Category: Spoken Word

“Dinosaurs in the Hood” by Danez Smith

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Spoken Word1 Comment

Let’s make a movie called Dinosaurs in the Hood.
Jurassic Park meets Friday meets The Pursuit of Happyness.
There should be a scene where a little black boy is playing
with a toy dinosaur on the bus, then looks out the window
& sees the T. Rex, because there has to be a T. Rex.

Don’t let Tarantino direct this. In his version, the boy plays
with a gun, the metaphor: black boys toy with their own lives,
the foreshadow to his end, the spitting image of his father.
Fuck that, the kid has a plastic Brontosaurus or Triceratops
& this is his proof of magic or God or Santa. I want a scene

where a cop car gets pooped on by a pterodactyl, a scene
where the corner store turns into a battle ground. Don’t let
the Wayans brothers in this movie. I don’t want any racist shit
about Asian people or overused Latino stereotypes.
This movie is about a neighborhood of royal folks —

children of slaves & immigrants & addicts & exiles — saving their town
from real-ass dinosaurs. I don’t want some cheesy yet progressive
Hmong sexy hot dude hero with a funny yet strong commanding
black girl buddy-cop film. This is not a vehicle for Will Smith
& Sofia Vergara. I want grandmas on the front porch taking out raptors

with guns they hid in walls & under mattresses. I want those little spitty,
screamy dinosaurs. I want Cicely Tyson to make a speech, maybe two.
I want Viola Davis to save the city in the last scene with a black fist afro pick
through the last dinosaur’s long, cold-blood neck. But this can’t be
a black movie. This can’t be a black movie. This movie can’t be dismissed

because of its cast or its audience. This movie can’t be a metaphor
for black people & extinction. This movie can’t be about race.
This movie can’t be about black pain or cause black people pain.
This movie can’t be about a long history of having a long history with hurt.
This movie can’t be about race. Nobody can say nigga in this movie

who can’t say it to my face in public. No chicken jokes in this movie.
No bullets in the heroes. & no one kills the black boy. & no one kills
the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. Besides, the only reason
I want to make this is for that first scene anyway: the little black boy
on the bus with a toy dinosaur, his eyes wide & endless

his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there.

 

Danez Smith performs “Dinosaurs in the Hood”

“Convenience Stores” by Buddy Wakefield

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Spoken Word6 Comments

We both know the smell of a convenience store at 4 a.m. like the backs
of alotta hands.
She sells me trucker crack/Mini-Thins (it’s like Vivarin).
She doesn’t make me feel awkward about it.
She can tell it’s been a long drive and it’s only gonna get longer.
Offers me a free cup of coffee, but I never touch the stuff.
Besides, I’m gonna need more speed than that.

We notice each other’s smiles immediately.
It’s our favorite thing for people to notice—our smiles.
It’s all either one of us has to offer.
You can see it in the way our cheeks stretch out like arms
wanting nothing more than to say, “You are welcome here.”

She—
shows brittle nicotine teeth with spaces between each one.
Her fingers are bony, there’s no rings on’m, and she’d love to get’er nails
done someday.
One time she had’er hair fixed.
They took out the grease, made it real big on top, and feathered it.
She likes it like that.
She’ll never be fully informed on some things just like I will never understand
who really buys Moon Pies, or those rolling, wrinkled, dried-up sausages.
But then again, she’s been here a lot longer than me.
She’s seen everything
from men who grow dread locks out of their top lips
to children who look like cigarettes.

I give’er my money.
I wait for my change.
But I feel like there’s something more happening here.

I feel—
like a warm mop bucket and dingy tiles that’ll never come clean.
I feel like these freezers cannot be re-stocked often enough.
I feel like trash cans of candy wrappers
with soda pop dripping down the wrong side of the plastic.
I feel like everything just got computerized.
I feel like she was raised to say a LOT of stupid things about a color.
And I feel like if I were to identify myself as gay—
this conversation would stop.

It’s what I do.
I feel.
I get scared sometimes.
And I drive.

…But in 1 minute and 48 seconds I’m gonna walk outta here with a full tank of
gas, a bottle of Mini-Thins, and a pint of milk while there’s a woman still
trapped behind a formican counter somewhere in North Dakota who says she
wants nothing more than to hear my whole story, all 92,775 miles of it.

