By Button Poetry
.
.
Pages Matam, performing at Storytellers VII at Main Street Playhouse in Miami Lakes, FL.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
♪ (singing in a foreign language) ♪
00:32
This is for the days
00:34
when poetry becomes reconstructive surgery
00:37
for a gaping spirit,
00:39
where prayers go where our hands cannot,
00:42
where my black may be the color of reason
00:44
and my name can snap a trigger
00:45
for all of the loved ones who did not come home,
00:49
for all of the times I had to undo the hurt,
00:52
how I became my own church
00:54
and my eyes cried a new religion,
00:56
for all of the times they told me to pray
00:59
instead of at least asking, “Are you okay?”
01:02
for all of the times I had to learn
01:04
how to offer myself back to myself again.
01:07
There will be many of these days
01:09
where you will feel beaten down
01:10
by the weight of your own galaxy,
01:12
like you are a shooting star emptying its clip in the sky
01:16
on a celestial drive-by.
01:17
But can’t nobody tell you how to defy.
01:20
Can’t nobody tell you how to be fly.
01:23
Can’t nobody try to clip your wings
01:26
when you’ve never needed them to leave gravity behind.
01:28
See, this world’s favorite song will try to dance your flesh
01:32
into an illusion,
01:33
but your skin, your skin is made of dreams
01:35
that turn into songs, that turn into laughter,
01:39
that turn into a song.
01:40
So sing, y’all!
01:42
Sing for all of the times they tried to silence your thunderous cry,
01:46
and if they throw you shade, peel back your name,
01:50
and show them how it is a sunrise.
01:52
It is a reason to wake up every morning.
01:54
You are always a reason to wake up every morning,
01:57
because the morning ain’t always been kind.
02:01
The morning ain’t always been faithful.
02:05
But Momma said, “Speak through your actions.”
02:08
She said, “Speak through your art.”
02:11
She said, “You came from me,
02:12
so you’ve been celestial from the start.”
02:15
Know that when this world feels like a flood,
02:18
your tongue can be the ark.
02:20
So learn their streets and their languages,
02:23
but never forget the language of your heart.
02:26
(speaks in a foreign language)
02:35
English is only my fourth language.
02:37
It is the baby of the family.
02:39
It is the one my mouth spoils, favored by default,
02:42
who may one day be sold off by all of its siblings
02:45
in hopes to never return
02:47
because all of my other tongues have grown so jealous.
02:50
In my country,
02:51
in my country of Cameroon,
02:54
we have over 200 dialects.
02:56
That’s over 200 ways to say “love,”
02:59
to say “family,”
03:01
to say “I belong to something that does not want to kill me,
03:04
and does not want to siphon the gold from my flesh
03:07
or the stories from my bones.”
03:09
You know, I was a house once,
03:11
full of stories–
03:13
one for this American dream,
03:16
the other is me still trying to translate the catacomb accents
03:20
of my parents’ tongues when it would say,
03:22
“You have become so American now.”
03:25
I know what they really mean to say
03:27
is deport all of that tribe from your mouth.
03:30
You talk like them now.
03:32
You walk like them now.
03:33
No more of that Yaoundé, Cameroon stuck in my teeth.
03:37
Now, everything tastes like the steps to unbirthing a country,
03:40
which is to say that America has a way of killing everything it comes from.
03:45
A passport can feel like a smooth step death sentence.
03:48
So I learned early
03:51
how to fold myself into a flag,
03:53
how to stitch myself a newly striped name,
03:56
a new set of stars.
03:57
I was always able to pass through customs,
04:00
but my tongue had to stay behind,
04:02
which is to say,
04:04
I remember when I was too black for Africans
04:07
and too African for blacks.
04:08
But all a meaningless story in America.
04:11
My name was thick in chemically enhanced amendments.
04:15
My name was wishing for a white picket flesh
04:17
while living with Section 8 bones,
04:19
which is to say that you can be a house,
04:21
but America has a way of reminding you
04:23
that you’re not a home,
04:24
you’re only the debris, the aftermath,
04:26
the constant reconstruction, the projects.
04:29
They will say that you don’t belong
04:30
in the country that doesn’t even belong to itself.
04:33
But oh, America! I mean, show us your papers.
04:36
I mean, who documented your dream?
04:38
I mean, can the attack dogs still smell the unalienable
04:41
right from my brittle and marginalized skin?
04:43
Because I know,
04:46
I know that the bullet does not care which side of the ocean I am from.
04:51
It will swim through my body all the same.
04:54
It will try to make a home of me
04:56
until my name is but a salted exit wound.
04:59
But I know that my tongue is still patiently awaiting for my return.
05:03
But I wonder if I will only feel like a stranger in my own house,
05:09
which is to say
05:10
that I know that one day I will grow up
05:13
to become a language that is always worth coming home to.
05:17
How are y’all doin’, storytellers?
05:20
(cheers and applause)
05:26
Y’all so beautiful, y’all so beautiful!
—
This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
The post Pages Matam – “The Boy With Many Mouths” appeared first on The Good Men Project.