Blackboy Utopia

Danez Smith in Don't Call Us Dead creates a utopian space in which to reinvigorate the Black psyche through an artful homoerotics. He saves the body. The mind bends the body politic to imagine another place and another time beyond wounds.

that boy was Trayvon, now called RainKing.
that man Sean named himself i do, i do.

O, the imagination of a new reborn boy
but most of us settle on alive.

from "summer, somewhere"

The fanciful can take a whimsical turn (which then turns to a deep contemplation of the logics of culture).

let's make a movie calld Dinosaurs in the Hood.
Jurassic Park meets Friday meets The Pursuit of Happyness.
there should be a scene where a little black boy is playing
with a toy dinosaur on the bus, then looks out the window
& sees the T.rex, because there has to be a T.rex

[…]

no bullet holes in the heroes. & no one kills the black boy. & no one kills
the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. besides, the only reason
i want to make this is for the first scene anyway: little black boy
on the bus with his toy dinosaur, his eyes wide & endless

                                         his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there.

from "dinosaurs in the hood"

As crazy as a Barmecide feast in Peter Pan or a generalized ability to manipulate illusions

if you don't
eat the imaginary potato (grown in an
imaginary field, baked in in imaginary
oven) your real capacity
to imagine illusion lessens:

A.R. Ammons from The Ridge Farm

Worth noting that "illusion" has in its etymological roots in the verb "to mock" — a defence mechanism. [Middle English (in the sense 'deceiving, deception'): via Old French from Latin illusio(n-), from illudere 'to mock,' from in- 'against' + ludere 'play.']

And so for day 2058
01.08.2012