Name: Raise Your Open Palm: A Five Digit Social Experiment on Belonging*
Duration: P00H01M53S
Description: for Imagining America 2019

Raise Your Open Palm: A Five Digit Social Experiment on Belonging*

by Hakim Be

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.

Purchasable with gift card

name your price

about

for Imagining America 2019

lyrics

Raise Your Open Palm: A Five Digit Social Experiment on Belonging*
AKA Question Everything**
AKA The Anti-Fist

For Imagining America 2019

Raise your hand if you belong to student loans?
If you belong to mortgages and car notes?
If you belong to first and last month’s rent?

Raise your hand if you are over 30 and you still belong in your parents’ house?
Raise your hand if you belong to care taking for your parents,
grandparents, nephews, nieces and domesticated animals?

Raise your hand if you belong to your family?
And raise you hand if you don’t?

If you belong to those who don't belong
raise your hand if you know the difference between belonging
and fitting in?
-
Raise your hand if you belong to books
more so than Netflix binges.

Raise your hand if you belong to restaurants
more often than you belong to kitchens.

Raise yourself if you belong to standing
more than you belong to sitting.

Then raise your gratitude for the living,
raise your love.
-
Raise your answer
if you know the hand
to belonging without borders.
If you've ever imagined belonging
to an America that once had a dream about
belonging to all of us.

Raise your voice
if you know the secret
to belonging without others.
Raise your hand if you belong to a life
that you like.

Raise your hand if you’d like to belong
to different life.

Raise your hand
just to see what your rotator cuff feels like.

Raise your hand if you want to belong
to the kind of spaces that don’t make you long
to be anywhere else.
-
Raise your hand
if you’re like me

just longing to be.

Raise your open palm if you belong to “them”
and we belongs to “us.”

Raise your hand if you exist.
even if it’s just by the skin of your teeth...

Raise your hand, Imagining America,
if for no other reason than to belong to this urban forest of hands.

If only for a moment
of this

this being enough.

*Meant to be read aloud in the round
**including belonging

credits

released October 22, 2019
Hakim Bellamy

license

about

Hakim Be Albuquerque, New Mexico

contact / help

Contact Hakim Be

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

If you like Hakim Be, you may also like:

Winter Of Discontent
by Knomad Spock

The British-Somali poet draws upon everything from leftfield folk to minimalist spoken-word, bound together by simple-yet-cutting wordplay. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 28, 2021
go to album
Playing with Esu / Where will Ogun Live
by Neo Griot & The Afrocentric Prince

featured on Bandcamp Radio Jan 25, 2022
go to album
Fodder
by Douglas Kearney & Val Jeanty

Poet Douglas Kearney and composer/producer/drummer Val Jeanty link up for a a compelling LP that feels like the written word come to life. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 30, 2021
go to album
The Japanese Rimbaud
by Mikado Koko * o g i v e

Mikado Koko blends glitchy ambient with excerpts of poems from the late Japanese experimental poet Chuya Nakahara. Bandcamp New & Notable May 27, 2020
go to album
We Must Be Sacred
by The Last Poets

featured on Bandcamp Radio Oct 23, 2018
go to album
Body Of Work
by Tenesha The WordSmith

featured on Bandcamp Radio Aug 7, 2018
go to album
Jujus/Alchemy of the Blues: Poems by Sarah Webster Fabio
by Sarah Webster Fabio

featured on Bandcamp Radio Jul 24, 2018
go to album