There will be other poets but Shane Koyczan and his spoken word poems changed everything for me.

Without further ado “Help Wanted”

I’ll post the link to the spoken one later on.

Everyday, Grandma would come into my room
And I’d hear her say, “Rise and shine.
The world is a window that holds a sign
There’s help wanted somewhere.”
So I rose and I shone.
I put on my shoes and I was gone.

See Grandma bought me my first phone.
She said, “Don’t bother calling the people who care,
Call the people don’t.
Don’t bother calling the people who have taken up a fight,
Call the people who won’t.”

And I learn at a very young age
Where my Grandma’s rage came from.
The entire congregation would nod,
Never ask Grandma about God.

I’d argue with her everyday
All she’d say is, “Go down to the store
Buy some light bulbs,
And when you run out, buy some more.
Because the light at the end of your tunnel needs to be maintained.
You can’t let it be stained by their beliefs are better than your beliefs.
And you can’t agree to disagree, because they’re fucking wrong!”

It’s not the strong who have gotten lazy,
It’s just that your vision is a little hazy.
You’re not sure what you want,
But what you’ve got is all you need.
Falsed greed.

For every hypocritical church goer
Who won’t walk past the beggars
‘Cause they can’t spare a dime.
Grandma said, “Fuck them,
I don’t talk to God ’cause I ain’t got the time.”

And it struck me as strange.
Every time I walked past someone
Who stopped to ask me,
“Hey can you spare some change?”
Because, yes I can, but you see
I don’t carry change around in my back pocket.
I don’t wear it around my neck on a chain in some locket.

I keep change in the tip of my pen.
And it seeps out every now and then,
In spurts of angry ink that make me think,
Maybe the writing on the wall could use a little revision.

Grandma told me, “Stop trying to calculate the difference between people.
People don’t need division.
Gotta stick it together.
Gotta love each other.”

Father, brother, sister, mother, uncles, cousins, aunts,
Forget about the chance, the cheers, the jokes, the jeers.
After 2000 years, you’d think we’d know by now.
Grandma said, “We will only find equality in the number of tears.”

And she was right,
Because I don’t know what injustices you have suffer,
Based size, sex, race, religion,
Or the political pigeon shit on the shoulders of
Us versus them.

Like in Bethlehem,
When a man said, “Hey I could be wrong,
But can’t we all just get along?”
No! So we nailed him to a tree.

See, justice isn’t justice,
It just is.
And I can’t change it,
You can’t change it.
So we’ve just got to try and rearrange it.

And I could offer you this miracle.
A chance to see,
A chance to see what I see.
To see the way that people see me.
Because if seeing is believing,
And you see what I see,
We wouldn’t want to see anymore.

But I’ve got a little surprise in store
For every man who looks upon me with judgment in his eye,
The women who looks upon me with wetness between her thighs.
I’m the world’s greatest overweight lover.

And you might just laugh.
And you might just scoff.
My bones are made from sticks and stones
And names just piss me off.

Grandma told me, “Young man,
You can’t be concerned with what ever it is they’ve got,
Because the only reason they think they’re beautiful
Is the same reason they think you’re not.
And, young man, you have beauty beyond measure.
You are a treasure entrenched in this earth.
You can’t let strangers determine your worth.
Rise and shine!”

So I rose and I shone.
I put on my shoes and I was gone.

See, Grandma bought me my first phone.
She said, “Young man, from time to time,
I too need to smile.
Would you do me a favour and keep me on speed dial?”
Yes, Grandma, I will.

And still, to this day, I can call her up
And hear her say, “It’s a game!
You play, you win.
You play, you lose.
You play!”

“Rise and shine!
The world is a window that holds a sign,
There is help wanted out there, somewhere.
But young man, if you are playing to win,
The first thing you have to do,
Is apply within”