Bars from the Stars

Spoken word raps to escape the traps of life.

There is something about word sounds that can be fun and joyful to experiment with-not just perfect rhyme but assonance, slant rhyme, alliteration and repetition. Using the word “experiment” makes me feel freer to be playful, and explore the possibilities. This is how I escaped sadness and anger, and I have so many amazing rap artists and spoken word artists, both national and local that have inspired me. I started word play exploration freestyling in the back of class to get other classmates to laugh or join me instead of make fun of my whiteness, and I have kept playing ever since. I have found many scholars and adults also enjoy this type of expression and play. Over the years, writing and experimenting with bars have brought joy into classrooms.

Homemade Possibility

It’s ironic they hate to love when they always love to hate,

Just because someone does not acknowledge your greatness,

Does not mean you are not great,

Sometimes it’s hard not to lose the best parts of you on the way,

But we make a way to make a way,

Promise yourself, to tell yourself every day,

You are born with a purpose so big,

No one can take it away,

Look, they didn’t like me then,

They still don’ like me now,

some people got so much beef

Like they must be mixed with cow,

Since I came up, stay, layup,

Guess you can say I am just hanging around,

Feel like the point guard of my town,

Drew Holiday hitting 3 after 3, while they fight over rebounds,

Time to get your dreams on solid ground,

Get your head out the clouds,

You don’t want to be in retirement age

Looking for your life in the lost and found

Should have named me Merry, I go around and around,

Feel like Debo hard as I have been putting things down

Never been bound by hate, I feed people over because I am tired of seeing us die off of history’s aftertaste.

I just want to speak so real I make Rolexes look fake,

Let’s talk about our history, our true possibility,

Rich as chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate cake,

if they are drive through, let’s be homemade

Use our intelligence to catch everything they got coming our way, like we were born to place first base,

pray we can get past the pain

By bad decisions this country has made

First apologies and reparations need to be put in place,

Mourning for those lives we long along the way

Tired of young people’s lives being erased like chalk in the rain

But when we say their names, their souls give us strength

To pave a way to make a change for better days,

Every day a gift to give thanks

I am learning to drink the sky,

That’s what stars do. Family, where are your cups?

You should we drinking too