[APPLAUSE]
And now, I will read one from my father.
This is in honor of Charlotte, because she's from St. Louis.
And so, I thought I would do this.
My father was a great baseball player.
And he played in the old Negro leagues--
he was one of the most famous baseball players to come out
of that time--
probably the second greatest catcher of all time
in the old Negro leagues.
And so, this poem is kind of set in the '40s--
it's kind of set in the late '40s.
"A poem for my father-- for my father Quincy Troupe Senior."
The other thing is, all the films that you see on the Black
baseball league-- whenever you see any of those films--
they're my father's films.
He took those whole movies.
"Father, it was an honor to be there in the dugout with you--
the glory of great Black men swinging their lives as bats
at tiny white balls burning in at unbelievable speeds,
riding up, and in, and out.
A curve breaking down wicked, like a ball
falling off a high table, moving away, snaking down,
screwing its stitched magic into chitlin circuit air,
its comma seams spinning toward breakdown.
Dipping like a hipster, bebopping
a knee-dip stride in the Charlie Parker '40s,
risk curling like a swan's neck behind a "slick" Black
back, cupping an invisible ball of dreams.
And you there, father, regal as an African obeah man,
obeah man sculpted out of wood from a sacred tree
of no name, no place origin--
thick branches branching down into Cherokee and someplace
else lost way back in Africa.
The sap running dry, crossing from North Carolina
into Georgia inside grandmother Mary's womb,
who was your mother, and had you there in the balance
of that great song.
Ink blotter news gone now into blood and bone
graves of American blues.
Sponging Rococo truth long gone as dinosaurs,
the agent-oranged landscape of former names,
absent of African polysyllables, dry husk consonants there now
in their place--
names flat as polluted rivers.
And that guitar strings smile, always
snaking across some virulent American red neck's face,
scorching like atomic heat, mushrooming
over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the fever blistered shadows of it
all, inked as body etchings into sizzled concrete.
But you there, father, through it
all, a yardbird solo, riffing on bat and ball glory.
Breaking down the fabricated myths of white Major League
legends, of who was better than who, beating them
at their own crap game.
With killer bats as Bud Powell swung his silence
into a beauty of a Josh Gibson home
run skittering across piano keys of bleachers.
Shattering all manufactured legends up there in lights.
Struck out white knights on the risky slippery edge
of amazement, awe.
The miraculous truth slipping through,
steeped and disguised in the blues.
Confluencing like the point at the cross
when a fastball hides itself up in a shimmying slider
curve, breaking down and away, in a wicked sly grin, curved
and broken down-- broke down like the back
of an ass scratching Uncle Tom.
Who like old Satchel Paige delivering his famed hesitation
pitch before coming back with a high hard fast one rising
is sometimes slicker, slipping and sliding,
and quicker than a professional hit man.
The deadliness of it all.
The sudden strike, like that of the "brown bombers"
short crossing right.
All the hook of Sugar Ray Robinson's lightning
cobra bite.
And you there, father, through it all.
Yeah.
Catching rhythms of chono pozo balls drumming like Cuban conga
beats into your catcher's mitt-- hard and fast as cool Papa
Bell jumping into bed before the lights went out
of the old Negro baseball league.
A promise you were, father, a harbinger of shock waves
soon come.
[APPLAUSE]