 Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. How's everybody doing? Small. How are you? I'm tired. Very, very tired, but being more and more energized by the millisecond to see you all, really it's a presence I don't take for granted. I brought for you a merry band of misfits for your listening pleasure. We're just going to dive right in. Is that cool? Right on. So you're in for three treats. First dessert is, you know, you know, there you meet many geniuses along the way. But every once in a while, you actually meet one through the course of political struggle before you know even what they can do to a microphone. And so this very, very, very special poet I met when we were in the trenches of the Mario Woods struggle. I don't know how many of you all are familiar with what happened SFPD overkill Mario Woods. What was this 2016 or 15 or something like that? So in doing organizing, we wandered into each other's lives. And we have been thicker than blood ever since brilliant poet, child whisperer, you know, brilliant teacher. Actually, I brought a couple to actually, they are teachers. Sorry, I just so that just use that one up, you know, everybody else, I figure out something else to say. But first, man, please make feel welcome. Lady Reff. What's good, everybody? How y'all living? Originally, I was going to come here and say some wild outlandish shit, but I'm gonna be a little more cool today. So I got some new pieces that I wanted to try to get out and see how it goes. And I got a little bit of time. So I'm gonna split a couple of them. This first one is called a thin line between life and death. You think because you be breathing that you actually be alive. You think your tear filled dry eyes see the same truths that men see feet stand between cliffs and open air. Hope stands between jumping and sky diving purpose be left irrelevant on bathroom floors. If you hold your breath long enough, you can witness angels sitting with their eyes closed. If you just shut down your consciousness, then you could hear the spirits whispering about our ancestors failures. Who do you think you are? This be flat land. Every line is meant to be crossed. It was short. I don't really write a lot of short shit, but that was that one was short. This next poem doesn't really have a title. It's based off a war baby by Roddy rich. Not sure if y'all know that song was it slaps. Go hear it. I'm from the bottom of the bottom. Check your sources, baby. I'm a war baby. I'm a war baby. Did you know if you take it in the right doses trauma can create this metamorphic view of a fallen world. Your third eye can be revealed and you will bring souls back from the pits of white man Hill. Your tongue will breathe fire on every light of day. And your aura will radiate at such high levels that even white women will one attend. Did you know that trauma is so powerful that it creates cold from diamonds and they sell out on store shelves. It can produce experiences that fascinate Hollywood and justify poverty simultaneously. Trauma does not mean dying does not mean death. It is our ability to be beaten, forced down, raped, ravaged, stolen from, lied to, cheated, abused, children murdered, brothers martyred, maintained toxicity between mothers and daughters. You racing black fathers and still believe that the American dream, the melting pot meme actually belongs to us. You know, whiteness as a gift for black disgust. Because happiness fulfillment could never intentionally come from us. If you inhale oppression, you don't get asthma. Instead, you build stamina to fight for your life one more day. The Guinness World Record for holding breath underwater is four minutes and 40 seconds, but living with an oppression can teach you how to hold your breath under pressure for a lifetime. Functioning in white inferiority can teach you how to assimilate in the womb. Living in poverty teaches you where to not grow where there is no room and concrete is everyone's destiny. Trauma and correct doses will teach you not to want anything else, but more trauma. I'm a little nervous now. Another untitled piece. Yeah, don't know what to call it. Generational curses serve as playing field for corrupt cops. Sometimes, freedom is hidden in life choices that you don't get to make. It's hard to see little kids as innocent, auctioned off in classrooms. So we turn on TVs instead. Callie King Baird's red heads are falling gangsters whose mothers shun the fathers. Black folks. They never been free. Grocery shopping is capitalism disguised as food equity. Prison reform can actually be established because masters ain't trading high yields stock. Stimulate foreign times with stories of American dreams. You are only as good as you put out dirty hands, build cities, not the poor. A society must be conducive to crime. That's why we at war ain't nobody in America free. Chains don't sell like they used to. Grandma's voodoo can't always protect you. Streets grit their teeth at empty clips. Rain don't cleanse acid. That's why we need blood. Grass grows in every mind that witnesses martyrdom and sunlight. What's freedom anyway? Lick lips chasing savory guava leaves filled with disappointment, resentment, and coffee mugs. You don't even know yourself. Why should I? Gamble away liberty to profit private laws. Don't nothing humble you like a jailhouse. Trauma fuels the economy. I know all this don't make sense. It's not supposed to. The world wasn't made to live. Am I doing time? This one's called We Carry. We carry loads of souls to the borders of free land. Broken hearts guide footsteps to revelations not yet received. Ignorance tastes like candy. 380s banged daily so that children learn to count. How many bullets does it take to break 500 year old chains? There aren't different names and every face blends together. Life beer mill dedicated to seeds never planted. Shit, air ain't cheap. And holds till ground looking for love underneath. We carry sadness like divine carries us. Collect tears and empty buildings to fund commissary for angered white folks trees move faster. Leaves painted by secrets kept and when we live in cemetery and we carry dead babies and metal strollers. Tongues clipped yield better crops. Your medicine be pennants for every time you allowed your mind to break cycles. When retracing did not erase the smell of falling clouds and so we carry pieces with arms bleeding and back stomped in. Unlevel ground looks steep, but we really just walking barrettes pattern and reflection of sun and suns hold those hands. Freedom cannot be free. Palms cracked rubbery grass on concrete building someone must build it. We carry fertilizer to our graves to show our commitment. We made it here without mothers without fathers without love without hope without fearing ghosts of ourselves carrying shit that we don't even need to uplift new hearts. Reconfigured limbs lead to holy water and we carry cups just enough to not give up. There is no last breath almost ain't enough but bricks bricks build legacy. Okay this is my last one and I'm gonna put it out of here passing it on. I think I'm gonna call it death ain't sacred no more. Death ain't sacred no more. Souls is already lost before the body is housed in coffins sometimes morning feels like tradition sometimes blood on concrete mirrors sun rays whole time we crying losing bits of memory we not even breathing can't see past a certain distance call upon ancestors you've never even mentioned resentment is a source of clearer vision the moon is just a projection of spirits stuck in limbo ain't no privilege in pain cemeteries are fools stacked bodies flood our gardens children are eating those crops only thieves find pleasure in distorting lineage greed compromises sanity takes away choices you still trying to learn yourself premature transition as a writer passage these legends ain't shit but myths despair feels like love depression feels like hope ain't no truth in stolen land we all just trying to make it internal struggles replace conversation in public spaces in those voices derail they derail the quality of life shit life is too expensive anyway so but death ain't sacred no more and there are more souls than human host I wonder if the land of ancestors is polluted with innocence can they house all these masters while fate played ignorant jealousy finds those who's cheated the struggle revolution falls on the shoulders of gangsters and others who don't even know how to love themselves gods turn their faces disassociated from empty prayers you commit treason every time you inhale just passively breathing without permission but death death ain't sacred no more so next up to the microphone uh you know what I gotta double up man because I gotta talk about uh you know again just just somebody who is really just a gift to the people and and have have put in so many anonymous anonymous hours um just helping the the the miracle of education alone um and uh equal to the you know just kind of the water I've seen her walk on in the classroom uh in some of the most disregarded places is this um once in a generation talent you know uh I'll get out the I'll get out the way with a real um a real warrior of brilliance um I'll let her do the rest maylani clay the black woman is god in a world hell bent on being heathen betrayed by those at our right hand hung out to die knowing streets and temples will team with parishioners when