Hopes and Hopes

When youth take on challenges, exciting things begin. I am eager and excited to see things unfold as we all focus on our respective projects. Last Friday was the Global Xchange Benefit Dinner. With the blaring music from the dance sport competition echoing from the outside, a group of young people presented their earnest appeal for support to family, friends and colleagues over dinner, poetry and music.

Tita Gang indulged us with Ani DiFranco's words. Thank you, thank you. You do enjoy that poem, and it does show. I'm posting it below.

Congrats Team 52.

*****

my i.q.
Ani DiFranco

when i was four years old
they tried to test my i.q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong
but when i was 13 years old
i woke up one morning
thighs covered in blood
like a war
like a warning
that i live in a breakable takeable body
an ever increasingly valuable body
that a woman had come in the night to replace me
deface me
see,
my body is borrowed
yeah, i got it on loan
for the time in between my mom and some maggots
i don't need anyone to hold me
i can hold my own
i got highways for stretchmarks
see where i've grown
i sing sometimes
like my life is at stake
'cause you're only as loud
as the noises you make
i'm learning to laugh as hard
as i can listen
'cause silence
is violence
in women and poor people
if more people were screaming then i could relax
but a good brain ain't diddley
if you don't have the facts
we live in a breakable takeable world
an ever available possible world
and we can make music
like we can make do
genius is in a back beat
backseat to nothing if you're dancing
especially something stupid
like i.q.
for every lie i unlearn
i learn something new
i sing sometimes for the war that i fight
'cause every tool is a weapon -
if you hold it right.