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Patrick Roche, performing “Fairy Tale”
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Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of production, distribution, promotion and fundraising for spoken word and performance poetry.
We seek to showcase the power and diversity of voices in our community. By encouraging and broadcasting the best and brightest performance poets of today, we hope to broaden poetry’s audience, to expand its reach and develop a greater level of cultural appreciation for the art form.
Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)
0:02
– Once upon a time, there was a boy,
0:05
and he was locked in a tower,
0:07
and the tower was in his skull,
0:11
and the evil queen was in his skull,
0:14
and the dragon was in his skull,
0:16
and the whole kingdom burned in his skull.
0:21
Once upon a time, there was a boy,
0:23
and he wished for a happy ending,
0:26
and his brain said no.
0:31
Once upon a time, there was a boy,
0:32
and he waited for a good spell or a fairy godmother,
0:36
but he only got a clock stuck on midnight,
0:39
and his neurons always turned back to dust and rags,
0:43
and the angry mob formed in his mouth
0:45
and flung its torches at the beast of his own body,
0:48
and maybe the worst villain was that of his own making.
0:54
Once upon a time, there was a boy,
0:58
and he tore up the old books
1:00
and climbed down his own hair to the ground
1:02
to write a folklore befitting a new world of joy,
1:06
so I am the author here,
1:09
and I learn how to talk to animals
1:12
and to the crying child in my head,
1:15
and I pull the sword from the prescription bottle.
1:18
I unwind all the clocks, and the winter thaws,
1:21
and the witch meets her end at the sharp edge of a blade,
1:24
and I never do.
1:27
Let’s praise the fairy godmother of a good therapist.
1:30
Let’s tell the bards to sing about the enchanted kingdom
1:33
I’m freeing in my own mind,
1:35
and we’ll watch as I become everything
1:37
I was promised in a bedtime story.
1:40
I become the rescuing prince and the sleeping beauty,
1:43
kissed back to life.
1:45
I become the genie and every wish granted.
1:48
I become the forest and the fairies,
1:50
the rainbow and the flying over it.
1:52
I am all of it, and I’m doing it myself.
1:56
And yes, I suppose I was also the witch
2:00
and the evil stepmother and the serpent
2:02
and the poisoned apple,
2:03
and I’ve held a multitude of contradictions
2:06
too complex for a child’s storybook,
2:08
but not today.
2:10
I lock them away, and the villagers cheer,
2:14
and I grab the pen and forge the tale into a song,
2:18
slowly, deliberately, now.
2:22
And every day I do not disappear is a new chapter,
2:27
and every day I fall backward isn’t a defeat, only a page,
2:32
and every morning I swallow the pills
2:36
is the greatest romance.
2:39
And I think this is the story that I’ll tell my children
2:43
when they ask for a happy ending,
2:45
when they beg for the fantastic and the mythical.
2:49
I’ll show them how I grabbed hold of the magic
2:52
in my mind and in the milligrams,
2:54
and in the end, everyone sang and loved,
3:01
and they’ll look up and ask me to read it again
3:08
and again
3:11
and again.
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
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