one of these but I still use my fingers
to count sometimes and mean it when I
say I love you so I guess not
hey Ted thanks for inviting me your big
flirt I’m Tom I’m a poet twenty-one
breasts Odeon and literally terrified
right now safe to say I know more about
perspiration than perseverance in time
Freddie Mercury said it waits for nobody
I’m drea Bocelli said to say goodbye
Gordon Ramsay so it’s often used
incorrectly I can’t help but agree with
that last one
as far as I can tell it’s a
well-intentioned if slightly stubborn
agent of losing and finding and losing
and finding and losing and finding
yourself lost lost
Peter Pan said it made a fitting for
name for kind boys my PE teacher said
nice try but property is where you’ll
find today’s a kid my friend Chris said
it was cinematically interesting but
that the last season was fundamentally
disappointed as far as I can tell it’s a
simulacrum for freedom I don’t know what
from the first I learned about
perseverance for seeing it itched into
my mother’s iris the first I learned
about courage was trying not to be
terrified every time she blimped we had
it tough back then the first five years
of my life looked a lot like dashboard
footage from a car crash my pillow was
an airbag I wasn’t sleeping to you I was
ignorant to most things but I knew that
we hadn’t made money and I knew that we
were frightened the vast majority of my
time was spent either in the car or with
my child mind now the thing about a
child minder child minder is that you’d
but a rule without an exception is a
I shouldn’t have actually been here in
the first place a few years after my
sister was born my mom got really sick
she was told that she’d never have
another child she must have thought to
herself that some things just aren’t
meant to be
I’ll give this girl the best of me my
love my joy my empathy and that can be
my legacy
but then came along a pregnancy
emergency cesarean because I had somehow
managed to choke to death on the
umbilical cord when I arrived the doctor
held me up and called me a miracle made
a skeptic out of me there in there the
local paper wanted to write an article
about it they spent hours pushing me on
a swing trying to get me to smile for a
photograph eventually they gave up
I was the grumpiest miracle baby in the
world people have been trying to get me
secondary school I was a boy gone wrong
misplaced mind
I was nearly expelled I used to spend my
lunch time kicking doors and throwing
fruit at teachers perhaps perhaps I
wanted detention to avoid being at home
I don’t know but I do know that it
sparked direct lessness that never
learned I would shake with excitement
running down corridors hearing my name
shouted behind me perhaps it was my name
while running a racial when I was 12 our
self-harm for the first time because I
hated myself I would grab the knife and
slice away thinking that those red
barcodes on my wrist with just the price
I paid when I was 14 I took 64
painkillers into a toilet cubicle 64 was
and is my lucky
I guess I’d decided I would rather die
of liver failure than survive and liver
failure home so ii myself I didn’t tell
anybody what I do because I knew that if
I did that I would live but my mum came
upstairs at 2:00 in the morning I didn’t
realize she had been lying awake the
whole time worried she found me hunched
over my bed they were bringing up buying
a full 14 hours after I’d started she’s
a dentist and so a combination of her
medical knowledge and my ignorance led
to my story unraveling it turns out
people don’t generally just feel unwell
and then convulse in pain while stirring
up blood for 14 hours I was rushed to
hospital 3:00 a.m. right to Swindon
strapped into an ambulance in agony I
won’t describe to you how I felt but I
will tell you that since then I’ve never
been in vain not really
they saved my life in Swindon and after
a few days I was out by age 16 I’d lived
in eight different houses averaging a
move every two years it was also when I
was 16 that my friend and I decided we
wanted to do something stupid the truth
is we’ve been doing so you could stop
the whole time but we thought let’s do
something stupid with substance
something that actually means something
we decided that a tool and charity bike
ride to Edinburgh was the obvious answer
on the day we self when I was five
hundred and twenty five mile journey we
had no food no money no accommodation no
map no bike pump
and no worries we just rode off into the
sunrise like the closing scene of some
second-rate movie having an identity
crisis I never was one for endings
we slept in sleeping bags on pavements
and in parks we cycled 12 hours a day in
the blistering heat I regret my teeth
and repeats of poem I have tattooed on
my arm called Invictus which is Latin
for unconquerable by William Ernest
Henley its final couplet reads I am the
master of my fate I am the captain of my
soul
it was popularized by TV ad for a well
known drinks company without quoting the
source meaning there are people who see
my tattoo and assume I must love this
beverage so very involved advert
tattooed on this anyway onwards recycled
my shoulders were blistered from
rucksack straps carving tracks into my
back on day three or four we arrived in
Derby at 1:00 in the morning after
another 12-hour day of cycling we were
exhausted we sat down and agreed that we
were very close to having to give up we
had no food we decided that our only
hope of completing this would be to cut
our time significantly we agreed that if
we could get to Middlesbrough by the
