 my name is Damon Arundel. I am a poet and a teaching artist and thank you for being here with me. We're going to be doing some writing today and this is a little bit less of a lesson and more of writing activity. We're going to be writing a mad lib fear poem and I'll get into exactly what that looks like in a moment. The big idea behind this is tapping into our imaginations can help us see past our limitations. I'll say that again, tapping into our imaginations can help us see past our limitations. So where we're going to start is by looking at our fears. I want you to make a list of things that scared you when you were younger and some of those things might still scare you. So just take a couple minutes to write down things that scared you when you were a little kid and a lot of the students that I've worked with often have the dark or darkness on their list. Clowns are a very common thing, spiders as well. So certain insects, certain animals, places you've been, some things that are on my list, clowns, earthquakes, family members getting hurt, dying, getting old. The dark is on my list as well. Failure, global warming. For me, the police, sometimes our government. These are some of the things that scared me as a little kid or I should say when I was younger. So take a moment to write down some things that are on your list. What are some things that scared you when you were a kid and may still scare you? See, if you can get to five, that would be awesome. So I'd like to share with you a poem that is all about our imagination and how our imaginations can take us past what we thought we were capable of. How our imaginations can help us to become more than who and what we are. This is a poem by a poet named Saku Andrews. Saku Andrews is Black Man from Los Angeles. And I really love this poem. And I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna read it out loud to you. This is called Be For Living. You asked me now, mommy. You asked me now what I want to do for a living. Well, I think I finally figured it out. I don't want to do for a living. I want to be for a living. I want to be life. I want to make things grow and move and breathe and reproduce and respond. I want to make things respond and react and rejoice and relapse and relate and release and receive. As soon as I recite when I grow up, I don't want to be like the mother kids, mommy. I don't want to be doctors and ballers and astronauts. I want to be passion and heat and energy when I grow up. Not the fireman, mommy. Let me be the fire, the explosion behind the soul's big bang theory that leaves in its place desire, the burning within that gives life to the word aspire. Let me light the paths of those wandering in darkness and when the artists of the world have become so infatuated with ice that the whole world freezes over, let me be the poet that melts the ice caps, drowns the planet and starts this whole thing over two poets at a time like Noah. When I grow up, I don't want to be like the astronaut, mommy. I want to be the space that she explores. Not the doctor, mommy. Let me be the cure, the prescription for a better life. I want to be the pill of which you take to and the call this place the next morning. I want to be the white blood cell that strengthens your immune system, the clot that stops your bleeding, the antidote that counters your poison. I want to speak antibiotic poetry that defeats your life's viruses but only if you take my words in three times a day until the entire bottle is gone. I don't want to be the artist, mommy. I want to be the art. I don't want to be the painter, mommy. I want to be the canvas, not the choreographer, mommy. Let me be the dances, not the poet, mommy. Let me be the stanzas. I don't want to be the philosopher. I want to be the philosophy in those minds or rather the elusive concept that they can't quite figure out like purpose, faith, and time. Let me be time. Let me be time so that I will never again feel this depression that I feel now from being abandoned by it. Let me be time so that everyone will go to sleep tonight feeling like they never got enough of me and will panic when they feel me slipping away. Let me be time so that I will never be before myself, never be against myself, never be too late, never be too early. So for once in this life of unfulfilled dreams that have left my cheeks streamed with saltwater erosion in my mouth perpetually coated with the bitter aftertaste of disappointment for once I can be right on me. When I grow up I want to be the answer to the void, the antilogy to emptiness, the inverse of regression, the reverse of absence, the illumination of shadows. I want to be the opposite of darkness. Let me be the opposite of darkness so that when the greatest poet in existence recites the first line of the greatest poem ever written, let there be light, then I can begin. So I was a poem by Seku Andrews and what I love about it is him wanting to be more. It doesn't want to be a job. And one thing that I noticed that you young people constantly have to face from adults is what do you want to do when you grow up? As opposed to what type of person do you want to be when you grow up? Sure, jobs are important, careers are important, but I've known doctors who are complete jerks. And I've known people who bag groceries at Safeway and are the kindest people in