Spoken word teaches that if you have the ability to express yourself and the courage to present those stories and opinions, you could be rewarded with a room full of your peers or your community who will listen.

Spoken word teaches that if you have the ability to express yourself and the courage to present those stories and opinions, you could be rewarded with a room full of your peers or your community who will listen.

Poetry is like pooping. If there is a poem inside of you, it has to come out. Sometimes it can be really difficult and take longer than you'd like (it may even be painful), but other times it can be really easy and happen much faster than you expected. But either way - it is important, and it feels so much better when it's done.

I think you can perform any poem. But what I believe is that the best examples of spoken word poetry I've ever seen, are spoken word poems that, when you see them, you're aware of the fact they need to be performed. That there's something about that poem that you would not be able to understand if you were just reading it on a piece of paper.

I want [my daughter] to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind.

I write about love and family a lot, because I'm always trying to figure those things out. At different points in my life, just when I think I've finished writing about it, the dynamics shift, and then I have a whole new set of questions and worries and misunderstandings to wrestle with.

Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things and always apologize when you've done something wrong but don't you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining.