I Will Breathe After My Own Fashion

Leaning into
Identity–a scarred
child break-

ing the bars
of a colonial
cage.

Rage is temporary (sometimes).

Pleasant, like
Jill Scott

singing

about living
a golden life

or like Bobby Womack
crooning–
110th Street
on his mind.

No mercy for leaders
who use power,

like an eraser,
jazz-like,

scrubbing

surfaces for
definitions
of power

or splashes
of the wrong
HUE.

I navigate
the pressure,
like

a hustler,
an urban
eagle,
a man

on a tightrope,
playing above

hate,
anger,
political
winds.

The choice
to breathe
FREELY

is liberating.

No restrictions,
no limitations,
no patriarchal
cosmos.

FREELY

without society’s
metallic
voice

or its
poisonous
blessing.


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Published by Synnika Chizoba Lofton

"Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton is an award winning poet, the president and CEO of Guerrilla Ignition LLC, host of a Nationally Syndicated radio show, and an educator, teaching literature at Chesapeake Bay Academy and English courses at Norfolk State University. Lofton has recorded more than one hundred and fifty CDs, albums, CD-singles, and mixtapes of poetry, including his highly praised debut, The New Breed. He is the author of twelve books and the founder of Riot Speech, a musical genre combining performance poetry with traditional musical forms, such as Rock, Jazz, and Hip Hop. His poems have been published in Experience Reality Magazine, Quay: A Journal of the Arts, UpStreet: A Literary Magazine, and, in 2014, Lofton has been featured in Blind Sided Magazine. He is a regular on Virginian television programs such as The Hampton Roads Show and Chesapeake’s Thinking Out Loud on WCTV. He teaches World Literature, British Literature, and Composition, while touring the country, performing at literary festivals, musical festivals, poetry readings, open mics, concerts, high schools, and colleges."

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