dixon line

Joy

Joy is family

Is brotherhood

Is sisterhood

Is feeling another's dimple in your face

Is together

Joy is together

It's together unified on the frontlines

Our joy

Our joy will astonish the world

Because joy

True joy

Has always been

And will always be

Justice