it is time to mourn our passing we show up anyway to make feasts from scraps we'll rage for a future eons beyond this one and yet our names are only ever uttered soft in prayer whispered close to clavicle and exhale on lips before sleep we call to you over the roar of the ocean's hush but you don't trust you enough to meet us in the storm all our prophets must be false if our names can gild the tongues of pretentious pagans at performative protests when only black women can hold the syllables in our mouths with the reverence they deserve we have wept wiped libation from our faces only to have it replaced with spit no matter our weary we resist rest so long as any of you are refused respite though our bodies blanket this earth from end to end we continue to offer ourselves to mobs of marauders though we still the crashing currents to soothe your worry we remain the black woman a god rarely granted grace and still how hallowed be how hallowed be how holy be our names thank you to natalie for organizing this event shout out to folks who are new at their roles and thank you to tango for having me and then just lady revan linden to share space and stage with y'all is a gift for all my attackers must be r kelly's and bill cosby's pedophiles or perverts for me to have half a chance at being taken seriously but the friend who trails his hand too far down my back the lover who chooses to bury my no beneath all the yes that came before it the boy i caught myself falling for who played bass in church none of them are monsters yet memories of them still hide beneath my bed breath hot with denial whispering doubt into my dreams without being pinned down without being drugged without being underage without dark alleys and strangers with weapons and even with any of these my story has no teeth nothing with which to attach itself to righteous outrage we are never victims even when there is a fight in dna under fingernails even when there's video and scars even when the world becomes the dumpster behind which you leave our bodies contorted and trembling our stories are little more than think peace fertilizer growing clicks and traffic but changing nothing about how we feel forced to sleep fully clothed with lights on feel forced to never be alone even when solitude would nourish us feel forced to keep our stories buried out of the blazing rays of unrighteous indignation for multitudes there is a place between monster and human where too many travel a Bermuda triangle where accountability and remorse vanish in the swirling turbulent waters of patriarchal violence instead of telling the truth instead of shouting our stories into the storm to be swallowed in self-righteous solidarity we watch as monuments and murals accolades and opportunities are heaped upon these beings instead of grief we survive so i feel like i'd be remiss if i didn't mention um that the particular part of that poem is titled on being a survivor and the part that talks specifically about kind of feeling forced um to never be alone because of it not being safe is really um directly influenced by june jordan's poem about my rights so if somehow you are unfamiliar with that piece um please look it up um i wish she could still be with us um we definitely need her wisdom and her light um but i will keep doing my best to honor that legacy i wrote this poem for my child um she's five which is really awesome and really terrible if you have ever raised children it's just it's really great and really awful um all the time every day so and i love her so much um so i tried with this piece to to capture the incredible um that i experienced being her mother i'm tired of writing poems for white people so i gave birth to one they can't read a copper skin poem revised for 37 weeks and five days a poem with my exuberance wound helix around each curl laughing loud toward the sky a poem with my resistance etched into a tiny furrowed brow i gave birth to a poem with my rage alchemized into a gilded voice never backing down never silent on command a poem with my hope sewn carefully to its sternum a little patchwork yet certain all the same i gave birth to a poem that doesn't know any words but synonyms for love and freedom a poem that careens down sidewalks ecstatic shrieks prayers laid at the highest altar this poem's eyelids are lined with the silk of my faith this poem is invincible still one day though i gave birth to this poem this people's poem i know someone will try to read her anyway failing they will demand i translate but the poem i birth was never meant for their understanding for between the lines of this poem's lashes i placed a single dream a future that is this poems and this poems alone to write really like this poem and it really has a lot of cussing feel free to have those conversations later oh before i do my last two pieces i just want to i have to shout out the patrice limo writing group um which is where i met uh several of these folks um it's where a lot of these poems came from it's it's one of the most special places i've ever had the the blessing to be a part of and it and it i have soared um as a creative since being part of that group and just as a human also um so thank y'all fuck the police their badges their guns their ray bands their boots their grins fuck the politicians fuck the government at every level all three branches of this cursed fig tree fuck the blustering about draining the swamp fill it flood dc's now flavorless streets until every Volvo and s-class rest rusting beneath the Potomac fuck the stock market fuck more expensive money made from codes instead of cotton or coin fuck money period fuck how it's treated as deity determining daily who gets to eat who gets to have a home who gets to garden who gets to have clean water and earth beneath their toes fuck asking for permission to breathe fuck the schools fuck the superintendents fuck the standardized tests and the scantrons they wrote in on fuck straight rows blank walls silence children fuck puppet pedagogies fuck academic coaches and performance reviews fuck your principal doing the dougie at a school assembly celebrating the perfect attendance and high GPAs of children better adjusted to our genocide than their peers fuck white teachers in deep east oakland chicago or dc southside and rural black communities anywhere at all in new Orleans fuck white teachers including the ones with brown skin making themselves martyr for student loan forgiveness do i really need to say fuck student loans fuck white people and their adjacent who still think i need to first stop and confirm they are in fact here to slit my throat and make me mop my own blood for minimum wage before decking them in the mouth before raising strip malls before screaming but also fuck giving up fuck losing sleep or working alone or limiting your imagination fuck hopelessness fuck silencing your rage or your grief or your joy most of all fuck losing we have a duty to win like i saw the camera angle and like i got right here this is it uh so i'm gonna try and move as much as i can within this pleasant very pleasant box um compromise is saying i will give this up for you and i will give this up for you in return because the joy is in the giving knowing this i no longer wonder at the self-indulgent ignorance white men carry with them like badges if not of honor then of steadfast and toxic mediocrity so i don't crave white skin or its parasitic privileges my soul is no longer guided by whiteness i will not give up this penny cheeked profile this mighty melancholy in my bones this libation that is my sweat and tears just remember they demanded this phoenix rising from our former hopes and handshakes with crimson wing and razor beak when we were robbed of ourselves in exchange for lost limbs and legacies when we compromised our homes nations gods for shanty towns police states crumbling shoebox sanctuaries when we traded our children their buoyant self-image and melodic slang for lip fillers on porcelain teens butchering habitual viral videos i'm just saying with all this compromise you think our very existence would be pure joy thick and amber honey sweet instead we gave muted suits and slick scalps in exchange for ruby woo map lines and canine teeth to the calf when we gave every mood sermon and music they gave us bullets to torso to skull to sheet rock above one sleeping swollen belly compromise with white supremacy has only ever come with the promise of more loss there is no balancing this ledger laden with our suffering so i will no longer take responsibility for the fact the white imagination is a mausoleum only capable of seeing a nation of deceased playgrounds in my eyes i won't give up anything else when history and yesterday prove compromise is a word white folks use to dream themselves anew and give up nothing and return please some more applause for my Lonnie Clark but you know i wanted to talk about patrice lamumba and why it must be re-emphasized now um you know all um all great advances in in any kind of art um really come out of gathering um working with each other workshopping uh bouncing off of each other's uh psyches um and no one has um you know we have almost the coming up to the microphone is the human catalyst after this patrice lamumba writing group that has you know that has nurtured us kept us sane was like the first activity we did uh in the pandemic um like the first time i talked