WEBVTT

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And because it's a book length
poem, I'm just jumping around,

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but when you have it, you'll
get to do whatever you want.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So I had the opportunity,
this book length poem

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is the first part of a series.

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The second part is
a book of essays

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that includes interviews.

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I interviewed family members,
I interviewed Miriam Makeba,

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I interviewed Russell Craig,
folks who have been impacted

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by prison, folks who are
prison abolitionists,

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and a cousin who actually just
took his life, who finally got

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out of prison went back
into the world tried

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to repay his debt
to the community

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and still was just
broken, broken

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from the effects and the
impact that prison promises.

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And I start the second part
of this book with a quote

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from Miriam Makeba.

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She said, "we don't
get how we are all

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tied to the prison industrial
complex, nobody's out."

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A private prison can offer
their services to the government

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and charge $150 per
day, per prisoner.

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Constant threat in a box.

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So you know what I'm
saying, it's actually a box.

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We miss this as adults.

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We don't get enough visuals.

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What is a threat except
the possibility of danger?

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What is dangerous about a Black
man beaten for his defiance?

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What is defiance
except the refusal

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to bow the bone that restricts
the body from quaking?

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The threat is all of us
breathing constant threat.

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I have nothing else
to write about.

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The steel bars haunt me.

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I remember death and
it knows my name.

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We dance a dance if
that is poetic enough.

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I feel closest to my father
with a dagger in my mouth,

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or my mouth is the weapon
itself when I slam bones.

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Segregated.

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Like a whisper, like a promise,
if I were a betting woman,

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I only bet on my ability
to slam bones and walk away

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from the shaky table
every time victorious.

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Segregated.

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When I play dominoes,
I am the one true King.

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I am the one left
breathing, I am, I am,

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I am a worst kind of thief,
I steal your swag right

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in front of your own eyes, right
in front of your own child.

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Remember, I'm my
father's first daughter.

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And you will remember my name.

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It is his, you know, and
like any horrible tune radio

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frequent with the static as
constant as rain in Orange

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County, there are 35
prisons in California.

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I miss my father.

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Since 2017, California's
prisons populations

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has hovered at about
115,000 inmates.

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I miss my father.

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Currently, there are 2.2
million people in prison or jail

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nationwide.

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I miss my father.

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California's recidivism rate
is ranked among the highest

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in the country.

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I miss-- I am, I am, I am your
King, segregated, segregated.

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House one, I got seven bones.

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If you don't know how to
play dominoes or the language

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for it, this section
isn't for you.

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I got seven bones, that
is actually in the text

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just so you know I'm giving
instructions as we go,

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and every person at the card
table look like my daddy.

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House two, he loose like a
body with the heart too soft.

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He look weak, I bet
his demise tastes good.

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I slither, you ain't
been hugged enough.

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He heard your mother
don't love you.

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His face go slack.

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My jaws tighten,
ready for the blow.

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The room get ghost, get
silent, get mosque like.

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I praise me today.

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Watch me become the
bed your mama climb

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into every lonely night.

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House three, my father'd
been gone a long time,

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but he taught me don't
nobody with any sense clap

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for mediocrity, so I don't.

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The man child across from
me is a Cheshire grin

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full of beautiful teeth.

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He smiles, and I see my father.

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He laughs, and I see my father.

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His haunt be my horizon.

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Imma rise like the star.

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Imma rise like Virgin Mary.

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Imma to slam these dominoes
and sip on that brown.

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Wait for his heart to
foxtrot from his throat.

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Get with it or get hit with it.

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The story arrives
whether we are ready

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or not to hold it close, its
little voice singing off-key

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with no fear, a kind of truth.

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The first son of a young
man and even younger woman

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lifts like a fist from the
red dirt of Homer, Louisiana,

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and finds a patch in
Berkeley, California

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to toil until it becomes a home.

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Name it, the big house.

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The first son of a
father from the military

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and a mother with a
penchant for horse racing

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grows, ivy like, from the
soil of a Bay Area revolution.

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First son will forget
and then remember

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the weight of his hands.

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Will press both thumbs
into a human throat.

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Will swing baseball
bats and rage.

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He will connect
with a bag of flesh

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and bones and
dreams, my father red

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like the earth from
which his parents fled.

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Relocated to a place where eight
more would be born and die.

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Among the streets of Berkeley,
Oakland, Richmond, Antioch,

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where each boulevard
reeks of blood or car oil

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drop top cherry
Chevy's burned rubber.

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An inheritance of abnormal
hemoglobin, and a trench

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of violence.

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Here.

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Yes, here.

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Violence is
considered love, too.

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