Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
A pen and a folded piece of paper.
My thoughts and ideas; I'm not a writer, I'm a painter
who sprinkles ink and watches it gallop across a thin piece of wood.
I write letters addressed to horses who ballet in the sea
and to cherubim who were once blind but now see.
My mind gets dizzy on a merry-go-round of images
as it makes love to the curvaceous figure
of a pen.
It breathes, cuts and bleeds.
Words bring form to the mess that's inside my mind.
If you were to cut open my brain with a ruler,
measure the accountless amusement parks
where the theme of joy passes through the teeth of lovers
who are dancing on the tails of shooting stars,
you would land on unexplored galaxies inside my stomach
where the residue of pain and joy collide.
Poetry to me is something of my therapeutic fingers
walking down the ribs of a goddess
as if I was playing Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata."
When I write, I can hear the hum of my own words
lifting from a paper's soul.
It sounds like an upside down choir of willow trees.
It's crazy but it rings so beautiful to me.
A dyslexic is here to challenge you on the importance of words.
At the early age of four,
I was diagnosed with a learning disability
titled, "an auditory processing learning deficit."
Soon after that, my mother and I
went to the private and public schools, looking for aid.
And instead, my mother and I were told
that I was never going to get above a sixth-grade learning level,
in anything.
My mother, in her heroic self, turned to me and said,
"We're going to do better than that."
My learning disability can be described in a couple of sentences.
I can see information and hear correctly.
But where the clutter happens is when the information goes into my mind
and then comes back out of me.
So, that's where the words are flip-flopped;
that's where the numbers are switched;
that's when a sentence and a paragraph was removed.
So you can imagine that anything
that had to do with learning, reading, spelling, vocabulary
were extremely difficult for me.
My learning disability left me feeling alone and alien -
kind of like E.T. with no Eliott.
Give you an example of what this looked like:
One Sunday morning going to Sunday school,
and there's a routine that we did where we sat in a circle
and then we all started taking turns
reading a sentence or a paragraph in the Bible.
And as it came to my turn, I stepped out in courage and tried to read
but was soon made fun of because I didn't recognize a common word.
The following week, the same routine happened,
but this time, when two people were two turns away,
I excused myself to the bathroom and hid for fifteen minutes with my shame.
I needed to have an outlet for this type of pain,
and it was soccer.
Soccer was my avenue of where I found success,
where I found a skillI that I was good at.
And soccer led me to play in collegiate environments
and also led me to play in professional environments
in Brazil, Holland, Germany and Argentina.
It even led me to play here in Chattanooga,
with Chattanooga's Football Club.
Another image so that you guys can grasp where I'm coming from:
In ninth grade, a freshman in highschool,
and of all of our awkwardness
trying to figure out what status we're going to be a part of
or, maybe, what group we're going to be in or what sport we will, or will not, play,
I had a reading level, spelling, vocabulary and learning level
of a third-grader.
A freshman in high school -
third grade.
But,
but ...
by the time I graduated high school, I was at grade level.
This is an accomplishment I never had until then.
That means I climbed nine years of education in three years.
So, what I want to tell you is along that journey,
I had to wrestle with language
where other people who don't have a learning disability probably have not.
And standing here before you, I'm a college graduate
with a communication degree.
(Laughter)
A dyslexic poet.
And I'm here to tell you - and take it from me
because I've wrestled with words
because I never always had them -
that words are crucial to the human being experience.
They are essential to who we are
but what I'm sad to say is that the words that we use,
our definitions, are depleting and being lost.
Words are important and let me tell you why.
Words describe our philosophies;
words are a lot more than just letters and sounds combined.
They tell somebody, or they communicate to somebody,
things that we love or hate.
They communicate the sorrows or the joys that we're walking through.
But today, because of our laziness and the influence of culture,
we have come to a place where this gift of language and words is not cherished.
What I want to do is I am going to use two examples
that will back up what I'm saying.
The two examples are "love" and "cool."
Love seems to be a word that has been around since the beginning,
and it seems, in the absence or the presence of love,
people are evaluating if their life has meaning or value.
And someone of a wordsmith and a craftsman of words,
Shakespeare,
decides to write a poem and a story that declares this love:
"Romeo and Juliet,"
a story where we see that love is so deep and so important
that one is willing to die for it;
that one is willing to be neglected by his family and friends for it;
that love seems to be something that I'm willing to sacrifice my life for it.
But today, just the cultural idea of "I heart you."
This happens in our text messages, in our social media,
even in conversation and advertisements,
this does not suffice the depths of what love looks like.
But it influences us so much
that we can say "I love my wife" and "I love pizza" in the same day.
And this is terrible.
Because loving a human being versus an inanimate object
can't be the same.
Love is deeper than that.
So I would tell you that if we don't know how to talk about love,
or even use love correctly,
then I would suggest that we don't know how to love anymore.
The second word I want to use is "cool."
"Cool," I would tell you,
is the worst word in our working vocabulary today.
"Cool" is a word that seems to be super, super influential.
I'd argue it's probably one of the most powerful philosophies of today,
and I'm going to tell you why.
Because no matter what age you are, it's impacting you.
I see it, when I substitute teach, that one who thinks he has it
or other people who tell him he has it -
bully.
