 San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Mamatash Ohlone peoples, and the Brooklyn Public Library acknowledges that we are on the ancestral homeland of the Totino Ohlone. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their and traditional homelands. Thank you Stuart. Sorry folks, can you hear that double? No? Okay. All right. So thank you Stuart. Mr. Clark's book is published by the Black Woman on Pacific Raising Raven Press and edited by Carla Brundage, who is here to talk about this special publishing collaborative and introduce the readers who will start us off. Thank you Shauna. I'm here, so honored to be here. I had the pleasure of working with Dante as he went through the process of publishing this book, and I'd like to introduce we have two readers coming tonight to share their works, and one of them we are honored to have Catherine Takara, who is the founder of Pacific Raven Press. You're muted. I thought I was unmuted. No? Do I need to? Okay. So I'm going to share with you a few words, a poem actually, about words that I wrote in my small publication. I've done about nine books, but this one is called Footprints, Wings, Phantasms. Yeah. Okay. And it's just a little pocket book. And the poem that I'd like to share is Strength in Words. Writers. Writers wordfully transform readers, knowledge, significance, historical perceptions profound and deepening. Writers expose forgotten footprints within the hurl to progress. Writers discover essence and stories, laughter, dream time among abandoned desks and chests. Forgotten lives are hidden in journals, old photos stored in secret drawers, histories dropped in pristine crystal vases and in cracked and broken jars. Writers. Writers dislodge words, stymied in tongues, stuffed in noses and throats, camouflaged yoni, their meaning hidden behind earlobes and knees in between fingers and toes. Words reveal passages to the womb and to heaven. The moon inspires, sings a secret of feminine identity, reflects fertility on earth's organic skin. Writers, Strength in Words. I just want to say a couple of words about Pacific Raven Press. I'll read from kind of a summary. We Pacific Raven Press publish manuscripts that motivate change and reflection, support diversity and envision and promote harmony and balance to the world. We are a leader in innovative perspectives through the written word. We help the prospective author to publish original work that includes a few of the following genres, Africana, memoir, poetry, politics. We also consider motivational and or self-help manuscripts that may be transformative. So consider us when you consider publishing. I know there are lots of writers out there and we have a website. Maybe I'll get it into the chat. Thank you. Thank you, Catherine. Our second reader to celebrate Dante's book, Close Caskets, which we can't wait to hear about more is Makita, Mama Makita, Sandra Hooper Mayfield. Makita, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. And I just want to, I was thinking about what to read today and this is something that I need to keep close to my heart. It started writing about it in 2014. I'm in a chokehold. My hands are cuffed. A knees in my back, but that's not enough. I got a guy so you can claim tough. Somebody screamed for me. Somebody please, they're holding me down and I can't breathe. No life-saving antics. No bringing me back. Just die, nigga. Die. You and nothing. Just black. Somebody screamed for me. Somebody please, they're holding me down and I can't breathe. Stalking my children, my wife, my life still mentioned and hating and saying, hang them high from a tree. Don't you know I know you fear me? You think I don't know that you long to be me? Truth is, you're the slave and you don't want to be free. Somebody screamed for me. Somebody please, they're holding me down and I can't breathe. Mama, seems whatever I do, I'm making you cry. Mama, I'm crying too. I'm crying from trying every day not to die. Single cigarettes for sale and dignity too. For this I'm dying. So tired of crying and living the lie that black men ain't trying. They just want to die to be dying. Somebody screamed for me. Somebody please, they're holding me down. It's 2020. My name is George and nothing has changed. Same black, same attack, same white, same fight, same stealing my breath, same choke to death and updated lynching without a noose. They're all in cahoots. I called my mama too and every mama in and out of the world heard my cry. Set me free, just let me die. And I could feel my mama right here in my heart saying, let go son, suffer no more. Your new life is just past the door and she whispered every black mama's prayer. The street lights are on George. You get home right now. And I just, there's nothing else to say about that. But I have one little thing left. It's called homelessness. I see beautiful mature women in the community. They're my age. Born in the hopeful 1950s, teenagers of the revolutionary 1960s, they take real good care of themselves and they are higher educated and proper. Some call it class. They marry and stay married. They show up to important community events and religiously bring their yoga mats to class. They are usually quiet and reserved and tidy and orderly and sanitized. They go to buildings to see God. They wear wraps and hats and would never wear blouses. They show off their shoulders or skirt that slurped around the hem. Me, I wear purple when the color of the day is pink. I sleep in clothes sometimes then wear them the next day if I feel like it. I fell in love with a man who liked my morning scent and another who was just sitting on a bench. And through the years, anything that's about love brings me to tears. When my heart aches with love, I'm pure shine. I'm a caterpillar and a butterfly over and over and over