to somebody else yeah when we were really in the pre-vaccine uh throws of it um you know just uh the most stand-up poet i know um along with being the author of a brand new book of poetry no bed no bedtime stories for soil that is actually being released tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow published by me so coming up to the microphone someone who owes me a favor now i'm just playing i'm just playing it's it's really been my greatest honor man to know this cat um and uh you know for your for your mind's pleasure landon smith right right there that's you it's like you right there all tall people always got jokes there are two less feet in a tent this evening and somewhere a prison guard gives another close fifth speech about order the air thins above a tentpole eviction notice while a new jumpsuit is handed to a suit on a a tooth on a cement floor nicky bass photo shoot next to gentrified housing while no gallo votes to steal more fruit fruit veal money into patrol cars leech van ray to pile up bodies just to bleed bleed corners drive for development while gary yee red tags another black school for prison bed construction at least there will be clean street corners a dirty mouth in a suit will say at least there will be law and order no dirt is always better when swept under under a rug or at least onto the next encampment and three tents blown on the other side of 580 will lower property value just for more protest signs to pop up just to be ignored next week but did you know there is no such thing as an empty bomb threat thrown at a black house greenwood and pine still can't move past the cement with marrow mixed in so excuse me for taking white history seriously as i walk down these hbcu steps with the target on my back for another white board member bans a book from speaking on and another black mare steps up to a podium to say it is a shame or in these troubling times or we are better than this despite all the evidence otherwise in matter of fact who is we who does we that be in backroom meetings who be this we turn in the wheel on the ship who be the we saying that we deserve we do it to ourselves saying we can't get respect until we respect ourselves who who does we come in sideways out your mouth talking about mo pay for leeches to put up see something say something signs and turn around and pocket dial bond threats to black campuses talking about we better watch our back we better hurry up and die we better go back now that the labor cost more than the ground beat ground me on my back who who does we we supposed to be better than who does we we supposed to be a part of sitting on the left side of it abandoned building because i took white history for what it is and spoke to the remains of the last threat shoveled on to a whitewashed mlk quote shoveled on to the left hand of a philadelphia cut short shoveled on to a tulsa i mean a rosewood i mean i mean i mean i am on pace to be called the nigger two hundred and twelve times by summer it is january and there are only ten days left in this month and i refuse to be a corpse by the third but catch me fist closed on the fourth and i might be gone by the fifth if this white woman in power has her way which is the same as that white man in that seat which is the same as that last miss check which is the same as that eviction notice my mother says the cloth of my ancestors makes me bulletproof so i put on a new head wrap every time passive aggressive head shots fire off of cradle tongues down into the gutters of unsweep streets where i'm told that i belong and i walk around with cash just in case i pass another cardboard sign giving a fortune to crates just to see more hungry mouths the next month it's almost like i cannot fix these encampments on my own like starvation is intentional like billions in surplus don't exist maybe by the end of this poem you can tell me what the cause is while i kick three more election pamphlets off my doorstep since i don't do drugs on tuesdays ever since my neighbor overdosed on kamala harris bumper stickers meanwhile the city of san francisco made 90 million in parking tickets just to not have affordable housing just to hire more pigs to put tickets on windshields to pay for pigs putting tickets on windshields and my last 60 dollars goes to the cardboard sign again you know a fist fight is always fair to the waistband with a gun tucked inside that you know an eviction is always fair to the feet standing on a bankroll and my cousin told me that not all skinfolk are kinfolk so i keep two feet in my back pocket so i land on my feet when i'm sucker punched between line breaks and a neoliberal slides of judge lump sums to slide me into solitary silence so that a white tenured professor can tell you that these are not poems that these are lyrics that these are a soap box that they are too unhoused and must cut their hair before they deserve a home but i drag infected minds through the broken tires of my unread poems macartheism smashed into my dinner plate hoping to crack the communists from my swollen red knuckles john earlick men's shoulder shrugs my car upside down to the part of foothill buried in flashing patrol lights while raganism hovers above my neighborhood like smog and my kids new lungs binary pin strokes flood lake merit with pay stations hoping to drown out side shows there is blood on your overcoat liby what good is a progressive leech liby if i will still be three courts low after the confirmation hearing confirms me to be a necessary sacrifice on the white jesus alter adjusts harmonizing about the beauty of my execution south carolina firing squad triggering my last rights before i become a useful bullet in the throat of my comrades and my ancestors brought me to this page even the one standing on saltwater still but you know i dragged my lineage through dirt roads sandstorms scraping knees on cement center blocks stacked in the way my wrist cut deeply on the journey saltwater stinging bones showing before someone else tells me i'm healed tells me to move on when i drag lineage by their wrists wiping off a racer dust mixed with diamond flakes they sold back to us saying that's all our hands were good for it losing limbs between borders some european gave name to that i should be proud of that sing babe pa revolted to come back to maybe my wrist bleed on the chains he broke just to be speal bird in white savior hood i feel my lineage waited down beneath the long go war for man's paved over just be paved over just be built to top under silk cover smelling like liberation stranglehold while i dragged lineage to a native language not a native language in hopes to speak with limited lineage between borders and sandstorms i was told i didn't need to know enough mende for struggle i dragged my lineage with dislocated wrists separated at the broken tree branch to a tall-tailed pillar by monument and sand in my shoes meanwhile this top chef chef says he is a white guy from so cal says he has no culture so he can't decide what to cook looking for sympathy on a plate like i don't have sales receipts hanging in my family tree limbs like my mama's mama's mama's mama didn't have recipe claimed his family heirloom by a plantation dinner table chalkboard castration telling tall tales and color blind pillow talk but got the audacity to act like percentages make you whole stress from repressed trauma might suffocate pops before fruit vell becomes demolition tape becomes parking lot burial ground becomes museum plaque of what used to stand tall but was smothered by imperial ceremony but what the fuck do i know and who made saving you my problem when i'm still cast iron cut on writs still told to vote my way free with concessions this project paved me into still finding white fingernails in african borders call it genocide again if you want to see a white nation stiffen if you want to see what dodging a bullet does to a stuffed pocket but though the mammion empire at it and you might slow the awareness though you might bake in enough war for the dough to rise naturally i woke up a kidnapped victim the same day teacher told me to put my hand on my heart haven't felt it beating my own body for some time now might find it and colonize the pockets along with the keys to my lineage museum made a display of my remains and made me pay for admission told me stealing is only stealing when the body can talk back and while we're at it i ain't no oppression is in your mind ass motherfucker kidnapped victims falling in love with their captors one said america's for sale another said let's see who can assimilate best turn grandma scars into theme park admission but kill the pig in you where you'll find yourself singing love songs the shackles glorifying secret service breath on the back of bloodstained soup collars and for what so you can preach genocide for sport so you could dance on cynical village ashes i'm still trying to figure out how to be black and unsurveilled fbi vault redacted my file just to save skin but not even drive my bullet hole yet but you can hear the same script being prepared no dust on the playbook when its use is constant when capitalist hellscape must be written as hero tax money funding assassinations abroad but they got the nerve to tell me the cancelling student loans is immoral critical thinking cut off at the knees offer profit margin pastime usurper made their way into your