One night, God came to me in a dream
With a scheme that seemed to be out of this world
He approached me and opened his robe
And showed me a hypodermic needle in the shape of a pen
And my first reaction was to step back fast
But then God grabbed me and said
"Slow down my child,
I've got a job for you to do"
And with a burst of light God grabbed my arm
And said "I mean you no harm"
And he pushed the pen in
And it filled my arteries and God charted me
To write some new shit, some true shit, something just for you shit
And when I was done with part one
God said "write some part two shit"
He injected me with Billy's Blues and a muse of Langston Hughes
And God said "you've acquired some of the tools in the school you've been attending
But now it's time to stop pretending"
And he started sending into my bloodstream
The poetic feats of John Keats
And the published greats of W.B. Yeats
And just when I thought God was through
He started slipping me hits of Maya Angelou
And God asked "do you know what I've handed you?"
And my response was "No" and God said "let me show"
And he continued to fill my veins the same way he had been
Giving me a fix of Emily Dickenson and my bloodstream seemed to scream
As God gave me the liquidated literary genius of W.E.B.
And I got lost between doses of Robert Frost
And my eyes got blurry in a flurry
And I was no longer seeing 'em but I could feel Emerson, Tennyson, and Stevenson
And God said "you won't get far without Paul Lawrence Dunbar
And you can't start spittin 'til I've given you Whitman"
And God kept filling me and it felt like he was killing me
And I closed my arm tight and God snapped it back open
And screamed "you're not yet ready to write"
He said "tonight has just begun
Everything's alright my son
You see I need you
I use poetry to teach people
The world I created has been overrun by ignorant thinking
And I need poets to take the world back and break the curse
Now unbend your arm so I can give you William Wordsworth"
And again the pen was shoved in my veins and God grabbed the reigns
And as if I was a mule
He said "I use you as my tool and plow the field with you
Fulfilling empty minds' needs while planting knowledge seeds
No longer will there be a flourishing time for malnourishing minds
I want you to make intelligence a law cuz ignorance is a crime
Now I need you to go and reap what you sow
While captivating minds like Edgar Allen Poe
I gave you the wings so now fly like the raven
This world needs saving
Feel free to fight off your fears
Cuz they'll disappear within this injection
Of my tears which contains the remains of great things gone
And new things to come beyond the next dawn
You're the next in a bloodline of greats
You are a poet
You command the attention of large groups
You ready the troops for revolution
You write words that can commend or condemn
Turn boys into men
Make other poets push pens
And you must be about something more than slam scores based on ten
Because you are a poet
Think about all the great things poets have accomplished
And when the writing gets rough
Hold on to your pen
And don't drop this
Always take time in your mind to reflect back on the fact
That you're the next to step forth
From a poetic bloodline"
Billy Stewart - Billy's Blues
Langston Hughes
John Keats
W.B. Yeats
Maya Angelou
Emily Dickenson
W.E.B
Robert Frost
Emerson
Tennyson
Stevenson
Paul Lawrence Dunbar
Whitman
William Wordsworth
Edgar Allen Poe - the raven
