Poetry at the Clinic

The Invitation

Today, for National Caribbean American HIV/AIDS Awareness day, I took the train to Newark, NJ where I was to perform poems in the waiting room of a health clinic.

East Orange Primary Health Center, a one stop shop of all things health related, provide all realms of health care for impovershed, non-white, muchly Caribbean immigrant populations. Of the 3009 people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in East Orange since December 31, 2007, 93% of them are Black Americans or from the Caribbean.

So in response to this statistical calamity, the clinic put on a health education fest, where they invite the community to come get free screenings for high blood pressure, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. And while people wait, why not slip the arts in there to further educate and expand the mind? So this is where I come in.

The Funk

Thing is, this morning, I wake up in a solemn state, though I would not say it sad. Hey, even with my grinnin ass, some days smiles don't spill across the face so loosely, especially now at this point in the wrestling match with Seventeen Seasons, this monstrosity of a novel that wrenches me like no other love. To tell the truth, I woke up not wanting to be in front of people, not wanting to expose myself in the ways essential to the public poet I have grown to be.

Times like this it hits me: the insanity of what we as poets do, especially ones in the performance realm. Take sex workers for instance, I cannot concieve of sex being my occupation, but here it is, their livelihood. It reminds me of how most folk cannot concieve of being a poet, standing before the comprehending and uncomprehending masses, the empathetic and apathetic, naked inside your language.

But. This. Is. My. Livelihood.

So I spent the morning opening my energies to avoid entering into this poor clinic with a sense of dread because no audience deserves that. It's not their fault I woke up on the wrong side of things.

With Adam Mansbach's End of the Jews in my lap, I read all the way to Newark.

The Clinic

I walk into the clinic, and well, it's a waiting room all right, as they said. Aside from the balloons at the entrance to signify the specialness of the day, the mundanity of the situation is glaring. I scan the space, fingers in my brain flipping quickly through my rolodex of poems. I look around: young, old, men, women, everything in between. I don't have much time; I am to go on soon. What to do what to do.

Booths are set up all over the room with health educators on deck armed with pamphlets, mailing lists and varieties of condoms I never knew existed. Glow in the dark joints? Damn, where the hell have I been?

Youngings are on the prowl, coaxing candy from the young health educators (all women) manning the tables. A gentleman in his 70's palms a bunch of condoms and one falls. The young boy beside him, 7 ior 8, picks it up. Totally unseduced by its vibrant wrapping, he hands it to the man. It strikes me that I have never seen a kid that young hold a condom. I wonder if he knows what it's for.

I study the layout of the room.The chairs are set up in the middle, coming from two separate directions, with a big awkward gulf in between them--tricky to navigate when performing because you then have to divide your energies in two directions--not my strong suit. Oh well. Another day another challenge. Giddy up.

Elbows digging into my knees, I sit in a quiet room, contemplating poems. Contemplating my presence in this space, what it all means. From a performance standpoint, the situation wasn't ideal. But from a poetry standpoint it was beyond ideal, because how often is poetry asked to exist in such spaces? There are poetry venues, and then there is this. This too is necessary.

The Performance

Claire introduces me and the applause is lukewarm and genuine. With no plan, I step. Everything I have done in my short tenure on this earth help bring me to moments like this. I think back to my Tallahassee days, my Black on Black Rhyme days, when Keith Rodgers and I would roll to all the barber shops and hair salons on Friday afternoons (pay day), spit poems and hustle CD's. Oh, and at the Essence festival in New Orleans, 2002, spitting poems on sidewalks, selling my CD's to total strangers, happy to support.

Man, I hardly do shit like that anymore, which is kinda sorta an unsung tragedy in my life. And how fiery and brash I was back then! I wasn't afraid of anything . And if I was afraid, then the fear wasn't important enough to remember. And I find, that I am not afraid now. I wrote poems for 10 years and was too afraid to share them with strangers. Those days are long over. I believe in this gift I give and have been given, I believe in the functionality of poetry's elevated language in the mundane world. Time to spit!

At the start of my set a man breaks into a public reverie about how fine Trinidadian women are. I gestured to myself and told him I know! Vanity is so fun sometimes, like the sun playing peekabo through clouds. There was a girl in the back of the room, whose hand drifted to her mouth halfway through the set and kept it there for the rest of the performance. She didn't even clap. Most just sat there silently, some gazing at me, others looking off somewhere--a distant land?

All now so, there is constant movement that characterizes a clinic waiting room. To my right clinic staff and their clients are talking and laughing at non-poetry friendly volumes. Balancing that out to my left are two women bobbing their heads to the invisible beat to each of my lines, urging me on, thanking me after each poem, a rarity, because I am usually the one thanking the audience kinda profusely just for listening. Because truth be told, whether its big, small, black, white, young, old, a listening audience is gold. Sometimes I wonder if applause is an unnatural response to art. Applause can be loud enough to echo in your ears for days to come, and still be empty. I have had many audiences clap like lunatics, ushering me off stage with an erect ego. That's the same audience that will not approach you afterwards to shake your hand or buy your stuff, ushering you to the next gig a city away, pockets in pain. Poets if you're out there, holler if you hear me!

The Aftermath

There was this one woman in her 50's, who sat in the front row, with her body curiously turned away from me the whole time, stone still, looking down at the floor, not making eye contact once. Though I genuinely don't care about this anymore, I was certain my words were sliding off her like egg yolk. It be that way sometimes!

Do you know this woman was the first to approach me to buy my book, her money already out?

Lessons such as this are so important they need to be relearned over and over again: to never, never assume what you think a person gets or doesn't get out of your work based on how they engage you externally. This is a deep thing we do as poets. It's a dark magic. The journey our beautifully crafted words make into a person is a sacred journey, a journey that has nothing to do with us or the person its happening to. Mysterious, the travels our words make once they leave our bodies thorugh our pens, our lips. Exhilerating thought, the idea of our words go places we cannot follow, more less imagine.

Afterwards I shared some meaningful talks with some of my listeners--and boy were they listening! Some were quoting lines and sharing with sincere detail how and why certain images and whole poems intersected with their insides. Much more useful to me than a pat on the back and "good job!" --which is cool too, if that's what you got. Sold some stuff, too.

I left there feeling uplifted and inspired--nothing like before. I thank Claire from East Orange's Primary Center for comissioning me to come out of my self imposed funk, providing this unique experience for her clients and for me, to learn lessons both explicable and not.