Poetry

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So this poem has been online for a minute in one form or another, but now we get a definitive recording courtesy of the good people at Button Poetry, who continue to provide absolutely essential signal-boosting services to spoken-word poets all over the country.

In somewhat related news, two things:

Lots of frustrating things happening, but lots of GOOD things happening too, as those three bullet points illustrate.
(2025 edit: just adding the full text here. The poem is very much out of date by this point, and may be subscriber-only on Button’s channel, but it’s still got some good lines)

CHERRY SPOON BRIDGE TO NOWHERE

1.

So, I’m a rapper, and my stage name is Guante, and my last name is Tran Myhre, so at the end of every show, there’s always one person who kind of awkwardly approaches me, like: so… what are you? And it’s not an easy question to answer; it is a complicated and emotional topic. I’m mixed, both by blood and by history, but… if you saw a picture of me in a magazine, what would you see? A white guy. So there’s always a kind of tension between my abstract heart and the more concrete reality of privilege, between internal and external identities.

And maybe that’s why I feel so at home here, in the Twin Cities, a community inextricably bound to that tension. Where the arts and literary and musical scenes are all so diverse and vibrant and beautiful. But if you saw a picture of them in a magazine, what would you see? White people. This is not a question of diversity; it is a question of who… edits this metaphorical magazine. Who funds it? Who profits from it?

Have you ever been in a magazine? Who decided that your story mattered, that your voice deserved an audience? Have you ever hung in a gallery? Have you ever bared your soul to the abyss only to have it chuckle back at you? When asked “what are you?” Have you ever answered honestly?

2.

In a Facebook Q&A, The Ordway’s Artistic Director James Rocco responded to 46 questions regarding the decision to produce Miss Saigon despite community outcry and protest of the musical’s racist elements, by saying: Miss Saigon is a complicated and emotional topic. …and nothing else.

It is one thing to chuckle at their callousness or cluelessness. It is something else to refuse to acknowledge, that this is how just about every arts and media institution in the Twin Cities operates, every day. When they say our programs are open to everyone; it’s not our fault when only white people show up. When they say we’d like to hire more people of color, but they’re just not applying. When they say stop making good the enemy of perfect, and never question who gets to define “good” in the first place.

When every insufferable list of the things that make our community so great, share the same two dozen bullet points: Craig Finn, skiing, hotdish, Joe Mauer, Target, the Coen Brothers, MN NICE, 3M, sculptures made of butter, the Mall of America, the fact that the Oregon trail video game was invented here and, to quote the City Pages, “everyone has a cabin on the lake.”

To my fellow artists: remember: art is a weapon, not the war. Remember, your job is not to make people who look like you chuckle; it is to make people who look like you uncomfortable. Remember… Cece McDonald, Terrance Franklin, Fong Lee, the biggest achievement gap in the country, the foreclosure crisis, teen suicides…

I don’t mean to dwell on the negative. But I dwell here. No cabin on the lake. No helicopter on the stage. A cherry-spoon bridge to nowhere.

3.

It’s a hundred degrees outside, sirens in the distance, Big Quarters in the headphones; where are you? The neighbors are chain-linked, landing punches like mallets on meat; where are you? It’s a literary reading, except the entire audience is people of color; where are you?

I do not doubt that somewhere in Minneapolis, a skinny white guy with an ironic handlebar mustache and aviator sunglasses is riding a fixed-gear bicycle to his favorite coffee shop. Or that at this very moment in St. Paul, a rich soccer mom is power-walking her golden retriever past Café Latte. But I’ve never met them. I’ve never been to a Twins game, never seen a play at the Guthrie, or gone to Rock the Garden. I’m sure they’re all very nice. But the Twin Cities that I know keep me busy.

A kid gets slammed into a locker for wearing a rainbow button; where are you? A group of men pray together in the back room of a mom and pop restaurant; where are you? The students learn the footwork first, internalize the rhythm, save that spinning on your head shit for later; where are you?

