How Poetry Unlocked My Superpowers | Keenan Scott II | TED

Now, before I had the honor as a playwright to make it to Broadway,

which also opened the door for me to work in TV and film,

like everybody, I had a dream growing up.

Now, before I tell you what that dream was,

you have to promise not to laugh.

(Laughter)

You're going to laugh? Promise?

Alright.

When I was growing up,

I wanted to be ...

a superhero.

See, I wanted to be what I saw so vibrantly

on the pages of my Marvel and DC comic books.

I actually used to sit on a stoop in the projects with my godbrother Johnny,

and we would create our own stories, writing and drawing them all.

Now I have to confess, years before Miles Morales,

we actually made the first Black Spider-Man.

(Laughter)

Two of them. What can I say? We was from Queens.

(Laughter)

Now, as we know, there's always a moment in a superhero's life

where they realize that they have superpowers.

Now mine was revealed to me

by my arch nemesis, my eighth grade English teacher --

(Laughter)

after he gave the class an assignment to write a poem.

What happened after I did that

would forever change the course of my life.

Because when I turned in that assignment, the poem was so good,

my teacher actually thought I plagiarized it.

He asked me how did I know what all these literary devices were

that I didn't even know had names at the time.

Because up until this point, because of my dyslexia,

English and writing was always my kryptonite.

I didn't even realize that all those years of consuming hip-hop music and culture

was actually teaching me how to use literary techniques.

Like when Tupac said, "Picture perfect, I paint a perfect picture,"

I would find out that that was alliteration.

Hmm.

I wanted to try that.

"Pompous politicians pressure people to push towards their God."

Hmm.

Now, right in that moment, a new power was unlocked.

"We stood by street signs that were slightly slanted in the slums of the city.

Then we gradually, geographically graphed the graffiti on granite walls.

And this was driven from the rage of the reaction of racism that was --"

Alright. Y'all get the point.

(Applause)

Thank you.

I would soon find out what a metaphor was.

A simile, double entendre, onomatopoeia, end rhyme, internal rhyme and so on.

And I felt myself getting stronger

with every word and phrase I was putting together.

Now a couple of years later, in high school,

I would discover the world of slam poetry.

I had just recently got cut from my basketball team,

so I had a lot of extra time on my hands that I wasn't used to.

So what I did was I transformed my competitive energy

from the court to the stage.

Now this was years before I ended up going to college

and studying Chekhov and Meisner and William Shakespeare and August Wilson.

Back then I was studying underground battle rap kings

like Loaded Lux and Mook,

and prophets that called themselves Def Poets.

See, those men,

they looked and sounded like me.

They sounded like the neighborhoods I lived in.

They sounded like home.

So now, like those poets, Lemon Andersen and Black Ice,

I started to look at people different.

Stories started coming in and out of my mind

just from observing the everyday world around me.

Now I can make the regular, most mundane

blue collar worker of the middle class sound like a superhero.

Like I remember there was always this guy on the corner

telling stories and reminiscing.

We all know this guy, right?

And all his stories would start off with, "Y'all, I used to be nice."

(Laughter)

Most people would write him off.

But me, I saw more than a person whose dream was deferred.

I saw a person who came alive in those stories.

I knew that he was more than those dreams.

Whether they knew it ...

or not.

I used to be nice, yo.

Nice like Jordan fadeaway nice.

When I stepped on the court,

stars would align, the world stopped spinning,

gravity would cease and I appeared to jump higher.

You see, the angle of my form

was nothing less than Da Vinci's sketch of the ideal man.

Man, I used to be nice.

I wasn't fast, but I was quick.

My defense was well equipped and my assists were crisp.

Since birth I was chosen, I used to part defenses like Moses.

Due to my vision, I could envision

a player's position before they was positioned.

I was conditioned.

My no-looks were textbook, and scouts even said I was off the hook.

Look, my crossover would put my opponent on pause and cause the crowd to go,

Oh!

Yeah, I used to be nice.

I used to pin shots on the backboard, never bored, and when I scored,

I transformed into something that wasn't even human.

But who knew I would be ruined by a guy so envious of my game,

his aim was me.

So when I heard the snap of my knee ...

everything went silent.

I no longer heard the crowd or my team.

My years of dedication

deteriorated with my dream.

So I lay there on the floor, four minutes left, fourth quarter.

No water, just a jersey drenched in sweat. Regrets of trying to dunk on him.

No need to ask why. This is the hand I was dealt.

No sleeves. I couldn't cheat.

Defeat didn't taste good.

But I used to be nice, yo.

Nice like Jordan fadeaway nice.

When I stepped on the court,

the stars would align, the world stopped spinning,

gravity would cease, and I appeared to jump higher.

Yeah, I used to be nice.

(Applause)

Now I found myself

becoming obsessed with words

and how they sounded.

I started absorbing and paying attention more to speech patterns

when people would speak,

when I was on a train going through the city.

