Sarah Kay performs "Useless Bay"

once in Puerto Rico I held on to a rock ledge for 45 minutes refusing to jump into the lagoon below my friends shouted up encouragement and strangers offered kind advice until finally the man I loved crawled up the rock face and stood behind me coaxing this is not a metaphor he said this because he knew that I had already found a way to equate this failure with all other failures knew that my mind prison is a tangle of labyrinths with unwarranted symbolism around every stubborn corner I laughed because it was so accurate and also because if I died going down those would be the last words I heard instead I jumped and survived and that night in bed he wrapped his arms around me and whispered it was a metaphor me I am the metaphor I climbed up because I believed in you because I loved you and I knew that you could do it because I will climb up when you need me because you did need me and he was already asleep before I could answer leaving me to stalk my own hallways for the meanings of the clutched rock the shaking legs the racing heart the fall the smack the coldest shock and the man who climbed up to tell me to let go not even a year later he has moved into someone else's body and I am alone on a beach in Washington I have come here to hide from my sorrow to try and write poems that do not lead back to him instead I find myself watching a pack of young men throw stones into the air before swinging giant bats of driftwood smashing them over the water the SWAC and pop and plunk echoing up and down the otherwise empty beach and yes the name of this Beach is useless Bay and yes the men are swinging as hard as they can of course and yes it is Twilight and yes I am all alone and I do not want these metaphors I would give them all back if I could even if it meant a rainstorm would forever be just a rainstorm a ladybug on my arm simply that still I would trade it for this relentless weight of meeting this unfair promise of always finding pattern where there need not be any let the young man be just young men and not my heart forever swinging let the water be just water and not the vast loneliness let the driftwood B driftwood let the bay be unnamed let the sunset not be my time running out but only the hour of the day only an indication that the bugs will soon be out that the young man will pull on their sweatshirts but I should be heading home you

Channel: speakeasynyc

Views: 288,346

Keywords: Sarah Kay, Spoken Word Poetry, Poet, If I should have a daughter, TED talks, TED

Id: TmQSFGJS454

Length: 3min 51sec (231 seconds)

Published: Sun May 15 2016