RADIANT AKILAH OLIVER (1961-2011)

Shock. Gratitude to have known however all too briefly and now through her language such a light. To have shared voices in Boulder just last June. Grateful for the Belladonna collective, for the Naropa Summer Writing Program, for the manifold conversation, for introducing me to Akilah. To have witnessed across all contexts her fortitude, an activist compassion, persisting as beauty, without the waste of rage. She posted this song just last month, double sun. Looping this morning from multiple windows, catharsis. [youtube h8tuTSi6Sck]

Akilah, persist.

go

often now when i imagine life i think of what should be finite, the guise of limitability, the desire for stop

are there greeters there [are you one] when we former ghosts arrive

is this sea deceptive, as if alive or an                 actor, the world masked

in my own way there was a time when i stumbled over a tense: says/said now, bereft, in anticipation of how night collapses into its own effluence i conjugate occasions, ask just for time, just a little time, to get love right