WEBVTT

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"On Confessionalism."

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I'll say real quickly,
they're both mine, yeah.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I know which one I've opened.

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I mentioned to some
students earlier

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that I came to poetry, to the
serious study of poetry somewhat

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late in my young
adulthood I guess.

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Most people will say
they've been writing

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since they were 15 or 16.

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I was nearly 30 when
I started really

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taking this thing seriously.

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And I started actually
though as a rapper

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when I was 11 years old,
and then did that until I

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was about 22 or so.

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And that has nothing
to do with this poem,

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I don't know why I
told you that part.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But I'll say this, I'll say
this all that to say that,

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before I was a poet, before
I was Professor Murillo I

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had other lives that I've led.

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And this poem comes
out of an experience

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that I'm not really proud of.

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But I think the writing of this
poem has helped me process it,

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it's called "On
Confessionalism."

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Not sleepwalking, but waking
still, with my hand on a gun,

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and the gun in a mouth, and
the mouth on the face of a man

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on his knees.

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Autumn of '89, and I'm standing
in a Section 8 apartment parking

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lot, pistol cocked, and
staring down at this man,

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then up into the mug of
an old woman staring,

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watering the single sad flower
to the left of her stoop,

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the flower also staring.

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My engine idling behind
me, a slow moaning bassline

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and the bark of a dead
rapper nudging me on.

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All to say, someone's
brokenhearted.

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And this man with the
gun in his mouth--

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this man, who, like me, is
really little more than a boy--

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may or may not have
something to do with it.

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May or may not have said a thing
or two, betrayed a secret, say,

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that walked my love away.

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And why not say it--

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She adored me.

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And I, her.

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More than anyone,
anything in life,

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up to then, and then still,
for two decades after.

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And, therefore, went for broke.

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Blacked out and woke
having gutted my piggy

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and pawned all my gold to
buy what a homeboy said

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was a Beretta.

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Blacked out and woke,
my hand on a gun,

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the gun in a mouth, a man, who
was really a boy, on his knees.

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And because I loved
the girl, I actually

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paused before I
pulled the trigger--

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once, twice, three times--

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then panicked not just because
the gun jammed, but because what

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if it hadn't, because who
did I almost become, there,

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that afternoon, in a Section
8 apartment parking lot,

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pistol cocked, with
the sad flower staring,

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because I knew
the girl I loved--

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no matter how this
all played out--

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would never have me back.

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Day of damaged ammo, or grime
that clogged the chamber.

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Day of faulty rods, or
springs come loose in my fist.

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Day nobody died, so
why not Hallelujah?

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Say Amen or thank you.

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My mother sang for years
of God, babes, and fools.

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My father, lymph node masses
fading from his X-rays,

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said surviving one thing means
another comes and kills you.

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He's dead, and so, I trust him.

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Dead, and so I'd wonder, years,
about the work I left undone--

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boy on his knees, a man
now, risen, and likely

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plotting his long
way back to me.

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Fuck it.

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I tucked my tool like the movie
gangsters do, and jumped back

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in my bucket.

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Cold enough day to
make a young man

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weep, afternoon when everything,
or nothing, changed forever.

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The dead rapper
grunted, the bassline

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faded, my spirits whispered
something from the trees.

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I left, then lost
the pistol in a storm

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drain, somewhere between
that life and this.

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Left the pistol
in a storm drain,

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but never got around to
wiping away the prints.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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