I also fell in love with jazz, because I realized

that the style that I was creating for myself

had elements of improvisation,

like jazz greats:

Gil Scott-Heron, Miles Davis, Thelonious.

I also went and discovered new poets that I didn’t know.

That's when I discovered Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer.

Now like every story,

everyone has a love interest.

And mine was Nikki Giovanni.

And I actually fell in love with her.

I found an Afrocentric descended angel ...

sitting by herself.

And she is beautiful.

Certain moments are precious, I was told.

And when you get to see into someone's soul, you see heaven.

So if that's true, heaven is where I am.

She painted her finger across the sky like she was painting the stars.

And the world fell silent as I listened

to the internal instrumental that my heartbeat made.

I walked up behind her and touched her shoulder like the wind.

And she looked at me like that familiar image she sees in her dreams.

She is like the perfect use of assonance in just the right amount of lines.

(Laughter)

Her pupils looked lost, and I wanted to teach her to love what she sees.

Through pictures I have pieced together her figure like a mosaic,

and I have her on the walls of my mind

like graffiti on the cathedrals of the ghetto called apartments.

I sat down with her.

And I grabbed my Moon easel.

And cloud palette.

And I started to add stars to her masterpiece.

I found an Afrocentric descended angel that reminded me of Aphrodite,

and I wondered what would be her aphrodisiac.

(Laughter)

She was sitting by herself.

And now I sit with her.

And she is ...

so ...

beautiful.

(Applause)

Years would pass.

And unfortunately, I started to lose a lot of my friends

to violence and/or jail.

And it was hard for me not to feel a sense of survivor's remorse.

So ...

it would keep me up at night on how could I honor them.

And I realized that I can honor them

by not only telling my stories

but telling their stories as well.

So they could live on the page.

Forever.

I’m from a place with there’s big houses and spouses.

No, I'm really from a place where single moms commute two hours to work

in pencil skirts and nice blouses.

I'm from a place where dudes stand in front of the bodega,

trying to hold their jeans.

I'm from a place where there's hustlers and fiends.

Cops may intervene, some unseen.

I'm from a place where boys raise boys,

men are nonexistent and mothers are young.

So how y'all expect us to turn out?

Looking up to hustlers was our worth.

We were told that our awards were skirts.

See in the hood, fingers get contorted,

rhetoric retorted, shots ring out by orphans.

Now RIP shirts are worn in front of coffins

and this happens all too often

because we’re taught to do that with no regret, rep your set.

We’re throwing up signs, and we ain’t even deaf.

Kin to death. It's like our lives are as long as that Bible verse:

"Jesus wept."

See, that’s why I can’t wait till the day when my skin isn’t a novelty.

And our stories aren’t synonymous with poverty.

Because honestly, it’s hard to deal in modesty

when we have to deal with this identity dichotomy.

Like, why do I have to say I'm human, too?

When DNA proves I'm deep buried in you.

We made the pyramids so you could see a beautiful view.

We made statues with wide noses. We were just making the truth.

So imagine someone saying it wasn't you.

And whoever did those great things must have been much lighter than you.

But how, when you discovered the tombs,

mummy's hair was even woven down to the root?

Truth. So if you really want to help us young brothers out,

stop making our schools look like prisons.

Stop determining how many jails you're going to build

off our third grade reading scores.

Scores, false cause.

Give Black boy ball and watch him score.

Give Black boy good beat, then put him on tour.

Give Black boy big chain because he loves the law.

The crowd just screams because he never bores.

But then watch Black people get confused

because a couple of Black boys are up in "Forbes."

Five mic in “Source.”

Then be biased and make him law.

Send Black boy to jail, feed him well because he’s a Moor.

Now he’s locked down. Now who miss his amore.

Now he gets angry. He wants more.

He screams at the top of his lungs. His voice gets hoarse.

Because he remembers when he used to rock polo with man on horse.

But of course, this is not what Black boys cause.

He just stares, his look is coarse.

They made his God look nothing like him, but made him say "Lord."

Black boy fights in yard as guards watching us

like Ali and Foreman all over again with the same broken jaw.

Now he saw society clips his wings, then asks him to soar.

Now another Black boy dead, but nobody saw.

Now another Black mother crying in the streets, emotions raw.

Now she prays to that same God, saying,

"Why, Lord, why did you have to take my little Black boy?

He had so much in store,

but now he's just another young, dead Black boy."

You see, I'm from a place where boys raise boys,

men are nonexistent and mothers are young.

So I pray for the Black boy.

(Applause)

As you see,

that little boy that has dyslexia,

that's spent half of his educational journey

in special education and remedial classes,

that always struggled with English

and writing

eventually found his way academically

and actually started to thrive.

And that same little boy made it to Broadway.

To the mountaintop of writing.

See, by telling stories and being authentic to who I am,

I became the superhero I wanted to be as a kid.

Thank you.

(Applause)