I Got Five On It
I built an altar from the ones who wouldn’t let me forget.
I call them my starting five, if you know what I mean.
Five faces. Five flames. Five reasons I can’t unsee what’s being done.
Audre. Fannie Lou. Bayard. Nina. James.
They hang on my wall like an echo and a warning. A collage I made years ago, a kind of Blacksonian that lives in my own heart.
So when the noise rises yet again. When another executive order tries to erase the mirror we built and tries to silence the museum, dismantle the evidence, redact our beauty from the record…I remember:
I got five on it.
And I can’t unknow what they taught me.
Audre didn’t just speak truth…she made silence impossible. Fannie Lou turned being sick and tired into a national indictment. Bayard turned the shadows they put him in into blueprints. Nina didn’t soothe the world, she scored its reckoning. James made language a refuge of belonging and lit it from within with unbearable truth.
This ain’t nostalgia. This is remembrance as resistance.
They remind me that to practice equanimity and grounded presence…to stand in the middle of this grief, this rage, this country, is not to go numb. It is to feel everything and still not break.
And from that unwavering stillness, what blooms?
Fierce compassion. The kind that trembles with deep care and concern. The kind that refuses to look away. The kind that holds what’s breaking without breaking apart.
Not the kind of compassion that bows out. The kind that bows in.
That remembers. That refuses to forget.
So, let the records vanish. Let the budgets bleed. Let them try to pixelate the past.
I still got five on it. And the ancestors won’t let us forget. Neither will I. You got five on it?
May you carry yours in power.
Devin
For those who saw the title and nodded—yeah, that song! Luniz classic from ‘95 But this one’s my remix.
Devin Berry is a dharma teacher, storyteller, and biomythic memoirist. He co-founded Deep Time Liberation and Heartstream Sangha.
Heartstream Sangha |IG: @blkb3rry
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Devin, this is fire wrapped in reverence.
Five echoes that won’t let me sleep through the sirens.
Five flames still flickering in the marrow.
This isn’t just memory — it’s mandate.
Thank you for this liturgy of refusal, this remix of remembering.
You remind me that presence can be protest,
and compassion, a form of fierce resistance.
Carrying mine. Grateful to stand with yours.
Five on it ten toes down!!! Thank you D!! ✊🏼👊🏼💪🏼