During the 2022 Voqal Fellowship convening, Voqal was once again honored to have poet, Molina Speaks, document the meeting through a process called Live Scribe Poetics. This year’s poem reflects the cohort and the work it hopes to accomplish during its fellowship. The final part of the poem is below. See part I and part II and part III.
—TOGETHER—
Time, Space, Tables and Chairs:
Collected Fragments of Dreams and Realities Part IV
a Live Scribe Poetic Reflection by Adrian H Molina as inspired by Voqal Fellows 2022 Cohort
We are making our exit plans while we widen the entrances.
We are unsubscribing from the starving artist mentality.
We are ascribing to a reality of “overturning and flipping tables,”
accepting that this may lead to cracks, fractures, fragments and fissures
of old structures. We will pick up the pieces and make them new.
We will insist on what is true: that collaboration produces
the type of power that we want to live within.
We want to live and work within buildings
that are beautiful
like the earth beneath the concrete,
like the skies that are often obscured,
in the re-making of places that will fantastically reflect us,
the magic in our murals, our stories, and our dances—
spontaneous eruptions of joy.
We will uplift the historical significance and beauty
of our identities, our love, our hair, our energies.
It is time to end Black hair humiliation and discrimination,
and to celebrate the roots, the styles, and legacies
that are braided into pre-colonial history and human dignity.
One of many issues that may seem insignificant…unless you are the one
dealing with the ignorance, the hatred, the hurdles and blockades
that come with this history. But new futures are being written
and recorded, and we are them. Meditations
on what is possible.
Finally, it is time to end mass incarceration, a control epidemic.
If walls could talk, they would tell you
that one in three Americans have an arrest record.
The problem is that mass incarceration destroys lives by design.
Part of the solution is narrative change.
Another part of the solution is strategy and long-term vision.
The ultimate goal is to maintain hope, to escape,
and redesign lives and communities that are worth living in.
It is time to end these many things that bring trauma and pain.
And it is time to begin new dreams
under new moons, new alliances, and conjunctions.
From the headwaters: “Don’t forget that you are awesome.”
“You do not have to do things the way everyone else tells you to do things.”
“You are here to disrupt the system, to change the system.”
“You are not here to fix people, you are here to fix systems.”
“Be the storm, and remember that you are right where you are supposed to be.”
Dream. Work. Celebrate. And bring it forth. Into the Real.
Learn more about the Voqal Fellowship and the 2022 cohort on our fellowships’ page.