"On Confessionalism."
I'll say real quickly, they're both mine, yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
I know which one I've opened.
I mentioned to some students earlier
that I came to poetry, to the serious study of poetry somewhat
late in my young adulthood I guess.
Most people will say they've been writing
since they were 15 or 16.
I was nearly 30 when I started really
taking this thing seriously.
And I started actually though as a rapper
when I was 11 years old, and then did that until I
was about 22 or so.
And that has nothing to do with this poem,
I don't know why I told you that part.
[LAUGHTER]
But I'll say this, I'll say this all that to say that,
before I was a poet, before I was Professor Murillo I
had other lives that I've led.
And this poem comes out of an experience
that I'm not really proud of.
But I think the writing of this poem has helped me process it,
it's called "On Confessionalism."
Not sleepwalking, but waking still, with my hand on a gun,
and the gun in a mouth, and the mouth on the face of a man
on his knees.
Autumn of '89, and I'm standing in a Section 8 apartment parking
lot, pistol cocked, and staring down at this man,
then up into the mug of an old woman staring,
watering the single sad flower to the left of her stoop,
the flower also staring.
My engine idling behind me, a slow moaning bassline
and the bark of a dead rapper nudging me on.
All to say, someone's brokenhearted.
And this man with the gun in his mouth--
this man, who, like me, is really little more than a boy--
may or may not have something to do with it.
May or may not have said a thing or two, betrayed a secret, say,
that walked my love away.
And why not say it--
She adored me.
And I, her.
More than anyone, anything in life,
up to then, and then still, for two decades after.
And, therefore, went for broke.
Blacked out and woke having gutted my piggy
and pawned all my gold to buy what a homeboy said
was a Beretta.
Blacked out and woke, my hand on a gun,
the gun in a mouth, a man, who was really a boy, on his knees.
And because I loved the girl, I actually
paused before I pulled the trigger--
once, twice, three times--
then panicked not just because the gun jammed, but because what
if it hadn't, because who did I almost become, there,
that afternoon, in a Section 8 apartment parking lot,
pistol cocked, with the sad flower staring,
because I knew the girl I loved--
no matter how this all played out--
would never have me back.
Day of damaged ammo, or grime that clogged the chamber.
Day of faulty rods, or springs come loose in my fist.
Day nobody died, so why not Hallelujah?
Say Amen or thank you.
My mother sang for years of God, babes, and fools.
My father, lymph node masses fading from his X-rays,
said surviving one thing means another comes and kills you.
He's dead, and so, I trust him.
Dead, and so I'd wonder, years, about the work I left undone--
boy on his knees, a man now, risen, and likely
plotting his long way back to me.
Fuck it.
I tucked my tool like the movie gangsters do, and jumped back
in my bucket.
Cold enough day to make a young man
weep, afternoon when everything, or nothing, changed forever.
The dead rapper grunted, the bassline
faded, my spirits whispered something from the trees.
I left, then lost the pistol in a storm
drain, somewhere between that life and this.
Left the pistol in a storm drain,
but never got around to wiping away the prints.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.