mudroom and left blood on the hardwood so you would tell about freedom and patriotism about spreading democracy but never pick up a book and you might think cuba is destitute you might think palestine is terrorist you might think blindfolded true fire and squad justice and soldiers bullets in the backs of kids is honored might have you high on red bait before you can even sell your labor first before you call health care equitable before you call capitalism meritocratic before you before you before you before you step foot on occupied indigenous land and thought property taxes pennants for assimilation before you realized we all died by poison died by colonized textbook died by language that stole you from you stole the kneecap from your resolve and told you plantation life was the real american dream and kissed you with poison tongue and told you your death had no color but you know a real poet told me once that not every story has to appeal to the heart it can appeal to the spine sever vertebrae shouting hear me out from straight jacket buckles and scratches on cement walls that made my spine property of the state that made me two-thirds of a past the future left bloodstain baton swing slush from bomb exploding outside what used to be my bedroom wall just long enough for the taste of robot will be family heirloom nobody even asked where I wanted my body to be buried I'm talking to this soil like everything is a weapon formed against me melatonin making meger ever is my docent on this impending bullet train woke up 10 times lost coroner can tell you jokes three minutes past America if you wait long enough might diagnose you as a rebel if you speak too loudly about the cause of death every 20 minutes another puppet dies by teleprompter tells a revolutionary to just vote if they want change tuxing sheets on deathbed for preparation hell how you gonna make it out alive anyway you might as well laugh through that ash coating lungs we used to breathe air now all we do is drink water and pray to the fire next time burning flag flapping around a body somebody deemed illegal somewhere drew a border and said I dare you to cross let's see if your lungs and taking more air than this bullet can take from you first step is to dare you to dream second step is to get you to fall in love with the sound of a growling stomach third step is to sacrifice you to a tree branch to put you on a postcard what good is the poet with no neck the coroner will joke only half of half of the half he spoke to listen to anyway my burial plot place center stage for encore viewing floating on a Sierra Leone river I am less weight than tree tree telling my neck it meant to shield me before I became a dash somewhere within this project where I can't even float you know a white poet told me once that not every poem needs to be a revolution like my pen not attached to a fist with scab knuckles from punching through oak memories trying to talk to my uncle and Haiti I've never met who's trying to talk to my aunt's headstone in Brazil these crop dusted palms never got to touch I must be a carpenter from all these splinters stinging white prayer circles gathered around stapled corners I was born a poet and I have hitchhiked my way to a meal a last meal beneath this tree so let me pause for a second and see how much Sierra Leone is left beneath my fingernails thank you hello everyone welcome to the library my name is Natalie I just want to take a moment before we have tango come up here and say hello to all of you uh I'm the librarian here at the african-american center I do want to say some thank yous I don't see him out here but Josiah um Josiah we had a conversation we ran into each other while everybody was on lockdown and he was telling me about doing a spoken word album with tango and from that conversation he introduced me to Sonny who you'll meet in a little bit and uh so I'm so grateful to Josiah for for making this come to fruition and thank you to all the poets here tonight I'm speechless I'm like I'm like shaking listening to all of your poems and you really blessed us so thank you lady revolutionary thank you Melani thank you Landon Smith I appreciate you I appreciate you um so I don't do introductions like tango does so I'm gonna have to read a little bit here's you have to bear with me but yes again we're here to celebrate his debut record I go to the railroad track and follow them to the station of my enemies yes and this album was produced with rock in your heads records and Sonny Smith again you'll meet them both shortly and tango I thank you too we just met through text I'd seen you perform when I was a student so many times I'd gotten lying like a little fan had you signed my book and everything and uh so it's just been a pleasure to kind of put this evening together with you so I thank you for your time and that's all that's all so thank you everyone tango please come up here and this dream planted dead in a weekday that I was laid up in the hospital and people kept coming into my room by the dozens and each dozen had special handshakes for each other and occasionally current dance moves and uh they would kick my hospital bed from time to time to let me know that they would be dancing from this hospital room on out to my grave there's strange cha-cha's and soft shoe shuffles disco spins like they were dancing for a white sundial uh marking numbness in their feet drum race riding I was ready to die because you know ask a musician in the tombs after court it's the surroundings that is the uniform but still I just couldn't bring myself to visualize against God one of them stood over me like a conductor waving their arms over my body directing my heart to beat fainter and fainter directing the fluids that are directing the tubes to turn the fluids back and I faded from consciousness with third after third on the um legs of my bed as they danced uh wilder and wilder well wild uh but meek or artificially meek like an artificial pastor told them to be I was to be a projection or some kind of character to be laid at their feet you're the only one participating in the revolution today they mocked and I was I was ready to go because there's plenty of pianos that could use a new soul and I'm thinking we're supposed to be in the revolution for as long as it takes so you can punch me out now I was born with one foot in the line pit anyway and check it out uh no one bothered to ask the doctor if I was really dead uh too busy strutting too busy kissing I kept fading and fading with with only enough breath and sweet consciousness to count uh their smiles one two three four five and then then I heard a voice a whisper and it was counting with me six we said seven we said eight then another joined us nine ten then another I haven't been sleeping mama I've been in the trance I haven't been eating I've been washing my hands off the port of Charleston there is blood on the fog societies wander together like hopeful drops of a virus citizen testament's bent on offering me a nation of breadwinners to hold me back like it's a brinks I wrinkle the concrete sometimes like flesh my Martin Luther King permanence turned away from a podium into the reeds like God is the dangerous twin black august to the mountain top balcony on my bedroom floor you know they um they steal you from the earth itself and suspend you when you're broken neck from their foolish euphoria from the loyalty out of their great superstitions loyalty out of their agrarian reform I returned to my mother completely disrespected for peeling the heat off of purgatory they kill poets like me walk me away from my poems never to be heard from again in this file industrial complex of bloodlines picked over picked through a sport and spiritual death of your devil at least half made police become a pretty word I'm reading a lynch mob shoestrings like they were tea leaves teaching you how to write about cities it's the 25th century in the mirror people tear any against your chump change your chump to be mocked even with a gun in your car a cubit of needlework spell tune for the proletariat the relapse ministry talented people crawled up in a fetal position next to a diamond dime just another service day in the theatrics of tea house fascism in a bouquet of surveillance cameras in the poverty of God new blue eyes corpses of water a newly potted presidency of one big shiny coin if you ask your animated capitalism another non-literal voice killing is white freedom the deification of hyphens medicine bread and picture shows great protesters in that leg guess of our ink drop kicking rose in a graveyard dc mink like a stone torn in half the pen advances despite cia god post despite non-african passing futures a metaphorical but not surreal day in the horn written life horn player improvising king like a radio prize fight feature in shongo himself a real hand speaks the land of racism now return to the ground now make progress with the gun on our mother a man you were they put on music that evening a swinging type body language for you to drink with fermenting five dollar bills for your body language some applause my past stomach lining either a good thing or a bad thing like being psychic on the way to a lethal injection it'll sit you down with lady day lady day leading youth who surrendered their souls to africa too soon polythor floating in the cup of water she saved me accessing my