WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.230 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.230 --> 00:00:04.740 align:middle line:90% "My brothers are notorious." 00:00:04.740 --> 00:00:06.960 align:middle line:90% They have not been to prison. 00:00:06.960 --> 00:00:09.600 align:middle line:90% They have been imprisoned. 00:00:09.600 --> 00:00:12.480 align:middle line:84% The prison is not a place you enter. 00:00:12.480 --> 00:00:14.550 align:middle line:90% It is no place. 00:00:14.550 --> 00:00:17.910 align:middle line:90% My brothers are notorious. 00:00:17.910 --> 00:00:21.240 align:middle line:84% They do regular things, like wait. 00:00:21.240 --> 00:00:25.050 align:middle line:90% On my birthday they say my name. 00:00:25.050 --> 00:00:28.590 align:middle line:84% They will never forget that we are named. 00:00:28.590 --> 00:00:31.200 align:middle line:90% What is that memory? 00:00:31.200 --> 00:00:34.410 align:middle line:84% The days of our childhood together were steep steps 00:00:34.410 --> 00:00:37.350 align:middle line:90% into a collapsing mind. 00:00:37.350 --> 00:00:41.040 align:middle line:84% It looked like we rescued ourselves, more rescued. 00:00:41.040 --> 00:00:44.940 align:middle line:84% Then there are these days, each day of our adult lives. 00:00:44.940 --> 00:00:48.370 align:middle line:90% 00:00:48.370 --> 00:00:50.830 align:middle line:84% They will never forget our way through, 00:00:50.830 --> 00:00:54.580 align:middle line:84% these brothers, each brother, my brother, dear brother, 00:00:54.580 --> 00:00:58.690 align:middle line:84% my dearest brothers, dear heart-- 00:00:58.690 --> 00:01:02.000 align:middle line:90% Your hearts are broken. 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:04.060 align:middle line:84% This is not a secret though there are secrets. 00:01:04.060 --> 00:01:08.140 align:middle line:84% And as yet I do not understand how my own sorrow has turned 00:01:08.140 --> 00:01:10.750 align:middle line:90% into my brother's hearts. 00:01:10.750 --> 00:01:14.740 align:middle line:84% The hearts of my brothers are broken. 00:01:14.740 --> 00:01:17.620 align:middle line:84% If I knew another way to be, I would call a brother, 00:01:17.620 --> 00:01:21.490 align:middle line:84% I would hear myself say, my brother, dear brother, 00:01:21.490 --> 00:01:26.160 align:middle line:84% and dearest brothers, your heart-- 00:01:26.160 --> 00:01:28.820 align:middle line:84% On the tip of a tongue one note following another 00:01:28.820 --> 00:01:32.250 align:middle line:84% is another, path another dawn where the pink sky 00:01:32.250 --> 00:01:34.905 align:middle line:84% is the bloodshot of struck, of sleepless, 00:01:34.905 --> 00:01:38.754 align:middle line:90% of sorry, as senseless, shush. 00:01:38.754 --> 00:01:43.860 align:middle line:84% Those years of before me and my brothers, the years of passage, 00:01:43.860 --> 00:01:48.410 align:middle line:84% plantation, migration, of Jim Crow segregation, 00:01:48.410 --> 00:01:53.600 align:middle line:84% of poverty, inner cities, profiling, of one in three, 00:01:53.600 --> 00:01:59.420 align:middle line:84% two jobs, boy, hey boy, each a felony, 00:01:59.420 --> 00:02:04.970 align:middle line:84% accumulate into the hours inside our lives 00:02:04.970 --> 00:02:09.110 align:middle line:84% where we are all caught hanging, the rope inside us, 00:02:09.110 --> 00:02:11.780 align:middle line:84% the tree inside us, its roots our limbs, 00:02:11.780 --> 00:02:15.920 align:middle line:84% a throat sliced through and when we open our mouths to speak, 00:02:15.920 --> 00:02:22.790 align:middle line:84% blossoms, o blossoms, no place coming out, 00:02:22.790 --> 00:02:27.110 align:middle line:84% brother, dear brother, that kind of blue. 00:02:27.110 --> 00:02:29.990 align:middle line:84% The sky is the silence of brothers all the days 00:02:29.990 --> 00:02:32.550 align:middle line:90% leading up to my call. 00:02:32.550 --> 00:02:35.630 align:middle line:84% If I called I'd say good-bye before I broke the good-bye. 00:02:35.630 --> 00:02:38.750 align:middle line:84% I say good-bye before anyone can hang up. 00:02:38.750 --> 00:02:40.510 align:middle line:90% Don't hang up. 00:02:40.510 --> 00:02:42.830 align:middle line:84% My brother hangs up though he's there. 00:02:42.830 --> 00:02:43.660 align:middle line:90% I keep talking. 00:02:43.660 --> 00:02:45.710 align:middle line:90% The talk keeps him there. 00:02:45.710 --> 00:02:47.780 align:middle line:90% The sky is blue, kind of blue. 00:02:47.780 --> 00:02:49.160 align:middle line:90% The day is hot. 00:02:49.160 --> 00:02:50.780 align:middle line:90% Is it the cold? 00:02:50.780 --> 00:02:51.690 align:middle line:90% Are you cold? 00:02:51.690 --> 00:02:52.910 align:middle line:90% It does get cool. 00:02:52.910 --> 00:02:54.350 align:middle line:90% Is it cool? 00:02:54.350 --> 00:02:57.350 align:middle line:90% Are you cool? 00:02:57.350 --> 00:03:00.740 align:middle line:90% My brother is completed by sky. 00:03:00.740 --> 00:03:02.360 align:middle line:90% The sky is his silence. 00:03:02.360 --> 00:03:04.300 align:middle line:84% Eventually, he says, it is raining. 00:03:04.300 --> 00:03:05.185 align:middle line:90% It is raining down. 00:03:05.185 --> 00:03:05.810 align:middle line:90% It was raining. 00:03:05.810 --> 00:03:06.860 align:middle line:90% It stopped raining. 00:03:06.860 --> 00:03:08.930 align:middle line:90% It is raining down. 00:03:08.930 --> 00:03:10.760 align:middle line:90% He won't hang up. 00:03:10.760 --> 00:03:14.420 align:middle line:84% He's there, he's there but he's hung up but he's there. 00:03:14.420 --> 00:03:15.365 align:middle line:90% Good-bye, I say. 00:03:15.365 --> 00:03:18.350 align:middle line:90% I break the good-bye. 00:03:18.350 --> 00:03:21.825 align:middle line:84% I say good-bye before anyone can hang up, don't hang up. 00:03:21.825 --> 00:03:23.670 align:middle line:90% Wait with me. 00:03:23.670 --> 00:03:31.060 align:middle line:84% Wait with me though the waiting might be the call of good-byes. 00:03:31.060 --> 00:03:32.000 align:middle line:90%