SLAM Poetry

You 

Life is happening for you, not to you. 

Each misstep, each pitfall, and each obstacle 

Only empower you. 

Only if that's how you see it of course. You 

Will encounter struggle. There is no doubt that destruction, despair, and darkness Will follow you. 

The type of uneasiness, weariness, that snatches the breath from your lungs, leaving you gasping in its wake. You 

Will feel each and every offensive word like thorns raking across your skin, each one leaving a mark. 

It will never not hurt when you get cut, when you 

Feel the tongues of flames licking your skin, 

When lies cut through truths too easily, 

like a knife sinking through soft sand. 

Luckily for you, 

Your skin cells regenerate every two to four weeks, and your body fully regenerates every seven to ten years. So even when you think that your body, your mind, and your thoughts are damaged, you work to heal that hurt and every hurt every day. You, 

Then, you are what you choose to be. 

Who is the creator of your own life? You. 

There is an incomprehensible amount of information in every second. Millions of signals calling you. 

Millions of stories waiting for you. 

Yet you can only focus on a few, and hold a few within you. 

The rest dissolves without you. 

What's wrong is always available to you, 

But so is what’s right. 

Out of millions of possibilities before you,

The one that grows is chosen by you. 

The only life you’re living is your own, 

And so you not only get to choose what experiences to focus on, but you 

Also get to choose what they mean to you. 

You, 

the hero, are defined by the villain you 

fight. 

So when the breath is stolen from your lungs you 

Take another breath. Each offensive word only cuts you 

If you let it. 

We ask you now, is life happening to you? Or is it happening for you. 

We ask you to remember that each misstep, each pitfall, and each obstacle only empowers you. 

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Science 

In science, we need to be precise. 

We measure, in perfect millimeters, how much of liquid x 

Is filling the beaker. 

To avoid an over or an underestimation, we even kneel 

Down to the floor to make sure our estimation is 

Measured at least to the tenth decimal. 

However, life and love and friendship and joy and laughter are not traditional sciences. There is no way I could measure 

The bliss of time to enjoy the day in seconds or the 

Force of life’s purpose in newtons.  

I cannot tell you, in kilograms, how much love weighs on my life, 

Or the lengths, in meters, I would go to for someone I love. 

And so when we try to measure, in hours, the amount of time we 

Need to wait before we respond to their message, 

Or how much energy, in joules, we need to give so that they’re

Curious enough to keep advancing. 

Love, like life, is not a science. 

However, There is only one theoretical law that we need to follow: The secret to living is giving. 

Instead of measuring how much to give 

to understand how much we should expect, 

Give to see their face light up like a christmas tree. 

Give to see them jump up and down and squeal 

Like they’re a little kid. 

Giving is thermal expansion – warmth to make room.