the world. So what type of person do you want to be is a much more important question in my personal opinion. And in this case, he's talking about not wanting to be a job. He doesn't want to be an astronaut. He wants to be the space that she explores, not the doctor. Let me be the cure wants to be more than just a person. He wants to be an impact. He wants to make an impact. He wants to make a difference. And I think it's one of the greatest things in the world to want to be. So the next step in our writing is to think of aspects of nature that you find really interesting or that you really like a lot. What are some animals that you think are amazing? What are some aspects of nature? Trees, a forest, the wind, aspects of nature, animals, insects, what are three things that you think are interesting or admire? And what is it that you like about them? For myself, my first pick would be the blue whale, the largest creature that has ever lived on our planet. One blue whale is the same length of 10 full grown African elephants. They are huge. The eye of a whale, blue whale is about that. And the heart of a blue whale, it's about the size of a Prius, a small compact car. That's huge. And yet there are some of the gentlest and most graceful creatures that have ever swum the ocean. So I'm fascinated by blue whales. I love those creatures. What are some animals for whatever reason? What are some animals or aspects of nature that you think are interesting? Maybe the rain or thunder or a whale or a lion or a forest or the wind? What are some aspects of nature? So going back to our fears, I mentioned in my list that earthquakes were something that scared me when I was a little kid. And I'll tell you a little story. When I was 10 years old, I'm born and raised in New York. And when I was 10 years old, New York had an earthquake and wasn't big enough to do any damage, but it was big enough to shake me and knock me out of my bed. And it scared me to the point that I started having nightmares. And I needed a way to kind of get through it. And I was told by an elder that one of the best ways to get past a fear is to learn everything you can about that thing. So I was taught to research earthquakes. I went to the library, read everything that I could about earthquakes, and that helped with the nightmares that I had started to have, but it didn't make them go away completely. The next thing that I was told was about lucid dreaming. It's when you're aware that you're dreaming. And so I was told by this elder, when you're getting ready for bed, say to yourself, I will become the earthquake, I will become the earthquake, I will become the earthquake, which made no sense to me whatsoever, but I did it. And the next time that I had the nightmare, I can't explain it other than to say in the dream, I said, I will become the earthquake, I will become the earthquake, and then I literally dissolved into the ground. And that was the last time that I had the nightmare. So think, if you could transform into something else, an animal, a force of nature, when you had to face one of your fears, what would you want to become? And I'll give you an example. When I was little, I was scared of earthquakes. When I saw the ground shaking, my face looked like a cracked eggshell. And my heart sounded like a steam engine going through a long dark tunnel. But all that's changed. Now, when I get scared, I become the earthquake rumbling beneath your feet. When I become the earthquake, my heart will look like an old school boombox with the base bumping. What I've got here is a structure for the mad lib poem that we are going to create together. The idea here is facing one of those fears on your list. And if you had to do that, what would you want to transform into so that you would no longer be scared? So we're going to use this template. When I was little, I was scared of blank. When I saw the blank, my face looked like blank, and my heart sounded like blank. But now when I get scared, I become the blank. When I become the blank, my heart will look like blank. I'm going to show this worksheet for you all to follow along and write your own responses. I encourage you to write the whole thing so that it's easier to follow along rather than just writing the responses. But the idea here is to really use your imaginations, just like, say, Koo Andrews talked about in his poem, to help you to move past your own limitations, to help you to move past your fears. And I think that's a really wonderful gift that our imaginations give us. So again, you're going to use your fear and your fear on this worksheet does not have to be the thing that you turn into. In my case, I did become the earthquake, but if you are scared of dogs, maybe you transform into the rain, or transform into the wind, or maybe you transform into an elephant, you get to decide if you are scared of the dark, you don't have to transform into the dark, you get to transform into whatever you would like. The idea here is to use these fill-in-the-blanks to create your own version of this poem, where you get to become more than what you are. You get to imagine yourself as more than just a person. You get to be whatever you decide. So thank you for being with me. Take about 10 minutes to write with this activity. Dive on in, see what you come up with. Thanks for being here with me.