SPOKEN WORD

Spoken word is written on a page but

performed for an audience. It relies on a
heavy use of rhythm, improvisation,
rhymes, word play, and slang.
Taylor Mali “What Teachers Make”

Conversation at a dinner party turns to the topic of how much money

teachers make]

He says the problem with teachers is

“What’s a kid going to learn

from someone who decided his best option in life

was to become a teacher?”

He reminds the other dinner guests that it’s true

what they say about teachers:

“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

I decide to bite my tongue instead of his

and resist the temptation to remind the dinner guests

that it’s also true what they say about lawyers.

Because we’re eating, after all, and this is polite conversation.

“I mean, you’re a teacher, Taylor.

Be honest. What do you make?”

And I wish he hadn’t done that— asked me to be honest—

because, you see, I have this policy about honesty and ass‐kicking:
I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.

I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor

and an A‐ feel like a slap in the face.

How dare you waste my time

with anything less than your very best.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall

in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.

No, you may not ask a question.

Why won’t I let you go to the bathroom?

Because you’re bored.

And you don’t really have to go to the bathroom, do you?

I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:

Hi. This is Mr. Mali. I hope I haven’t called at a bad time,

I just wanted to talk to you about something your son said today.

To the biggest bully in the grade, he said,

“Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don’t you?

It’s no big deal.”

And that was noblest act of courage I have ever seen.

I make parents see their children for who they are

and what they can be.

I make them read, read, read.

I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely bea‐

utiful

over and over and over again until they will never misspell

either one of those words again.

I make them show all their work in math

and hide it on their final drafts in English.

I make them understand that if you’ve got this,

then you follow this,

and if someone ever tries to judge you

by what you make, you give them this [middle finger].

Here, let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:

Teachers make a goddamn difference! Now

what about you?”
Prince Ea “I Am Not Black”

I am not Black

I mean, that’s what the world calls me, but it’s not... me

I didn't come out of my mother's womb saying, “Hey everybody, I'm...

Black”

No, I was taught to be black

And you were taught to call me that

Along with whatever you call yourself

It’s just a.... label

See, from birth the world force feeds us these.... labels

And eventually we all swallow them

We digest and accept the labels, never ever doubting them

But there's one problem:

Labels are not you and labels are not me

Labels are just ...labels

But who we truly are is not... skin... deep

See, when I drive my car, no one would ever confuse the car for.... me

Well, when I drive my ....body, why do you confuse me for my... body?
Yours the "Irish" or "White edition"

And with no money down, 0% APR, and no test drive

We were forced to own these cars for the rest of our lives

Forgive me, but I fail to see the logic or pride

In defining myself or judging another by the cars we drive

Because who we truly are is found inside

Listen, I’m not here to tell you how science has concluded that genetically
we’re all mixed

And race in the human species doesn't exist

Or how every historian knows that race was invented in the 15th century

To divide people from each other and it has worked perfectly...

No....

I'm not here to lecture

I just want to ask one question

Who would you be if the world never gave you a label?

Never gave you a box to check

Would you be White? Black? Mexican?

Asian? Native American? Middle Eastern? Indian?

No. We would be one; we would be together

No longer living in the error

Of calling human beings Black people or White people

And when you let an artificial label define yourself

Then, my friend, you have chosen smallness over greatness and

minimized your.... self

Confined and divided your .....self from others

And it is an undeniable fact that

When there is division, there will be conflict

And conflict starts wars

Therefore every war has started over labels

It's always us... versus them

So the answer to war, racism, sexism, and every other ism

Is so simple that every politician has missed it

It’s the labels...

We must rip them off

Isn't it funny how no baby is born racist

Yet, every baby cries when they hear the cries of another

No matter the gender, culture or color

Proving that deep down, we were meant to connect and care for each other

That is our mission, and that it's not my opinion

That is the truth in a world that has sold us fiction

Please listen, labels only distort our vision

Which is why half of those watching this will dismiss it

Well, these labels are our shells and we must do the same thing

So we can finally spread our wings

Human beings were not meant to be slapped with labels like groceries at
supermarkets

DNA cannot be regulated by the FDA

We were meant to be free

And only until you remove them all

And stop living and thinking so small

Will we be free to see ourselves and each other

for who we....TRULY.... Are
Prentice Powell ‐ “The System”
[Arsenio Hall:]“Please welcome spoken word champion, Prentice
Powell.”

[Prentice Powell:]“Arsenio the system don’t want us here right now. See,
we live in a system that’s designed for

us to fail, a system that would tell you no matter how wonderful, how
fantastic, how great you think you are…”

[Powell pulls hat down to cover eyes, lights go down for a dark setting]

“...there is no you.

There is only who I want you to be, from your latest cellphones

to the style seen in your most recent videos

to my implementation of what you call swag.

If you can’t brag

about how many women you have

or the $200 denim on your butt you are worthless.

Your purse

is not hot if it is a Fall edition and we are in the winter.

And as long as your kids have Jordans on their feet

it is okay if they have to eat

Top Ramen for a week

for dinner, your check is in the mail.

Have them growing up with a single mom

and no males to emulate, and you wonder why so many begin to have
extensive rap sheets,

and ADD with no off switch

and download a defense that is nothing, but false self‐confidence,

shown through them being overly aggressive.

Your misguided women want nothing but diamonds and Fendi

or dreams of finding a professional athlete to pay for their lives because to

them being a wife is not a lifestyle, it

is trendy.

