WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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And now, I will read
one from my father.

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This is in honor of Charlotte,
because she's from St. Louis.

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And so, I thought
I would do this.

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My father was a great
baseball player.

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And he played in the
old Negro leagues--

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he was one of the most famous
baseball players to come out

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of that time--

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probably the second
greatest catcher of all time

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in the old Negro leagues.

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And so, this poem is
kind of set in the '40s--

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it's kind of set
in the late '40s.

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"A poem for my father-- for my
father Quincy Troupe Senior."

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The other thing is, all the
films that you see on the Black

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baseball league-- whenever
you see any of those films--

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they're my father's films.

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He took those whole movies.

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"Father, it was an honor to be
there in the dugout with you--

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the glory of great Black men
swinging their lives as bats

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at tiny white balls burning
in at unbelievable speeds,

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riding up, and in, and out.

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A curve breaking down
wicked, like a ball

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falling off a high table,
moving away, snaking down,

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screwing its stitched magic
into chitlin circuit air,

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its comma seams spinning
toward breakdown.

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Dipping like a
hipster, bebopping

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a knee-dip stride in
the Charlie Parker '40s,

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risk curling like a swan's
neck behind a "slick" Black

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back, cupping an
invisible ball of dreams.

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And you there, father, regal
as an African obeah man,

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obeah man sculpted out of
wood from a sacred tree

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of no name, no place origin--

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thick branches branching down
into Cherokee and someplace

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else lost way back in Africa.

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The sap running dry,
crossing from North Carolina

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into Georgia inside
grandmother Mary's womb,

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who was your mother, and
had you there in the balance

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of that great song.

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Ink blotter news gone
now into blood and bone

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graves of American blues.

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Sponging Rococo truth
long gone as dinosaurs,

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the agent-oranged
landscape of former names,

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absent of African polysyllables,
dry husk consonants there now

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in their place--

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names flat as polluted rivers.

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And that guitar
strings smile, always

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snaking across some virulent
American red neck's face,

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scorching like atomic
heat, mushrooming

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over Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the
fever blistered shadows of it

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all, inked as body etchings
into sizzled concrete.

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But you there,
father, through it

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all, a yardbird solo, riffing
on bat and ball glory.

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Breaking down the fabricated
myths of white Major League

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legends, of who was better
than who, beating them

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at their own crap game.

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With killer bats as Bud
Powell swung his silence

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into a beauty of
a Josh Gibson home

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run skittering across
piano keys of bleachers.

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Shattering all manufactured
legends up there in lights.

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Struck out white knights
on the risky slippery edge

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of amazement, awe.

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The miraculous truth
slipping through,

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steeped and disguised
in the blues.

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Confluencing like the
point at the cross

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when a fastball hides itself
up in a shimmying slider

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curve, breaking down and away,
in a wicked sly grin, curved

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and broken down-- broke
down like the back

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of an ass scratching Uncle Tom.

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Who like old Satchel Paige
delivering his famed hesitation

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pitch before coming back with
a high hard fast one rising

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is sometimes slicker,
slipping and sliding,

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and quicker than a
professional hit man.

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The deadliness of it all.

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The sudden strike, like
that of the "brown bombers"

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short crossing right.

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All the hook of Sugar
Ray Robinson's lightning

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cobra bite.

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And you there, father,
through it all.

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Yeah.

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Catching rhythms of chono pozo
balls drumming like Cuban conga

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beats into your catcher's mitt--
hard and fast as cool Papa

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Bell jumping into bed
before the lights went out

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of the old Negro
baseball league.

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A promise you were, father,
a harbinger of shock waves

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soon come.

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[APPLAUSE]

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