Dear Council, (The Kings Have Always Had Poets)

by Sacramento Poet Laureate Andru Defeye

Every time I approach this dais

My grandfather says “Make them feel it.” My father says “Pray for them.”

I am both my father’s son and my grandfather’s grandson

Poets have always spoken life into leaders and magic into the masses From the Fili and the Bards to the griots we have always been entrusted to hold the stories of our tribes like gutter gold so I know more about you all than you will probably ever know about me.

I have a story of how one of you gripped a grieving girl after the death of her dear friend with words given straight from god in a whisper that no one else heard

I have a story of how one of you put your peace on the line to help a broken woman put hers back together without her ever being the wiser who her guardian angel was.

I have a story of one of you taking the time to tell a young man who life had given up on to not give up on life and that young man finding enough strength in your words to carry them around for decades

I have stories of those who protest each of you and who they think you are because of stories they don’t know. Stories that make you more than vote counts or operators of a broken machine. The stories that make us human. The stories where our healing is.

I hold their stories that you have never heard of pain and trauma from living in a broken machine daily

But I can see clearly that there is a we because I hold all of these stories.

This is the importance of poetry and poets we hold the stories that remind us who we really are “Poetry is how we speak ourselves into existence” We are the fili and the bards. We are the griots.

The city of Sacrament is full of mini Maya Angelous and Amanda Gormans

The next Langston Hughes lives in the heights writing right now and wondering what the worth is in his words and how do we put a price on his story how it is told and who gets to tell it

Simple. We don’t.

We teach everyone to tell their own stories. And we listen.