00:03
black boy auditions for his own funeral
00:30
how is that did my silence break the
00:35
small mother in your chest I was going
00:38
for this closed casket kind of quiet you
00:41
know thought make things more real like
00:45
an autopsy cause of death
00:48
racism time of death when white America
00:52
opened my auction block mouth poured
00:55
nigger down my throat and it became the
00:57
only language I knew poison so thick you
01:01
could call it an accent call it self
01:03
hate you know a ruined black boy be a
01:06
fresh meal be what prisons fill their
01:09
wallets with black movies so low-budget
01:12
we could use the concrete instead of a
01:15
crucifix yes Vaughn heaven had a casting
01:17
call so I’ve been training with a cop
01:19
you know he told me to get against the
01:21
wall
01:22
told me that to get on the ground told
01:24
me to save my lines with his gun and my
01:27
mouth they didn’t believe there could be
01:29
a God in my sometimes church body and
01:32
thirsty for faith they shot rounds at my
01:35
stained-glass skin wanted to see a God
01:37
they look like them who’s from the
01:40
rapture of me but I look the part yet I
01:43
spend all day with the mortician they
01:45
liked me they saw my headshot you can
01:48
put as many holes in me as you want I
01:50
could dance despite the bullets these
01:51
seeds police planted to make me a feel
01:54
of blooming things like activists and
01:57
protests and hashtags at the morgue
02:00
they held me like a mother would but not
02:02
like my mother did at the hospital
02:04
trying to squeeze the rhythm back into
02:07
my chest will the sequel won’t be about
02:10
my mother in a courtroom wailing her way
02:13
into a settlement of I was holy doing my
02:15
job and a check to pacify her raging
02:18
blood take what flowers grow from me
02:21
make a bouquet from my mother for all
02:23
mothers who lose children and are left
02:25
with shovels to bury what they thought
02:28
would be the rest of their lives roll
02:30
the credits a round of applause for
02:32
every cop that made it to the big screen
02:34
with their hands too full of fun to
02:37
raise new retirement money to carry any
02:40
kind of accountability to
02:42
walk out the theater all the names of
02:45
the taken from us too soon ascending
02:48
into some rushed and forgotten heaven
02:50
let my death be your last take and in
02:54
this final shot when you burying me make
02:58
sure you get my good side
03:00
[Applause]
◊♦◊
Have you read the original anthology that was the catalyst for The Good Men Project? Buy here: The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood
◊♦◊
Talk to you soon.
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