- I am thrilled to be here
and to share this story of three places
that are near and dear to my heart.
I wanna start with a poem
that is about the place where I grew up,
the Ida B. Wells housing projects.
I was born there, I lived there until I was nine years old,
around the time it was torn down.
I wrote my first book about that place
and about not being able to go back to my childhood.
About how it feels when your friends are able to return to
their childhood homes but all you have is a plain.
This is called "What to do When the Wells
is Turned Into A Facebook Group".
Go to church and pray.
Thank the Lord for finally getting rid
of the police cameras.
Log into your childhood home
and be grateful for thick walls.
Now you can argue in the privacy of a direct message.
Now you can post on the block and not watch your back,
now shorty who said it was popin'
the next time she see you gotta send a friend request.
Aint this the life, a play date
in the comfort of your bedroom.
No more waiting on the front porch of purgatory,
Daddy always shows up when you type in his name.
A vigil is just comments under a digitized obituary,
we are still dying, but in better places.
Shit, if I knew this was the price
I had to pay for permanence,
I would have stopped going outside a long time ago.
Who needs liberation when your prison is comfortable?
Thank you.
(applause)
Thank you guys so much.
The second poem I'm gonna do
is about a place where I just moved,
it's my first apartment, when you move
into your first apartment--
thank you (applause)
When you move into your first apartment,
it's supposed to be a celebration, right?
That's not what it was for my family
because of the location that I moved,
which was weird to me because all my life,
I had grown up moving from place to place in Chicago
and listening to people talk about the neighborhoods
in which I lived in in negative ways
and I just didn't see that
and it was weird for me to move into this new place
that now my family was talking about in this negative way.
This is a poem for 71st and Wabash.
The block, a loose square, packed like sardines,
loose screw people, keep up the pace people,
know a street lights bedtime like a backhand road,
people know parole don't keep the Cartels sleep.
Mom say we're sick for picking a block
with such a backstory, the building shot up last year
before demolition, the uneven foundation of my body
could be swept away by a storm of smoke powder
as I'm left gasping for fair housing rights.
At least I know my neighbors name,
her perm waving a stiff hello from the front porch
or the window of her bedroom where she
watches the building swell fat with broke, young people.
Pockets too thin to notice the
blood waiting to escape my veins.
To rap his set once he hits the street air,
the boy on the corner who could trigger initiation,
the woman with the nice garden who makes sure he won't.
Since I moved here, I walk twice as fast
because of what my family tells me
about this path of Chicago land,
a city caught in the wrong throat.
I walk like I don't know how quickly saliva decomposes,
like I don't know how quickly a mouth can swallow
a whole people before even checking for nutritional value,
before even knowing the blocks name,
all the words that make Park Manor a home.
Thank you.
(cheering and applause)
Thank you guys so much, I have one last poem.
This poem is dedicated to the place
that hopefully we all know so well
and if you are not from here,
hopefully this poem is a great introduction.
It's called I am Windy City
after Jayne Cortez's I am New York City.
I am windy city, here is my
tomato head baton scattered badge in blue.
I got my cousins ears of corn gentrifying in the melting pot
My mouth a mercury lake,
I baptized Jean-Baptiste in a barn fire.
I am windy city of red meat, stuffed yards
of men in factories inside my belly,
a jungle of segregated joints.
Rub my navy pores with the blood of bet-a-dime boys,
making steel and stealing it.
I am windy city of Cabrini Green Giants,
hear my new port throat croak in eight hour work day
a hay market rally in the projects.
Pipe bomb at poor mans pied piper.
I work for no one, I am windy city of bloody gums,
my teeth a collection of patina coated churches.
My famous swirl earrings such a kind
for the rest of the white ass Illinois,
my boys cleanse the white city
with a storm of gunpowder tears.
I am windy city only dressed in white on Valentines
for all my lovers massacred at the hands of Chi-Raq.
A man I don't know who keeps trying to wife me,
Chi-Raq is boo boo the fool and foolish who bool
with peeping toms who have license to strip search.
Chi-Raq turned churches into resale gun stores,
Chi-Raq attracts song serenades sung into the wrong ear,
Chi-Raq city of lost boys under the hood,
Chi-Raq could never take my face value
or royal flush into Chicago river,
my leaning Sears Tower of pizza,
my Heineken and soul food got feet tap dancing bare foot
with my hot-headed friends, my confetti flushed comrades.
Come, break bread with me.
Thank you.
(cheering and applause)