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Carlos Andrés Gómez, performing at Main Street Players in Miami Lakes, FL.
About Button:
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
My little sister likes to read Harry Potter books.
0:07
We’ll spend an entire afternoon
0:09
doing nothing but something she’s not supposed to be able to do.
0:14
Don’t be fooled!
0:16
By the fluttering pages in her palms, she’s channeling da Vinci,
0:21
inverting words like a fresh bruise
0:24
turned tangerine orange.
0:25
She picks the ripe part from a swaying branch in a chapter,
0:28
and we both hear Albert Einstein’s words echo up from the floor,
0:31
“If you want your children to be intelligent,
0:34
read them fairy tales.
0:36
If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
0:41
My little sister, Maya, likes to read fairy tales,
0:44
has always loved fantasy.
0:45
It’s where we built her playground.
0:47
She is Leonardo minus the mirror.
0:48
It took years
0:50
for people to read what everyone thought was da Vinci’s own invented language,
0:53
when all he did was just write backwards.
0:56
And, just like Einstein and Leonardo, Maya has a gift.
1:00
Some don’t think so, and call her dyslexic.
1:02
She has a genius to her,
1:04
coded like the paragraphs, her potent mind distills,
1:07
but while kids repeat monotone words from a teacher–
1:11
who might as well be a cartoon parrot
1:13
or a doll’s audio-recorded voice,
1:15
or a Hooked-On-Phonics tape acting as a babysitter–
1:18
while kids stuff their mouths with dull letters and muted sounds,
1:22
Maya is in a daydream.
1:24
They try to beat her down with a four-letter acronym baton,
1:26
but she’s too busy directing the orchestra with her magic wand,
1:30
a symphony of mixed chlorophyll-tinged pastels,
1:33
constellation framed with songs of a summer breeze-drenched field.
1:37
Maya’s dancing in that open clearing in the woods,
1:40
scrawling out recipes with Mozart in sweaty rooms of overcrowded notes.
1:46
She calls it a curse.
1:49
I tell her it is a gift.
1:53
There is nothing wrong with you, Maya.
1:56
She asked me, “Who, with dyslexia, has ever really done anything,
2:01
besides this Leonardo da Vinci or Albert Einstein?”
2:06
And I answer, “Well,
2:14
I guess no one else, really.
2:18
I mean, besides Pablo Picasso,
2:24
Anne Bancroft, John Lennon, Auguste Rodin,
2:29
Ansel Adams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, W.B. Yeats,
2:31
Agatha Christie, Muhammad Ali.”
2:34
Maya, your mind is a gift of greatness.
2:38
I’d rather see the page like you,
2:40
imagine all of the possibilities at once,
2:43
the paragraphs unhinged, each sentence released
2:46
by the first hinted promise of a word–
2:50
its promise,
2:54
to make us free.
3:01
(cheers and applause)
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
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