again. My hope is to dance, one more dance, to sing a song without perfect pitch, like a bird, to live, to give new birth to a soul, a poem, or myself, to express my love. To experience things so beautiful it hurts. To drown, enjoy, and be naked in the face of truth. This is where, this is the world I could live. Where in the world can I live? Homeless in America. Oh my gosh. So beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Makita. Thank you, Catherine. And that line you said, drown and be naked, be naked and drown in the spirit of truth. Working on Dante's books, Dante Clark's book. And also the first poem you read, Mama Makita. Really, Dante, I'm so honored to have the words you bring, which bring the violence and the death as well as the healing. So so many of the poems in this book made me cry. Not because of sadness, but because of the truth you were telling. So I'm going to pass it to Shauna to introduce Dante Clark. Thank you so much to our readers, Catherine and Makita. Thank you to our readers and apologies to everyone else for the little mix up in the beginning. I agree with Carla. This book is so powerful and we're so grateful to have Dante Clark here to be reading with us. You were in for a treat. So I'll give a brief introduction. Dante Clark, aka Don Black, a native of Richmond, California captures the complexities of being vulnerable within Black masculinity while governed by a society of white supremacy and hyperviolence amongst Black youth. In 2008, he co-founded an arts collective called Raw Talent, Richmond Artists with Talent. In 2013, he published a co-written play entitled Tays Harmony, which documents Richmond youth while making parallels to Romeo and Juliet, which was also documented in the film Romeo is Bleeding and was executive produced by Russell Simmons on All Deaf Digital in 2017. Clark is featured in a film Kicks 2016 and in 2018, he co-starved in Two Seasons of the North Pole, a political comedy about gentrification in Oakland, California. His first collection of poetry, No Freedom, was published in 2008. It's my pleasure in welcoming Dante Clark. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate y'all for being here. Can y'all hear me? My audio cool? I sound good? All right, for sure. Wow. The more I talk about this book or the more I read it for myself, I discovered a lot that's up in there that has been said, a lot that I haven't shared yet. And as I reflect on the times that we live in and what's going on, I don't even know everything that's been happening, but I just want to say before I start any piece, rest in peace to Dante Wright. My mind is scattered. I got some scattered thoughts. I got a list of pieces that I may or may not share, but you feel me? I thank y'all for being here. We're going to freestyle it a little bit as usual. All right, what I want to do. I'm going to do a song if I can remember it. Sitting on a dock of the bay, watching the tide, I roll away. Sitting on a dock of the bay, wasting time. I was posted on the block in the bay, watching my kind fade away. Oh, posted on a block in the bay, wasted my time. I was high sitting, early sunrise, Richmond, with some of my kindred sipping, reminiscing about when we were children outside empty buildings, feeling all of the feelings of living under no ceilings. Yeah, yeah, wish to prevail, no work under fingernails. So we inhale to escape while we inhale with stale, dry, well, impaled by corner sales. I'm replaying my ails. I wear my public fails with yells and random screaming, dealing with inner demons. Keep leaving out of my body. I probably won't see a reason for reaping on any longer. Faded almost a goner. I wanted to, I want to go to them heavenly gates. If not the case, I just sit on a dock and just wait. I imagine brass men with brass skin lagged on the drag of the evils. Sidewalk huddle with their people's feeble in spirit, a gaze in stock on Broadway. You know the site, doing what niggas do all day, ass chasing and fast pacing. We hand them out for ever standing out of spiritual drought. We left the heavenly house to go snore on a devil's cow street, like we call it. Paving way for new day, murderous thieves and alcoholics, hollocks, hollocks, hollocks posted on the block in the bay, knowing my time to fade today. Posted on the block in the bay, this rage of mine. Yes, quite usual. See it like nothing new to you, limited to these cubicles, circle corners like hula hoops, hard knock was a school of you, thugging from wound to funeral, gang case on my cuticles, making poverty beautiful. Yeah, yeah, over grinding, knowing that time is winding backwards, on our shining. So we invest in diamonds, I'm trying, but I'll be lying pretending that all this dying don't have me clutching that iron to keep my mind from crying while I am my soup. Staying in my new soup, poverty, new soup, poverty, new soups, sitting on the block in the bay, watching my car fade away. Posted on the block with a K, this rage of mine. It's like being born black, bearing blues by brothers buried beneath bridges, burned bodies, belittled before becoming better beyond broken, but believing because brotherhood builds beautiful bonds by passing bullies, brute billy bats beating black's backbone, breaking, burdened by balancing books, bullets, bricks, bearing blocks blown by bombs, billowing blues, billy blue before backbuss boy, cotton brunk benefits be barely breathing between blitz brought by Babylonians, bifemants, biopics be blackberries bent below bulky branches, bruh, sitting on a block in the bay, watching my car fade away. There was an explosion of lead that erupted his body to blood memory, all of his life cut down to seconds of booms. It was smoky air and shrieking tires that twirled through stop lights as the engine cut corners, leaving a drunk night to plop