St. Louis poet laureate Michael Castro opened the August 7 working meeting of the Ferguson Commission by reciting two poems on Michael Brown Jr. and police militarization.
“We open every meeting with a devotion for centering purposes,” commission co-chair the Rev. Starsky Wilson told The American. “It is our belief that faith and the arts help to center us on the deeper issues of this work of healing and reconciliation.”
Castro first performed “Double Kwansaba After Michael Brown,” a poetic tribute to the late Ferguson teen written as a kwansaba, a poetic form invented by Eugene B. Redmond that has seven lines, seven words per line, no more than seven letters per word. Then he read the poem “We Need to Talk.”
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DOUBLE KWANSABA AFTER MICHAEL BROWN
By Michael Castro
When police are the threat, who’s there
to protect? When walking in the street
can get you busted, shot, or beat
just for being black, talking back, looking
wrong, or looking strong—how can we
really be: a viable city, where people
can live in harmony? a free country?
With tanks in the street, who or
what do they defeat? No good results,
only bad; fear is what drives us
mad. And fear, the root of hate,
becomes the Police State. Instead of tear
gas, hear us! Let’s relate, for a
start, human to human, heart to heart.
*
WE NEED TO TALK
By Michael Castro
I am more than your idea,
I am tangible, touchable,
a human being like you.
We breathe the same air,
want the same things.
We need to talk.
I am more than my skin tone,
more than the weight I bear,
more than the clothes I wear,
more, even, than my hair,
more than who I sexually prefer.
more than my accented speech,
hear me—we need to talk.
So get out of your closed mind,
It’s claustrophobic in there—thoughts fester
if they can’t expand. Let’s meet.
Get out of your car, come onto the street.
Let’s discover each other on common ground.
We need to talk.
I say, take off your armor,
put away your gun,
don’t just stare into your smart phone.
Hel-lo. Or as they say in the East, Namaste,
& Savati—the god in you honors the god in me.
We need to talk.
*
Castro told The American, “What was interesting in the aftermath is that references to the militarization of police central to the Kwansaba and the phrase ‘We need to talk’ kept recurring in comments from the audience and the commissioners.”
See videos of his performances:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j2ruvzjw6bx393h/video%20aug%2007%2C%2012%2043%2009%20pm.mov?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s3poe9adji7kkwe/video%20aug%2007%2C%2012%2044%2047%20pm.mov?dl=0.
