I wrote this next poem--
sorry.
I'm deeply hot.
It's like 1,000 degrees.
I wrote this next poem.
I was thinking about not just what
happens to you while like when you're incarcerated
but what even happens like when you get out
and not just when you get out but if it's decided
you didn't really do what they had you in there for
and how there is no undoing of that mar, that you're marred,
and the ways in which you're seen as a weapon or a threat
forever.
And I started.
I feel weird saying this.
Sometimes I just look at like Black men, and I'm like,
you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
It's like the cosmos, waterfalls,
and like that nigga.
Like you're-- and I mean that in like possibly the least
exoticising way possible.
It's not like a sexual thing.
It's like an unacknowledged--
a tacitly unacknowledged truth that like you're just
actually beautiful.
It's actually impossible.
It's actually painful how beautiful you are.
And there's no word that can be said to shed that off of you.
And so I was thinking particular about the Exonerated Five.
And I was thinking about Korey Wise.
And I know this is weird to say.
It's like wild to say this.
I feel super exposed.
But he's so beautiful.
He's so beautiful.
And what do you do with that?
What do you do when they take everything from you?
And they can't take away how fine you are,
how beautiful you are.
And how do you embody that?
King, wise.
I don't want to be that chick.
But Lil' Kim said put lips to the shit.
And this is a poem so freedom is the fountain and the right.
I know what she meant.
But let me tell you what I meant.
State sanctioned kidnapped and five lives ravaged.
Boys, now men.
And every second my blood moves in me, I'm sick.
So I hang your picture behind my eyes
because I know what they want to say.
The way you look, gruesome.
Snatched your childhood, but left you your beauty.
Took all your snow, but left you the winter.
I want to talk about his dimples, his eyelids,
low and storied, lips doing what a mountain wishes.
They say he's hardened.
But have you ever smelled a Black man's hairbrush?
I mean stole yourself for a full five suspended seconds,
brought the bristle to your face, suspended in silk,
licorice, pink lotion, a honey trapped heaven.
No monsters here.
They've been fine.
Gifts so elegant, the ribbons hide.
[APPLAUSE]