I can feel it though, y’all, she’s heard more opinions and trucker small talk than
Santa Claus has made kids happy, so I only find the nerve to tell’er the good
parts, that she’s the kindest thing to happen since Burlington, VT, and I wanna
leave it at that because men—who are not smart—have taken it farther, have
cradled her up like a nutcracker and made her feel as warm as a high school education
on the dusty back road, or a beer, in a coozy.

I feel like she’s been waiting here a long time for the one who’ll come 2-steppin’
through that door on 18 wheels without makin’er feel like it’s her job to
sweep up the nutshells alone when she’s done been cracked again, who won’t
tempt her to suck the wedding ring off his dick, but will show her— simply—
LOVE.

She doesn’t need me or any other man but she doesn’t know that either, and I’m
just hopin’ like crazy she doesn’t think I’m the one because the only time I’ll
ever see North Dakota again is in a Van Morrison song late (LATE) at night, I
promise.

Y’all, I feel like she’s 37 years old wearing 51 (badly), dying inside (like certain
kinds of dances around fires) to speak through you, a forest, if you weren’t so
taken with sparks.

But she was never given those words.
She has not been told she can definitely change the world.
She knows some folks do
but not in convenience stores
and NOT with lottery tickets
so
I finally ask’er what I’ve been feelin’ the entire time I’ve been standin’ there

still
gettin’ scared like I do sometimes
really (REALLY) ready to drive
I ask,

“Is this it for you?
Is this all you’ll ever do?”

Her smile
collapsed.

That tightly strapped-in pasty skin
went loose.

Her heart
fell crooked.

She said (not knowin’ my real name),
“I can tell, buddy, by the Mini Thins and the way ya drive—

we’re both taken with novelty.

We’ve both believed in mean gods.

We both spend our money on things that break too easily like…

people.

And I can tell
you think you’ve had it rough
so especially you should know…

It’s what I do,
I dream.
I get high sometimes.
And I’m gonna roll outta here one day.

I just might not get to drive.”

–from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
Tribute to Slam Poetry

“Love Poem Medley” by Rudy Francisco

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Spoken Word2 Comments

Love Poem Medley

by Rudy Francisco

I want you to bite my lip until I can no longer speak
And then suck my ex girlfriend’s name out of my mouth just to make sure she never comes up in our conversations.
I’m going to be honest, I’m not really a love poet
In fact, every time I try to write about love my hands cramp… just to show me how painful love can be.
And sometimes my pencils break, just to prove to me that every now and then love takes a little more work than you planned
See I heard that love is blind so, I write all my poems in Braille
And my poems are never actually finished because true love is endless.
I always believed that real love is kind of like a super model before she’s air brushed;
It’s pure and imperfect, just the way that God intended.
See I’m going to be honest, I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love I swear that my first poem…
It would be about you.

About how I loved you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike: Scared
But reckless with no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you.
You see, I’m not really a love poet
But if I was I’d write about how I see your face in every cloud and your reflection in every window
You see I’ve written like a million poems hoping that somehow maybe someway you’ll jump out of the page and be closer to me
Because if you were here, right now
I would massage your back until your skin sings songs that your lips don’t even know the words to.

Until your heartbeat sounds like my last name and you smile like the Pacific ocean
I want to drink the sunlight in your skin.
If I was a love poet
I’d write about how you have the audacity to be beautiful
Even on days when everything around you is ugly
You see I’d write about your eyelashes and how they are like violin strings that play symphonies every time you blink.

If I was a love poet
I’d write about how I melt in front of you like an ice sculpture
Every time I hear the vibration in your voice so whenever I see your name on the caller ID my heart
It plays hop scotch inside of my chest.
Yo it climbs on to my ribs like monkey bars and I feel like a child all over again.
I know this sounds strange but every now and then I pray that God somehow turns you back into one of my ribs…
Just so that I would never have to spend an entire day without you.

