I'm not sure if it's my critical gender studies class or just my complete lack of concentration, but I've been looking through def poetry jam stuff tonight. This girl, is incredible. After finishing some bell hooks, this particular poem is quite perfect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQOmyebFVV8&NR=1
What's cool, is that it's igniting the same thing in me bright eyes, rilo kiley, or dashboard did 4 or so years ago. I think spoken word is bitchin' in theory, but some of the time it's hard for me to pay full attention. For her though, it's so passionate and eloquent that it demands my admiration in full.
some more notables-
If only out of Vanity
"I want to be the girl your parents will use as a bad example of a lady.
I want to be the dyke who likes to fuck men.
I want to be the politician who never lies.
I want to be the girl who never ever cries.
I want to go down in history in a chapter marked miscellaneous because the author could find no other way to categorize me
in a world when classification is key.
I want to erase the straight lines so I can be free."
Speech @ The Gay Games VII
"amidst the new fangled fallacies
of sexual and racial freedom for all
these under-informed
self-congratulating
pseudo-intellectual utterances
reflect how apolitical the left has become
I don’t know why
but the term lesbian just seems so
confrontational to me
why can’t you people just say you date
other people?
Again I say nothing
tongue and courage tied with fear
I am at once livid
ashamed and paralyzed
by the neo-conservatism
breeding malicious amongst us
Gay
Lesbian
Bisexual
Transgender
Ally
Questioning
Two spirit
Non-gender conforming—every year we add a new letter
our community is happily expanding beyond the scope
of the dream stonewall sparked within us
I become more afraid to say black
or lesbian
or woman—everyday"
"if the tragedy does not immediately impact you
you don’t give a fuck
offer a social ladder to those of us inclined to climb
and watch the bottom of a movement fall out
a revolution once pregnant with expectation
flounders
without direction the privileged and the plundered
grow listless
apathetic and individualistic no one knows
where to vote
or what to vote for anymore
have begun to look like the ones who used to burn crosses"