its weight on the silence. Before a concert of sirens, the body's gold teeth stained with a current drip, spilling cries for mama out of his left cheek into the ears of the concrete. A red coat over the petals of young feathers, flowers stemming through to be watered by blood, sitting on a block in the bay, watching my car fade away. Cause they orgasm when they kill us. Show me a news clip with our face down and our ass up with our legs spread open and wet, twitching and moaning with our eyes rolling back as we take it. And there you'll see, on the screen, seduced by your ears, that you are an added consumer of media porn, the orgy of buck rearing. When these white folks reach into their pants and pull out their loaded pipes on camera, with the world watching American streets, these whites be like fucking niggas. Yeah. Fuck these niggas. And they mean it too, to see us lying in the street and they aim to kill. Pray for the blocks, the streets, the corners that drip at the head from the lives of men that pours down the sideburns like hot oil on a coarse scalp. Pray for the neighborhoods that sit between the legs of a tire city that's hard-spoken and brash with heavy hands, combing swiftly through thick waves of African roots, forcibly brushing out the indigenous kinks and cuckabugs, napping and curled in the back of the mind, familiar, like moms in pop's kitchen. Pray. I say pray for the concrete, for the cracks that blister dry like chap lips and teeth sharp as bullets that chew down skin, gnawing its beauty of black to raw pink. Pray for Friday nights that gather the shots and have not been proven to be bulletproof when the night rises, our suns fall. I say pray for moons who slither to slim to fool again ministering at twilight praised holy by a congregation of mourners howling from the hollow streets in front port pews in the wheat hours of service between the cycling of blunt offerings and Hennessy ties. Who can count the sinner's hands that are a loud clap of a man's shouts and stomps when loved on feel their spirit talking in tongues from the touch of bullets. You know I was driving two hours south to the countryside of California and beneath the morning clouds I'm standing in the rain in red mud with the white man at the back of his truck helping him to unload his box of pistols and rifles and bullets. We was out for a day of shooting targets falling in love with the metal discharge and fire projectile through flesh of blue paper the gun smoke and wet rocks caught the wind. I started to record my pistol play but I said nah nah nobody need to see that I've been out here shooting because if it ever come the time for me to be shooting whoever I'm shooting that gonna know for sure that I'm pretty good at shooting but then you know after a full day of pistol play and driving back to where phones get serviced you are alerted to the buzz and vibration of missed messages and voicemails you skim through the names as you drive and wonder why so many calls you make a mental note to call back later then the calls come ringing again and some calls be back to back too many from some names who don't call often too much anyway so you answer and sometimes on this type of call it be your sister who'll be calling to tell you about that thing again you know that thing about somebody killing somebody else enrichment and have you heard only this time that somebody else is that somebody you love who somebody had just killed so you cry with too much roll back home before you with the type of music that puts you in all of the feelings not with the type of music that puts you in all of the feelings for not having no feelings about killing and your mind is turning like the speeding tires you speed with and your hands are remembering its full day of pistol play and you say to yourself this song is different when you sitting on a block in a bay watching your car fade away post it on a block in the bay a waste in mind but yo check it I don't care if you bear arms the size and strength of bare arms if you ain't got the heavenly power the tower over you when they bear arms then your sad sad mama and all the windows and windows on your dilapidated street gonna have to eyeball your beautiful body shake and leak out all of her motherly dreams for you and her arms bear arms you damn fool but we just poor people penny pinching and panhandling prayers for per diems prefer pushing and peddling prostitution to participate in purchasing the presence of presence of pastime just a pathological pathway of the proud from peasants to pedestal you know it's the pain of my people who pretentiously post photos of prize possessions and paper pendants porches and pistols the perpetual peonyry of particular parenting that pre-lose the pea popping and parking lot pimping a plethora of portraits from parches in the philadelphia patern porn parade and poison the preteens while police patrolling these project parties are a paradigm of pagan pandemonium we pose this positive preach prolific but be petty I say petty praying proclaiming peace with no prosperity they say protest protest protest until pop by projectile we pause then protest must be the prey of politics performers of propaganda pupils of predicted programming and pages and pages and pages of paragraphs papers by poets and professors philosophizing and pleading against mass promotion of the Parisian parables of our poverty pain for profits hmm perhaps anyhow just my personal perspective from the piece but you know some say supposedly that the sweet silence and spiritual scourgence to start out the source of our stupidity that the scraping of sin and savagery soaked in our skin is somehow the set services of a southern system sustained as slavers self said superior to susceptible servants said to slaves seed to seed season to season shore to