stomach accessing the love of the american lynched coat sleeves wooden avalanche into the wrist our mother a man you are avalanche into the sharp keys pain the deal you make with pain piano makes sense for them land hands on the world gradually addressing a bender next on the streets of the north traveler sailing in pain repeating pain in the north 10 trigger fingers on that piano if harmony would have me putting a hundred fights on every directs it off for the lady day leaning on trees again recruiting the country side itself saying lay your plan on this lightning make your pores a corner pocket of men i've greeted the blues itself american may clean my dead body but will never include me there goes the poet killing without killing never mind this painting of your language now be a meaningful lynching a crow's passing good and dead by the afternoon i go to the railroad tracks and follow them to the station of my enemies a cobalt tooth man pitches pennies at my mug shot negative all over the united states their toddlers in the rock i see why everyone out here got in the big cosmic basket and why blood agreements mean a lot and why i get shot back at i understand the psycho spiritual refusal to write white history or take the glass freeway white skin tattooed on my right forearm ricka say sue is near where i collapsed into a rat infested manhood my new existence is living graffiti in the kitchen with a lot of gun cylinders to hack up i mean house of god in part no cops in part my body brings down to christmas the new bullets pray over blank is made from the old bullets pray over the 28 000 next beauty mark extra judicial confederate statue restoration the waste bed before the next protest post a by the way time is not in the losing your honor i will save your desk for last you're a witty your honor you're moving money again your honor it's only raining one thing nine white cops and prison guard shadows reminded me of spoiled milk floating on the oil spill a neighborhood making a lot of fuss over his demise a new lake for a black panther party Malcolm X's ballroom jacket slung over my son's shoulder the figment of village a new news to a new white preacher all in an abstract painting of a president but both slavers some time didn't it the tantric screeches of military bolts in election tuesday cars a cold blooded study in leg irons proved that some white people have actually fondled nooses that sundown couples made their vows of love over opaque peach plastic and boat action audiences the medgar ever second is definitely my favorite law of science found those news clippings and primitive method is my arm changes imperialism simple policing versus structural frenzies elementary school script versus even wider white spectrums artless bleeding in the challenge of watching civilians think of terrible rituals they have around the corner they let their elders beg for public mercy i'ma go ahead and sharpen these kids' heads and their elves myself and see how much gravy spills out of family crest modern fans of war what with their t-shirt poems and t-shirt guilt and me having on the cheapest pair of shoes on the bus i have no choice but to read the city walls for signs of my life you know apparently too much of san francisco was not there in the first place this dream requires more condemned africans to put another way state violence rises down or still life is just getting warmed up army life is looking for a new church and ignored all of the suggestions or folktale writers have not made up their minds as to who is going to be their friends this is the worst downtown yet and i brought a cigarette everywhere i've taken many a walk to the back of a bus that led on out the back of a storyteller's prison sentence then on out the back of slave scores but this is my comeback face i left my watch on the public bathroom sink and took the toilet with me through that the first bus i saw eating single mothers half alive it flew through the bus line number then on out the front of the white house hopefully you find comfort downtown but if not we brought you enough cigarette filters to make a decent winner coat a special species of handshake let's all know who's king or it's a lifespan of uniform cloth this coffin needs to quit acting like those are birds singing rusty nails have no wings have no voice other than that of a white world dying in book pages in the gas pump catchy isn't it the way three nooses is the rule or the way potato sag mask goes so well with radio calls or the way condemned africans fault they way back to the ocean only the fine waves made a 1920s burnt up piano parts european backdoor deals and red flowers for widows who spent all day in the sun mumbling in san francisco red flowers but what's the color of a doctor visit there are book titles in the streets book titles like hero you make a better zero or hey fur coat lady the president is dead or pay me back in children or they hung up their bodies in their own museums and other book titles pulled from a drum solo right here a hero lied to hide in place all the bullets and ten precincts know where to go there's no heaven or any other good idea in the sky politics means that people did it and people do it understand that when in san francisco and other places that was never really there i bet this ocean thinks it's an ocean but it's not it's just 60 mission street all know who's king king of thin things you know like america i'm proud to deserve to die i'm gonna eat my dinner extra slow tonight in this police state candy dispenser you all call the neighborhood no set of manners goes unpunished never mind the murderers insomnia or the tea kettle preparing everyone for police sirens you know i talked facing away from the dead they replaced me with the change in my pocket a penny that she had to be invented they say you have to know how to cut a throat on the way to cut in the throat and after sleeping on a mattress made from two garbage bags of clothes i became content with the small gestures of plantation fires i mean playing with couch ashes i realized how weird the universe was it existed so many places so many random things that interrupts me while i'm trying to dream like your clay correspondence lord to be transparent i have 20 books next to a bullet like an old man giving advice at the beginning of a revolution i've really done it lord export the mammals of my mind explored what's naturally there and i found no brainwashing i found the african lord i have a future it takes place in the diaspora south i have morning possessions modern militancy i mean went oh to the south i walk on a missile for food i guess you and i won't fly us for a few years lord when i be tired face to face with the country i'll murder murders with this lord our old metal versus new metal our old metal versus a pool of meandering imperialist faces of multiculturalism of sorts the dead replaced me with a comedian's chest cavity instead of a chest cavity held tight it takes a violent middleman for me to talk to myself stories that travel through other people's stories a song about a song a hemisphere about a hemisphere stories that travel through a conquered poet hey my mother remembers african lord she killed on behalf of you lord i wore a machete all winter and no one asked me what it meant i read 1 000 books in front of the world what i do is fight palms and sleep through decking in san francisco prayer circles watch people play for post-working class associative surfaces or recreations of a governor's desk ruling class art of utility playing fine sociopathic bureaucrat a day some white people scared even easier tv in the basket next to a ceramic baby wearing a ceramic armor must get prized and fantasizing through the order to pour their trendy latches like before god black or hunt it down like a dog a hand over my friends lord lord i think i'm gonna die in a war i mean unelected white people in my small house like a blue song of no spiritual effect a dollhouse h bomb a pony show near dead bodies apartheid weddings that go right apartheid white people who give birth to mathematicians and spiritual continuity of barracks and police stations a chemical interpretation of a sunday trip to church church smells in their pockets of river mistaken for a talking river no autobiography outside of small personal victories of violence and drug use made in the image of god trinkets white abolitionists confided in their children about chemical assurances that they will switch from black artists to white artists from black god the white guy from black worker the white worker i think about you cautiously lord in the same way i think about my childhood lord fox whole friday nice most of life is mute a comedian points out a planter's field to a priest king sugarcane king cotton king revolutionary to buy the central containing all modes of shallow introduction introducing an unlisted planter class speaking about fevers and boundaries he said reassuring the masses that we could figure out our fathers later a priest took my mother lightly lord sit in front of parishioners re-ravelling fantasies about black art priest reading confidently before i broke him and broke his parallel after today i've never been a poet before a little brother watches his big brothers friends they mean rightfuls on shelter walls they agree with me and call it literature it's a simple matter this revolution thing