WEBVTT

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(calm music)

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- Heaven is all goodbyes,
but I hope it's soft.

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Softness of skin,
softness of thought.

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Call me soft and I'll
send you a heart.

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Won't do fisticuffs,
just brisket cuts.

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When people called me soft,
I found I'd be ashamed.

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Now I call myself soft,
to rebuke that disdain.

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Autistic, sensitive
to everything.

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Autistic, we don't
speak the same.

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Autistic, in every poem I sing.

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Autistic, in every song I cry.

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Using tears to wipe ink
smudge from my pants cuffs.

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Drowning in words,
living for life.

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Heard it once told that life
is wasted on the living.

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And death isn't something
we should dwell on.

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All I know for certain is

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life exists on the fence
between hope and hopelessness.

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It's like a seesaw,
being Autistic,

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swinging from joy to a meltdown.

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Sensory overwhelm, need
something soft to calm me down.

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The good Lord blessed
me with soft skin.

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So, I caress myself
for comforting.

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My masseuse, 20 years
in the game, once said,

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I had the softest skin.

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The softest skin
she'd ever felt.

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Like velvet, like felt.

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I took the compliment.

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But deep down, I knew
Autism was to thank.

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Autism and Allah.

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One of the primary features of
EDS, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome,

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is velvet soft skin.

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EDS is associated with ASD.

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I hate how white people
attach syndrome or disorder

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to everything they
don't understand,

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and I hate how
negative connotations

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are attached to
those attachments.

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Which perhaps explains
the negative connotations

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I attach to my-same-
self-said-Said-Saciid-name.

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What's a shorter
word for connotation?

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How about, bro pass me the
cream cheese and a light.

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Pass me the hookah and a sprite.

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Pass me fatty food and bring
to stummy great delight.

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Better yet, pass me a
prescription for my ADHD.

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So I don't have to self-medicate
just to get through life.

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And if you can spare it,
pass me that peace of mind.

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Right behind two lost
lovers stuck between time.

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And the metronome which
hangs over us all.

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Ticking, tocking,
clicking, clocking.

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Bombs over Baghdad,
bombs over Baidabo.

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Bombs over Kyiv, bombs
over Kurdish Peshmerga.

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Young (beep), ever a learner.

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Never have I clutched a burner.

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That's a lie, but I
was born in the land

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where AKs are cheaper
than grains of sand.

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And sand is all we understand.

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The sun is all we have.

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The Blackness of our skin,
protecting us from it.

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White people colonized
Africa but 400 years

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after the Dutch erected
limp castles on our land,

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their descendants' skin
still peels off in the sun.

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They can't even
protect skin from sun,

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yet we're the inferior ones?

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Anyway.

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None of that matters anyway.

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I just pray I get to
see heaven one day.

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Wish heaven on earth
for all my people.

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Wish heaven was
easier to get into.

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But as the Prophet Peace
Be Upon Him once said,

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the road to heaven is
paved with hardship,

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the road to hell
paved with ease.

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So if this life
is any testament,

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heaven just may
be in our future.

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At least we hope.

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And hope is all I
have these days,

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when nights turn to day,
turn to nights again.

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When the blood moon
serenades my waking dreams.

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When Larry Levis' ghost
writes living poems in Fresno,

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Modesto, San Diego.

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Takes the form of dirt
devils, sand tornados,

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uses wind to carve
poems about nothing

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into still more nothing.

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Migrant farmers step
over stillborn poems

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as they pluck fruit
destined to be tossed

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from suburban fridges.

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I got cousins back home

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who've never seen
strawberries or fridges.

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I don't know what that means,

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but I should probably
cherish something.

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At least while I still can.

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Lord knows they could
be on their way.

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Shoot, I think they knocking
on my door right now.

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No knock raid.

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Ain't that how the
last brother got tased?

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I mean shot.

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Shoot, I mistook
their guns for tasers.

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Ain't that what they said

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about the brother they
killed before him?

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He was shot, a nine
millimeter Glock taser?

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This is Minnesota, bro.

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All we export is frigid
ice and police lies.

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Murder too, tho.

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We export a lot of murder here.

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Shoot, am I next?

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I wonder what lie they'll
export about my murder,

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about my death.

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I pray I'm not next.

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And every one of my brothers
prays he's not next.

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In a country that values
our bodies only in death.

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Where we know every traffic
stop could be our death.

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In the land of never
quite making rent.

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Hmm, this place is hell.

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But is that such a bad thing?

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Hell is hard and
hardship leads to heaven.

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And heaven is all we
have to keep us going.

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Heaven is all goodbyes,
but I hope it's soft.

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I hope heaven is
softer than this life.

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And I hope I see you
on the other side.

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(cheerful music)

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- [Announcer] This program
was produced in collaboration

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with the Center for
the Art of Medicine

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at the University of
Minnesota Medical School.

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And funded by the Minnesota
Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund

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and the citizens of Minnesota.

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(calm music)