shore slaves saved by slave ship that's something scary huh such a sad story and a surplus of suffering for the swarthy so my strongest suggestions to you students is to stay strapped I mean sharp smart stand tall sturdy and speak seldomly sometimes sacrificing speech saves the sheep from the suffer of the sickle sometimes separating self from showoff showboating such silliness may salvage some sewage so surrounded by silhouette of sinking ships and sharp shooters shooting of 7.6 tools sure some say it's safe to slip through the shadows side stepping snares and studying just stay studying yet studying don't solve sorrows and scratching surfaces shucking and stuttering slump shoulder sounds like straight sucker shit I mean stupid shucking and stupid for stipends and statues are now are now suspended so I say stand straight stay solid if study then study scripture seven sunset straight seeking the sure shalom of shallow so you can escape thinking of thoughts that trauma teaches the thinking because they trying to train those of us that's thoroughbred to talk tersely and timid to teeter teeter till teeter and teaches us to trace to the third trace of tyler to be tripping and tumbling 10,000 times so we're tossed over to the tango of taunting tales that's told to us about their tenacious taboos the tragic track list that track listed torture that's tattooed and the thrusting trials tracking with tribulations always there to twist and touch the torsos of us talented 10 the targeted the 10 toes of the toughest teenagers traumatized from the terrible tactics that the tyrannical task force used to tame us by torch they're tempted to tear through our time huh but we will overcome their nights by fire pour into streets with spewing heat igniting a falling sky tequila sunset because there was nowhere to hide all souls and soil purged together and we knew this day would come we've prayed and waited murky waters aside bloated babies and charred bones craving the taste of this jubilee because peaceful protestants stirred a war cry holding signs while kneeling down only gotten a shot jailed or vanished there is no way around it with no justice peace escapes us america you are an evil child born rotten bursting with a belly of flies who only have a taste for killing out of options and nothing left the price for our freedom is death but we overcome their nights by fire carry our weight with bleeding knuckles through the flames seeking to redeem we knew this day would come leaping over ashes of mount rushmore with my heart making noise within me these heavy sounds are pulling for new tears to submerge earth a holy baptism forsaken seedless vines of strange fruit for an endless bite out of heaven with parts lips we will sit numb the sun and moon will cover their eyes untieing our souls we will mourn deeply and our tears will walk on the wind and in prayer we will uplift those that's dead remembering each soul precious and unique as black sand kissing the sea with iron yolks removed in tables turned though the memories of what happens hunts but we knew this day will come thank you let's unmute everyone thank you i appreciate it i couldn't stop myself from cheering but um this is such a amazing reading i almost kept going i'd be feeling like uh yeah the time if you like something dante oh me yeah okay um wow i don't even i guess i could just talk a little bit about what inspired this i don't think i'll talk about it enough um what inspired this book is uh about last year around the summertime um i actually i say like around april make when you start seeing a lot of the protests and that was going on um you start hearing about who who was killed and and who was not charged or convicted for the killings and you seeing a lot of people in the street you seeing people protest um and just me feeling like and there are so many things that i want to say um i feel like in so many ways i want to get involved but honestly sometimes i just feel tired and drained from from constantly doing the same thing for the past 75 years it's just like just trying to figure out like how can i show up how can i be present as an author what can i say that hasn't already been said you know what i mean from the first negro spiritual all the way up until whatever hip hop song you could think of is like what can i say that haven't already been said already been chanted shouted screen danced and uh i realized was like man you know what i have a lot of anger i have a lot of uh things that i haven't overcame internally as far as like the trauma that i've experienced i feel like i've always focused so much on how can i show up for others how can i show up for the world um and then this was the opportunity where i was just i really felt silent i didn't really know what to say or how to say it and it was like you need to uh process your own trauma first and through that let that lead you to to what's next to the next to the next level or platform of because i can't be useful if i don't if i still got things that i'm dealing with you know what i mean so i had to take that time over the summer to just sit with myself and just ask myself some questions about you know people in my lives and um who i've passed and things like that so close caskets really represent for me um an opportunity to move forward an opportunity to look at life and death as as both one because sometimes you know death produces life um and so just had to process that whole that whole situation about loved ones that i had in my life and just where i want to be and uh that's kind of like what inspired it um and i feel like it was still a lot of pieces that i wanted to write that it was just very difficult to write and i wasn't sure how how much i wanted to give to this first uh collection um close caskets so i put enough in there that it