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K McClendon, performing at Icehouse in Minneapolis, MN.
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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)
00:01
my lyft driver is white and male and in
00:06
his 20 so he is talking to me about
00:08
graduating college and the well-paying
00:10
job he got right after he did so but how
00:13
it was so hard so he had to quit because
00:15
he never had enough time to play Oh
00:18
after I found out about how good he is
00:22
at beer pong still two years graduated I
00:24
asked about the city as it slowly opens
00:28
up like scrap metal flowers blossoming
00:30
in front of us and he says come here
00:34
five years ago and there was almost
00:36
nothing worth your time but now the
00:40
cities are much nicer more livable and a
00:43
black child falls out of his mouth lands
00:46
in the Starbucks cup to the right of him
00:48
and drowns he the driver remains unfazed
00:54
he says I like it here and I imagine I
00:57
could like it here too if I knew how to
00:59
use all those fancy words he says
01:01
instead of gentrification and I imagine
01:04
it must be nice to have the public
01:06
transport end where the black
01:08
neighborhood begins it must be nice to
01:11
move into a downtown without asking why
01:13
the last family left then to see people
01:16
that look like you without wondering
01:18
what they looked like before you arrived
01:21
smoke billows out of these streets like
01:24
signals see Detroit is always on fire
01:28
its belly red and raw and ain’t that
01:31
like the blackest ever
01:33
the man on the trains black hoodie reads
01:36
Detroit’s versus the world’s and I think
01:39
Flint versus the world
01:42
stephane versus the world’s Ferguson
01:45
versus the world and ain’t that like the
01:48
blackest ever to be against the
01:51
world thank you
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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