Luna – The Colonization of My Spirit [Video]

By Button Poetry

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Luna, performing at Rustbelt 2019 in St. Louis, MO.

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Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)

0:06
So I’ve been learning to heal,
0:08
our ancient Black alchemy.
0:11
I learned my dreams were a secret language,
0:13
a recipe to use the earth to make rain.
0:15
There was a time when calling myself a “witch”
0:18
would get me rotisseried.
0:20
So these days I go by bruja, sprinkling mint in my blunts over tea
0:24
and breaking generational curses with crystals and mojo bags
0:28
in my pockets, but this is why we can’t never have nice things.
0:32
Up until last year, voodoo was nothing but Satan,
0:36
and every Black villain ever,
0:38
but now Buzzfeed wants to write an article
0:41
about a “new” wave of spirituality.
0:43
Now Becky is calling herself bruja with sage sticks and rose quartz
0:47
she got from Urban Outfitters.
0:49
She shows me her witch kit,
0:51
says she learned everything she knows from Instagram,
0:54
says the amethyst will make her totally psychic AF.
0:57
Three different pinnacles, not a jar of dirt in sight,
0:59
and she’s still burning sage like she’s not the bad energy in the room.
1:03
Buzzfeed interviews some woman who calls herself “The Hood Witch,”
1:08
but was has she done for the hood lately anyway?
1:10
Eight-year-old Kiki just told me the blue calcite I gave her
1:13
got rid of her nightmares,
1:15
how she just taught her mom to meditate.
1:17
You could raise a million Black boy GPAs
1:19
if you taught them how to ground themselves,
1:22
but you rather sell watered-down versions of my enchantment to white women
1:26
who call themselves quirky and develop crushes
1:27
for serial killers from the ’70s.
1:29
Meanwhile I had to scavenge the books they didn’t burn,
1:33
conjure the woman that they did.
1:34
It was never a trend to walk amongst the unseen
1:37
with the ease of a Friday,
1:39
to know death by name better than brother.
1:41
But isn’t that what being Black is,
1:44
to have the fix for any sickness and the sickness itself [ship].
1:47
Black girl so magic, they play dress-up in her archives
1:50
and call it their creation.
1:51
But this was always about the colonization of my spirit,
1:54
how every plantation had a Black mother who knew how to make gourmet
1:57
out of leftovers and protection out of the bones,
2:00
which means when we didn’t have crystals and tarot cards,
2:04
we could still use the earth to make rain and our dreams to make maps.
2:08
We knew putting almonds in your pockets can help you find anything,
2:11
and that the blue gum boy down the way can kill anything he bites.
2:14
That’s why his women suffer from so many health problems.
2:17
We busted open our chakras in the arms of Mother Wisdom,
2:20
but we didn’t call them chakras.
2:22
We called them common sense, gut feelings, “By and By”
2:25
and any other hymn that was more a pardon than we can beg,
2:27
even the slave masters wondered how we healed so fast.
2:30
Why you think they so scared of us?
2:32
So, dearest Rosemary,
2:35
stop putting my colloquialisms in your lopsided-ass Bantu knots.
2:38
Dear Disney, stop using witches to teach my children
2:42
powerful women are ugly.
2:44
Dear Buzzfeed, when there is no source to cite,
2:47
do not give airtime to the first woman cloaked in my glory.
2:50
There is nothing grander than to be Black and woman,
2:55
and witch, for this is to will things to be with your very hands,
2:58
and may my will be done.
3:02
(cheers and applause)

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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