I Am a Man: When Poetry Was the Only Place I Could Put the Anger

The Life of a Modern Renaissance Man: A Video Journal, entry 2

In the summer of 2020, I found myself asking a question no human being should have to ask: Who gets to decide whether my life matters?

The news was full of protests, grief, fear, and images that were impossible to unsee. I was watching people take a knee in solidarity while also confronting what it means when a knee becomes an instrument of violence. As a Black man, those images were not abstract political symbols to me. They reached directly into my sense of safety and humanity.

When I can't make sense of something, I write. That's how I Am a Man came into existence. I turned those questions into a spoken-word short film because a poem could hold anger, contradiction, grief, and an insistence on dignity all in the same breath.

The piece challenges the way we judge one another, the way we rationalize cruelty, and the way fear can tempt us to answer dehumanization with more dehumanization. I wanted to demand accountability while continuing to examine myself. That's a hard balance. It should be.

Rewatching it, I hear a man searching for a way to stay openhearted in a frightening moment. I still believe art has a responsibility to tell the truth, especially when the truth makes people uncomfortable. Sometimes the microphone is the only place to begin.