So There’s this idea that Poets are old white men, rich enough to sit around writing monotonous lines. Like since when did we become Congress?

See, poetry…poetry is for the people.

Clint Eastwood’s got cameras.

Celine Dion sings songs.

But us, the masses of ordinary Jane’s and Joe’s that jump from one stage of life to another with barely a sound to the general international stage, we have poetry.

An otherwise inaudible voice at the butt of the political process is now empowered to proclaim his message to the masses of other fellow proletariats.

We are engineers that construct creative structures out of concrete and abstract language, we lay down our words brick by brick like masons, and some of us, some of us lay down our lives for our words.

And in case you were wondering, yes. We are dangerous. We are verbal warriors. Fear our vicious vocabulary as we tear down walls of inequality with wrecking balls of words wrapped in rich metaphors and rhyme, we time each syllable to the fraction of a second so meticulously that if you missed a second you’d miss half the story.

See, we, utilize weapons of mass creation. God, spoke and there was light. We, speak and there is might. Power in our prose. Strength in our similes. We ignite fights for freedom, light in the darkness of oppression, revolutions calling for human rights.

We write history. Literally. To tell how it really happened.

To tell stories that will never make it to the big screen because they don’t have sex and great visual effects.

To put a middle finger to the history books written FOR me instead of ABOUT me.

I slam to rip the vines of disillusionment that you’ve been tangled in.

With these words I throw out keys that lead you out of your jail cells.

To the brainwashed I throw a rag to wipe off the propaganda that they washed your brain in.

We, poets, writers, we are worldbuilders who use our words to build bridges into bodies of people you will never meet.

We weave and guide our sentences until they grow past the roof as their roots take root in your ears and leave fruit in your mind.

You know the saying, “Walk a mile in another man’s shoes”? We offer the shoes. Try them on.