helped me move forward as an artist and as a person but it's so much more that i would like to say and and and it's so much more that i feel like needs to be said i'm just trying to figure out when and how to say it but i'll say that for the next collection that i'm working on i'd like to say i'd like to say thank you for your courage just to write these kinds of things from your um very deep personal experiences and those around you my um first cousin was 21 and he was uh we were in a college community in tuskegee Alabama and he was shocked in the back of the head for trying to go into a white bath from right in 19 uh you know right with the civil rights movement and all of that 1966 and of course the man was not charged except one night in jail and i continue to see in courageous ones like you that the story is still going on i mean it's no matter how you say it no matter um how your heart and your soul express it it's something that continues to to plague our community and at the same time perhaps create new strengths new birth new um new ways to be and words i mean they're abstract in a sense but on another sense they can touch emotional levels and identification with um the writer the poet the human that you are and that you express with a focus on blacks but you know people around the world can relate to this kind of thing of violence and injustice and i just wanted to say thank you i don't want to thank you i appreciate it i want to say something i want to say just thank you for always bringing the make it true i i that's that's you know when i think about what um your poetry brings is straight up truth and i and i love that um and like you um it's like it's nothing that it's it's nothing left to say it's nothing left to say and i and i feel like um um though that the the breath that is beyond being behind the powerful words is where the power lies the breath behind the words and that you are the light you are the light you are the what we've been waiting on um and when we give life to unbreath to what we are called to it it changes the world and that's what i see you doing and um i just want you to know that every day every time i think about you every time i think about your work i'm sending you mama water energy and uh and you just keep moving forward because um because you're the light thank you mama makita i appreciate it every time every time i talk to you it's always uh inspiring encouraging and it's it's endearing you know what i mean i appreciate it yeah thank you um i wanted to also thank you so much for this beautiful reading uh how the poems connect and create a narrative and yet how each poem is its individual art piece is something that really moved me in working with you on this book um i'd love for you to read some pieces about um koo daddy if you have the the wherewithal i'm here with my mother and you know those family connections are so deep and they shape us also letting the audience know that something so beautiful and wonderful about dante clark is his activism and his dedication to community he threw mama makita came to pacific raven press because he said he wanted to work with a black woman owned press but he also said i don't care about the big names i just want to reach my community my community is the most important audience i have and this is this uh honest openness towards really connecting with community is so astonishing to me placing your ego aside so don'ta has done a lot of work in prisons uh he continues to do things that are unbelievably amazing um to push forward this need to put our guns down over and over that's what he's what he's trying to say so don'ta i love for you to talk a little bit about some of the activism you're doing if you're in the audience please put your questions in the chat and if you have the wherewithal to read koo daddy i'll be so happy uh i'm gonna read probably like two or three pieces from the saga koo daddy and just for those who know or don't know we got the book um it's a section up in here called koo daddy it's about like five it's like a five part story um that is inspired off of my real father my biological father um his name is dono clark um people in the streets call him spunk but it's a certain group of people call him koo daddy and when i was a little kid um that's just what i heard them call him and uh one is like i'm gonna do more on him but i'm gonna just share what i wrote about him just thinking about his life growing up um and this is what what i wrote inspired off of him i believe this is part three and it's called koo daddy with folk koo uh born in 59 the offspring of a tennessee waltz and ashi knuckles there was a summer day that brought forth a boy benevolent black and blooming with a silky spirit medley of fire and rain on the collar bone of the 60s i could imagine the mind of koo daddy then as a child just a boy growing into whirlwind and mud floods of north richmond under segregated skies chasing sidewalks to catch the dreams escaping his bones priming his gentle to the rasp of cold while hiding the depths of his sapphire blue to be held in the streets of north richmond as the poet of secrets koo daddy becoming cool since 68 summer nights there's been a fright look over your shoulder that appears to be praying for another day to run while living in life of footsteps in the dark it's the tales of tales that keep telling me through the margins of poverty's parables that paired you to the hunger pains of ghetto child lost in looking out the window of a broken home with no axe to grind in a mean old world that left you spoiled slowly trekking towards freedom further up on down the road house to forever suffering through the vamping shadows of underground but how slick to maneuver to maneuver the sewers of black stab us as steady as you were with a solid rock posted