WEBVTT

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It's my pleasure.

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Thank you.

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"Don't stick your
head out the window.

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They shooting
everything that glows."

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That's a personal quote
from Nikky Finney.

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"November sings in tongues
through shivering trees.

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Winter's tambourine
stirs barbecued leaves.

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Short day, sundown, cloaks,
ancestral saxophonists,

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savoring tropical memory
perfuming the promise of hawk.

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Soloing its biting lullaby
of dusk, horn section

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for everyday people.

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Nana, tío, auntie, cuz, all
hear tunes they want the wind

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to play, to soothe ears stung
by whine of bell-curved liars,

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English only canters, Nordstrom
scholars, one-note theorists.

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My own soundtrack
echo King Curtis,

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blowing me a raspy
escape route out the box

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canyon of my mediocrity.

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Fingering me a bridge
to a safe place,

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where Bobby Byrd invites
me to repeat after him.

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I know you got soul.

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If you didn't, you
wouldn't be in here.

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Sitting in on the jam
session of resistance,

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searching my instrument
for one grace

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note pure enough to
bop gun frontliners

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who have exhausted their funk.

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Horn section, tuned and timed
to roll with the ball-bearing

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needs of any era.

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Comping for the call to hit me.

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Accenting pleas of a Vietnam
vet on homeless knee,

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throbbing between fingers of
men reciting the million man

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pledge, praying she'll
come back to me,

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stretching time
while she meditate,

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strutting when she say, mhm.

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Swaying when she hold me
in her storybook arms.

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High noon, sprawling
from an orchestra

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on the curve of a liquid sky,
filled with soloists, begging

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for the nod to eliminate
altogether words,

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to eliminate all words
together, to eliminate words

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all together, acts angled like
Prez or unchained like Trane,

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willing to leap into the
wind, or worry a toothpick

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as only a virtuoso
signifier can do the do.

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From mouth on machine,
activated by inspiration,

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vocabulary of sound
daring us to repeat

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when breath of turning
seasons chill our intentions.

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I know you got soul.

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If you didn't, you
wouldn't be in here.

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Oh, I know you got soul.

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If you didn't, you
wouldn't be up in here.

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Inside the mind, or
outside the senses,

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there are sacred places where
doors spring open from pressure

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of baby steps, where even squeak
of hinges sound like Reverend

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Cleveland's all-star choir,
where lives of asthma get

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resuscitated, and we can get
on with the daily business--

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making the streets of our
world safe for men and women

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to double Dutch
in peace, slipping

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like sound between
the bolo ties,

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waving and weaving at
the wrist action of girls

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with names that swing
through the alphabet.

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There are sacred
places inside the city,

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and outside the jails where
rules heal, as whisper

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of first notes, where even
demands of commandments

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fit like a one-off ensemble.

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Where lives of
sclerosis get massaged,

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and we can get on with
a daily livelihood,

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making streets safe for men and
women to play jacks in peace,

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counting, singsong
up past their tenses,

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bouncing little
balls, high enough

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to gather scattered
lives in one smooth grab,

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with the wrist action
of boys combing hair

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before a lint-free weekend date.

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There are men and women with
sacred places inside who

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surrender to the word without
becoming vengeful missionaries

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and crusaders, carrying
spears, and scimitars,

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and automatic weapons
of conversion.

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Uh-uh to the word of
ruthless invisibility.

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Get to the word of the gesture
within the common smile,

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the candy gesture, the
gesture of peeled bananas.

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The word of the common
reprieve written

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without commission from
nobody's ruling class,

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from nobody's royal decree.

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Inside borders or
outside jurisdictions,

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there are sacred
places with doors

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fitted spiritual carpentry,
with rules jigsaw of stone

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contemplation, where men and
women are safe to live long

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as they supposed to, and die in
their own unrehearsed moment,

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with another good idea perched
on the lip of their ever

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ready tongue.

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