Go to Tibet or Central America or India to “find yourself,” if you really think that’s where you’re hiding. As though there weren’t a million stories in every crack in the concrete here, as if the Southside weren’t “exotic” enough.

The things we make invisible do not disappear; we only cloud our own perception— Minnesota nice, Minnesota passive-aggressive, Minnesota gentrifier, closet homophobe, white supremacist, bystander; open your eyes and watch Garrison Keilor possessed, irises burning blue and red, pop-locking down university avenue, his spine a light rail, his voice an empty wind, howling like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A Hmong teenager is shot eight times by a police officer and dies; where are you? That same police officer is awarded the medal of valor; where are you? A planted gun, an all-white jury, not guilty; where are you?

I can’t listen to the Current any more. It sounds too much like history being re-written, basslines diluted, polyrhythms unified. There are days, I forget the dirt underneath the endless white of winter. There are days, I forget that race and culture are not just about blood; they are also about blood. There are days it is easier to believe the lie, to buy into this politely whitewashed, liberal utopia on a stick. But remember: the things we make invisible do not disappear. And the things we choose to see are not everything that’s here.

A cipher blooms in the lunchroom; all of the kids love hip hop, and none of them has ever heard of Atmosphere; where are you? A group of activists march for gay rights, but it’s not pride week, and they’re not talking about marriage; where are you? The difference between Keith Ellison and Michele Bachmann is a single step further up Central Avenue, where are you?

Frogtown, where are you? Northside, where are you? Philips, Eastside, Little Earth, Midway, Cedar-Riverside, Uptown, Downtown, Northeast, suburbs, where are you?

Where are you?

We—all of us—are right here.

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UPDATE (2022): CHECK OUT THIS LINK FOR A “CLASSROOM-FRIENDLY” VERSION OF THIS POEM (WITH HIGH-QUALITY VIDEO/AUDIO), PLUS REFLECTIONS ON ITS TEN-YEAR ANNIVERSARY, PLUS MORE RESOURCES!


This poem has been out there for a while; the original is up past 100,000 views. The original also happens to be the first time I’d ever performed it, very soon after it was written. The video above is a revised, memorized version, and I think the quality is a little better.

***FULL POST HERE WITH TRANSCRIPT AND MORE DETAILS ON THIS POEM.***

Thanks to Button Poetry for capturing it and posting it. What they’ve done over the past year in terms of being a major signal boost to slam poets all over the country has been inspiring and important.

And just as a snapshot of my life: I’ll be on MPR today at 9am discussing the legacy of JFK and reframing the idea of “service.” Then performing with the legendary Jamie DeWolf tonight at 6:30pm at the U of MN’s Bell Auditorium. Then giving a keynote tomorrow morning on social media stuff at the Fall Media Forum. Then finishing up my new mixtape. Check out the FB page for details on all that stuff.

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UPDATE (2022): Check out this link for a “classroom-friendly” version of this poem (with high-quality video/audio), plus reflections on its ten-year anniversary, plus more resources!


UPDATE: This is the newest version of this piece. The Button Poetry version has a million+ views (plus 10 million more on Facebook, which maybe speaks to how these ideas are striking a chord with people right now), but I think this one captures a more polished performance.

***

New piece. I really hate those Miller Lite commercials, but it’s definitely bigger than just that. Felt good to talk about it on stage.

On a side note, I know there are a ton of spoken-word pieces out there about masculinity.  I’ve got this one too.  But I think it’s important to keep talking about these issues, especially if you can do it in a creative way, or at least have a new angle or hook.  I think there’s a bad tendency in spoken-word circles to dismiss any poem that covers well-trod territory (like “here’s another hip hop poem,” or “here’s another domestic violence poem”) and while I completely understand where that’s coming from and agree that we should be pushing ourselves in terms of subject matter, I ALSO believe that certain topics deserve the attention.  Especially as someone who works with young people–particularly young men– I like to have three or four of these kinds of poems in my pocket.