at the end of a junkie taste for the fire and smoke taste it takes for flying high and as they twitch and claw at the night you were searching for some type of miracle even as the little child running wild when the world was at peace with being syphilis and shady jealous type of people you knew to listen to the clock on the wall as something to believe in a black Caesar outline with the sunshine and leather skin known to go for your guns but prefer to cruise controlled within such a mellow mood what allure for their eyes to check out your mind in my time I only knew of cool daddy's cool before I ever met superfly before I understood the blood sweat creased in your fingertips and the heavy that dragged in your eyes when the night had beat at your heart and chased you solemn with the treble blues unaware I only knew you as cool daddy just 5 10 of stork of city and built like prison complex like arms of cedar wood chest of ivory mary's grease sleep on a dip of wave currents beneath a black slanted wave cap beanie fold hold the cigarette behind the wheel thumb it through hundreds of hundred dollar bills steering on the highway with your knees while speeding back when money was dirty and paid for christmas summer trips and school clothes before I became a prophetic bullet discharge from the chamber of sponks barrel there is a child that still mourns behind the cool in the midst of the shake rattle and roll of a fool's paradise you know we were sitting in the car waiting for cool daddy to emerge from the blue tarp that swings low over the metal gate to the back of the blue house the sun began to surrender his glory to the pacific while shinny and i fight with our stomachs with the cool stride and heavy plop into the driver's seat a turn of the key in the brown beings roars shinny my sister speaks with a mother's tongue what took you so long i'm ready to go my pops say y'all hungry want some McDonald's or something shinny a burst of hunger and eager for forgiveness names choice options for her happy meal i too am hungry but more so burning with the question hey daddy why are your friends ain't got no teeth for a long time he laughed real tears cool daddy i have a question in the chat thank you for that so there's a question um from somebody who's read uh known no freedom it's wonderful to see letters in the 2000 the Hebrew letters in the 2018 publication of no freedom for me it's cosmic religiously resonant gateway to order the contents and they'd like to hear about your intentions for using those letters uh wow um those letters was just representing for me um the five stages of grief and just like uh you know just just connecting back to to the roots of how everything begins you know just coming up in from a from a christian background just understanding that once i once i read scriptures and understand that how it's taught to us in the english it's not necessarily what it says in the Hebrew and then once i connect back to the Hebrew and i see it's so much more meaning in the Hebrew and once i see it so much more um in the Hebrew that connects to the the culture of of quote on quote african-americans i just felt the connection to that and i wanted to put that up in there just like those numbers those letters that i left representing the the ox representing the power the strong power the the uh the um i can't remember what was up in there but when i was writing it i was like i wanted i want to structure each chapter of of the book with with that letter that represents a particular type of power and i think five represents grace and just grace and mercy and so for the fifth chapter or the five stages of grief you want to get to this place of shalom or this place of peace this place of freedom this place of awareness this place of of recognizing like wow i went through all of these different obstacles and i have now arrived at this place so each each each letter represents a number each number represents a particular type of personality and energy that conveys the message uh you have to go through these cycles in life um and its power behind numbers and that was just my way of doing it i could have easily labeled the chapters that is one chapter two chapter three but i wanted to do something that i felt like would stand out um and i kind of wanted to see if who would catch up on that and uh yeah somebody caught up on that so that's cool so it sounds like um it sort of sounds like your note to readers in the beginning of the book where you said that the idea of closed caskets is to remind challenge and encourage all ears to un-busy themselves and to seek silence in order to hear our true selves and speak right right um and i and i feel like um closed caskets is like a follow-up to no freedom because no freedom starts off in the first chapter of saying like wow uh if you ask me how i feel i'll probably smile until you find then you'll walk away satisfied not knowing that i was lying not knowing that i was hiding behind this grin on my face with these evil thoughts running through my mind waking up every day wanting to get away just thinking and wishing i wasn't alive you see i try to say tough i keep my head up and get fed up and ask why the hell i go through so much it's like i'm feeling that life man how and what i'm feeling at times too difficult for me to describe let's just say it's a mixture of anger and hate happiness smiles cries joy frustration self-esteem is my complication on why i can't succeed and be all that i can be pursuit of things we call dreams because i don't think that i have it in me sometimes i feel so alone don't have a place to go to or call home i go left because i can't get right or i sick standing because i ain't got no backbone man i love the thought of peace and quiet but at times to act to be some violent because all the emotions