Today’s poem is Kofi Dadzie’s “Baton”. As the title suggests it tells us more about a baton, a club typically used by the police to hit people. Kofi Dadzie explores the metaphor of violence against black people (especially police violence) being similar to conducting music, at least it seems that way to the Baton in the poem. Black people are being hit with batons, their screams are like symphonies, songs are made out of suffering.
I chose this poem because Dadzie manages to convey the frustration of having to deal with the same issues that black people have had to deal with for far too long in a very creative and powerful manner. It is necessary to listen to what people of colour have to say, and it is more necessary now than ever.
I took the liberty of writing down the text of the poem here so that following the performance is easier – performance poetry can be quite fast at times. I gathered the text partly from the automatically generated closed captions of the video on YouTube and partly from listening to it on repeat in order to correct the mistakes in those captions. Still, this text may not be perfect and it is important and necessary to listen to Kofi Dadzie’s performance, instead of just reading this.
From the point of view
of the nightstick.
I orchestrate brutality
but I never wanted to compose this symphony.
We batons fell into the role masterfully though
As the blue Beethoven’s adorned in badges
used us to keep the beat on black notes,
it’s just that the syncopation of their screams
was always the hardest to hear.
As it ends
and repeats
Voices crescendo in agony
as we direct the masterpiece
who helped create a piece once.
We titled him Rodney
Reduced his life to eight minutes of mutilation
but that song got old real quick.
So we found new Symphony halls
wherever the bars kept black notes in place
See it’s hard to be a conductor for this symphony.
Especially when they twirl you
like color guard on parade
eager and willing to conduct the next tune
See we batons, the color of midnight,
turned black bodies in the batted heaps.
Now ain’t that black on black crime.
Are we just an officer’s token black friend?
Would he put us down the minute we
looked threatening too?
We do our best
to quell the rhythm of rebellion
Put rests on the voices of colored women
so we can play the same tired tune over
and over again.
They never seem to get a solo.
Only seen as a supplement
to a black man’s medley
the audience doesn’t seem
to like this piece anymore.
America
don’t seem to like peace anymore.
Black folk never wanted to be in admittance hell.
We never even bought tickets
but we’ve been instrumental in its creation.
Unplugged from society
all we wanted to do
is make music.
We never expected the dissonance
of black instruments
to create the best melody
yet keeping time on torture
was something of a classical arrangement for us.
Like leaving bodies to hang in the breeze like high notes.
Like massacre
is musical
So not for nothing
we’ve turned murder into an artificial art form.
Have masterminded the maiming of the people
and we couldn’t have done it on our own because:
what’s a baton without an officer?
What’s the conductor’s wand
without a maestro?
What is a black body
besides brutality composed by the boys in blue?
See he
who holds my hand
and wishes I were a whip
misses the sound of its crack
and decided to make music instead
but who am I to judge?
When I’m cut from the same wood
that decorates that whip’s handle.
We are tired
of making songs out of suffering,
of turning the altercations
between my maestro and black folk
into twisted duets.
Remove me
from his hand
before the body count rises
like chord progression.
We prayed that this would see a finale soon
but for now
the show must go on
America
always wants
an encore