Anyways, hope you like it.  Might be a bit of a “preaching to the choir” piece in some ways, but that all depends on with whom we all share it. Any FB posts, tweets, tumblr posts, re-blogs and whatever are much appreciated, as always.

UPDATE: A few more thoughts:

I see a lot of comments informing me that the phrase “man up” actually means “to take responsibility and handle your business.” And it’s like, yeah, I know that. The point of the poem is less to question that advice (although there are times when it should definitely be questioned), and more to question why we *gender* that advice, why we don’t just literally say “toughen up” or “handle it” instead– why we always seem to equate competence, strength, and resolve with maleness.

It’s also about what the implications of that are.

Because there’s a bigger point here about the inability of so many to make connections, to see beyond the specific. This is not a poem about one specific phrase that I happen not to like. It’s a poem about language, and habits, and how the “little things” we don’t always think critically about connect to larger realities of harm and violence. If to be male means to always be strong and in control, what happens when we aren’t? Or what happens when are, but that “strength” and “control” become violence? What percentage of mass shooters are men? What percentage of killers, abusers, warmongers, and exploiters are men? Why is violence so often associated witih masculinity– in pop culture, in policy, and in everyday experience?

The poem doesn’t have room to answer all those questions, but it’s trying to point in a particular direction, and trying to make some connections. It’s also trying, if nothing else, to encourage us all to think a little more critically about the messages we receive about gender– where they come from, who benefits from them, and what kind of world we might be able to shape without them.

TEN RESPONSES TO THE PHRASE “MAN UP” (words are for the updated version)

1. Fuck you.

2. If you want to question my masculinity, like a schoolyard circle of curses, like a swordfight with lightsaber erections, save your breath. Because contrary to what you may believe, not every problem can be solved by “growing a pair.” You can’t arm-wrestle your way out of depression. The CEO of the company that just laid you off does not care how much you bench. And I promise, there is no lite beer in the universe full-bodied enough to make you love yourself.

3. Man up? Oh that’s that new superhero, right? Mild-mannered supplement salesman Mark Manstrong says the magic words “MAN UP,” and then transforms into THE FIVE O’CLOCK SHADOW, the massively-muscled, deep-voiced, leather-duster-wearing super-man who defends the world from, I don’t know, feelings.

4. Of course. Why fight to remove our chains, when we can simply compare their lengths? Why step outside the box, when the box has these bad-ass flame decals on it? We men are cigarettes: dangerous, and poisonous, and stupid.

5. You ever notice how nobody ever says “woman up?” They just imply it. Because women and the women’s movement figured out a long time ago that being directly ordered around by commercials, magazines and music is dehumanizing. When will men figure that out?

6. The phrase “Man Up” suggests that competence and perseverance are uniquely masculine traits. That women—not to mention any man who doesn’t eat steak, drive a pickup truck, have lots of sex with women—are nothing more than background characters, comic relief, props. More than anything, though, it suggests that to be yourself—whether you, wear skinny jeans, listen to Lady Gaga, rock a little eyeliner, drink some other brand of light beer, or write poetry—will cost you.

7. How many boys have to kill themselves before this country acknowledges the problem? How many women have to be assaulted? How many trans people have to be murdered? We teach boys how to wear the skin of a man, but we also teach them how to raise that skin like a flag and draw blood for it.

8. Boy babies get blue socks. Girl babies get pink socks. What about purple? What about orange, yellow, chartreuse, cerulean, black, tie-dyed, buffalo plaid, rainbow…

9. I want to be free, to express myself. Man up. I want to have meaningful, emotional relationships with my brothers. Man up. I want to be weak sometimes. Man up. I want to be strong in a way that isn’t about physical power or dominance. Man up. I want to talk to my son about something other than sports. Man up. I want to be who I am. Man up.

10. No.