My favorite poet is Sarah Kay. A New Yorker. a poetry writer and reader. a spoken word poetry teacher. Sarah Kay is an American poet. Known for her spoken word poetry, Kay is the founder and co-director of Project V.O.I.C.E., founded in 2004. She is a performing poet since she was 14 years old.
Sarah Kay
"If I should have a daughter…“Instead of “Mom”, she’s gonna call me “Point B.” Because that way, she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I’m going to paint the solar system on the back of her hands so that she has to learn the entire universe before she can say “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.”
She’s gonna learn that this life will hit you, hard, in the face, wait for you to get back up so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry, so the first time she realizes that Wonder-woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried.
And “Baby,” I’ll tell her “don’t keep your nose up in the air like that, I know that trick, you’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him.”
But I know that she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boats nearby, ‘cause there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix. Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything if you let it.
I want her to see the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat, to look through a magnifying glass at the galaxies that exist on the pin point of a human mind. Because that’s how my mom taught me. That there’ll be days like this, “There’ll be days like this my momma said” when you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises. When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you wanna save are the ones standing on your cape. When your boots will fill with rain and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say “thank you,” ‘cause there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it’s sent away.
You will put the “wind” in win some lose some, you will put the “star” in starting over and over, and no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.
And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting I am pretty damn naive but I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.
“Baby,” I’ll tell her “remember your mama is a worrier but your papa is a warrior and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.”
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.
Your voice is small but don’t ever stop singing and when they finally hand you heartbreak, slip hatred and war under your doorstep and hand you hand-outs on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.”
The Geese
Still, the sun contributes its honey
and a large raindrop magnifies the thin branch,
here, where I am, and where my mother,
many miles away in her kitchen,
is quietly aware of each
as they pass, over flat land and long grasses,
the lone, strong, open-branched tree,
and the rain that gathers somehow,
to flow over large boulders,
highlighted like hair by sunlight.
In the scheme of things, I too, belong.
All I need do is try, heed the geese,
their squawk and wildness.
If it is meant to be, she thinks,
they will return again.
Mirroring
I am giving up beauty.
Not the silver thickets and the sandpipers
Not the grass beneath the lake,
not the way your hair eddies
when you rinse it in the bath–
but the lighted rooms when
tall and cool
I am effortlessly suspended in the
wordless hush of sight and gifted desire,
drifting quiet like a trout at the water’s edge,
pulled by a gentle current.
I will learn eyes that look outwards.
Since I no longer pull and sing like the current,
when a river butterfly
touches silent surfaces with delicate feet,
I will bend to meet it myself.
When an egret stands in the
marsh shallows with folded wings,
I will call it lovely.
This is beautiful, this is not, this
is an endless garden of reeds,
this is the forest after a rain.
Witness
I do not laugh at bubble letters on the bathroom stall.
The pretty cursive, the delicate loop in the y.
Even when the words spell, help me. I hate my life.
I am willing to witness your toilet paper autobiography.
Who am I to judge, after all? I have spent hours considering
how many other people’s photographs I have wandered into.
That couple from Minnesota in Times Square at Christmas.
The bottom left hand corner.
There I am, wearing my blue coat.
Trying to turn away from the camera, blurry
Market
She buys those eggs with little scenes in them,
a frosting tree and icing child within glittering
walls. She places the village on the end table,
the forest scene atop the television and tiptoes
across the carpet so the deer by the brook won’t
startle. She dusts the ovals in all tenderness
every weekend, shaking her head, remembering
how her life was once that small, the curls on her
head, miniature, her heart a veritable smudge of
gumdrop, neck held in abeyance by the dazzle
of the domed white sky—until the day of the
hammer and shout and sugar shards, cathedral
piping falling across the lintel of an opening door.
She’s gonna learn that this life will hit you, hard, in the face, wait for you to get back up so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry, so the first time she realizes that Wonder-woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried.
And “Baby,” I’ll tell her “don’t keep your nose up in the air like that, I know that trick, you’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him.”
But I know that she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boats nearby, ‘cause there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix. Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything if you let it.
I want her to see the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat, to look through a magnifying glass at the galaxies that exist on the pin point of a human mind. Because that’s how my mom taught me. That there’ll be days like this, “There’ll be days like this my momma said” when you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises. When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you wanna save are the ones standing on your cape. When your boots will fill with rain and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say “thank you,” ‘cause there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it’s sent away.
You will put the “wind” in win some lose some, you will put the “star” in starting over and over, and no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.
And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting I am pretty damn naive but I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.
“Baby,” I’ll tell her “remember your mama is a worrier but your papa is a warrior and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.”
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.
Your voice is small but don’t ever stop singing and when they finally hand you heartbreak, slip hatred and war under your doorstep and hand you hand-outs on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.”
The Geese
Still, the sun contributes its honey
and a large raindrop magnifies the thin branch,
here, where I am, and where my mother,
many miles away in her kitchen,
is quietly aware of each
as they pass, over flat land and long grasses,
the lone, strong, open-branched tree,
and the rain that gathers somehow,
to flow over large boulders,
highlighted like hair by sunlight.
