Fred Moten

art don’t work

for abolition.

art works for

bosses, like you

and me. if “let’s

abolish art” sounds

too close to “let’s

abolish you and

me,” it’s ’cause it

is. I love art and

I love you, too,

and this is a love

song, so it’s got

to be too close.

freedom is too

close to slavery

for us to be easy

with that jailed

imagining. we’ve

been held too close

by that too long

in all that air they

steal in our eyes

while we swarm in

common auction.

in my eyes, art had

me from hello it’s

me when ronnie

isley oversays it.

I thought about

us for a long, long

time. I followed

mythic being on

the bus. if I’m a

slave to art am I

a slave to love? am

I a ferryman? am

I abridged? am I

from houston to

oakland to hugh

son to oakley to

houston to oak

land ave, or just

a name to have

for this ordered

action, no aviary

setting, just absent

settling for the

moral law within

on this highline

stroll? ain’t there

this new way of

gathering that’s

not like that, like

when we do it so

pretty, and there’s

no selling instead

of visiting, just this

old revolutionary

visiting where no

one lives in how

we fellowship in

abolition, which is

long and sudden

presencing when

ruthie gilmore

undersays it? this

exhausted, endless

swerve of beauty

from art, of move

meant from free

dom, jail being

their being held

in being, not ours,

is way past you and

me and the lives

we hide away from

them and you and

me in looking after

them. art works their

being there. that’s

the cold, funerary

origin of the work

of art. our beauty

wants to hold us

in not wanting

being there with

them, don’t want

to be like that at all.

let’s work on work

like murray jackson.

let’s work through

work like general

baker. let’s work

it and reverse it,

like ronaemedsim.

let’s work against

monastic rule with

the boy next door.

let’s work against

anything that works

against we jah people

can make it work.

let’s work against

royalty like a prince

formerly known as

as the artist; let’s

work against how

art don’t work for

abolition. let’s work

the artwork down

to common nub’s

low gravy. let’s work

through freedom

from can’t see to

see through how

we mow miss lady’s

yard, when we were

talking with erica,

and we talked about

toni cade bambara,

and erica held her

so soft on fire that

we saw blue fields

in june jordan’s

eyes, and we saw

that we could sit

and talk about a

little culture. we

saw that we could

see through our

selves through

sylvia wynter in

america; we saw

that in broken

memory of them

we’d starved our

mothers with still

accomplishment,

drowned in real

abstraction and

false care, holding

our held against

each other for the

tired purity, for

some let me make

you over in the

image of my dream

of who I am when

I dream of being

me at the center

of all dreaming, a

circle of dreamers

of the center all

dreaming of me

in lemon yellow

sun, a picture of

another world

where you’re my

residue, my love.

even in my black

art you do just

what I say till the

black aesthetic,

which black art

bears with love

and leads us from,

leads us from art

and you and me

and slavery and

freedom to afform

and oblige in

near and lovely

distancing our

real black share.

a river is studio agitation n through one window,

aloft in rock bottom’s soft support and

     rumble, a room, a cell alight in the way the

          walls walk off in juba’d pat and tiling,

   the pattern on the river floor all absolute

and indiscernible unless you walk it, in the

       river, as the river, as all this rotary soar of

the dammed and held, sous vide in second

   linearity, parading in this tuba’d lining

out of the basic line all and against itself

  in black and blue switchback and beatrice

         smiling seeing all our little differences

together in the venereal collection area’s

      serial eddying of how we taste and feel,

    inseparably. there’s just so many ways to

       keep going along the way. the miraculous

   influence is delta’d in floridian branch or

mangrove double silt, coahoma co. moaning

    or swung oklahoming—a gap band or a gap in

   nature kinda sounding, drowning, burning, this

   continually caribbean being on fire of the

      river, from river to river on canal and torn

         to another bleeding place we from in our

   lenape shift, our delaware gap band, sending

       geography through a sycoractic horn chart

    of the natural city in and out of its broken

         window, cadence still cruising mobile studio.

unnamed, and making waves, and making ways

is what it sounds like: lining, tiling, moaning,

    smiling, drowning, bleeding, burning, seeing,

       sending, sounding just like joseph daley,

thurman barker, dave holland, and sam rivers.