Trendy to have like a little black dog carried around in a bag,

the demasculinization of your black man is going according to plan.

Flip‐flip the coin and for those

who have chose

not to go down that road,

make sure that any statement they make that may challenge their
masculinity

are followed by statements of insecurity

we can’t have them thinking for themselves.

Program dreams to be a mirage, close enough to see yet too far to reach,
set their

aesthetics
Downtown corner is full of rappers who refuse to give up

even though their stuff sucks,

but will allow them to say their piece,

at the very least

it will make them a quick buck.

Any more success initiate operation

exploitation,

throw them a bit more cash.

I am – I am the system.

Programed

to initiate command.

You Negroes ‐ error

you people

are programmed not to ask.

You are nothing more than empty vessels

who have sold their souls

a long time ago and you call me robotic.

I am the system.

Systematically set to just do.

You are systematically set to just do

You want a cop to pay for killing one of you, but carry a “no snitching”
policy

in your own community,

which allows,

which allows,

which allows,

which allows,

which allows you negros, error, you negros, error, you negros, error,

you people

to have absolutely

no accountability

irony overload reset.

I am the s‐s‐s‐s‐system.

Systematically set to

desensitize your

senses and

senseless activity,

surrounds your society,

simultaneously making you love me

while sh‐sh‐shaking in your boots

and for those who dare to overthrow me

Prince Ea “Why I Think the World Should End”
The world is coming to an end. The air is polluted, the ocean’s
contaminated. The animals are going extinct. The economy’s

collapsed. Education is shot. Police are corrupt. Intelligence is shunned

and ignorance rewarded.

The people are depressed and angry. We can’t live with each other, and,
we can’t live with ourselves, so… everyone’s

medicated.

We pass each other on the streets and if we do speak it’s meaningless

robotic communication. More people want 15

seconds of fame than a lifetime of meaning and purpose, because what’s

popular is more important than what’s right.

Ratings are more important than the truth. Our government builds twice as
many prisons than schools. It’s easier to find a Big

Mac than an apple, and when you find the apple it’s been genetically
processed and modified.

Presidents lie. Politicians trick us. Race is still an issue, and so is religion.
“Your God doesn’t exist. My God does, and He is

all loving. If you disagree with me I’ll kill you.” …or even worse, argue
you to death.

Ninetytwo percent of the songs on the radio are about sex. Kid’s don’t
play tag, they play twerk videos. The average person

watches 5 hours of television a day, and there’s more violence on the

screen than ever before.
Technology has given us everything we could ever want and at the same
time stolen everything we really need.

Pride is at an all time high, humility an all time low. Everybody knows
everything, everybody’s going somewhere. Ignoring

someone, blaming somebody. Not many human beings left anymore. A lot
of human “doings.” Plenty of human “lingerings” in

the past. Not many human “beings.”

Money is still the root of all evil, yet we tell our kids, “Don’t get that
degree the jobs don’t pay enough.” Good deeds are only

done when there’s a profit margin. Videos of the misfortunes of others go

viral. We laugh and share them with our friends to

laugh with us.

Our role models today, sixty years ago would have been examples of what
not to be. There are states where people can

legally be discriminated against because they were born a certain way.

Companies invest millions of dollars hiring specialists to make little girls

feel like they need makeup to be beautiful,

permanently lowering their selfesteem because they will never be pretty

enough to meet those impossible standards.

Corporations tell us “Buy, buy, buy!” “Get this, get that!” ”You must keep
up!” “You must fit in!” “This will make you happy.”

But… it never does for long.

So… What can we do in the face of all this

madness and chaos, what is the solution?
We can love.

Not the love you hear in your favorite song on the radio. I mean real love,
true love, boundless love. You can love, love each

other from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed.

Performing acts of kindness because that is contagious. We can be

mindful during every interaction, planting seeds of

goodness, showing a little more compassion than usual.

We can forgive because three hundred years from now will that grudge
you hold against your friend, your mother, your father

have been worth it? Instead of trying to change others we can change
ourselves, we can change our hearts.

We’ve been sold lies, brainwashed by our leaders and those we trust to not
recognize our brothers and sisters, and to exhibit

anger, hatred and cruelty. But once we truly love we will meet anger with
sympathy, hatred with compassion, cruelty with

kindness.

Love is the most powerful weapon on the face of the earth. Robert
Kennedy once said that few will have the greatness to

bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events.
And in the total of all those acts will be written the

history of a generation.

So yes, the world is coming to an end, and the path towards a new
beginning starts, within you…
"Mockingbird" by Rives

Mockingbirds are bad-ass.

Mockingbirds are the MC's of the animal

kingdom--
they listen, and mimic, and remix what they like,
they rock the mic.
Outside my window every morning
I can hear them sing
the sounds of the car alarms
like they were songs of spring.
I mean: if you can talk it,
a mockingbird can squawk it.
So check it:

I'm gonna catch mockingbirds.

I'm gonna trap mockingbirds, all across the
nation
and put them gently into mason jars
like mockingbird Molotov cocktails.
And as I drive through a neighborhood, say,
where people gotta lotta
I'll take a mockingbird I caught in a
neighborhood
where folks ain't got nada
and just let it go, y'know--
Up goes the bird, out come the words:
"Juanito! Juanito! Vente a comer, mi hijo!!"