Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Sulaiman's friend who liked a broken neck

I was looking at another video when the title of this poem caught my eye. Catchy title... Words in it, direct.

Just a backgrounder... this is technically called def poetry. It has its critiques, just as anything that has come to be conceptualized has.

Finally, below is Amir Sulaiman's I Prefer A Broken Neck To Another Broken Heart. Scrolling further down would reveal my favorite lines from it. I admit that I have some contentions with the way the words have been chosen to express the idea as I find it not so consistent with what the title's trying to say. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the lines for their directness.







And it took her some time with herself to discover 
That having love is even more important than having a lover

(...)

She said, "Yeah, I'd like a man to kiss me, I'd like a man to hug me
But he's gotta truly love love before he can truly love me"
I said, "I feel you." She said, "No, you're not feeling me.
We are women bringing up seeds,
Our own sons grow up thinking love is a disease
Ducking and dodging real relationships, and just gonna take what they please
And they treat pregnancy like it's an STD
If the test comes back positive, it's a negative
And they are ghost in the streets,
Drunk in the wind, only a moment is spent and those moments are brief
Our sons' role models are rolling stones unknown or deceased
They figure we can't teach them manhood, so they'll get grown in the streets
So in the cold world they find warmth with the men holding the heat."

(...)

"But when I think about my childhood, I don't think about poverty
I remember how she hugged me, kissed me, taught me, loved me.
And I know you prefer a broken neck to another broken heart
Broken parts that litter the night sky like stars.
But remember, even the beauty of birth leaves its own scars
And know that you will find your home, right where you are
We will find our homes right where we are."

(excerpt of Amir Sulaiman's She'd Prefer A Broken Neck to Another Broken Heart)

0 comments: