THE AUDIOVISUAL TREAT that is slam poetry continues. Today, we are featuring not one but two slam poets. The award-winning duo Death From Below are Dan “Sully” Sullivan and Tim “The Brazen Caucasian” Stafford. Again, we found this poem at the Borders Open-Door Poetry Web site.

Also, we would like to remind you that, as a part of National Poetry Month, Thursday is Poem in Your Pocket Day. Everyone should carry one poem in a pocket and throughout the day share it with friends and peers. And, make sure to ask others about the poem they are carrying.

“PENS (THERE IS A REASON)”
by Death From Below

WRITERS HAVE GIVEN THEIR LIVES

Osip Mandelstam exiled
for writing “Stalin’s Epigram”
wife persecuted thoughts like his life
she preserved his work by reserving to memory

poems.

Boris Pasternak exiled “Doctor Zhivago”
forced by country to reject noble prize

Anna Akhmatova
expelled from writer’s union
poems banned 15 years
stripped of ration card — hungry for food she fed herself with pens
forced to rely on friends to live. remainder of days.

Dante Alighieri exiled
pen morphed Italy’s poetry with journey from satan’s fields
through purgatory to heaven’s haven;
riddled with epitaphs of his own banishment

Dennis Brutus jailed
enlightening change
imprisoned in South Africa
cracked stones with Mandela
now writes in US as political refugee

Federico García Lorca
lost feared loved compassionate,
penned to make art heard martyred, chastised because his ink
had men rethink themselves.
Died by the blade of his words.

So tell me Lorca,
what does it mean to control pens
at 5 in the afternoon

tattoo blood into the forearms of paper

be soothsayer salivating words
at 5 in the afternoon

what does it mean to gargle stanzas at the end of a sword
chew on line breaks when bullets are locomotives
spit verse to shadowbox perspective

what does it mean? there is a reason?

what does it mean? THERE IS A REASON

youth are pumping blood into microphone hearts
spitting ink through hungry teeth onto willing paper

there is a reason maturing spirits are vice-gripping pens and pages
mics and stages
readied faces searching for placement
and individuality in a society that tells us
we are everyone else.

there is a reason
teething babies are biting the hand feeding carnage
to bulimic souls unable to keep down regurgitated stream of comatose.

men and women have died for their writing
made difference where there couldn’t be
change where once was enslaved hearts, panicked minds
men and women have died for their writing
lived for their writing bled for their writing
loved for their writing starved for their writing
left family for their writing been exiled
sacrificed for a pen.

Now, we are soul prostitutes singing lipstick bladed songs
on the corner of ocean-smoke

soul prostitutes in this imploding supermarket of spirits
(don’t be pimped by society’s suppression)

wade in the waters of artistry —
join Mandelstam Pasternak
Akhmatova Dante Brutus Lorca

make change and difference with pens
live into word
weave culture within breath
reconstruct the fallen temples of art

have society help us join these epic banshees,
exile me, slice my wrist
and eat our heart so they can taste poetry

then ask writers what does a pen mean to you?

Watch Death From Below recite their poem here.

“Pens (There Is A Reason)” is reprinted with permission from the authors.