It's a lot more y'all in here than when I sat down.
First of all, thank you all for coming out tonight.
Thank you to Tyler, to Diana, to the entire team
at U of A and Haymarket, to Vanessa and Roque,
and all of the poets that I got to be in this anthology with.
It is a huge honor.
It's a great honor of my life to be here with you all today.
And timing-- timing is always divine.
Oh, I also want to thank Amy and Jean, directors and producers
of those films that we just saw.
They were great people to work with, I loved them.
I had all this stuff that I wanted to say,
and all these things are just on my mind.
This project, like Diana said, it's always been close,
but it seems to be getting closer and closer
as time goes on.
It's like living in me.
A close brother of mine has been incarcerated
for 17 years, almost 18 years now, for a crime
that he couldn't even have been in the place to commit--
prosecutorial misconduct.
We all know how that goes, but I want to take this moment
to lift up Ricky Slaughter--
free Ricky Slaughter.
May he find justice.
And I also am, today, thinking about Big U,
who's been in the news?
I don't know, some of you might have seen,
but as a person who is just being alive
has made me a fugitive, right?
Black people in this country have always been illegal,
in some way or another.
And it's very clear that Black and Brown folks alike,
as we try to collect each other and protect each other,
there will always be forces to intervene and to try
to disrupt that effort.
And so I lift up Big U's name, as well as
a person who has done nothing but try to lift the community
and stop the cycle of gang violence in Los Angeles,
and try to educate people about how the Crips came to be.
They were born because the Black Panthers
were killed on national TV.
Malcolm X and Martin were taken from us,
and so a group of people decided that we should protect
ourselves, and that the people here
would never protect us if we didn't stand up for each other.
And if y'all don't know, that's actually how the Crips came
to be.
So I'm going to read this poem first.
It's not actually in the collection.
On Crip.
On certain corners, cars circle ceremoniously,
And couriers carry cake to circumvent cases.
Classics and coupes consulate crenshaw carry Compton.
Cobalt, chrysanthemums, candles and champagne
Celebrate cherished companions.
Because comrades collaborated to counter crooked cops
And corrupt civic commanders cannibalizing our cities,
Coloring us cancers.
Courts, Congress, and CEOs conspired
To confine citizens in coffins and cells
Like crack was contagious.
Churches cried, considering their children,
The condition of their classrooms.
Caught in a cruel, ceaseless cycle of crisis
Crip clenched circumstance,
Crip cracked the cement, chasing chicken and change
in California,
That concert of calamities.
Crip cultivated the concrete,
Co-created a community of cousins,
Coalition cum covenant,
Connected by the crimson chronicle of cotton.
The collective choice to chase control
coverless in the center of chaos.
Curiously, commentary censors constructive critiques,
Challenging common conversations about the culture of Crippin,
Contrary to contextless caricatures
of combat and consumption.
See notes-- Chucks and chunky Cuban chains,
Cartoonish canards of Capo.
See Joaquin and Cortez's cognac, cocaine, and caskets.
The cold calls for care, coordination, courage.
Character is critical.
It's criminal how Crip been criminalized and commodified.
Caliban of Calabasas, conscious of the cosmos's complexity,
Capitalism's chokehold and its charter,
The clock's cold, constant counting,
and the cramped capaciousness of county.
Crip crafted a coastline,
A cartography of chances for the chronically cut off credit list,
Convicted and concurrent, constrained like chattel,
Clamoring for a cathartic conflict,
Coupled to a calm chapter,
A clean crib to chill in, consistent checks, compassion
A cure for the cancer of civility.
Cause came correct.
Clutch Curry, chorus and champion,
Clear-sighted Caesar with cloth, Cerulean crown,
Confident, cunning, cutthroat for the conclusion of combat.
Crumpled a Constitution Crip cremate this colony.
Thank you.