By Button Poetry
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Rupesh Bhattarai, performing at IWPS 2019 in San Diego, CA.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
We were little lumps of dirt squirted out of our mothers
00:05
when we first came here,
00:06
as brown as the streets we called our home.
00:09
We were brought back from the dead more than once,
00:12
almost being taken by malaria, typhoid, and racing motorbikes,
00:15
we developed an innate survival instinct.
00:18
Our parents, they wanted to make us humans.
00:22
How did they dream so big?
00:24
We were careless kids in school.
00:27
We forgot textbooks and memorized rap verses.
00:30
We bunked classes and attended concerts.
00:32
Schools failed us more than we failed schools.
00:35
But somehow,
00:36
hiding behind our friends’ backs and behind our introvert cloaks,
00:40
we started composing music and writing stories.
00:44
We were 13 when we first wanted to be artists.
00:47
How did we dream so big?
00:50
We were the youngest employees in our first jobs.
00:52
We worked overtime to pay the bills for the house.
00:55
We clenched our fists before buying a new pair of shoes.
00:58
But somehow we started writing poems.
01:01
We were plebs,
01:02
our best-laid plans involved getting a job that kept the house running.
01:06
But somehow we wanted to follow our passion.
01:09
How did we dream so big?
01:11
We were minuscule poets from a small city.
01:14
Even the loudest of our verses would get muffled in
01:17
by the sound of traffic in Kathmandu.
01:19
Even the most powerful of our poems would drown
01:21
in the ruthless sea of pop culture.
01:23
Even the most beautiful of our words
01:25
would dive into the sewers-ridden rivers of the internet
01:29
and cry for help while we watched them being carried away.
01:31
But somehow we wanted to get away.
01:35
We were minuscule poets from a small city,
01:38
but somehow we wanted to get out,
01:40
but somehow we wanted to get bigger.
01:42
How did we dream so big?
01:45
(applause and cheers)
01:48
(man) Alright, that’s Rupesh, y’all!
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video