to really lie to no one to keep nothing godlike to write a poem for god you know all street life to a certain extent starts fair sometimes with a spiritual memory even pre-dial soclap you father dying even maybe i've pushed the city too far my sensitivities to landfill district thing and mistral whistles white supremacist graffiti on westbound rail guards all overcoming re-authored re-authored by revolutionary violence that chose its own protagonist or muted stage of genius the garbors is going voices condensed marxism for warrior depressives underpasses in their pockets because they just might be deities a decent bid on the panther name a merciful marxism this quieted home life a metaphor for relaxing next to a person who is relaxing next to a gun i stared my father for a few seconds then returned to my upbringing returned to the souls of ohio black folk revolution daniel pegging at this point you know what the clown wants the respect of the ant wants to interpret pain only wants to pull a 38 out of a begging bowl wants me to hurt my hand on this pen i'm not tired of these rooms just tired of the world to give them a relativity my only change of clothes prosecuted the government finally learned how to write poems shootouts that briefly align that make up a parable or parables like white bodies are paid well do white men even have leaders or all white people white men or rat pictures of river can almost taste the racial divide can almost roll the family members heading to a city hall legislative chamber knows who in this good book will fly all i do is practice lord decided not to talk out of anger ever again met my wife at the same time i met new audience members for our pain we passed each other cigarettes and watch cops win the city gone uniquely linear Harlem of the west do a true universe i will always remember you and fancy clothes my wife said so here i sit twisting and silk ideation rifle made a postbellum tarred targets made of an honest language this san francisco poetry is how god knows that it's me whining riding among the lesser respected wolves lesser observed militarization tixie list prison bookkeeping i mean the california great coaster coming this mob gossiping boos while deck collection i mean it's tempted to change professor's mid poem in the chicago briefing the white sergeant saying blank slave for all of us after this black organizer is dead senator academics toasting two buck wine at the tank parade but damn nothing lord just nuclear cobblestone's gunline athleticism in the last of the inherited asthma children giving white dogs to play with and fear facial expressions borrowed from rich people shoe strings i can hear hate and teach hate and call tools by people names and name people dead to themselves no one getting naturalized except federal agents soon carving the equator in the throat soon i'm sorry to make you relive all this lord all this pre-diamond i keep friends putting up politician posters and snorting the remainder of the pace mistral script shelving to the walls by the elders my children sharpening quarters on the city's edge for these audiences i project myself into a ghost like state for these gangsters i do the same every now and then take a nervous look east sleep becomes cry sleep starts growing a racial identity do you ever spiral lord has a gang of traitors be patient with my poems lord hey so much pain and support the crown meaning has to be a freight traders come with it lord is that my revolver in your hand you know better presence the knees if you're on the cages have called us holy slaves through the school our bears with cop documentaries baby i don't have money for food shit i don't have a present moment at all thank you begin though i guess uh sonny's coming up here she's uh could be a little clumsy because when the the email said interview with tango and sonny and i was like what are they gonna ask me and uh i didn't actually you know write any i have a lot of things i'm interested in um thank you for that by the way i know that's really beautiful subjects you write about our our sacred and important i actually have a couple questions about process if that's all right but uh i know myself as an artist i'm more kind of interested in how you make this stuff um as much as what you are making but uh so i hope these aren't too light for anybody but uh do you write most of your stuff in uh do you start writing already in your mind or when you are writing down on paper or computer or whatever you do is it start to come out that way yeah it's it's all uh nothing really happens before i pick up the pen you know it's it's uh it might even be in the grip i think i don't start thinking in a certain way until i get my hand around a pen um i think there's a uh you know there's there's kind of a there's kind of a shift um towards trying to use more um more subconscious um voices um to to get to to move thought to thought uh when i when i when my hands go like this i start i start thinking in political dispatches i started thinking about people's assemblies and this type of thing um and uh what i'm a car cabral thought about this or that um so it's it's really nice it's uh it's all moves it's all it's all it's all moves on the page i start small and then um you know when i get my hands on something that just kind of has a ring or a vibration to it i excavate around and and see what see what little mountain range will reveal itself to me yeah that yeah that makes sense this kind of starts subconscious somewhere in the subconscious but at some point you're you you're seeing what you it came out from the subconscious and you start to sculpt it consciously at some stage yeah i mean and there's even a groovy kind of you know there's there's sort of a access point to other people's to to the psyches of other perspectives um you know in that kind of uh if you go down where if you go down one floor on the elevator you you end up in a more a kind of a more open space where then i can actually appropriate different people's vantage points in order to in order to make my point so it's a bounce it's it's a bounce back and forth i i don't try to run away from the cliche as far as i can it's like away from the cliche then back towards it away from my cliche then towards someone else's and on and on and on so sometimes you're inhabiting kind of characters even if they're not if you're not trying to make anybody know that you are yeah i mean writing from other yeah i mean think about a dream you know i mean i don't know maybe i'm different i've literally seen like millions maybe not millions i've seen a hundred thousand people that i've never seen before in a dream or had a hundred thousand conversations i've never had before it's really easy for your mind to cough up a shade or to cough up a kind of an impression of a of a person so i just kind of lean into it i mean even think there's like a point you know we you can actually do an impression of anyone if you don't have to physically do it and see poetry is all just internal it's all in the mind so within the mind i can run i i could um i can become every anything or any or anyone or you you see how how um everyone is kind of uh is kind of present um so it's it's uh yeah it's it's it's almost in a way if you just kind of lean on your lean on the natural shape lean on your natural shapes um i mean at the end of the day we're all doing an impression right like we all we just decided that this impression right here is the path to safety or success but but but but really you can pick anyone up like this right um and so it's just kind of the if you relax if you relax your persona you can build you can build all kind of um you can build all kind of avatars to make to make various points and you can also use yourself how you actually exist you know like instead of looking for the perfect weather to write a poem with internally i mean you know i i'll i'll take every little which way i'm feeling and build and build a perspective yeah i mean i have found it easier as a songwriter sometimes historically to sing as if i'm someone else or or something else or or or um because if i write something from what i think is my own perspective it just it doesn't always feel um authentic i guess because my my own self might be shifting all right because ours and ours because ourselves is full of vendetta's you know what i mean and and man poetry is just where we want to settle all scores you know and and and you know go ahead and settle them but there's also you know there's a you know there's a deal with that with that devil that you know you are um you're then kind of uh you have to play you you have to play the self absorption a little closer and uh you know it's almost like self absorption is like tunnel vision on the page you only see so much both in a kind of like a geographical kind of sense but also in a um within like the kind of the anatomy of a thought um within the like molecular structure of a thought you only get you can only see but so much within an idea uh when you're worried about presenting a defendable self oh yeah that's that's great um when you're when you're in a place where you feel like you you know i don't know a sad place or something's happened to you that's devastating or or hard to get out of do you write your way out of it or do you get out of it some other way and then write in retrospect yeah and uh you