D•Colin•ized

2026-Episode 4: Poem "Native Tongue"

performed at Proctors Theater May 2, 2026

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Welcome to d.colin.ized! Thank you for listening! This episode is in honor of Haitian Flag Day.

You can find me on Instagram @dcolinpoet, on Substack as Just D. Colin and d.colin.ized. If you resonated with this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, I'd love for you to join me over on Patreon.com/dcolin. For just $3/month you can help me keep this going and get bonus episodes as well as listening access to my full poetry sets when I perform somewhere. And for all the things including my weekly newsletter, visit dcolin.com

The poem I share in this episode is called "Sacred Land." I was thinking about Jean Jacques Dessalines and the women who contributed to the Haitian Revolution. The only didn't name in the poem and I may write an entire poem just for her is Cecile Fatiman. She alongside Dutty Boukman led a Vodou ceremony at Bois Caiman which marked the beginning of the Haitian Revolution. Really what's important here is that enslaved Africans held the first major meeting that would lead to their independence from France and Cecile a woman was at the helm.

The women I do mention in the poem are Victoria Montou, a Dahomey warrior and revolutionary fighter in the army of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Marie Sainte Dedee Bazil also known as Defilee who marched with and sold provisions to soldiers and Catherine Flon who we can thank for the creation of the Haitian Flag.

Happy Black History Month! In this episode, I share my poem "I woke up this morning" and talk about the urgency of now, specifically highlighting TPS for Haitians in the U.S.

Thank you all for listening to this episode of d.colin.ized. If you resonated with this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, I'd love for you to join me over on Patreon.com/dcolin. For just $3/month you can help me keep this going and get bonus episodes as well as listening access to my full poetry sets when I perform somewhere. I am a full-time artist and can't do this work without a village. And don't forget to sign up for my newsletter for free at dcolin.com. May we all be inspired and then inspire.

Welcome to the first episode of 2026 for d.colin.ized! In this episode, I talk about two inaugural poems read at mayoral swearing-in-ceremonies on New Year's Day released on January 10, 2026.

The first poem is called "Proof" by Cornelius Eady.

The second poem is called "New Dawn" by D. Colin (me).

You can find more and subscribe to the newsletter on dcolin.com or support the continuation of this podcast and support a full-time artist on Patreon or on Substack!

In this episode, I mention I don’t have a title for the draft I shared, but I think “Breathwork” is a contender. Also, I didn’t say it in the episode, but don’t go holding your breath for that long! It’s a metaphor. Let’s all be safe.

If you’re looking for more, you can subscribe to my Substack and/or sign up for my weekly newsletter at dcolin.com. For folks who are willing and able to support monetarily, you can do so on Substack for $5/month or on Patreon for $3/month by joining the Podcast Peeps tier at patreon.com/dcolin.

As always, we can all unlearn what doesn’t serve us and learn what makes us better. See you in the next episode! Thank you for listening!

Welcome to episode 27 of d.colin.ized! my personal creative podcast space for poetry, purpose, process, and creative power. I am D. Colin, poet, visual artist, and storyteller, bringing you reflections, rants, and real talk from my multi-hyphenate creative life.

I say on this episode that there is so much, often too much, to talk about. Still, I’d love to hear from you what you want to hear from me!

Here’s the link to the page from the National Coalition for the Homeless page that I was reading from: https://nationalhomeless.org/trump-administration-issues-executive-orders-that-fundamentally-misrepresent-homelessness/

I also read some things off of the White House Page for the executive orders that I reference. It’s called Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets and is searchable.

I hope where ever you are, small joys fill you throughout this week.

Until next time,

D. Colin

Support This Podcast

If you enjoyed today’s episode, please rate and review the podcast—it helps others find this space. Support the show and get bonus content at patreon.com/dcolin when you sign up for my Podcast Peeps Tier for $3/month

.Subscribe to my newsletter on dcolin.com to stay connected to what I’m working on next from creative work to workshops I’m offering to events you can attend

You can also support my work right here on Substack for more of this podcast, poems, essays and inspiration.

About Your Host

D. Colin is a poet, visual artist, performer, and cultural worker whose work centers healing, liberation, and creative expression. She has degrees in English and Africana Studies.

Connect With Me

Website: www.dcolin.comInstagram: @dcolinpoet & @dcolinartistPatreon: patreon.com/dcolinContact: [email protected]

I just decided to talk into my phone. Here it is.

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Support This Podcast

If you enjoyed today’s episode, please rate and review the podcast—it helps others find this space.Support the show and get bonus content at patreon.com/dcolin when you sign up for my Podcast Peeps Tier for $3/month

.Subscribe to my newsletter on dcolin.com to stay connected to what I’m working on next from creative work to workshops I’m offering to events you can attend

Follow me on Substack for more of this podcast, poems, essays and inspiration.

