Sarah Kay

Instead of mom, she's going to call me Point B. Because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I'm going to paint the solar systems on the backs of her hands. So she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, oh, I know that like the back of my hand.

and she's gonna learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach, but getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.

There is hurt here that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry. So the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn't coming, I'll make sure she knows she doesn't have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I've tried.

Baby, I'll tell her, don't keep your nose up in the air like that. I know that trick, I've done it a million times. You're just smelling for smoke, so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him. But I know she will anyway, so instead I'll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby, because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can't fix.

Okay, there's a few heartbreaks that chocolate can't fix, but that's what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything if you let it. I want her to look at the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind, because that's the way my mom taught me.

that there'll be days like this, there'll be days like this, my mama said. When you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises. When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly, and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape.

When your boots will fill with rain and you'll be up to your knees in disappointment and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say thank you. Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it's sent away. You will put the wind in winsome.

Lose some. You will put the star in starting over and over. And no matter how many landmines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life. And yes, on a scale from one to overtrusting, I am...

Pretty damn naive. But I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily, but don't be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it. Baby, I'll tell her, remember your mama is a worrier and your papa is a warrior. And you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more. Remember that good things come in threes.

So do bad things and always apologize when you've done something wrong, but don't you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining. Your voice is small, but don't ever stop singing. And when they finally hand you heartache, when they slip war and hatred under your door and offer you handouts on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.

All right, so I want you to take a moment and I want you to think of three things that you know to be true. It can be about whatever you want.

Teknologiaa, ilmastoa, suunnitelmaa, perheesi, mitä olet syönyt yöpäivällä. Ainoa periaate on, ettei ajattele liikaa. Oletko valmiita? Mennään. Tässä on kolme asiaa, joita tiedän olevan totta.

I know that Jean-Luc Godard was right when he said that a good story has a beginning, a middle and an end, although not necessarily in that order. I know that I am incredibly nervous and excited to be up here, which is greatly inhibiting my ability to keep it cool. And I know that I have been waiting all week to tell this joke. Why was the scarecrow invited to TED? Because he was outstanding in his field.

I'm sorry. Okay, so these are three things I know to be true. But there are plenty of things that I have trouble understanding. So, I write poems to figure things out. Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go, oh, that's what this is all about. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven't solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it.

Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person. When I was a freshman in high school, I was a live wire of nervous hormones.

I was underdeveloped and overexcitable. Despite my fear of ever being looked at for too long, I was fascinated by the idea of spoken word poetry. I felt that my two secret loves, poetry and theater, had come together and had a baby.

a baby I needed to get to know, so I decided to give it a try. My first spoken word poem, packed with all the wisdom of a 14-year-old, was about the injustice of being seen as unfeminine. The poem was very indignant.

and mainly exaggerated, but the only spoken word poetry that I had seen up until that point was mainly indignant, so I thought that that's what was expected of me. The first time that I performed, the audience of teenagers hooted and hollered their sympathy, and when I came off stage, I was shaking. I felt this tap on my shoulder, and I turned around to see this giant girl in a hoodie sweatshirt emerge from the crowd. She was maybe eight feet tall and looked like she could beat me up with one hand, but instead she just nodded at me and said,

I really felt that, thanks. And lightning struck. I was hooked. I discovered this bar on Manhattan's Lower East Side that hosted a weekly poetry open mic, and my bewildered but supportive parents took me to soak in every ounce of spoken word that I could. I was the youngest person there

At least a decade. But somehow the poets at the Bowery Poetry Club didn't seem bothered by the 14-year-old wandering about. In fact, they welcomed me. And it was here, listening to these poets share their stories, that I learned that spoken word poetry didn't have to be indignant. It could be fun, or painful, or serious, or silly. The Bowery Poetry Club became my classroom.