that runs through me gets my temperature rising i didn't hell so much in it gets to a point that i explode without realizing oh how i feel you ask oh me i'm just fine i only say that to see if you really cared enough to read between the lines and all the signs and shows on a person that's hurting inside but then again you probably knew about them and kept on with your life and never thought about them twice that was the that was the first uh real poem that i wrote when i was 17 years old called how i feel and it was inspired off of me sitting next to this white boy in summer school in english class and he had these this big hole in the front of his shoes and i could see his socks but he on the outward side he was just so joyous and smiling and i was just wondering like you know i know what it feels like to have busted up shoes because at the time i did too but i wasn't happy and smiling so i was just wondering like how does this person really feel and when we ask somebody and when we pass by i'm like hey how you doing and our response is quick like i'm good i'm fine it's like are you really and do we really allow enough time for a person to answer that question like if you was asking somebody like hey how you doing today they say not good you know i kind of feel like jumping off the edge what would your response be to that like a lot of us is not even trained or prepared to even answer that question if somebody really came to you was like you know i'm thinking about you know this is what i'm thinking like are do you feel equipped enough do you have the patience enough to sit and listen to what a person is going through a lot of the times we are at work we are in passing we had a gas station we're rushing and we don't even allow them to answer somebody hey how you're doing okay thank you it's like we already done answered for him and it's like so i wrote that poem at 17 and so when when constructing no freedom it was like i want to put the first piece that i wrote when i was 17 to show this is where i was at and towards the end is like trying to get to this place of of peace at the end of the book and then closed cast is kind of picked that up with diving more deeper into the personal so the first chapter and no freedom was like this is my personal the second chapter is like this is my community the third chapter is like now i'm angry and then the fourth is like this is the historical context and then the fifth chapter is like okay i can't no freedom until i know peace within myself um and then closed cast because it's kind of like picking up after that like well this is what it looks like you have to face the inevitable you know you gotta you gotta walk towards it brave and bold and just say what needs to be said so this was my attempt of like trying to say what i feel like needed to be said but i still feel like it was a lot of blockage there internally um and i think it's starting to open up a little bit more uh you're going to see a lot more of the of the hebrew language and me and diving into that because the more i uncover that the more i start seeing more truth and more i start uncovering more lies about like who we are what's going on in the world and and how how to approach things and things like that so i'm still studying but i'm just trying to figure out the best way for me to articulate myself as a poet and as a writer yeah so what's what is next for you i mean you've done so many different genres you've done plays and movies and poetry you continuing as poetry or what's next uh i think i'm gonna continue with poetry for sure um continue with poetry and i want to dive more into the storytelling this was my first time with closed tasks is by attempting to take real life people and recall situations that i had with them and try to document it in a story format like i've written plays so writing a story like for the for the stage is one thing but to like try to write a story poetically um off of real people is like is challenging because you don't want to offend no one you don't want to put too much out there but i'm the type of i'm i'm kind of blunt but with dealing with people i had to learn how like not sugarcoat but how do i say this in a way that people don't feel like um you know what i mean like putting their business out there but i'm telling the truth i'm telling stories i'm talking about healing i'm talking about a mindset that may or may not be suitable for us to live by anymore and so it's like i'm gracious that my father was okay with me you know telling that story but it's other stories that i would like to tell that's that that incorporates like you know real life situations um and that i want to use for like healing purposes so i have a few more stories that i want to do um they may be like play format or they may just be like you know little fiction tales where it's like 10 page stories where i just write it and then you know may turn it into an album may turn it into a movie a short film may turn it into audio book um i got like at least 10 of those brainstormed already it's just now just like which one do i want to write first because i love all of them so much in my mind but it's i know it's going to take a lot of time and attention to write out these stories and then build it into something bigger uh definitely want to keep writing poetry um and you know whatever whatever else come from it i'm ready for for whatever else come from it you know i think i speak for everybody and saying that you know we're ready to hear what else you have i love it and i'm sure everybody else here does too i have another question in the chat about the title of close caskets so how did you arrive at the title um i had wrote a poem in closed caskets called closed caskets um and it was one of those alliteration type as you can hear some of the