My introduction to the world of academic poetry began in the ninth grade, I decided to take a class on the subject.

It was not too pleasant. 99 and 44/100ths of what was read, discussed, and analyzed, came from deceased and sometimes boring white men. Looking back, I almost fell for it since I read Macbeth and enjoyed the story, but in class, I was constantly getting other students to laugh through berating nearly every single poem that the teacher decided would do us some good. What did you think of this poem? I once said The Rhyme of The Ancient Mariner was the only close to decent thing that ever came from the major English Romantics. I Hated it or its Awful leaped forth from my mouth in sarcastic mockery. Byron and Arnold were demolished for fun and insults opened my mouth and mind wide and obtrusive on hegemony through poems we were forced to read. Everything discussed was banal, austere, unworthy. I squatted in class where everyone seemed to be somnambulists looking for grades and wrote a paper on a Shakespeare poem where I read the thing so many times that I memorized it and recited it. And the dumb people fawned, blushed, oohed and ahhed, like this overweight couch king was 62, handsome, and a trained Shakespearian actor. I learned many things are more lovely and temperate than the immortal bards sonnets and that he is maybe killing optimistic rhythm in young people who struggle through his thous and misspellings. Please, do not kill me for insulting the master, and I know, he did not misspell words but the atmosphere of many Literature classes has been students pondering whether or not to sleep and I grew to hate old Will as I got older. Here is a poem that I crapped out for this class: I love you

Like I love my shoe Like I love the color blue Blue the color of my shoe Thats how much I love you I love you Like the little rock Thats inside my little sock The little rock inside my sock Thats inside my blue shoe Thats how much I love you I love you Like I love TV TV is a part of me Like the little rock Thats inside my sock Thats inside my blue shoe Thats how much I love you And the dumb people melted like ice in a burning house when I was asked numerous times to repeat this poem when my school held a coffee house and I being the schmuck I am would bumble center stage to recite crap it took less than a minute to write.

15 YEARS, 2000 BOOKS, AND 2000 HAND WRITTEN POEMS LATER I cant believe I even wrote that garbage To show how far I have come here is a poem written more recently: on whitey and nigga hood you do not wish to experience blackness the black experience is not about knowledge you seek to acquire you wish to transform metamorph into mr. nigga ish it is not about brotherhood but about soul speak slang how cool we look you want the nook so since you are more nigga ish (an amalgam of black conscious and white pigment nigga whitey sunshine rightly) you are blacker than me understanding you and your amazing array of nigga speak your nigga clothes and nigga music nigga jive

and nigga bullshit you a nigga cause niggas do it whitey shut the fuck up and go on in your small mind knowing your blacker than any nigger like me Can you see the difference? I am older and now I love Toni Morrison and David Foster Wallace, Walt Whitman odes and Wu-Tang lyrical waxes, Sylvia Plath and Paul Beatty speak to me in tongues I understand, Richard Pryor is an ethical philosopher deeper than Plato, KRS-ONE is nicer than Keats, Jay-Zs book stays on my shelf while dead white guys dont even make the reading list, Richard Wright is like music while Mathew Arnold hurts my aesthetic sensibilities, Alan Moore is a genius but Emily Dickinson needs to sharpen her metaphors, Bolano could slap me and Id ask for an autograph but Joyce Oates needs to try something new every once in a while, Id wash Alexies dishes but CS Lewis shouldve never come out the wardrobe, Spike Lee makes Griffith look stupid, Guru over Beethoven, Nas above Mozart, and Kevin Smith is the funniest white man alive with Steve Martin, Mel Brooks, and George Carlin coming in a close second. As stated, I am a diverse and ever expanding galaxy. I am an entertainment junkie who mostly reads books, has a real love for hip-hop records, and writes. I draw from what builds and defines me over my lifetime the same way other writers do and know a reason I am invisible is quoting Big Pun over the immortal bard.

Some old guys do rock I read The Iliad in high school and thought it brilliant. The message behind it humanity will probably never understand. LOVE. And we love throwing around the idiom, if we do not learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it, but what have we ever learned from anything that has ever been passed down from anyone, ever. Look around you and we are still constantly fighting and lying, cursing and vexing, sinning and grinning, and while older writing contains carbon copy messages used presently, tools used in storytelling are constantly experiencing revivals, recycles, reiterations, resurrections, rebirths, and recreations. There are many ways to tell a story and breaking from traditional usage of structure, diction, form, plotting, punctuation, etc. would make books speak to people in ways they dont believe possible. Language in the Iliad was dense then and I struggled each night until I found my groove, Shakespeare was hard to get senior year when I was handed a stone-age version of Hamlet, quitting the first night, but when I found Bukowski the sky cleared, Paul Beatty left me wide open, when Salinger wrote I felt, Toni Morrison I will never stop looking for, when my mind awoke during Infinite Jest I knew I had to finish. Hal, get em! When I experienced the Wu Tang Clan, Definitive Jux, Rawkus, Common Sense, Gangstar, Jay-Z, Bad Boy, The Fugees, Pac, Snoop, KRS ONE, Kool Moe Dee, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, 50 Cent, and on and on to the break-a-break-a dawn, I lived and was awakened and beat boxed and spun records and sang and danced and cried and laughed and got hyped up and spinning and juiced and lifted and high and open and felt more me alone with music, than me around most people ... I loved. Everyone has a definition of love. Everyones journey is unique. We are a dope mix tape, a swirl of billions of flavors in clusters recorded for our own personal listening pleasure and everyone does not experience bad shit the same way as Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Wordsworth, Chaucer, Homer, and any other old dude who people believe could not pollute

