I hadn't planned to do this but I'm
going to do this because I think since Obama
is in the White House and has to produce his papers and shit.
[LAUGHTER]
Like, really dog?
President, got to fucking produce papers?
I remember being-- if you're over 30, 35, and you're Black,
you probably thought that Obama's run at the White House
was impossible before it happened.
And you probably thought, it probably crossed your mind
that if he tried and got close, that somebody would kill him.
Which in light of the amount of death threats
that his presidency has faced more
than all the previous presidents combined, by the way.
It's not a vain worry, but I remember being in a hotel room
in Lake Placid, New York, just after he won South Carolina,
and this he had already won Iowa,
and I was like, he's not going to fucking win, like, come on.
And then he won South Carolina and I got really scared,
and so this poem came out of that.
It's "American History Looks for Light,
a Prayer for the Survival of Barack Obama in Five Voices."
The epigraph is from Muhammad Ali, float like a butterfly,
sting like a bee.
The hands can't touch with the eyes can't see.
One, The Bullet Speaks of Purpose.
Trajectory is everything.
The difference between a kiss off the rib
cage or the blessed blood of a riped organ.
The brain protests the most.
Neurons firing over and around the Holy landing,
trying to make sense of it.
The wailing and the vivid snapshots, metal
tendrils reaching, trying to block out the light.
Two, Malcolm pulls Obama's coat.
There is no doubt in my mind they will
come for you dozens at a time.
Miniature fighter planes built for just such an idealism
as yours.
They are amazing fish, fanning their steel gills like razors,
formations neat and orderly as a school barreling
toward the heart, spleen, kidney, abdomen, anywhere there
is light.
Three, Obama plays the dozens.
I'm so fast, I'll be gone by trick of time.
I'm so bad to beat Hillary by 30.
I'm so slick, not even Bill could sink me.
I'm so bad ass.
My name is Barack.
I'm so chameleon, my name is Hussein.
I'm so pretty, your mama Canvas for me.
I'm so pretty, your mama voted for me.
I'm so pretty your mama is my mama.
I'm so good, I shook up the world.
I'm so fast, I dodged the circus of bullets.
I'm so fast, I flipped the switch
and be in bed before the light comes off.
Four, The bullet takes the beat.
Neither disease nor plane crash, not knife, not hurricane
or freak accident is as dramatic as me.
See the body begins to decompose in an instant.
See the body become particular.
See the body become tendrils of impressionist thought.
See how marvelous my entrances, how devastating my exit wounds.
I saved my best work for the stage.
Five, Bruce Lee knows from bullets.
See this fist, this quick a cappella
kick Kung Fu showing of what.
See this sidestep Tae Kwon.
Don't you never think steel is hard like bone.
Barack, I legacy you, me, every dragon flow strict mantis,
pose struck to cobra swift release.
Don't you never think steel be hard like home.
See this river flow bones to see how bullets bury,
what they cannot kill.
See how I live ecstatic, fly jumpsuit, dramatic Barack,
I legacy you, me, like I loan Muhammad, the butterfly
and the bee.
We stay vested, historically protected bee.
We battled terrific.
Fuck Chuck Norris.
Me and Jim Kelly's got your hood and your dome.
Don't you never think steel is hard as stone.
[APPLAUSE]