In the scheme of things, I too, belong.
All I need do is try, heed the geese,
their squawk and wildness.
If it is meant to be, she thinks,
they will return again.
Mirroring
I am giving up beauty.
Not the silver thickets and the sandpipers
Not the grass beneath the lake,
not the way your hair eddies
when you rinse it in the bath–
but the lighted rooms when
tall and cool
I am effortlessly suspended in the
wordless hush of sight and gifted desire,
drifting quiet like a trout at the water’s edge,
pulled by a gentle current.
I will learn eyes that look outwards.
Since I no longer pull and sing like the current,
when a river butterfly
touches silent surfaces with delicate feet,
I will bend to meet it myself.
When an egret stands in the
marsh shallows with folded wings,
I will call it lovely.
This is beautiful, this is not, this
is an endless garden of reeds,
this is the forest after a rain.
Witness
I do not laugh at bubble letters on the bathroom stall.
The pretty cursive, the delicate loop in the y.
Even when the words spell, help me. I hate my life.
I am willing to witness your toilet paper autobiography.
Who am I to judge, after all? I have spent hours considering
how many other people’s photographs I have wandered into.
That couple from Minnesota in Times Square at Christmas.
The bottom left hand corner.
There I am, wearing my blue coat.
Trying to turn away from the camera, blurry
Market
She buys those eggs with little scenes in them,
a frosting tree and icing child within glittering
walls. She places the village on the end table,
the forest scene atop the television and tiptoes
across the carpet so the deer by the brook won’t
startle. She dusts the ovals in all tenderness
every weekend, shaking her head, remembering
how her life was once that small, the curls on her
head, miniature, her heart a veritable smudge of
gumdrop, neck held in abeyance by the dazzle
of the domed white sky—until the day of the
hammer and shout and sugar shards, cathedral
piping falling across the lintel of an opening door.
OK just listen
We are Broken
i really think you need to Pay Attention
Do you think love is really a thing
Because It seems like you could care less about our feelings
because it seems to me that boys only seem to want sex nothing more nothing less
I believe there is so much more to a girl than bra size and breast
You should pay attention to what's in our heads
not what's in her bed
what's in her heart
not what's in her pants
what's in her eyes
yes, Her eyes are deep to swim in
They are Filled with oceans and seas
of thousands of water filled planets
look
If you just look you would see her soul
you would see the colors of the rainbow
Fireworks and all the great things that make her who she is
She is filled with treasures
She has A mind filled with wonders
Secrets they you will never know
Unless you look
what do you see??
a good personality
no because you’re not looking
You don’t see because the only thing you’re looking at is that body
listen
listen to the words
that come from her mouth
don’t just hear them
listen
listen to the beat of her heart
Do you hear that remedy
LIke the beat of a drum
The wonderful sound means she is alive
It means that she has feelings
She shows little emotion
Afraid to get her heart broken
She has bones of steel
She puts up a wall
Too strong to be torn down
Too dark to see through
And too big to climb over
Unless you try
In Order to get through you must push and fight
PLease dont fight and give up because you think you’re going to lose
Feel her
touch her delicate soul
do you feel
the hurt in her veins
and the pain in her heart
feel her
Feel the ocean of tears
that flows from her face
Wipe the tears
from her deprived face
Dont let them come back
dont be the cause of her pain
Protect her
from the destruction, hatred, madness, and insecurity
pay attention
you will find so much more inside
Love her
not for the body she possesses
But all of the great things that come with it
We are Broken
i really think you need to Pay Attention
Do you think love is really a thing
Because It seems like you could care less about our feelings
because it seems to me that boys only seem to want sex nothing more nothing less
I believe there is so much more to a girl than bra size and breast
You should pay attention to what's in our heads
not what's in her bed
what's in her heart
not what's in her pants
what's in her eyes
yes, Her eyes are deep to swim in
They are Filled with oceans and seas
of thousands of water filled planets
look
If you just look you would see her soul
you would see the colors of the rainbow
Fireworks and all the great things that make her who she is
She is filled with treasures
She has A mind filled with wonders
Secrets they you will never know
Unless you look
what do you see??
a good personality
no because you’re not looking
You don’t see because the only thing you’re looking at is that body
listen
listen to the words
that come from her mouth
don’t just hear them
listen
listen to the beat of her heart
Do you hear that remedy
LIke the beat of a drum
The wonderful sound means she is alive
It means that she has feelings
She shows little emotion
Afraid to get her heart broken
She has bones of steel
She puts up a wall
Too strong to be torn down
Too dark to see through
And too big to climb over
Unless you try
In Order to get through you must push and fight
PLease dont fight and give up because you think you’re going to lose
Feel her
touch her delicate soul
do you feel
the hurt in her veins
and the pain in her heart
feel her
Feel the ocean of tears
that flows from her face
Wipe the tears
from her deprived face
Dont let them come back
dont be the cause of her pain
Protect her
from the destruction, hatred, madness, and insecurity
pay attention
you will find so much more inside
Love her
not for the body she possesses
But all of the great things that come with it