Toiryan Milligan – 2 Round Knockout [Video]

Toiryan Milligan – 2 Round Knockout [Video]

 

By Button Poetry

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Toiryan Milligan, performing at Rustbelt 2019 in St. Louis, MO.

 

Transcript provided by YouTube:

00:02
See, I don’t really like to brag.
00:04
But my stepfather, my stepfather is a world championship boxer.
00:10
He literally won all of his fights. All KOs.
00:14
See, he won his fights because every day he would go to the gym
00:18
and strike punching bags.
00:19
You know, train his hard fist to hit soft things a lot more harder now.
00:23
When I say “gym,” what I mean is…
00:27
my home.
00:28
When I say “punching bag,” what I mean is my mother and me.
00:32
See, me and my mother’s black eyes used to have heart to heart conversations.
00:37
I used to talk about feeling blue and black,
00:39
how beating me and beating my mother
00:43
was the same thing as beating the odds.
00:45
See, me and my stepfather, we have a pretty odd relationship.
00:48
He always told me that everybody goes down a rocky road.
00:51
So tell me, why did my body have to go down a rocky road?
00:55
His favorite quote from Rocky.
00:56
“It ain’t about how hard you hit.
00:58
It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”
01:01
That same night, that’s what my mother did,
01:03
took his hardest hit, fell forward through a glass coffee table, y’all.
01:07
That same night, we found more pieces of my mother on the ground
01:10
than the actual coffee table.
01:12
See, boxers like him, they live to fight through others.
01:15
My mother thought that marrying him was more than a title,
01:18
but for him,
01:19
man, my mother was his title.
01:20
Her wedding ring was a boxing ring.
01:22
The wedding bells were ring bells.
01:24
My mother literally fought to keep their relationship alive, y’all.
01:27
I could see it on my mother’s face
01:29
how she would treat God like coupons–
01:31
only pull his name when she needed some savings.
01:34
And me,
01:35
my black eyes and swollen cheeks started looking like dance moves.
01:38
I’m talking a swollen electric slide
01:41
then a one, two step in the name of love.
01:43
Step in the name of my stepfather’s boxing gloves, y’all.
01:46
I was afraid, I was terrified.
01:48
My friends, they said, “Write him in a poem.
01:50
Kill your stepfather in this poem.”
01:52
But I was afraid that if I wrote my stepfather’s fists inside this poem,
01:56
it would be way too many punch lines and never enough storylines.
02:01
See, sometimes, you gotta throw in the same towel
02:03
that you used to dry your tears off,
02:05
just to show him that’s the only fight you had inside of you–
02:08
fighting back tears.
02:09
But I don’t blame him.
02:10
His father was the same way.
02:12
His father was the same way.
02:13
His father died being the exact same way.
02:16
So, trust me, when it comes to showing me the man
02:18
I’m never supposed to be,
02:19
clearly, he didn’t show me the ropes.
02:23
(applause and cheers)
02:24
♪ (music) ♪

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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