For the "I Am... Scholarship Slam."

We write, we hide,

we live our lives in coffee shops,

sippin' tea from little mugs,

stains on our teeth,

contemplating the meaning of life.

We strive to make our voices be heard.

Every emotion that hangs

on every little word

that we speak.

We're more than just black clothes,

black beanies, black coffee, black tea.

We are our emotions,

the words that we speak.

We are our experiences.

We are the thoughts of the things that we see.

Now he is he, she is she, but I am me.

I am the flow, I am the rhythm, I am the rhymes.

I am the words that live between the lines,

see I am a poet.

But as a poet, people see me as

emotional, apathetic, and unkind,

so quick to judge, so quick to change your mind,

so quick to say, "Coffee, tea, and beanies can't produce flow.

You need to have

the swagger of a rapper,

the intelligence of a professor,

the skills of a writer,

the precision of a doctor,

and the voice of a speaker."

But I am a poet.

I am all of these things.

I pick the little parts of my mind,

define them by metaphors and similes

and recite them through a mic.

Precision of a doctor,

skills of a writer,

voice of a speaker,

swagger of a rapper. I

bump my voice up and down,

make sure you hear the sounds that shoot off my lips. I

blink my eyes,

wink at the guys in the audience,

baffle the minds of the haters,

kiss 'em goodbye and see 'em later, and I say, "I

am a poet." I

take the little tweezers to my brain,

choose all the right words to say and then I
take my most precious instrument, my pen. And then I

load up the gun with the verses,

my arm swerves swiftly from each side,

writing between the lines the words from my mind

with the precision of a doctor.

And then I revise and I write

and I revise and I write and then I

take my mic and I speak.

My voice booms from the speakers,

the audience so weak.

And you say I don't matter, but I

know who I am.

I've got the swagger of a rapper,

the intelligence of a professor,

the skills of a writer,

the precision of a doctor,

and the voice of a speaker,

see I am a poet.