Now, they want you to talk.
[LAUGHTER]
I just want to say this has been a really powerful visit.
And I don't even know that I've ever given--
read poetry while people sat out in the cold.
I mean--
[LAUGHTER]
You guys 6 to 12 row back there, I just--
I bow.
I bow before you.
I am just-- yeah.
So this is a really important thing
you're doing here, talking about restoring restorative justice.
And I thank you very much for the stories you've told.
I think you will hear before I leave this microphone how my--
what I've written absolutely directly
connects with what you've just said.
We didn't plan it that way.
There's no script.
But when you're doing truth work,
it just lines up like that.
And today, I need to tell you--
I want to tell you that I spent three or four hours,
I lost track of time, out of the Cape Detention Center
with young people in that detention center talking
about poetry.
And that was planned.
It was purposeful.
And there's a teacher here, Lisa O'Neill, who doesn't just go--
didn't just go today.
She goes out there every week and does the hard committed
work of talking about poetry to young people who really, really
are hungry to not be forgotten.
And if you think this night is just about four or five people
who have direct--
have some direct relationship with the juvenile justice
system or the prison industrial complex,
I want you to ask me about that before I leave after I finish
reading because what's happening in that realm is impacting
every one of us, whether it's our husbands or our wives
or our children or it's--
you don't think it is, but it is.
And I can explain that further after I read this piece.
But I asked Lisa does she think-- when I left today,
they made me cry while I was out there, but I cry easily,
so that's--
but they-- there was a young man who was being really tough.
And you could-- I could just see his tenderness
through everything he was doing and saying,
and I asked him to write some poems.
And I wanted him to be here tonight with us, and of course,
he couldn't.
But I wanted-- I asked Lisa if I could read this,
and she thought it would be OK.
So the prompt that Lisa gave them
weeks ago when she knew I was coming was a poem that I read--
that I wrote called "He Never Had It Made."
And it's about my father being a country boy
and really having just the love of the family around him
to become the first Black Chief Justice
of the State of South Carolina.
And it was a story about his getting there
not because he had money and not because somebody
did him a favor, but because he worked really hard,
and he just kept a lot of stuff in his heart that he needed to.
And so she gave him this line, "He Never Had It Made,"
and this is what DeAndre wrote.
And I know he's in this room because he loves poetry.
I never had it made, but I tried going for it.
I never stopped recognition, accomplishment sometimes
failed, also, fallen, but I got back up, accomplished again.
Sometimes I succeeded, but I never had it made.
[APPLAUSE]
I don't have enough thank yous for Tyler and for--
Sorry.
That's OK.
For Diana.
Yeah, for Diana.
For everything you guys have done for me the last 48 hours,
I just--
I'm at a loss for words.
So I'm just going to read a few poems that are in "The World Is
Round" and "Head Off & Split," and I'm--
and then I'm going to read the new piece that was commissioned
by the Art for Justice program.
When I was born, every time I tell the story,
my mom cries because I had to stay
in the hospital for a couple of weeks,
and I had yellow jaundice.
And so I always think that the nurses--
in my mind's eye, I see them coming in the room
and putting their hands in that old contraption that
had the circle, and you put your hand in
to touch the baby when the oxygen--
they don't do that anymore.
But I love the circle, and the title for this book,
"The World Is Round," came from me thinking
that the first geometric symbol I might have seen as an infant
was a circle.