By Button Poetry
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Sarah Abbas, performing at Button Poetry Live, August 2019.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
My body is a clock. My body keeps time.
00:06
My body remembers a time
00:07
my friends flinched at me going to the mosque,
00:09
afraid of how my people and I praise our god,
00:12
afraid of what we might be planning,
00:14
my body too brown and Muslim to be American.
00:17
America declared war on my body,
00:19
signed a Muslim ban to keep my body locked away,
00:22
loaded a bullet for anyone who looks like me,
00:24
presses their palms together in prayer like me.
00:27
I’ve lost count of the crimes America committed against my body.
00:30
I’ve lost count of the times America made me a criminal.
00:33
America made me a broken clock.
00:35
told me nothing I loved was mine to keep.
00:37
But a broken clock still keeps time.
00:39
A broken clock shows the right time twice a day.
00:41
My body remembers I’m brown and Muslim twice a day,
00:45
like when I saw Mohamed, 14 years old from Irving, Texas,
00:48
walking into school with his engineering homework,
00:51
a digital clock rebuilt inside a pencil case.
00:53
Mohamed carried time in his hands,
00:55
carried history in his brown hands like a prophet,
00:57
carried innovation in his brown and Muslim hands like a genius.
01:01
But his teachers did not see
01:02
the Swat river or the Muztagh Tower,
01:04
they saw genocide, terrorist, bomb threat.
01:07
They saw a 14-year-old bomb and called the police,
01:09
took him into custody without permission to see his parents,
01:12
took him into juvie where they took his mug shot,
01:14
his fingerprints, still handcuffed and trembling.
01:17
What is a prophet if not a prisoner?
01:19
What is a Muslim if not a miracle until proven murderer?
01:21
I know what it’s like to be seen as a weapon by my country,
01:24
to throw my minute and hour hands up in surrender,
01:27
to feel my red, white, and blue wires tangled
01:30
between acting too white and not brown enough,
01:32
too brown and not white enough,
01:33
too American and not Muslim enough,
01:35
too Muslim and not American enough.
01:36
I know what it’s like to wish I could stop keeping time,
01:39
to wish I could stop remembering,
01:41
carrying my history in my hands.
01:43
I know what it’s like to wish I could wash the dirt from my skin,
01:46
but my body flows to Pakistan like the Kurram river,
01:49
too ethnic of a shade for the whites to drink from,
01:51
too [inaudible] for my people
01:53
who want their water infused with Allah subhana wa ta’ala
01:56
ashamed not to [inaudible].
01:58
But remember this, America,
02:00
you can stop a clock, but you can’t stop time.
02:02
You can crush my gears, but you can’t crush me.
02:04
You can strip my identity but not my god.
02:07
God gave the prophet Muhammad his word.
02:09
His word was the Qur’an.
02:10
Muhammad held the Qur’an in his hands.
02:12
Muhammad held time in his hands.
02:13
The word of God is time.
02:15
The word of God is memory.
02:17
To remember is to be a prophet of God.
02:19
To be a prophet of God is to keep time.
02:20
My body keeps time, my body remembers America.
02:24
I’m not a threat to your democracy,
02:25
I’m a threat to your white supremacy,
02:27
your white patriarchy, your white lies.
02:29
I’m a threat to all the crimes you thought you could get away with.
02:32
I’m a threat to all the times you thought you could break me.
02:34
I’m a broken clock, but I’m still ticking.
02:36
I’m still coming for what’s mine.
02:38
And America, your time is running out.
02:41
(cheers and applause)
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This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video