About Your Host

D. Colin is a poet, visual artist, performer, and cultural worker whose work centers healing, liberation, and creative expression. She has degrees in English and Africana Studies.

Connect With Me

Website: www.dcolin.comInstagram: @dcolinpoet & @dcolinartistPatreon: patreon.com/dcolinContact: [email protected]

Episode Summary

Welcome to d.colin.ized—my personal creative podcast space for poetry, purpose, process, and creative power.In this episode, I talk about going to my first Beyonce concert and the poem by Ras Baraka that among so many other parts of the concert, made me feel seen. You’ll also hear the poem that I’m talking about.

Timestamps

*Optional—remove if not using*- 0:00 – Intro- 0:54 – What’s been going on in my creative life- 2:39 – Seeing Beyonce in concert for the first time- 8:45 – “I Want to Hear an American Poem” by Ras Baraka- 18:45 – Outro

Resources & Mentions

- “I Want to Hear an American Poem” by Ras Baraka

Writing Prompt or Reflection

What is an American poem to you? What symbols of American life have you had complex feelings about, and what can you reclaim for yourself?

Support This Podcast

If you enjoyed today’s episode, please rate and review the podcast—it helps others find this space.Support the show and get bonus content at patreon.com/dcolin when you sign up for my Podcast Peeps Tier for $3/month

.Subscribe to my newsletter on dcolin.com to stay connected to what I’m working on next from creative work to workshops I’m offering to events you can attend

Follow me on Substack for more of this podcast, poems, essays and inspiration.

About Your Host

D. Colin is a poet, visual artist, performer, and cultural worker whose work centers healing, liberation, and creative expression. She has degrees in English and Africana Studies.

Connect With Me

Website: www.dcolin.comInstagram: @dcolinpoet & @dcolinartistPatreon: patreon.com/dcolinContact: [email protected]

Written in 2016 but ever relevant now, I’m sharing this piece on the podcast. To support the continuation of my podcast, please consider supporting at patreon.com/dcolin and remember to sign up for my newsletter at dcolin.com.

Poem text:

When America was great the buffalo in all their glory, proud mammals, must have known that

even then before the West was filled with states that they would at least, at the very least die

with dignity, that every part of them would be used, that it was an honor, that the code, the

circle of life would be honored like the lessons taught to Simba were cross cultural, immune to

race and color and breed, that the land, the connection to it, the music inside the soil would

always sing to the people and the people would hear it. Perhaps now the buffalo are rolling in

their graves if of course there is anything left of their skeletons to roll. But America

America was great once, back when tea bags cast over ships told the British off like a neck roll

and a long sucking of the teeth or maybe that is too colorful a comparison. Maybe it was more

like a two year old tantrum. MINE! MINE! Like a child’s way of ownership, owning things that no

one in their two years of life would know how to own but knew ownership by piercing the word

through the air, MINE! And then destroying it all, if I can’t have it then no one can.

When is it that we learn power? When do we become greedy? When is it that our needs

supersede another’s? How is it that we birth oppression? Does it feed from our own breasts?

Would you call it murder if we decided oppression wasn’t fit to live? To sit next to us at the

table, you know that table that everyone is trying to sit at. Who made that table anyway?

I digress.

America was great. That time when it occupied Haiti. That time when it occupied the Dominican

Republic. That time when it occupied Nicaragua. That time when it occupied Cuba. That time

when it occupied Somalia. That time when it occupied Iraq. That time when it occupied…Wait,

No, America was great during the Civil War, when America was bipolar,

torn between two sides. To nigger or not nigger. Did you think this was about cotton? America

has being mourning over not niggering ever since. America was great when new ways to nigger

were invented.

America was great when Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson’s mistress, when Sojourner Truth

was still Isabella Baumfree and learned to read and write, when Kunta Kinte didn’t have to

change his name to what was it again?...

America was great when Martin Luther King lived a long life and Malcolm X saved his grandson

from murder after cheating his own death.

Brown v. Board of Education actually meant equal education which meant equally allocated

funds which meant Black neighborhoods matter, I mean All neighborhoods matter. When

America was great, prisons were turned into schools and we became the most educated

country in the world. Two million, one hundred forty-five thousand and one hundred people [1]

were rehabilitated, restored to a normal life in America’s greatness.

When America was great Langston Hughes changed the title of his poem ‘I, Too’ to ‘I Am’

I am America

I am America

I was always America

Right?