And in the absence of cool, people tell him, "you don't have it" -
bullied.
This is an example where the word "cool" actually affects people's lives.
So, don't tell me that words don't influence or affect our lives.
What I would also say, as another good example,
is that when the parents, nowadays, are more interested in being cool
than rather being a parent;
so when they communicate with their kids, they're looking for that type of response.
And let's do the reverse: so that a child,
when they interact with their parent when their friends are around,
they have no problem being disrespectful or rude to their parents,
for the sake of cool.
This can't be it.
Words are something we are supposed to be treasuring,
taking care of them,
but I want to acknowledge that these words do affect our lives.
What I want to do also now, here,
is I want to share another poem that I've written
that explains this struggle I've had
with when I start going down the words that I use
or the words that I'm seeing other people use.
I start asking, "What does this stuff mean?"
I'm going to show you that it does affect my life
and the life I'm seeing around me.
This poem is called, "Screaming,"
and this is written in the art form of spoken word.
All of my fellow brothers and sisters of this human race,
we run with the unison that seems to be overlooked
like a nerd getting picked for basketball.
The gifts of life are assessed by external judgments,
and that pisses me off because it's shallow.
It's shallow like a kiddie pool full of teenagers
reading magazines on how to judge a man by the size of his dick.
Manhood has stooped to a level
where pornographic influence has given our culture the means
to not only measure a man's ability to please a woman,
but that laying down your preferences is the furthest from love.
Love, at its truest state, is beyond cultural influence.
I can see that life hasn't shocked you enough,
so would you oblige me
by jumping into a fish tank full of vegetating piranhas
who are half socket and half fork?
In the hands of a child who wants to see beauty recovered from pain and rejection,
like the rejection he felt after telling the girl in kindergarten
that flowers are earth stars.
Her words came like piercing poison to a life of Peter Pan
as she said, "Grow up.
Flowers are not burning gas."
We often act in the same manner by killing off the power of imagination.
Growing up is so popular, it fast-tracks 10-year-old girls
to find love in a bar full of shallow shotglasses,
introducing their new friends, Vanity and Egotism,
handing out cigarettes like TNT.
Lighten up, Mr. Poet, lighten up, man.
Don't take life too seriously.
But today, being anything close to a child-like faith
is stupid and not worth entertaining.
And the culture of today are forming our kin
with the ideas that it's okay to grow up in a single-parent home;
it's okay to start expecting your parents not to be there for you.
Demand more from everyone around you and never be pleased.
Continually complain.
Don't shovel this off of your lawn like it's some shit that doesn't apply to you.
If you will google the definition of entitlement,
you might see that it starts with your name.
Selfishness is nowadays a synonym for drive.
We have consumed and digested a beast that we are always our first priority,
and I see it now - we are so quick to place haters
as a stonger motivator than lovers.
I see it now - we are so quick to place value on how celebrities eat
and what they do to their bodies,
rather than exercising the amazing therapy of thinking well.
And I'm not talking about an app,
I'm talking about words being a place to expand the mind,
like a rubber band ready to pop a balloon and trapping curiousity.
So, free yourself from the chains of cultural definitions.
And here's why:
Do you even know what you are saying when you sing "I love you"?
Or when you plead "forgive me"?
Rescue yourself from being boring.
Faith and trust is all you need to fly, so where are your wings?
I'm tired of thinking that this world has too much power.
I'm tired of not speaking up.
Words can rescue us from the excuse of "life goes on";
it seems redundant like a metronome.
Shut up and say something; life's a song.
I'm tired of doubting God.
I'm sick and tired of seeing men and women abuse this amazing thing we call grace.
And I'm saddened to see that the church has been more influenced than influential.
And I can say this with zeal
because I've seen myself do every little disgusting thing I've mentioned.
My pride is something I can't keep my arms around;
it will always be the death who is sucking my life away.
My pride seems to look like a brush of Photoshop
altering the appearance of humility's smile.
But the whole time, I'm found rotting
behind a curtain of a drama that we call life.
I'm a starving man who has bread right in front of him,
but I'm still complaining I haven't eaten at Chik-fil-A.
The inner parts of all humanity cannot argue with me
that pride has laid its name on the chest of our motives;
that we are the best at being fictionally strong
and I've misread what my eyes are writing,
please tell me.
I'm not afraid of correction,
but I do think desperation is necessary to show us that humans,
we are a hot mess
and that we need something else.
And we need someone else, and maybe that someone is Yahweh.
We need Yahweh like a meth-head needs fire,
like a poet needs the page,
like a sinner needs your gracious father
to send forgiveness in a package we would never open on our own will.
This is where helplessness finds it knees as a foundation for life,
that submission is giving life to those who acknowledge weakness
is divine power.
I use this poem to illustrate to you
that words do affect our worlds.
And if you are seeing what I am suggesting:
that there's a problem,
do you care enough
to save it?
What words do you see that need to be resurrected?
So my question, what now?
Remember, a dyslexic poet told you today
that words are crucial to the human being,
that they are essential to who we are,
and that we are held responsible for these words losing their definitions.
But,
but,
we can also be the heroes of this story as well.
Thank you so much.
(Applause)