next Sun now though we could finish this
thing the Sun had not yet risen it was
half past 1:00 in the morning
we had just cycled for 12 hours we have
not slept we have not eaten
Middlesbrough is 150 miles north or
double and so off we went
we made it five miles before stopping
for a cigarette we sat down an
embankment to the size of an old country
lane we began to hallucinate spoke some
nonsense to each other before we both
passed out
we were working up several hours later
by a concerned commuter have explained
to us that there are no lights on this
road and it is a miracle we were not
accidentally run over we made it to
Edinburgh it was one of the proudest
moments of my life
compt ibly the most physically
challenging thing I have ever done and I
think whoever to do and now the next
time I’ll be in Edinburgh will be for
the showcase of my debut play of the
Fringe Festival later this year Samad
our life comes full circle for example
last time I was stood on this stage I’ve
been writing and performing poetry for
under a month I was competing in an
annual regional slam that I’d been out
the night before drinking like I do
sometimes enough to forget but not so
much as to forget that I’d forgotten I
never did have the balance that tight
ropes I woke up lower than the pitch of
a cannon shot sadder than a one-man band
practice
I’d overslept to work I spent the day
crying in bed I’d found out that each
round of the slam was judged out of 400
and that the scores were projected onto
a big screen I thought not only am I
going to get knocked out in the first
round but it will be by a huge margin
and everyone will see I very nearly
answered I was talked out of it by a
loved one I arrived here eyes puffy
hadn’t eaten hungover had a mess just
thinking to myself I’ll get this
embarrassment over with and then go home
and try to forget it happen and then the
slam started and I want
it was the first time in my life I never
felt good at anything and the moment I
knew that poetry was going to be a huge
part of my life the next year I was
invited back to Georgia I was honored to
be considered an expert in any field and
now I’m here today during this talk life
seems to play out in patterns and this
building seems somehow prominent
tomorrow I’ve had quite a hard life like
a lot of people I’ve also been extremely
lucky like a lot of people but in order
to get lucky you have to show up you
can’t give in persevere setback
perseverance sense back there is a voice
I am told that this life is more than an
open-top bus from heartbreaking to
wisdom that we are one left turn from
luck cradled in the corner like a
masterpiece God down our you are a
masterpiece how in security is your
frame how good you look without a frame
and how strong you start like silence I
am sorry to say that my weakness leads
meted noise that’s not a street in this
town my face hasn’t kids dragging my
baggage like an unlit cigarette wasting
away like chances to change I’ve been
picking clovers in all the wrong places
tattooing my energy into anything that
didn’t explode into fog the moment I
blink recklessly setting rows of houses
are like hoping to hear a smoke alarm I
recognize I realize now that hole is not
so easily conjured so I cast my courage
towards surviving today sidestepping the
dying mistakes that I’ve been dying to
make I have learned to fight fire with
fire escapes and I know I should have
seen disaster approaching forgive me my
distraction while of my eyes were locked
on the sound the Stars make when you
grovel at me but we both know by now
that life demands it’s told and taken 18
hour days begun to bruise my blind spots
piling up on the welcome mat that the
unlocked door
my curiosity on the night that I still
carry in my pocket like a promise sign
collapsed like a brave face housed in a
hospital
a Gaul and now a coat hanger and
waterbirth as you can tell I am no
masterpiece
I am smudged with them seared with her
perfection is a blur on my skyline I’m
still looking to the sky in a t-shirt
that reads hope still lives here he’s
making paper airplanes from eviction
notices dancing on the grave of my I
don’t know bouncing on the beat of my
heart won’t skip praying to the God but
I lose sometimes when the bottom of the
bottom is a full moon curse and the
poetry I love in is a tire gone flat
he’s running rings around the spirals I
slipped up teaching me how to stay level
don’t you see my dear you have my word
trust in this because I have his help or
not abandoned he just leaves sometimes
like the title of a song on the tip of
my tongue
he will always come back to me and I
will always come back to you I refused
to be another figure on a spreadsheet I
refuse to live this just a figment of
your memory I will lift myself up by my
own shirt-collar my spine will be
straight talking I will stand as strong
as Hadrian’s Wall as pure as angel
Gabriel my pride will break the fall it
comes before no longer no longer will I
be Atlas with the world on my shoulders
under that burden I faltered I will be
Theseus with a dream of wish and all of
yarn this is not a call to arms this is
a quarter love this is for anybody
running the race to Redemption no need
to find themselves one band smack-bang
back where they started darling I swear
hope he still lived here stood on his
own shoulders arms apart like a lover’s
spirit true heart brave with a
paintbrush in one hand and a pledge in
the other screaming under somebody
else’s
boy I’m going to make you a masterpiece
I’ve been Tom Jerry thanks so much [Applause]