So naturally when the president says make America great again

The operative word being again

Because greatness was lost somewhere in America’s history and he’s the one to bring it back

When the president says make America great again

He must be talking about raising the buffalo from the dead. He must be saying give the land

back. He must be honoring the legacy of the Natives. He must be talking about reparations. He

must be talking about time travel. He must be talking about Africans not being imported like a

cash crop. He must be talking about demolishing walls instead of building them. He must be

talking about justice. Social justice. Educational justice. Political justice. Economic justice. He

must be talking about justice. Damn, he must be submitting his resignation.

Right?

Right?

1 This number was taken from www.prisonstudies.org

It snowed in New Orleans. Almost a whole foot of snow! Being from Connecticut and living in central New York, I know a thing or two about snow, but if I'm being honest, I'm trying to remember the last time I saw up to 10 inches of it here where I live. Though snow in New Orleans is surprising, I welcomed the snow day moments that came across my social media feed amongst the barrage of politics in our descent into a dystopian future much like Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, prolific writer and prophet that she was.

I recently posted on Facebook and on my newsletter how last week was a long month. We are still only in January, and it feels like we've lived a year already. There's a lot of talk about boycotting businesses and leaving social media in the wake of DEI initiatives being rolled back and the fiasco of social media giants joining their collective minds to align with this new administration.

Recently, I read a heartfelt blog post about leaving Facebook and Instagram. It stirred up some of my own feelings that I've had for a while now. Is it time to leave? And what do I do as an artist and entrepreneur to stay connected to the larger world around me? I went to Facebook and started scrolling through my posts. I've been on Facebook since around 2004 when it expanded from Harvard-only students to other colleges and universities. Back when a college email was required to be on Facebook, it felt like a space where I could not only connect with my peers but also, someplace I could experiment with my voice. Eventually, it would be a platform where I could promote my work, start groups to support my arts community and share my growth as an artist.

What I didn't account for when I joined Facebook is that over the years, it would grow this much, opening up to the entire world and expanding into what we know now as Meta, a universe of social media apps that erase borders and connect people from around the globe. Who knew I could meet folks in Australia through a virtual open mic I found out about through Instagram or see what's happening with folks in the UK I've shared space with and want to stay connected to? Who knew I'd find some of the friends I had in middle school and be Facebook friends with them?

At the same time, I can't tell you the last post I saw from most of the folks on my "friends" list and that's not for trying. Now I see more suggestions for "follows" than posts from many folks I want to hear from. This last week I noticed that I was seeing more conservative-themed posts than normal. Who knew these apps would turn from a place of conversation to one riddled with ads? Who knew 'influencer' would become a job title? But also, who knew how divisive, how misinformed, how hateful social media spaces could become? If there's any doubt, often, all someone has to do is visit a comment section.

Certainly, none of those questions I'm raising happened overnight. But this point in time feels like a tipping point for me. Now, I'm working on archiving the last twenty years of my presence on Facebook. I've started leaning into other platforms…starting a Substack account, getting on Bluesky, posting more on my Patreon, and encouraging folks to sign up for my newsletter. As an entrepreneur, I've learned that social media is not my website but rather a vehicle to drive traffic to my website. It's easy to rely on it so much that it's difficult to imagine how business can continue without it. I think if there's anything we can learn from TikTok going dark for a night is that social media is not guaranteed, that it's supplemental to the main thing and we need to own our stuff. If it all disappeared tomorrow what next?

This is probably going to sound lofty and idealistic but I believe in our creativity. I'm interested in what we can create outside of the meta-universe and offline. I want to see what happens when we support entrepreneurs and artists directly. That work has always been happening but let's make it exponentially more! It requires a little more intention but it's possible. In a way, many of the companies being talked about in conversations about boycotting are built from our desire for convenience. I don't know of anything I went looking for that I didn't find on Amazon. Walk into any Walmart and everything is there from groceries to sports equipment to you name it in one place. To show up for what's next, we need to be committed to doing the work of going to the source and that might mean going to three places instead of one. It might mean spending more on small businesses. It might look like finding other ways to connect with people. I'm excited about what that shift means for our collective spirit.

There's a small part of me that thinks about what it might mean for me to lose all my contacts on Facebook but a louder voice is telling me I'll be grateful to learn how to expand without the comfort of Instagram and Facebook. I also consider what it might mean to be a light on an app where people need hope. But I believe everything I've done on Facebook or any social media app (that I don't own or control), I can do somewhere else and the people who want to stay connected, who want to keep supporting me, who enjoy what I share, they will always find me and in this moment of great uncertainty, I am grounded in the work I do and who I am enough to know I can create, build and organize anywhere.

Thank you for reading!

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Be inspired. Then inspire.

Until next time,

D. Colin

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