WEBVTT

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I wasn't sure if I was
going to read this one.

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I'm going to crack open
some water real quick.

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How are you guys doing?

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Are you OK?

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I'm talking so much
and feeling so much.

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So about 80% of the poems
that I wrote and worked on

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were informed, some puzzles
and ballads and sonnets.

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I think I have a
couple of pantoums.

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And the 20% that aren't are
maybe the most difficult

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for me.

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My personal connection to
this project in this state

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that we're in is that
so I'm thinking about,

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if incarceration and if
the prison system isn't

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rehabilitated, then what is it?

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If its claim is that it's
rehabilitative but it's not,

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it's not a failure.

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It's succeeding in
what its true aim is.

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And that was a hard thing
to keep finding more about--

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finding out more about.

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But people need to heal.

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And people need to actualize
their humanity, no matter what

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cards they're dealt. And so
I started thinking, well,

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what are the ways
that people do that?

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If prison is not that--

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it ain't that-- then
what are the strategies?

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And I'm Muslim.

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I was raised Muslim.

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And all of the men in my
life and the women, who

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have been touched by mass
incarceration, who have spent

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time being incarcerated,
all of them,

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this particular generation
that I did interviews with,

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they either converted
while incarcerated--

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there's a long history of that,
of Black men in particular

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and them metabolizing their
own redemption through Islam,

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right?

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And that being not just
a spiritual journey

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but an actual moral elevation
outside of being stuck,

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being tethered,
being trapped, right?

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So I interviewed my
uncles and the men

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in the neighborhood I grew
up in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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They're all pretty
much from New York.

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And I didn't know if I was going
to read this piece because it's

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about my dad.

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And everything I know
about you deciding

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who you're going to be, in
spite of, if for my dad.

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And everything I know about--

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my dad is my religion.

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I feel like that.

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I'm Muslim.

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But I feel like my dad's
my father and my brother

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and my god and my son.

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And I lost my dad this
summer right in the middle

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of these interviews.

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And I didn't know if I'd be
able to read these poems today.

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But I feel like I
just don't really

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know what these poems
are for because they

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don't fix anything.

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But they help me see better.

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And they give my dad
a place in my singing.

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And there's no stamp that
somebody could put on him.

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He will never be
a prisoner only.

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And I think about self.

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I think about
selfhood and what it

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takes to retain your spirit,
your soul when you're isolated

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from the people you love, when
you're isolated from the world,

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from the sky, from birds,
from water, from food.

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And I think about
what keeps you here.

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And I think what kept
my dad here is Allah.

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And that makes me religious.

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Not Allah doesn't
make me religious.

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My dad makes me
religious for Allah.

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And so this is for my dad, who--

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if anybody does not follow
Islam or know anything about it,

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your deen is sort of
your it's your roadmap.

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It's your devotion, your
practice, your tool,

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your teachings.

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And my dad credits everything
good in his life to his deen.

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So I'm going to read
a quote by my dad.

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And then I'm going to this poem.

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And then I'm going
to go sit down.

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This is for my dad, Abdullah Nafis,
who walks with me where I walk.

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And I asked him what his
life was like before Allah.

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And this is a quote before I'll
read the poem is what he said.

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Craziness.

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I was sleeping on trains.

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I'd steal anything that
wasn't nailed down.

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And that's why I
stay on my deen.

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My, my, my, my, my,
my, my, my, my dad

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won't go to the hospital to get
the cyst in his hand drained.

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My dad won't let them take a
knife to his overlapping toes.

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Instead, cuts , a crude
hole in the top of his shoe

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for comfort.

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My dad eats one meal a day
and doesn't even drink coffee.

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My dad doesn't need an alarm.

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He sleeps on a board on
the living room floor,

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so he won't fall too deep.

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My dad won't take
showers or [INAUDIBLE],,

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only scalding baths.

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Nina Simone, his only soap.

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My dad has a ring of a
river around the gravestone

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of his pupil so blue,
if he let you get close,

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you'd think they were contacts.

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But my dad don't touch his eyes.

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He wears prescription shades
high on the bridge of his nose.

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The rim of his hat
stays low, low, low.

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All you can see is his
mustache, his two-tone lips,

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straight, yellow teeth,
and that famous nose,

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which is my nose, sniff,
sniffing out a lie.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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