By Button Poetry
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Jon Jon Moore, performing at Rustbelt 2018 in Detroit, MI.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:03
I receive a hashtag cross stitched with
00:08
my own tongue and spine and deliver an
00:12
update from the other side I died and
00:16
lived to tell about it
00:18
live to tell and beat a tale told after
00:22
the fact I was starving for applause so
00:24
loud that I could hear it from
00:27
underground but now I am full of wicked
00:32
spirit question if I am black and refuse
00:37
to ask for permission does that make me
00:40
dead already
00:41
if my throat is thirsty for a Red River
00:44
Revolution does that make me the anomaly
00:48
they warned you about the word zombie
00:50
first appeared in the English language
00:52
and reference to Zumbi king of a 17th
00:55
century settlement of fugitive Africans
00:58
in Brazil the language gongo gives us
01:02
the words in zombie meaning God and
01:05
zombie meaning fetish object of
01:08
irrational devotion and zombie breath
01:12
crept up on enslaved Africans and Haiti
01:15
scarlet Sun holds its tongue and I fear
01:19
getting stuck somewhere between hell and
01:22
gone when I first appeared in American
01:25
cinema they called me ghoul flesh-eating
01:28
demon of Arabic folklore derived from a
01:31
glad meaning to curse to see I just
01:39
crashed the Crypt stole back my own body
01:43
this object of irrational devotion
01:46
nowadays I hold myself the way only a
01:50
casket can imagine this
01:52
to be reanimated malcom-x of Mosiah
01:55
silly harriet tubman tintype come to
01:59
life and we be busting bodies that
02:02
breathe lilac lily and late to the party
02:05
non-black a lie ship asthmatic because
02:11
violence is never the answer until you
02:15
start asking the right questions and I
02:18
am starving so when my jaw comes
02:21
unhinged and my cake a cake gets gotta
02:24
got her know that the dead were risen
02:28
long before the outbreak black death
02:31
they buried and taunted us with
02:34
individual eulogies the gall of the
02:37
living to make one story into many I
02:41
have been a laboratory and come out mad
02:45
scientist what I mean is the only way to
02:49
kill a ghoul is to strike it dead in one
02:52
blow for the second blow breathes life
02:56
back into it so count how many times you
03:00
flinched
03:00
the blood dripping from my teeth and if
03:05
every flinch is a wound then that
03:08
raspberry crimson in the corner of my
03:11
mouth tastes nothing like me
03:19
[Applause]
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This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
