By Button Poetry
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Rob Mitchell, performing at Icehouse in Minneapolis, MN.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:01
they said boys will be boys but I didn’t
00:05
really know what boys were so I spent my
00:08
days becoming first raucous mess
00:11
yelling rats wrestling wailing usually
00:14
running on playgrounds first from Glee
00:16
and then again when the kissy girls came
00:18
with their cooties and chased pecks to
00:21
the cheek they chased me until I learned
00:23
that like cooties don’t actually work
00:24
that way silence then soon smothered the
00:28
ruckus
00:29
first from shushes and swats at school
00:31
and church enough bruises nurse to know
00:34
when to keep my mouth shut and then
00:36
later from stoic men I modeled myself
00:38
after call him James Bond or dad or
00:43
anyone who only really cared about the
00:46
appearance of not caring feelings were a
00:49
feminine thing here boys will be broken
00:53
better the sucker of bottled emotions
00:56
than the stab of better to tuck
00:58
trauma tight then let it float free like
01:01
a butterfly better to be empty than to
01:03
loud that is until college came complete
01:07
with freedom and independence and
01:10
alcohol here men will be boys raucous
01:15
messes wailing with drinking games
01:17
chasing and kissing girls with bruises
01:19
to tell stories better than slurred
01:21
words I learned better to drown trauma
01:23
than tuck it tight better to crack the
01:26
bottle then to crack yourself better to
01:28
be loud than nursing an empty heart or
01:31
cup eventually the alcohol took its toll
01:34
I can’t remember the booze that broke
01:37
the camel’s back
01:38
silence crashed hard like haystack when
01:42
tongues tied from word slip slurred and
01:44
did knots are fumbling mess shakes and
01:46
shambles onto the floor eventually
01:48
enough spirits will scream silent back
01:51
into a boys soul so when she took my
01:55
silence for a s took the liquor as
02:00
license to my lips took the blank space
02:03
held aloft by my tongue as a checkmark
02:06
all the quiet and my bones became a
02:09
chorus of flesh a raucous of two bodies
02:12
smashing together
02:15
the sky the next morning still looked
02:17
the same I flipped through the
02:20
encyclopedia and my brain to make sense
02:22
of the shame that claim to my skin and I
02:25
couldn’t quite place it in all the empty
02:27
space and this shower couldn’t see past
02:30
the tea water you know the funny thing
02:36
about the elephant in the room is how
02:38
long it remembers the nausea the sting
02:41
of sweat her to FEMA hanging over my
02:44
face and all the inky black that sticks
02:47
it together at breakfast
02:50
the boys gathered as boys do for our
02:52
morning ritual interrupting Michael as
02:54
he recalled all the liquid courage he
02:57
stomach to the night before Mamadou
02:58
asked me how my night went with the same
03:01
hungry smile that she once wore to and
03:05
the whole dining hall turns to me five
03:08
tables back trio freshman boys bore
03:10
holes into now black expanse of naps
03:13
covering my hanging head i weekly i my
03:16
bacon knowing boys will be boys will be
03:20
broken will be jagged edges looking to
03:24
sink their cut teeth into something
03:26
substantial enough to hold off all that
03:28
empty so I smile my most practice grin
03:31
satisfied that silence will undress me
03:34
all the same waiting for the hoots and
03:38
the hollers waiting for all this empty
03:40
to swallow me waiting for the air to
03:43
become boisterous again
03:46
[Applause]
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video