pieces that i have in here have this alliteration uh challenge that i gave myself of like how can i pick a letter in the alphabet and tell a story using only that letter to see how far i can go and um one of the pieces i have is called closed caskets and it went because crack cocaine causes color cities crimson currents contributing cyclical comma counts compiling corner store counterlights closed caskets capturing choice choirs carrying cathedrals because constant casualties crushed color communities cheer cold cold cold so in that piece i use the term closed caskets and then i called the piece closed caskets and then carla was like the the original um title of the book was going to be the times we live which i was going to have beautiful little stories and parables about life and stuff like that and then as carla was reading um the the collection she was like i don't think the times we live actually captures exactly what you're saying or what you what what you could be saying i feel like this poem you have in here called closed caskets is more appropriate and i i kind of wrestled with that because i'm like closed caskets mean something that has already happened um and then i i thought about closed caskets as like this is something that's current you know like someone may have died but it takes like at least a week and a half two weeks for the burial and so it's like that grieving process and i look at our four hundred years as a long grieving process we haven't had the opportunity to say okay it's done now let's heal and i feel like everything that i'm talking about unfortunately i shouldn't even have to be talking about it it shouldn't be applying to whatever happened sunday whatever happened last year it still applies and so i feel like closed caskets is always a call in action of sitting still being quiet silence in the noise it's just approaching what is still not buried or unearthing things that needs to be properly put to rest um and i feel like us as black folks haven't had the opportunity so we still we're still in that we're still in that period of watching another body and now i'm going to another funeral and uh tomorrow it'll be the same thing typing so yep thank you for that i mean i love the idea of the different um well i'm going back to what you first said about the you know using writing poems based on the first letters i love the b do you have a favorite letter uh i love the b because i was the first one it kind of it kind of sparked it all it was like unintentional um i was posting on instagram a while ago and i was trying to put like a poetic caption and it was like me performing i had on all black and it was like at a at a banquet or something like that a fundraiser for i think it's called the innocent project or something like that um what a fundraise for a lot of folks um men and women who have been wrongfully incarcerated um they go out there do the work as lawyers and and spokespersons on behalf of them so we was performing um and someone capped the person at the venue captured me and it was like a sea of white folks and it was just me performing walking through the crowd and the picture looked so beautiful and i was just like the caption on my instagram was like being born black bearing blues by brothers buried beneath bridges or something like that or being born black bearing blues something like that and i was like wow that's dope and i'm like i want to see if i can turn that into a poem so later on that night i had the being born black bearing blues by brothers buried beneath bridges burned bodies belittle before becoming better beyond broken but believing and that was the first one that i had put in the book of no freedom and then after i published that one i was like now i want to see if i can go longer and then i added on to it and then so this is in um closed cask is like a part two or part three and then all of the other iteration uh iteration pieces came like kind of after that accidental true writer true writer i think i think my favorite one will be telephone the thinking and thoughts that trauma teaches the thinking because i feel like that has been the hardest one for me to read and i'm i'm determined to memorize that because i know once i memorize it the way i'm a performer it's going to be it's going to be like very magnetic so it's like thinking of thought i was at a flea market um and i was sitting there just looking at a lot of us just walking by buying stuff black owned businesses trying to sell and i was just like wow like a lot of us are still thinking of thoughts that trauma teaches the thinking and i was like that was just like a thought i had and i'm like i gotta write this down and then i'm like let me see how long i can go with this one and then it turned out to be in that and i'm like so i think b is my favorite piece and then telephones is gonna be my second well i can't believe you know your work is amazing and it's been it's already an hour it went by so quick and thank you so much for sharing your stories with us and um we put information about where you can get your book in the chat um you can also check out your book at berkeley public library seversisco public library um also check it out pacific rape and press and i also believe it's on amazon yes yes so i think with that we'll close out our meeting unless anybody else wants to say some final words well thank you so much don'ta i'm so looking forward to following your career reading more of your books this one is amazing i encourage everybody to read your books check out your films your plays thank you so much for being with us tonight thank you i appreciate it i appreciate the opportunity great to tap in dante left from Puerto Rico oh my brother my brother all righty guys see you later thank you so much thank you loved it powerful thank you