Obsession

from Freedom Journal: Antidotes to Violence by Brandon Wint

supported by

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$1 CAD or more
Buy the Full Digital Album

about

Obsession is a poem that arose out of my need to reckon with the enormity of anti-Black violence throughout North America, and police brutality specifically. The poem was my attempt to reconcile the difficulty of moving through the density of this violence and the social media discourses around it. The poem hopes to honour those who have been killed by anti-Black racism and police brutality, while pointing out the endemic, white supremacist structures that create such brutality. The song is a grief song. The song is wailing. The song is rage, pain and reckoning.

lyrics

Obsession

Of saying Sandra was hanged,
left to sway like a dim lantern in a cage;

Walter fled and the bullets chased
his blood into the grass;

name gathering, deciphering dash and body cams,
citing the maroon of Philando’s wet shirt;

anniversaries, dates repeating
names, tombstones
floating over the heads of our buried;

weeping into laptops,
finding on a sister’s arm
the purple lake of bruise,
on a neck the spangled red of stranglehold;

and being asked, still
for brutality’s signatures,

to prime our gums with verses
to find in a throat’s pink chute
something reasoned as essays

to say,
the bones glinting between toes are ancestors’,
the vault of the bank is full of our blood,
the anthem singing only a graveyard
the land yellowed varicose; our caskets,
unmarked.

credits

from Freedom Journal: Antidotes to Violence, track released January 21, 2022
Producer: Brian Raine
poetry vocal: Brandon Wint
sung vocal: KARIMAH
bass: Andreas Wegner
drums: Daniel Stadnicki
keys: Tyson Kerr

Single Artwork by Noah Lefevre
design by Nicolle Bell-Dupas

license

some rights reserved

about

Brandon Wint Edmonton, Alberta

Brandon Wint is a writer and performance poet based in Canada. His devotion to creativity, love and Divine understanding is evident in all of his poetic work. He is a two-time Canadian slam champion, an arts-educator and artist of national distinction. ... more