WEBVTT

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I guess I should also say that
if when I'm reading it seems

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as though someone's clicking
some kind of channel changer,

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it's--

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that's just my poetry, right?

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Sometimes it's on Ritalin,
sometimes it's on Demerol,

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you know what I mean?

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And so it does its thing.

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[NON-ENGLISH SINGING]

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"An ochre song called you from
the corners of post existence.

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You appeared a silent
apparition of language

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and I became pregnant
with the word.

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The word took flight upon
crimson oceans of light.

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Oceans of light screaming
prayer into vermilion angles

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of wrangled space.

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Angled space sank
like an obsidian siren

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into the mad mouth of my pocket.

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My pocket dangled
a jangling death

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from the tongue of
a stone victrola.

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A stone victrola
coughed a murder

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of crows shrieking
translucent blue music.

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Blue music circles the bells of
waiting and insistent speech.

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My speech oracles itself toward
the sword of your memory.

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Your memory cast at the
shadows of my castrated breath.

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My breath crying the
kiss of an ochre song,

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called you from the
corners of post existence.

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You appeared a silent
apparition of language

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and I became pregnant
with the word.

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And the word was born.

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The word was born still.

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The word was still born in the
center of turbulent awakening.

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The word became sunlight,
carving her arpeggio

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into the archipelago,
a flat unfolding

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blackness the word became.

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The word became the
shards of dead stars

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that bled the egg of plants
and planet the word became.

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The word became the
misspelled literature of tree

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caught the abysmal
womb of the eye.

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The word became.

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The word became the
silent hymn now singing

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in the ancient azure
stone and I saw the word.

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Saw the word knocked up.

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Knocked up, snorting
her death in syllables,

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drinking her liver in the
dilapidated taverns of bars

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without nuance or name.

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The word there, her fingers
bleeding blood, red, and raw

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from clawing the insides
of 40-ounce coffins.

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Sever the leg of the x.

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Manifest itself as
man, riddled 41 times

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by the mystery of lead.

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Left to die, eyes open
watching while life

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bled from a hole in the
head, back to the I.

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I saw the word.

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I saw the word is the lying,
how the hungry vowel, the dying

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child dragged to death,
decapitated, sodomized by wood.

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I saw the word.

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I saw the word as a Black
boy's body resurrected

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after three days from the
river bottoms of a nation's

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bloodied conscience.

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I saw the word.

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I saw the word as a man
beaten mercilessly because he

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loved the loins of other men.

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I saw the word would
manifest herself again

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as female, will manifest
herself again as female.

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Her thighs were still slick
but the slime of patriarchy.

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I saw the word.

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The word was entered.

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The word was entered.

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The word was entered.

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The word was entered.

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The word was entered by
her father so many times,

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she learned to believe
his sickness was sacred.

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And I love the word,
danced with the word.

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Seven insistent sources
to six AM with the word,

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and the word was no longer
afraid or ashamed to throw

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her head back and
her arms skyward

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and in white flashes of teeth
and sweat drenched hair,

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mouthing
incomprehensible mumbling

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to the rumblings
of unsound sound,

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the words sucked my
tongue as I wrote this.

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The word spit hibiscus
balm into my mouth.

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The word and I love that
night, love that night,

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love that night.

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[VOCALIZING]

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I came into, unto, cried
and died inside the word

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that night, and the word grew
pregnant, pregnant, pregnant,

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but the word grew inside,
grew inside the word.

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The word gave birth.

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The word gave birth.

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The word gave birth.

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The word gave birth.

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[SCREAMING]

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The word gave birth to
the word, and the word

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became a brown child's
fingers wiping tears away

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from her father's eyes.

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The word became.

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The word became a brown
child's kisses blooming

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in spite of the hurricane.

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The word became.

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The word became a
brown child's kisses,

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reaching out to embrace the
brown, thin, wrinkled hands

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of brown, thin, wrinkled arms
of brown, thin, wrinkled women,

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stirring pots of 5:00 AM
grits in a cornerstone called

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Mississippi.

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The word lives inside
of the universal shit

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thin spaces between,
in and exhalation.

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Travels herself around
the azure stone,

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traverses herself
around the azure stone,

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trapped and encased in
condominiums of skin

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forgetting and refusing to
remember that she is I am."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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