WEBVTT

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When I was doing the research
for this volume here called

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"African-American Literature,"
which is a textbook,

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which first time I've done
anything like that came out last

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year and seems to
be doing quite well.

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I made a discovery.

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I don't know how this had eluded
me before some of you out there

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probably already know this.

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But I found out
that the first ship

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bringing in a commercial load
of slaves in the Boston Harbor,

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when the slave-- that kicked
off the American slave trade

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and North American slave trade
in 1638 was named "Desire."

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And I was-- poet runs
across something like that

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and you say, well, I have to.

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I got to write
something about that.

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And I was looking for
an epigraph to frame it

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and I couldn't
find one, so I had

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to quote myself from the
introduction to that book

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African-American Literature.

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Says, quote: "As for the New
England slave trade, which

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along with rum and opium
turned the kind of get

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rich quick profits in its
day that international drug

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trafficking does now--

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that industry would not
be launched until 1638,

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when the first Africans arrived
in Boston on the slave ship

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Desire."

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The Slave Ship Desire.

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Human cargo is what
we're talking here,

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a boat piled high,
groaning in fact

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beneath the strain of
expectation factored in.

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On board, stuff hogged up
space turned soon to be.

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Straight ahead and bright
the salt sweet taste

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of sweat and sacrifice,
you couldn't spit it out.

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Like opium, gold,
and rum, like land

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enough to grow bigger eyes
than food gone belly up,

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the money's there.

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Like sugar or tobacco,
crack cash crops then

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as now like coal,
September wheat, October

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cocoa like unlit pork bellies,
like Jesus crossed with sex

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and shoot em ups like Anglo,
Franco, Banco American futures.

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Desire, the boat, the
streetcars still to come.

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Where human beings
walk, cross roads

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get jammed, get all tied up.

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Whoever blocks escape
routes gets locked in too.

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No exit signs shine just fine
in the dark and anger glows.

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Picture a boat that crowds
you, oversize a load of woe

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there is no way around, a
slave ship named "Desire."

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