He is an icon and a maverick—a voice of hope, sensuality, pain, and liberation…
This creatrix rises to amplify the power of pride and sexuality—to bring the joys of the grind to our post-apocalyptic civilization…
Like so many young black men—especially queer young black men—he wondered if his lips were too big, or if his skin were too dark…
These questions—so emblematic of white supremacy—are profoundly toxic, corroding self-worth and creating wellsprings of internalized oppression…
Yet our maverick transforms shame into its opposite—a divine feat of alchemy…
He twists his hips in syncopation with the rhythms of his prophecies…
Lil Nas X is a black maverick…
He is a maverick in need of a movement…
This seductrix emerges to channel a new zeitgeist, undermining the hold of transphobia and heterosexual dictatorship in the black community…
He emerges to de-center whiteness from the landscape of queer society—to craft the outlines of freedom from the hegemony of the Calvin Klein underwear model…
Lil Nas X is a maverick in need of a movement—he calls us forth, inviting us to cross-pollinate like Cylon fractals, imagining a new dawn of liberation…
We stand on the shoulders of giants–the trans and queer warriors who led the Stonewall uprising and built a radical movement that is the foundation for all we have achieved since…
Trans and queer resistance is an urgent calling—we have lost far too many lives to the barbarism of transmisogyny and transphobia…
Lil Nas X creates work no one else could have imagined…he generates a synergy that is pulsating and electric…
He is a maverick in need of a movement…
And we are a movement in need of a maverick…
May this sex positive black and queer intifada rise and fly—emerging like a phoenix from the ashes of bigotry, exploitation, and oppression…
As we groove to these tracks we conjure forcefields of presence that make our sex-fueled diasporic phalanxes unstoppable…
-Images are by LilNasX >> maverick.com
–BYPO PHOENIX c)2021
One thought on “BLACK MAVERICK”
Cool! Thanks for sharing so vulnerably. I really enjoy the reference to the uses of the erotic through the amplification that little nas is constantly playing at/with. Also I like dashes 🙂 Very useful for contrasting ideas with a minimum of distracting little words in between them.
I really liked the twisting hips in syncopation with the rhythms of prophecies line. So good!
I don’t love the repetitive He, and that’s probably related to my own pronoun questioning and centralization of he narratives. I also have a bias towards action statements with an …ing at the end.
I’d be curious to hear your phrasing, as I don’t think my imagined phrasing is doing it the favors that your imagined phrasing is doing the work.