A love poem, an ode
To the city that raised me,
To Los Angeles.
https://soundcloud.com/aacetera/where-im-from-spoken-word
I’m also excited to announce I’ve been honored by Urban Word Los Angeles (urbanword.org) and the City of Los Angeles as Los Angeles Youth Poet Ambassador and a finalist for the title of Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate. LA residents: please come out and support at the inaugural event in June at the LA Central Library. Thank you WP for all your continued support! One love.
Our school’s slam team recently met to discuss writing our own contrapuntal poem after reading and watching Cave Canem poet Jamaal May perform his contrapuntal, “I Do Have A Seam.”
Text of the poem:
Click to access Seam-for-Internet.pdf
A contrapuntal poem is 3 poems in one. The two poems on each column are similar in some way, but also conflict in point of view. The first two poems are read by reading each column down (left column with center line at top, right column with center line at top). The third poem is created by starting from the center line and combining the lines from each column, reading across from left to right, creating an entirely new perspective or poem.
This poem is my contrapuntal, adapted from one of my earlier poems also entitled “Where I’m From.” Enjoy.
A place
where poetry grows
out of every crack in the concrete
jungle – out here you can get blinded by stars
walk an avenue of fancy cars
to remind you why you need a new grind.
Where I’m from
They tell you to stay down to Earth
When you can barely breathe
Without your head above the clouds
Where sunsets feed the shining, steel trees
It rains sunbeams
And clouds are a purple haze.
Where food trucks brawl on the boulevards,
The capital of MUSIC
That’s music capitalized
Because MUSIC is where the capital lies
And the heart of these pulsating streets beats
In tune with the rhythms of the soul –
A place
Not where we live, but what we are
A state of mind.
Where street wanderers have more in common
With you than you might think
And the night dances to the sea breeze
In a gold sequin dress
Shimmering, conjuring images of Hollywood dreams,
Bless these rolling hills and golden valleys that form the city’s eyeline.
And even at ground zero you can see the skyline
Smile warmly as if to say
“if you can make it through the night, there’s a brighter day”
where I’m from.
Domed Knowledge 