I swear, I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love
My first poem it would be about you
And after all of that she was like, so how do you feel about me?
And I said, put it like this:
I want to be your ex boyfriend’s stunt man. I want to do everything that he never had the courage to do like… trust you.
I swear that when our lips touch I can taste the next sixty years of my life.
And some days I want to swallow stacks of your pictures just so you can be a part of me for a little bit longer.
If I could I would sample your smile and then I would let my heart beat
Do the bass line, we would create the greatest love song of all time
Whenever, we stand next to each other, love I was the only one made for you and you can be at last my Etta James
I’ll be oh child when you’re in pain or you could be candy coated drops of rain
Even though it never rains in Southern California
And together, we could be music.

And when my friends ask if you’re my girlfriend
I’ll say no.
She is my musician
And me… I’m her favorite song.

~ “Love Poem Medley” by Rudy Francisco, available on Scotch Tape [EP]

“Bone Marrow” by Tara Hardy

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Spoken Word5 Comments

You will be standing in the market, sorting through avocados when the band Kansas “Dust in the Wind” will come pumping through the ceiling, and you’ll think “Jesus…this song is gonna out live me”.

There are few things that getting really sick illuminates:

One. Dieting? Is ridiculous. The way you look is beside the point, the biggest you bring to any room is your heart.

Two. You will ask anyone for money. Will get on your knees to beg your enemy for help and because you know that, way down under all that animosity, is a deep and abiding love, for why else would she hate you with such loyalty?

Three. Things that used to taste bitter suddenly turn to maple sugar in your mouth; what you wouldn’t give for another year to grieve that man you thoughtyou loved more than your own bone marrow.

Four. Suddenly, everything will be so beautiful. The halfhearted sunset, the rotting leaves, the way a rind hugs a lime, your own age spots—what you wouldn’t do to earn more of them.

Five. Yes, you will drink liquid seaweed. You’d stand on your head in a mini-skirt wearing no underpants in front of your ex’s new girlfriend if you thought it would make a difference but you won’t—not ever—be the same again. This is neither good nor bad, it just is, and, anyway, too much suffering is caused by trying to hold onto things. There goes your youth, there goes your lover, there goes your health, your wealth, your beauty, all of them useful when they werearound but there are other tools with which to cherish yourself now.

Six. The first thing you give up is the means of comforting yourself with thoughts of suicide.

Seven. The second thing you give up is pride. And as you do, the world will come rushing forward. It is fucking hard to ask for help, but if you don’t, you willnever know how much you matter, or the fact that the only person who didn’tlove you enough is huddled inside your skin.

Eight.Your skin – Your skin is the biggest gift you were ever given. When the doctors first said I might die—soon—what surprised me is that I didn’t wish I had written more poems, or even told people I loved them, because if I love you, you know! What I wished is that I’d seen more of the world. Let it’s salt stick to me. I’ve spent so much time in my head and  in my heart that I forgot to live in my body! Maybe that’s why she’s in trouble now. I have been obsessed with achieving immortality through poetry. But when I was told in no uncertain terms that this rickety container has an actual expiration date, I knew that immortality is bullshit! So I left that hospital with a horse’s dose of right fucking now. We don’t get to take anything with us! And anything we leave behind is not one foot still in life because once we are dust we are literally for the wind. So on my agenda, for whatever time I haveleft, is joy.

Because number nine. Anticipatory grief is absurd. When I’m dead, I won’t behere to miss anything, and engaging in premising seems like an indulgence. It’s not that there isn’t pleasure in weeping—why else would we do it so much?!—but I’ve got oceans to float, I’ve got lava to peep, I’ve got a balcony in the south of France upon which to slow dance with a lover who I love down to the spaces between your eye-lashes! Poems will happen because that is how I process life, but I will no longer mistake them for living! If there is any advice I would have to give to my formerly non-sick self, or maybe you, would be this:

Eat the avocados. Love yourself down to the marrow and out past the rind. Make enemies out of good people who will hate you with their whole hearts, make it mutual and unconditional and this way you will never be alone with love. I don’t want to finite, but the fact that we are is what makes even theterror exquisite! So step out from behind your walls, let the world rush forward—rise to meet it! Turn your precious attention towards God’s most tangible gift, this physical world and while you’ve still got the chance let your beloved skin salt in the wind.

Tara Hardy, “Bone Marrow”

“A Struggling Artist’s Guide to Retail” by Omar Holmon & Brian Dillon

On By JennieIn Poetry, Spoken Word, Video

~Omar “Ion” Holmon and Brian “Omni” Dillon