The question that has been on my mind lately is what if I allowed myself to already feel

like I have enough? What if I am looking to be in community? But I am already in community.

With the people I see on a daily basis during my routines, the animals, the plants, my family,

my chosen family, what if I am already connected to everything? What if I allowed myself to feel

not just happy or joyful, but content, full, satiated? What if I allowed myself to feel like I

have enough, to feel like I am enough? Even thinking about it makes my shoulders drop.

I exhale and feel the breath in my lungs and it's something like peace. What if I allowed myself

to love not just where I am going or where I've been, but where I am right now? And in that

acknowledgement, give praise to everyone who is walking with me on this journey. What would happen?

Today's poem is an exploration of shouting out ourselves and our community. I love how this poem

makes room for complicated praise.

Acknowledgements by Enkousi in Kulu Leiko. When I hear my name, I feel like I am my own country.

I do not have my parents name, but their blood runs through me like hyphens shout out to the

fam addicted to addiction. The conception of greed for the feeling a body has when it has too much.

I know men on the block are full to the ends of their skin with sin. On the corners of my block,

brothers rep their hood like nations would. Allegiance is the only name that binds. I pledge it

like a president, one hand on the Bible, the other dipped in blood. I'm faithful to my people with

no God. Godless tribes deserve the shout out. The coal to the hopeless. We have no church to burn.

Shout out to the streets undone. The concrete that memorizes the word surrender. Shout out to the

surrendered. You fail for us to fail easy. When I jog through rain, I feel each bulb catch fire on

me. Watch me sing bright with a somber song. Shout out to the women who sung for me. I am a man

with many songs, but sing none. I want to acknowledge the homes I know, the brick frames with smoke

...