the airwaves with a fart.

Come Prepared Literature is not constant and the only lit constant is change. A great example is found tracing the history of comic books. Released during World War II, the first Captain America appearance featured Cap, on the cover, decking Hitler and similar occurrences liter the landscape of comic books. The medium is known to follow current popular trends, (since it is geared toward children), and if you want to find Americas enemy in an uncommon source, study wars and this art form. Dubya gets blasted in the pages of the Ultimates, Cap knocks the jaws off Nazis, Bats battles terrorist, Hulk, an experiment gone wrong, ran from the government. Every enemy since funny books inception as an art form is blasted, belittled, and beaten in the pages of a medium considered for children. Literature constantly changes with need, which explains my anger after reading Adam Mansbachs essay On Lit Hop, since he argues that Hip Hop Literature is not getting the respect it deserves from critics. After viewing a draft of this essay a mentor said this is just the way humanity behaves. Slow and not battle ready before being served, we see evolution as a threat to our emcee dominance and hate anything different from our own recognizable asses. We must accept what is happening now or a new breed of writer will lose faith and fade to black. Also explaining my anger is that I write Lit Hop myself and know that if you want to liven up a classroom, hand them Sesshu Foster, or Saul Williams, or Victor Lavalle, or Paul Beatty, or Michael Dyson, or Adam Mansbach, instead of Old Will. My last unpublished novel is littered with samples, hip-hop references, and freestyle battles and I question denial after applying to 10 MFA programs.

My essays have range. From psychoanalysis of characters in Alan Moores Watchmen to my disappointment after Eldrige Cleaver went Christian, the absence of my father and the search for him in the pages of a Luke Cage comic to comparing Superman with Jesus, to violences nature and my personal life to language manipulation in Ionesco, and my writing is worthy of signification.

Might as well combine what you love I began loving rap around the same time that I began reading and choosing between either is impossible since both continue to define me. My two unpublished works of fiction are a cut and paste experiment: old papers, poems, free-writes, and vignettes are put together to form a coherent story. I paint pictures with my pen and a pair of mental scissors the same way hip hop artist transform an old record into something no longer recognizable by the source of the sample, or what should be considered a new creation. My poetry is also heavily influenced by hip-hop. Rap music is where I learned poetics from and when I write the jewel I am looking for the bomb just like Ice Cube. I learned beautiful writing, metaphors, awakenings, and poetry, through hip hop music and I know I would not be the poet I could ever be had Rakim never picked up a mic.

Raekwon is the poetic equivalent of Allen Ginsberg ... And he speaks to people probably not too excited to read Old Will. Hip Hop has given youth like myself a means of self-expression, a voice, and a sense of unity: I have met people on the streets, Asians and Latinos ironically, who I have bonded with from my music being too loud and them over hearing a Wu Tang classic: Ey man, Wu Tang Yeah, Wu Tang And Hip Hop has the ability to reach further. Chuck D once called Rap black peoples CNN and Lit Hop can be the next step in the evolution of the five elements. Think about where the music could go. Think about Junot Diaz and 80s nerd nostalgia in Oscar Wao. Imagine visualize beyond what you believe and see the possibilities then someone who is not the average reader will actually read a book. Literature is unfixed and has a huge selection of classic material ... and while being ignored and ragged on is no fun, people once ignored and ragged on Allen Ginsberg and company. Ginsberg and other Beatniks are finally a part of the club. At West Point military academy Ginsbergs Howl is required reading for all students to teach them what theyre training to protect, that everyone, has the right in this country to speak out. Literature teaches people love through example and blasting literature too far behind the ropes for going Dolemite with diction is killing the lesson that many write for people to realize acceptance, tolerance, and understanding something before you judge it for its use of language, (which millions of people use), is unfair and against the grain of what literature, beneath the surface, is about. Love is love love Cappadonna of the Wu-Tang Clan

Therefore, if you believe what I write is not worthy of recognition then nothing anyone has ever written is worth a damn thing ... EVER.