know i man this little kind of the incarnation of of my little wherever this little species of boom i've kind of wandered into started with a weird uh not weird but uh with a practice that i'd never done before which was to actually put a timer on um and uh like for hours or two hours three hours two hours um and uh what what happened like the very first night i did that i wrote up like i wrote this poem and it was pretty groovy and uh and i was juiced and and then i looked down at the clock and only 15 minutes had passed and i was like what are we gonna do for an hour and 45 minutes and it was from that dejection from that dejection actually kind of arose this lucidity of craft and ability to be more um critical not in a not in a stern way not in a up tight way in a more curious way really of what's going on why is this line full why is this line uh flat actually writing from a state of kind of like boredom is is the ideal uh is the ideal way for me along the way i i developed a little you know another little trick uh really for you know kind of short circuiting the junkie in you who wants to just get high off of lines all day long you know i mean like oh that looks nice can we can we smoke that no um so now when when i'm in uh what it depends man sometimes you know i all they just say i'll keep i'll keep the pen moving through all um through all tides uh but uh but but it's not yeah it's not really a tool of it's not really therapeutic to me or or some kind of catharsis it's uh it's just a kind of like a parallel intelligence and uh and so and therefore really almost like a muscle that can atrophy just like any other aspect of consciousness and it requires a practice so all i'm really trying to do is is um is staying staying shape yeah well i mean two hours that's artistic discipline that's hard i find um because i personally am much more random and um need to write i guess whenever whenever i move to and when i've tried to you know have specific hours in the morning or something like i want to be like a novelist and wake up at six and do four hours you know that's that that's where i got the trick right that that's it was a well i didn't have the conversation somebody else had a conversation with a novelist who basically uh scoff scoffed at at poetry month it was like a poem a day you should be writing for hours of days you know and i said you know it's hard but easy for this world building motherfucker you know i was thinking you got a whole thing i got this little straggling creek i was supposed to spend a whole day at the creek you know you got a whole planet i'm sitting here with my trickle but yeah that's yeah i mean i imagine it depends on what you're writing about too you know if you're just um well man you know man i think the the the the crazy maybe of all disciplines why ours is so insane there actually is you do actually like so much of of what you do before you pick up the pen goes down on that page and so we can't we we can't lose the same day the other disciplines can uh because in order to kind of we're this i think we're this real real fragile uh kind of uh i don't want to say like conduit but it's just like this real fragile opening um that that is kind of a a middle um and if you if you if you sit just if you sit just right um then you have access to all of this you know you have access to this kind of musical insight but you have to it requires you to um it requires you to really deal with uh deal with the realities of life you know and really participate um participate in what you would digest and participate in what you would transmute you know yeah i mean if you yeah if you're you and all the writers tonight write about a lot of vulnerable things which is what makes it to me important and that's hard to sustain and um you know if you were a novelist that was writing travel travel adventure books that weren't necessarily vulnerable you could you know it seems like it would be a lot easier to write four hours a day you know when you when you're going as deep as all of the poets tonight i would imagine you need times of regeneration and maybe there are times when 15 minutes is is all that you need to do for your mental health you know we must persevere because on the um you know on the on the other side of that equation i actually look at um like internalized hegemony feels like a nightmare to me you know um a brainwashed consciousness seems tiring would be tiring would be exhausting you know giving my life to a ruling class agenda is is is something i fear more than fear more than anything you know or just not being a good person you know these these kind of like the walks the walks away from from a humanism um just just look like a just look like an absolute chaos that i don't even think i don't think i could survive i couldn't i couldn't i couldn't throw away my compass like it just seems like you know or when i look you know when i look at times where i was more underwater in my life i just look like man you know just play places you would never i could never i'd rather i'd rather be right here i'd rather be like this for better for better for worse and i think you know that's what that's what these revolutionaries knew that's what pushed pushed them in a way what could be like i i'd rather die i'd rather i'd rather die than not be a part of liberation because it's it's uh you know part participating in participating in this death cult um um it's just uh it's not it's not it's not an existence so yeah like i'm dog tired right now as we speak you know i've been dog tired for about six weeks now um basically sleeping in three hours shifts at this uh school uh occupation school liberation you know um you know praxis is is is with me but uh there's there's uh there's no other way to navigate this reality yeah i mean and look i mean or or put another way we gotta read the news you know i mean rovey way you know i mean they they you know bless the ruling class for always proving my poems right you know i mean because just when you know just just when you think like am i being a little too harsh you know i mean there's so many nice people and and then what and then what do they do they just uh they uh present us present us with this like very um like very self-confident and grotesque fascism um that that that should that that should um that should snap us all out of it like how many times how many times you know what what more do you need to see you know man i say this i say this a hundred times a day i don't i'm gonna keep saying why were the kids in the cages how how do you get three-year-olds in front of a federal judge you know so it's like what more what more what more until we say no this entire this entire system uh has to be transformed the social relations of production has to be transformed to set the the you know the state apparatus has to be transformed otherwise um you know it's literally gonna be you next it's gonna be you next you know i mean keep in mind i i get off the soap i i get i get off the soap box in like point five seconds you know the constitution was only voted on by one out of six white men they don't even give a fuck about each other you know it's not there is nobody in this society they can't they can't be on the wrong side of a fascist weapon or a weapon wielded by fascists so like there's there's there's no other way for me to go about things yeah well your your words are a form of leadership in themselves and that's why i'm i feel honored to have helped with your record and appreciate it so thank you i know the library has a time thing did you want to have a cute questions from the audience or i'd like to know how did how did this record come together like how why was it not a book like why wasn't another book how to become the spoken word album that would be for me first i guess i i i just i think i heard you you speaking on instagram on some i don't know i was just surfing around you do on your phone or whatever i didn't know you this is a few years ago i think it was pre-pandemic um i thought you were articulate that was my first impression and i thought that you had a lot of patience with your words so i was like i leaned in closer and um and listened a little bit more that's just how that started and i thought man no one makes poetry records it's like uh it's almost like um it doesn't even happen anymore and and and words without music are sometimes more powerful you know sometimes when i hear words with music even as a songwriter myself i'm like man this this the music is softening the blow of this um it might be good music it's not it's not a comment necessarily on the value of the musicianship or the music it's just softens it up so and i as a kid around 16 17 interested in literature i was devouring poetry records i i discovered you know there was carowak was kind of a big deal he had things you could listen to ginsberg kind of led me to i remember having a checking out a james Baldwin record out of a out of the library that i live near and there was a dylan thomas record and so i was just a sort of literary kid that didn't think that poetry records were odd or obscure and um and then and then i didn't think about it for a long time and i grew up and i did other things and music and stuff and then i had a label and i was like wait there's nobody does this um so i approached you and i have a lot of visions and desires of other records