This is my favorite spoken word piece. I've watched it on YouTube like 100 times. I just watched it five times before deciding to share it with you. The words are printed below the video, so follow along if you want to know what exactly is being said. Gemineye is a genius.
One night, God came to me in a dream with a scheme that seemed to be out of this world. He approached me and opened his robe and showed me a hypodermic needle in the shape of a pen.
And my first reaction was to step back fast but then God grabbed me and said, “Slow down my child, I’ve got a job for you to do.” And with a burst of light, God grabbed my arm and said “I mean you no harm.” And he pushed the pen in and it filled my arteries and God chartered me to write some new shit, some true shit, something just for you shit and when I was done with part one God said, “Write some part two shit.” He injected me with Billy’s Blues and a muse of Langston Hughes and God said, “You’ve acquired some of the tools in the school you’ve been attending but now it’s time to stop pretending.”
And he started sending into my bloodstream the poetic feats of John Keats, and the published greats of W.B. Yeats, and just when I thought God was through he started slipping me hits of Maya Angelou. And God asked “Do you know what I’ve handed you?” And my response was “No” and God said, “Let me show” and he continued to fill my veins the same way he had been, giving me a fix of Emily Dickenson and my bloodstream seemed to scream as God gave me the liquidated literary genius of W.E.B. and I got lost between doses of Robert Frost, and my eyes got blurry in a flurry and I was no longer seeing ‘em but I could feel Emerson, Tennyson, and Stevenson. And God said “you won’t get far without Paul Laurence Dunbar, and you can’t start spittin' 'til I’ve given you Whitman.”
And God kept filling me and it felt like he was killing me and I closed my arm tight and God snapped it back open and screamed “You’re not yet ready to write!” He said, "Tonight has just begun, everything’s alright my son. You see, I need you. I use poetry to teach people. The world I created has been overrun by ignorant thinking, and I need poets to take the world back and break the curse. Now unbend your arm so I can give you William Wordsworth.”
And again the pen was shoved in my veins and God grabbed the reigns and as if I was a mule, He said “I use you as my tool and plow the field with you. Fulfilling empty minds’ needs while planting knowledge seeds. No longer will there be a flourishing time for malnourishing minds. I want you to make intelligence a law 'cause ignorance is a crime. Now I need you to go and reap what you sow, while captivating minds like Edgar Allen Poe. I gave you the wings so now fly like the raven -- this world needs saving! Feel free to fight off your fears 'cuase they’ll disappear within this injection of my tears, which contains the remains of great things gone and new things to come beyond the next dawn. You’re the next in a bloodline of greats. You are a poet. You command the attention of large groups, you ready the troops for revolution, you write words that can commend or condemn -- turn boys into men -- make other poets push pens. And you must be about something more than slam scores based on ten, because you are a poet. Think about all the great things poets have accomplished. And when the writing gets rough, hold on to your pen and don’t drop this. Always take time in your mind to reflect back on the fact that you’re the next to step forth from a poetic bloodline."
One night, God came to me in a dream with a scheme that seemed to be out of this world. He approached me and opened his robe and showed me a hypodermic needle in the shape of a pen.
And my first reaction was to step back fast but then God grabbed me and said, “Slow down my child, I’ve got a job for you to do.” And with a burst of light, God grabbed my arm and said “I mean you no harm.” And he pushed the pen in and it filled my arteries and God chartered me to write some new shit, some true shit, something just for you shit and when I was done with part one God said, “Write some part two shit.” He injected me with Billy’s Blues and a muse of Langston Hughes and God said, “You’ve acquired some of the tools in the school you’ve been attending but now it’s time to stop pretending.”
And he started sending into my bloodstream the poetic feats of John Keats, and the published greats of W.B. Yeats, and just when I thought God was through he started slipping me hits of Maya Angelou. And God asked “Do you know what I’ve handed you?” And my response was “No” and God said, “Let me show” and he continued to fill my veins the same way he had been, giving me a fix of Emily Dickenson and my bloodstream seemed to scream as God gave me the liquidated literary genius of W.E.B. and I got lost between doses of Robert Frost, and my eyes got blurry in a flurry and I was no longer seeing ‘em but I could feel Emerson, Tennyson, and Stevenson. And God said “you won’t get far without Paul Laurence Dunbar, and you can’t start spittin' 'til I’ve given you Whitman.”
And God kept filling me and it felt like he was killing me and I closed my arm tight and God snapped it back open and screamed “You’re not yet ready to write!” He said, "Tonight has just begun, everything’s alright my son. You see, I need you. I use poetry to teach people. The world I created has been overrun by ignorant thinking, and I need poets to take the world back and break the curse. Now unbend your arm so I can give you William Wordsworth.”
And again the pen was shoved in my veins and God grabbed the reigns and as if I was a mule, He said “I use you as my tool and plow the field with you. Fulfilling empty minds’ needs while planting knowledge seeds. No longer will there be a flourishing time for malnourishing minds. I want you to make intelligence a law 'cause ignorance is a crime. Now I need you to go and reap what you sow, while captivating minds like Edgar Allen Poe. I gave you the wings so now fly like the raven -- this world needs saving! Feel free to fight off your fears 'cuase they’ll disappear within this injection of my tears, which contains the remains of great things gone and new things to come beyond the next dawn. You’re the next in a bloodline of greats. You are a poet. You command the attention of large groups, you ready the troops for revolution, you write words that can commend or condemn -- turn boys into men -- make other poets push pens. And you must be about something more than slam scores based on ten, because you are a poet. Think about all the great things poets have accomplished. And when the writing gets rough, hold on to your pen and don’t drop this. Always take time in your mind to reflect back on the fact that you’re the next to step forth from a poetic bloodline."