Poetry is not the most holy art No art is holier than another I tried to write songs But no tune could come to me And before that I tried to write stories But they lacked filling And the shells succumbed to their own emptiness Yet all the while Words remained
I tried to ensnare such words and trap them But always they escaped Slithering through the grooves and cracks of my conscious Finally one day I laid my body on the ground And let the words come as free as they liked And only on that day Did I begin to become a poet
Whether I achieve fame is meaningless How many more true souls have come before me and have been ignored by the cold world? I want to write not to be famous But to know my voice is heard And that I'm remembered For to be remembered Is to be eternal
Do I become a slave to my poetics? Never My poetic thought is a chunk of my self, bled out onto a page and then taken from the page by threads of voice to be dispersed into the air for the ears and hearts and minds You can't be a slave to yourself, if the poetics are yours And if the poetics are yours you will never betray yourself
If the pen is mightier than the sword, is this mic stronger than the gun? Will the shouts of truth be stronger than the pierce of the bullet? Because you better ******* believe that if I have breath in my lungs to spare I will shout these truths until the well runs dry and my voice shatters and my mind and heart rot
Poetry is no more holy than any other art But poetry is going to shake this earth before I am gone and you better believe it
Done in the Paul Laurence Dunbar lounge at Wright State so I hope he would enjoy this