This last poem, this one's a little expansive.
Have any of you seen, If Beale Street Could Talk?
OK.
So if not, go see it.
Any books I've mentioned, go read them.
Thirteenth, if I didn't mention it, go watch it.
And hopefully there's just a section
of this poem that deals with the Baldwin or Jenkins.
And hopefully you'll be able to stay with me,
and thank you all for listening.
This is called, "Can't Unsee."
The eye is a tool.
It takes available light and makes notes
to self about shape, distance, mood, the self, brain, mind,
soul.
Accumulates and cross-references these observation
with information from the ear, the skin, the tongue.
Turns the memos into memories we trust to be true.
What looks like wood will not give beneath our feet.
What sounds like a siren gives cause for alarm.
We'll be followed by flashing reds and blues or flames
or a stretcher and a gun.
The eye is the open drawer of a file cabinet
the size of your head on the outside
and the size of your life on the inside.
What goes in might get lost but never goes away.
"If Beale Street could talk," Jenkins says, Baldwin says,
"it would say, 'soft sunshine, sweater,
melting chocolate,' would whisper,
'artist's inner eye sends notes to hands about shapes,
distances, moods.
Would speak on woman's spine, shout about Black
silence and eloquent vocal Black eyes."
Jenkins' Beale Street says, "see?
The glow Fonny's eyes emit when Tish is in view."
The ideas spinning and shifting behind them
when he studies his strange sculpture in progress.
See, Tish.
See Tish discern that glow through prison plexiglass,
still smoldering through a gray wash of gray.
She can't unsee the lips she kissed, even when the mauve is
bashed black, blue.
And she can't unsee the bruise.
Meanwhile, Fonny's eyes are busily
imprinting on his psyche brutal scenes that
befog her face, that twist and disfigure the structures he
sculpts in his dreams.
His visions always black and white,
even when they're in color.
You can't unkill, and you can't unjail.
The Constitution doesn't yet confer on us
the right not to have to think about this shit.
We thumbs-up a criminal justice system
with cold-blooded murderers in mind,
not the system we'd like ourselves
or our kin to fall into.
Have you ever made a mistake?
Has a witness ever?
An officer?
A jury?
A judge?
When we think of violent crime, if we see Black skin,
history's whispering its old lies into our colorblind ears,
making it easier for us to say, "better that I'm safe
and the criminal's sorry than to waste time uttering the word
alleged."
You can't unsee slavery.
A woman is innocent until proven angry.
A man is innocent until he fits the profile.
A child is innocent until she sees her mother or father
in cuffs.
Can't unsee.
Set bail too high, and in two weeks
we've upped the odds that a petty thief becomes
a well-connected felon with even more reasons to steal.
I can't unsee the video of the school security
cops slamming an African-American girl,
a student, to the ground.
No, not the North Carolina one, the South Carolina one.
No, in Texas the girl is Latina, but I
can't unsee her abuse either.
Race is a tool.
The law is a tool.
They take power and make inhumane order out
of human chaos.
They make flaws that will not give beneath a brown girl's
skull.
They make officers see Black and think, gun.
What sounds alarming will be followed by cell phone photos
and YouTube clips, scenes that yet another century's minds
and spirits we'll file away.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]