Abalones for L.I.S.A.
by Mr. Hagstrom,
Writing Instructor
co-authoring: pauses-and-silences

April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.

Langston Hughes

Words like freedom

There are words like Freedom
Sweet and wonderful to say.
On my heart-strings freedom sings
All day everyday.

There are words like Liberty
That almost make me cry.
If you had known what I knew
You would know why.

by Langston Hughes

The Nuyorican Poets Cafe,
a cultural icon on New York’s Lower East Side since 1973.

“The Cafe is the most integrated place on the planet”- Allen Ginsberg

— Nuyorican Poets Cafe website

Tracie Morris

iii
and me angel
i’m tryin to write this
in honor of your divinity
but i keep thinkin
bout how lonely
it is to write bout
someone instead of
bein with someone

and i miss your…

— by suheir hammad from Angles got no maps in Listen Up! ed. zoe anglesey

Doubtless by Steve Ericson

When I was seven,

I looked to heaven

and dreamed

of going to the moon

but pretty soon

somebody came along

to change my tune.

They put me down.

Bang! There my dream lay

on the ground.

Thank God, eventually

I came around

and dreamed another dream.

At first it seemed

a good idea to hide it,

confide it

to absolutely no one.

But that was no fun,

besides, I realized

I couldn’t. The joy it gave me

just wouldn’t

be stopped up. It popped up

at the most

inconvenient times,

offervesced in all my rhymes.

-from Hip Hop Speaks to Children

Latin Night at the Pawnshop

The apparition of a salsa band
gleaming in the Liberty Loan
pawnshop window:

Golden trumpet,
silver trombone,
congas, maracas, tambourine,
all with price tags dangling

like the city morgue ticket
on a dead man’s toe

-Martin Espada

from Aloud Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.

— Anais Nin (via mikefrawley)

Brave New Voices - Group Slam by Denver High School Quartet - Angst, Place, Purpose and Meaning in Life

Kaona Cut - Slam Duet on the tie between the Survival of Language and Identity