As I was saying this morning to a wonderful classroom I was in,
I was telling them how much fun poetry is.
And I got the opportunity-- one of the opportunities
I've had since I started writing poetry was
to travel to other countries.
You know how when Americans go to other countries,
they act like they already know everything?
That's why they don't like us.
[CHUCKLES]
So I was in Paris, and people were like,
oh, Paris, we've been there.
I've been there.
And so, when I got there--
and this is a poem about the joy of discovery,
because my girlfriend and I went to the Louvre.
And we were in the Louvre so long that when they closed it,
they had send extra people out to look for those two
crazy colored girls.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, we were reaching across the ropes,
and touching the paintings, and--
[LAUGHTER]
--taking flash photos of stuff that was supposed
to crumble if you took flash.
We didn't care.
It was just wonderful.
It was just so much fun.
And so this is a poem for my friend Patricia Zamora,
and it's called "Doin' the Louvre."
"You're a junkie just like I am.
After we've dumped your husband in the Louvre's cafe
to sip the steaming tea and chew on his poetry,
we're off like schoolgirls, screeching in duet,
dazzled by the bright eternal gasp of ancient things.
We've got no business here, home girl and compañera.
We've got no business closing our mouths
around this sharp, exquisite language,
or savoring the sweet-tongued squeeze of pastries,
shiny cakes, and shaved chocolates.
We're of simpler stock--
city and country dust, collard greens, moon pies,
bullet holes, and basement slow dances.
We are shamelessly American, rough street girls
with rusty knees, the flip side of cocky Parisian wisps
in slim cashmere coats the color of tobacco.
[LAUGHTER]
Girlfriend, you and I are too much scream for this place,
but you're a junkie just like I am.
Too long denied access to official beauty,
we walk these streets with our mouths open
and faces tilted up, swallowing everything, swallowing it
all, much too much scenery and sound
for our thin American throats.
We gawk at cathedrals with their gargoyles bleached
to an eerie snarl by bright flashes of moon,
say goodbye when we mean yes, good morning when
we mean how much, ask for bread when we need the toilet.
[LAUGHTER]
We are amazed that no one is asking for all of this back,
that we are allowed to bask in this city's light.
I can still hear my mama as plain and practical
as a cast iron skillet, child, you
need to stop all that foolishness over there
in some France, where you don't know nothing or nobody.
Ain't no Black folks over there nohow.
[LAUGHTER]
But I know you, old friend, with your bright, burnished tangle
of hair, and deep laugh.
And right now, these halls belong to us.
There are bad girls loose in the Louvre, girls
soft as gunshots, girls nourished and fueled
by silvers, silks, and the stone gaze of Napoleon.
We laugh at the smashed noses of Egyptian rulers,
stare at the tiny mummified feet of a young girl,
mistake Goya for Gauguin, and rub what surfaces we can,
including the marble cocks of towering deities.
[LAUGHTER]
But we say things like, hey, I think I saw that on a postcard
once.
Or, do you know how old this thing is?
[LAUGHTER]
How could the world help but love us?
We would give Venus our arms.
After eight hours, clicking our hungry heels
and snapping illicit flash photos in dark halls brimming
with ancient music, we finally find the Mona Lisa, alone,
caged and antiseptic behind that glass every woman wears.
And we wonder how best to free her,
knowing she's a junkie just like we are.
She longs for our wild voices, our naive, accidental beauty.
She's aching to ditch that frame and skip these hallowed halls
with the home girls, mistake the obscene for the exquisite,
and gaze at unsolved mysteries that just for once
are not her own."
[APPLAUSE]