By Button Poetry
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Damien McClendon, performing at Rustbelt 2019 in St. Louis, MO.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:06
For Black boys from the hood who rollerblade,
00:09
like the world ain’t already trying to catch us slipping,
00:12
prefer us a body in a hole,
00:15
and never whole in our bodies.
00:17
I took hold of my first pair from grandma’s hands,
00:19
a garage sale gift of grace.
00:21
She knew her grandson was on a different kind of grind,
00:25
but she never made me apologize for it.
00:27
So to all my niggers who wear blades on their feet,
00:30
like the world don’t look at us and see weapons already.
00:33
I was a child conceived in rehab.
00:36
Six years later, my mother taught me how to skate in a parking lot
00:39
because ain’t no skate parks in the hood.
00:40
I guess you can say my mama broke a crack pipe and built a half-pipe,
00:45
figured her son wouldn’t go to prison from getting high this way.
00:49
Glad she didn’t see me get pulled over on my rollerblades.
00:52
Senior year at college, four white officers pull up two black cars
00:55
and tell me I can’t skate here in the street,
00:58
where I have skated since before I had any scars.
01:01
Now, the gravel has so much of my flesh and blood,
01:05
we family at this point.
01:06
Ain’t no skate parks in the hood,
01:08
but the police pulled me over for skating in the street.
01:10
Now, even this simple joy feels like something I gotta fight for.
01:14
Like every time I crack a smile, I break a law.
01:17
But I am rebellious like that.
01:19
We skaters who do liberate architecture
01:22
will repurpose it playground,
01:24
grind the face of any gentrified structure
01:27
and scrape our well-oiled skates against its smoothest tooth.
01:31
If we are to be swallowed anyway,
01:34
might as well shred the windpipe,
01:36
might as well have some fun in this heartless stomach.
01:40
Mama didn’t teach me to skate for nothing.
01:42
My family of smoke.
01:44
We do not inhale enough heirloom,
01:46
but my mama, she handed down joy
01:48
like it had been in our family for generations,
01:50
and we too often reminded of the trauma.
01:53
We inherit like a curse,
01:54
but never let ourselves forget that the joy is even more prolific.
01:58
It is 1950,
02:00
and my great grandmother
02:01
is giving the girl who will become my grandmother
02:03
her first pair of skates.
02:05
It is 1950, and my great grandmother is giving
02:08
the boy she does not know will become her great grandson
02:11
one of his greatest smiles.
02:12
It is 2016, and my mother is giving my son a gift of grace.
02:18
Nile was skating before he had running
02:20
all the way down pat.
02:22
and I be a proud father amazed.
02:24
Can’t even lace mines up without him running to get his,
02:28
like he wants to be just like his daddy.
02:30
And that is something I can’t relate to,
02:32
but I’ve always wanted to give my children what I didn’t have.
02:35
So we’d take a dead beat and turn him into music.
02:38
Nile and I can skate too,
02:40
and our living room don’t have no furniture,
02:42
but we still get our life there,
02:45
repurpose all this intergenerational joy on wheels.
02:49
And Nile trips and falls and cracks up the earth in his laugh,
02:53
calls out the ancestors,
02:55
and we all rejoice at how alive and beautiful we are,
02:59
and still becoming.
03:01
(applause and cheers)
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
The post Damien McClendon – Rollerblade [Video] appeared first on The Good Men Project.