in the same vein but this was um this is kind of that was the impetus for asking you why you chose to even answer my email i don't know and i really was just like cool yeah i was usually your text i was kind of like a long text and you'd be like smooth you know and i'd be like do it or i and then i'd have like a really long thing you'd be like yeah so it was um lopsided like that for a little bit i got it excuse me how you doing i like the poetry you speak it's beautiful like we need to change the world the world is corrupted already and what you said was beautiful thank you and i'm listening and i hear you i hear you right on brother keep doing what you're doing thank you thank you yes sir how's it going tongue go i just wanted to say it's an honor to share the space with you and i literally felt like from the rest of the polls as well like for real i felt uh like neural pathways being created in my brain tonight uh the question i have i don't know if this is uh maybe just rhetorical but how can i or how do you or how can someone balance uh my own creativity poetry whatever music with um mobilizing the masses like how does that i'm gonna keep it real with you man i think it's time to sacrifice our little creativity time and just put it into the mass work you know i would love me you know i would love to just all my peoples know about my amateur guitar about these little trances i like to go into and and my my um tragic attempt at understanding physics like there's so much i'm interested in and would love to do besides this uh besides this war with the ruling class but they started it i don't know and they keep escalating it and there's nothing else i you know i think and that's that's what they thrived on this whole time our attempt to have an individual groovy adventure um let's let's let's let's let's put let's put that down for a little while let's let's let's reabsorb our social powers that they have you know that they run amuck with both here and everywhere on the planet you know and on the biosphere itself um i i say we suspend in fact i'll be the first we we can all put our careers down right now if you would like i mean i'm i'm down we we can get back we can get back to building our individual names uh in a couple years or something like that but right now it's they move so aggressively they they um this is all they do is reconciliate power and destabilize us and so this what this means is we're gonna have to we're gonna have to put the we're gonna have to put the good times on on on hold and even even the stimulating you know you'll be okay you'll you'll be okay you can still be what you want to be but man we we got we got to get this human thing corrected man so i was i would say whatever double the dose and cut the other dough in half half the other activities hey tango um it's really great to hear you how you doing um as an artist i used to read poetry growing up and i also used to listen to my parents jazz records all the time and there's something in the way that you use your actual voice the timbre of your your your voice and then the actual wavelength of what your text is opening up so it's kind of an incredible double such kind of experience between the timbre of your voice which is changing and moving and it really seems to have the intonation of like um sonny rollins or john coltrane like i hear a railroad in your actual voice the way you use tone and i was wanting to find out what are some of your inspirations if there are any musically or places and people are what kind of inspiration do you soak up in terms of your your delivery and your presence thank you um actually i was just talking to a cat a cat about this i i think you know it um i actually think it comes down to meditation like a meditation practice really kind of helped me out because it um it gives you more space uh you can relate to it gives you more space to relate to thoughts with to relate to energy with and from that space you notice these little shapes that are available and you can um ride them and experiment with them and exaggerate them and mute them and and you know do do um almost uh dip in and out of right so you don't but at the same time you are like these are words right so you don't want to you know it's it's you know it's kind of like a path of least resistance so you have like in during the course of a poem you have access to different ways of experience experiencing the poem myself i can be lost in the idea of it or overwhelmed or you know energized i can be you know in that specific in the idea of this stanza can can kind of take over and i can play it that way you know or be really like whatever angered or or humored by whatever you know and just kind of so just deal with you know just dealing with the thoughts but then there's also you know almost like when i get tired of that then you can kind of shift your shift your attention to shift your attention to kind of musical potentials language and and then i'm just really just kind of running um running experiments um and also actually you know so this little guitar thing is pretty is useless in most in most ways but it has been helpful in um kind of uh do playing you do you you start to learn how to um or if you're lucky i guess i got lucky to be able to repeat things you just said on a on a guitar for yourself like to yourself so you can kind of improvise the melody and actually to play it again is actually was a miracle to me like oh whoa that that's a whole statement and i can say it again so so having that uh kind of uh a little bit of um kind of i guess training with myself i can hear a longer musical idea you know it's subtle you know and i'm not trying to do a lot with it like i'm not trying to make a musical statement but i can kind of like hear a block or a subtle melody in there and then i can repeat it and then i can shift it to comment on it you know or go somewhere else so it's just uh you know and then there's also a little you know you can't get your hands on kind of like little personas might want to come along for the ride that you can kind of shift into that zone and then you can also just you kind of shift into a place where the decision maker just goes and there's no distance or disappears and there's no distance between like thought and mouth you know and it's just like it's moving um according to whatever its own interests at at the at the time you know and then there's also a little you know like there's little ways to move to move with a room as well in a very abstract way you know i mean we're you know we're defensive creatures you know so even when things are going great we're still paranoid you know but what what what i found or wanted into is like you can actually if you if you if you strip an audience of the immediate implication or really that that kind of like the negative a negative view of what might be going going on there is um kind of energies moving through an audience or just moving through one person at a time that you can also kind of have a conversation with musically you know so it's like to you know you can uh what what do you call it uh you know like like like not the point but like his foot right here it's kind of like it's flexing was just flexing at a certain pace so then i could kind of i could drop into the pace of his foot or if somebody else moves then it can give me a cue i can use it as a cue to reset myself you know this type of thing but it's all this there's really um i wouldn't say infinite but there are like the search for new landmarks is part of the fun a new way of getting getting around with a poem is is is part of it's part of the fun and i'll try like if i really like like i only really have one objective when i'm saying poems i just want to find that kind of sweet spot of discovery just once that's the only that's how i grade it like did i find it today you know even if it was quick even if it was just like a couple words or it could have been like you know or we could have been just you know in one with the hurricane you know um i try to find something you know something that i've never done before you know what i mean and then over time if it comes back then i can kind of make a little science out of it and figure out like okay what did you actually do what actually happened in this type of thing and then you let that build your practice you know okay i just want to take another moment to thank tango for being here sonny thank you for being in discussion and also if we can have a round of applause for lady revolutionary melana play land and smith and uh yes thank you everyone for being here there is some informational flyers uh back there by the table our wonderful city librarian michael amber is kind of our vanna white there please sign up for the african-american centers newsletter so you can keep up to date with the things that we're doing here again my name is natalie i'm the new librarian for the center we've got plans so please support us support local writers come back visit us as we grow um yes come back to the library this is a special place and we welcome all of you here so thank you thank you there's records in the back there for sale uh so support local artists we also have tango's album for checkout too in our audio visual center down on the first floor too so please get a library card come back and thank you all um again for being here thank you thank you