Miles Hodges – Alcatraz of Balloons [Video]

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By Button Poetry

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Miles Hodges, performing for the Strivers Row.

 

Transcript provided by YouTube:

00:04
once upon somewhere
00:09
there was a young man with a mind a bit
00:13
too in romance with lonely and despond
00:17
still learning to straighten
00:20
i write things down for a living
00:25
i spend my days either pissed off at
00:27
gravity or amazed at the fact that seven
00:30
billion people
00:31
are breathing as we speak i do things
00:33
like this and you call me
00:35
an artist you say
00:38
of sorts i should be a musician of the
00:41
heart but you don’t know me or the hells
00:43
in god if you did and the truth is
00:46
i’ve been scared to tell the other side
00:48
of the story
00:49
the story of the engine behind all this
00:52
now
00:53
my mama says all it takes is
00:56
one look at the kid and you can tell
00:58
i’ve been a rose tongued wordsmith since
01:00
birth but for real for real i didn’t
01:03
start bleeding ink until
01:05
circa late junior high around the time
01:08
back seats on school field trips
01:10
started getting awesome parentless cribs
01:12
were all that we lived for and pegs on
01:14
the bike
01:15
could get all three of us home i i i
01:18
grew up playing ball
01:19
but when puberty made it very clear i
01:21
would in fact
01:22
never start point guard for the knicks
01:27
i traded in my nikes to ramble about
01:30
flowers and
01:31
pretty girls and
01:33
[Applause]
01:35
it was different back then back when it
01:38
was
01:38
just that pen in my teenage rebellion
01:41
every stage
01:42
seemed like a mountain and every poem
01:44
opened its own alcatraz of balloons
01:47
by high school things in my rib cage
01:49
began demanding refuge and it wasn’t
01:51
just
01:52
writing anymore they weren’t just poems
01:54
it was my best proof of god a
01:56
bed for my misunderstood a glimpse of
01:58
sin
01:59
and salvation in the same second what
02:02
were once journals were now holy purges
02:04
and i learned
02:05
just how real a knight could get
02:07
with some paper
02:08
and some secrets when i was 17
02:12
when i was 17 i wrote harlem
02:17
it was for you you with the basketball
02:20
hoop and foul line for a father
02:22
back pocket journal for a mother and
02:24
summer day to compare the rest of your
02:26
life again split that
02:28
down in dc for bnv russell simmons
02:31
took it and put it on tv like look at
02:33
the little white with
02:35
slave master blood in his veins look how
02:38
pretty his
02:38
pain is million views on youtube i got
02:43
death threats
02:45
dudes from the hood were like come to my
02:48
block
02:48
let me find out how much you really know
02:51
and this
02:51
one guy from ohio said imma kill you mud
02:54
blood
02:55
you in that father of yours
02:57
nothing happened of course a year later
02:59
or so
02:59
wrote from head to toe it was about a
03:02
girl with
03:02
hair that reeked of southern trimming of
03:05
a picket white fence
03:06
surrounding moat like grass the house a
03:09
house with a
03:10
big wraparound front porch she was a
03:12
writer
03:13
and i fall in love damn easy so i said
03:15
your head
03:17
your head was great baby
03:22
but your mind was the night before a
03:24
revolution
03:29
and ever since then women have treated
03:32
me like
03:32
some chauffeur to the moon they come for
03:34
their taste of mystery of
03:36
a mannequin made of wind they say i’m
03:38
not like most
03:40
men and they can tell i’m a poet by the
03:42
way i eat but in the end
03:43
it’s always the image of me that makes
03:46
them come the image
03:47
of me that makes their fun and they run
03:50
when my mask
03:50
comes off when i was a freshman in
03:52
college i wrote what’s in a man it
03:54
wasn’t even prose
03:55
i just couldn’t understand why i had
03:57
more hands than times i’ve seen men cry
04:01
more fingers than people i trust maybe
04:03
it’s because my father
04:05
raised me more honest than khan said
04:07
bring too much room for feeling things
04:09
in a world that boxes 12 30 rounds with
04:12
your dreams i’m
04:14
i’m 20 something now and still trying
04:17
not to believe them
04:18
i’m 20 something now still trying not to
04:21
believe them
04:22
20 something now and those poems done
04:24
flew to three continents this year yet
04:27
i still feel like i still feel like mist
04:30
like steam everywhere but right here
04:32
right
04:32
here on this stage right here on this
04:36
stage
04:37
is where i spill my guts under these
04:39
bright lights
04:40
i can’t be touched right here is why
04:42
folks from home don’t talk to me that
04:44
much right here
04:45
is why me and bell broke up right here
04:49
right here is why
04:52
this is my war this is my piece the
04:55
stage
04:56
is my teeth this is where i eat this is
04:58
the reason why i don’t sleep like
05:00
three or four nights a week cause why
05:02
why risk a nightmare when i got a pack
05:04
of 27s and a whole lot of work for this
05:06
rolled up franklin
05:08
right here right here
05:13
on this stage
05:16
this is my war this is my peace this is
05:19
where my stories become your currency
05:22
but i ain’t mad i just want you to know
05:26
what it feels like
05:29
i just want you to know where i be at
05:32
when i’m gone
05:33
right here on this stage i ain’t scared
05:36
anymore

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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The post Miles Hodges – Alcatraz of Balloons [Video] appeared first on The Good Men Project.