By Button Poetry
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Joshua Bennet, performing for the Striver’s Row.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
thank you mom
00:03
and auntie for looking after me
00:11
and kept me safe
00:14
kept me close
00:20
say it sing it if the spirit leads
00:23
after vivee francis
00:27
come celebrate with me every day
00:32
that something has tried to kill me and
00:35
failed
00:37
lucille clifton
00:40
back in the day sister lexi told me that
00:44
my black was beautiful
00:46
and i can never quite forget it so last
00:48
wednesday i went home and wrote this
00:50
letter
00:51
it said we are not always broken
00:55
even when we are we are stained glass
00:58
staccato
01:00
mosaic as god’s song sifted through the
01:03
stylus of a stutterer’s tongue
01:05
an ocean split like a reluctant fist
01:08
blooming into praise we praise always we
01:12
elegant
01:13
everywhere we die too soon we joyous
01:17
anyhow say it that every day is a toast
01:21
to living
01:23
an ode to the way we made resilience in
01:26
art
01:26
my classroom is a self-love anthem in
01:29
nine parts
01:31
together we unlearn shame
01:34
dream silly sing what we cannot say
01:38
anywhere else so say it say i am 12
01:41
years old and my joy is stainless
01:44
the next time the world calls me
01:45
subhuman i will remind it that spell
01:48
check is a virtue say
01:49
i think the word you’re looking for is
01:51
subterranean
01:52
ten thousand leads too deep for easy
01:54
definition fleet
01:56
as the feet of those tubman kept close
01:58
as kin we start each day
02:00
like this like poetry gives us a new
02:03
grammar for the body
02:04
say it i exist in excess of my anguish i
02:08
am not invisible
02:09
i am a beam of light too brilliant for
02:12
untrained vision
02:13
i am not target practice i am not a
02:16
bullseye with rhythm
02:18
this breath is no illegal substance
02:21
sing it a ballad for the youngest son
02:24
how he survives beat cops that see
02:26
caesars in seas upstream
02:28
freeze hands up to chain his flame
02:31
praise
02:31
the lyric name quivangine latavia
02:35
to brickishaw devonte how they make the
02:38
mouth
02:38
a musician sing it when you’re a seventh
02:41
grader in philly
02:42
and they try to turn your middle school
02:43
into a ghost town
02:45
may your voice be an atmosphere
02:47
imploding sing it
02:48
with conviction say i’m an illidale
02:51
lyricist
02:52
metaphor is everest anybody hating on my
02:55
halo is irrelevant i flow like whitman
02:57
clifton elliott pound rilke hayden
03:00
gwendolyn zora langston cullen allison
03:04
[Applause]
03:09
the authors that offered a glimpse of
03:12
what heaven
03:12
is say it say we fly in zeppelins
03:17
heavens high at our heaviest dignified
03:20
even when strangers try to make this
03:22
beauty a burden
03:23
say no one will make this beauty a
03:26
burden say
03:26
no you will not touch my hair
03:30
say for real
03:32
[Applause]
03:38
say for real the next time you try i
03:41
will slap you
03:42
say this skin this skin is no black
03:46
hole it is a holy blackness that i
03:48
cannot shake say
03:50
harlem shake say the appropriation train
03:53
stops here
03:54
say lindy hop and hip hop or have
03:56
sisters
03:57
that’s why they got the same last name
03:59
say this is the last time
04:01
you call me out of my name the last time
04:05
you call me anything
04:06
other than what i claimed for myself
04:08
when i woke up this morning say no one
04:11
will co-opt our morning we will honor
04:15
the dead
04:16
praise what they left behind say no one
04:20
will make me afraid of being alive
04:24
say my people my people
04:28
stay liver than life
04:31
say always have say
04:34
always will
04:47
you
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video