A spoken word poem by 2-time National Poetry Slam champion, activist and social justice educator Guante.

“New piece. I really hate those Miller Lite commercials, but it’s definitely bigger than just that. Felt good to talk about it on stage. This is one of the first performances of this piece, and it’ll probably be polished some and hopefully filmed more professionally at some point. But I wanted to post it now.

On a side note, I know there are a ton of spoken-word pieces out there about masculinity. I’ve got this one too. But I think it’s important to keep talking about these issues, especially if you can do it in a creative way, or at least have a new angle or hook. I think there’s a bad tendency in spoken-word circles to dismiss any poem that covers well-trod territory (like “here’s another hip hop poem,” or “here’s another domestic violence poem”) and while I completely understand where that’s coming from and agree that we should be pushing ourselves in terms of subject matter, I ALSO believe that certain topics deserve the attention. Especially as someone who works with young people–particularly young men– I like to have three or four of these kinds of poems in my pocket.

Anyways, hope you like it. Might be a bit of a “preaching to the choir” piece in some ways, but that all depends on with whom we all share it. Any FB posts, tweets, tumblr posts, re-blogs and whatever are much appreciated, as always.”

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Photo: pictureorpictures/Flickr