Occasionally I listen to various videos published through Button Poetry, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting spoken word via poetry. I have taken it upon myself to find some of my favorite poems and to share the highlights of each, knowing my readers may not have time to listen to 10 or 20 three-minute poems. Each poem has its own unique theme ranging from mental health awareness, social injustice, political revolutions, complex family dynamics and addiction. Feel free to search your own favorite poems using YouTube.

Catalina Ferro - "Anxiety Group" [3 minutes]

My favorite line as she refers to her other anxiety group members: “These people who fight through every day like f**king gladiators who fight demons worse than you and I can dream of, just because they want so badly to live. To hold on. To love. Because you can’t be this afraid of losing everything if you don’t love everything first, because you have to have a soul-crushing hope that things will get better to be this afraid of missing it.”

Blythe Baird - “Pocket Size Feminism” [2.5 minutes long]

My favorite line, “Once I forgave a predator to avoid starting drama in our friend group, two weeks later he assaulted someone else. I am still carrying the guilt in my purse. There are days I forget we had to invent nail polish to change color in drugged drinks and apps to virtually walk us home and lipstick-shaped mace and underwear designed to prevent rape. Once a man behind me on a crowded elevator lifted his hand up my skirt from behind and nobody around said anything.. So I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to make a scene. [...] We text each other when we get home safe and it does not occur to us that not all of our guy friends have to do the same. You can literally saw a woman in half and it would still be called a magic trick. We are the daughters [...] who are told to be careful. To be safe. Then (our fathers) told our brothers to go out to play.”

Matt Coonan - "Fish" [3 minutes]

This entire poem is worth listening to if you or anyone you know struggles with addiction or familial acceptance. My favorite part: “(My brother) loved how the hooks pierced his skin. Chris has always been a floater. Swam to grandma’s funeral, though. As the casket dipped we tried to reel her spirit back, and behind everyone my brother stood still camouflaged amongst the tombstones. You know, the ones people just stop visiting after a while.”

Darius Simpson & Scout Bosley - “Lost Voices” [3 minutes]

Another poem that is entirely worth watching as a decent human being living in 2016. One perspective shows the struggles of black Americans, while the other portrays domestic violence against women. I suppose if I had to pick a line or two from this poem to share: “As a woman, having a boyfriend is a battle. If 70 percent of us are abused in a lifetime, what is the number of men doing it? The answer is not one man running faster than light to complete a mission and that is what leaves me sick. [...] To the white woman that told me she knows what it feels like to be black because she grew up poor. I would tell you to think before you speak but your mind has got to be bacteria infected, and any filter through that labyrinth of nothingness might be worse than no thought at all. It is not a problem that you want to sympathize but to tell me you know my pain, is to stab yourself in the leg because you saw me get shot. We have two different wounds, and looking at yours does nothing to heal mine.”

Crystal Valentine - "Black Privilege" [3 minutes]

“Black privilege is having the same sense of humor as Jesus. Remember how he smiled on the cross? The same way Malcolm X laughed at his bullet and there I go again: asserting my black privilege using a dead man’s name without his permission. And it’s tiring, you know, for everything about my skin to be a metaphor, for everything black to be pun-intended, to be death-intended. [...] I’ll be lucky to make it to the (court) stand. For some people, their trials live longer than they do. Black privilege is knowing that if I die, at least Al Sharpton will come to my funeral. Black privilege is thinking this poem is enough.”

Adrienne Novy - “Baby Photos” [3 minutes]

Upon preparing for hearing the worst news regarding your chances of bearing children. “Do not look at your body like it is shrapnel. Or a skipping record scratching over the same unanswered questioned. [...] Even if I snap my own heart like a pencil hearing that I may not be able to carry the weight of my future children, how I have picked apart my body like a rough draft, I am 19 now. Lucky enough to not have severe conditions but still paranoid about the potential of my future everything, hoping that when I tell the man I’m in love with that poetry may be the only life I can bring into this world, that he will not let go of my hand. That he will not see the IV needles, stomach bile, emergency rooms and apologies to my mother. That we will both see each other as two people full of learning how to heal and forgive - neither of us far from empty.”

Nora Cooper - "Sharknado" [3 minutes]

This poem is interesting, and I watch it frequently to constantly try to understand all the meanings behind it. It is again worth watching, but my favorite line is, “In case you were wondering, if these movies were to become a reality, the sharks definitely did not consent to this. You can tell this by the way they flail around and how so many of them die and how they definitely preferred to stay in the ocean. In case you were wondering, there is a franchise of movies about tornadoes with sharks inside of them: don’t tell me what’s impossible!”

Lacey Roop - "Resurrecting the Kessler" [4 minutes but #unfff]

The entire poem was great, but this is the conclusion: "It seems that with every great invention we make, we're taking something more important back like we are trying to prove to ourselves that we are smarter than monkeys and apes. Because we can build skyscrapers and send people to space. To each its own, is our motto and since this is the case: I would like the aliens to come and attack us today. Cause only then will we unite as one world instead of being separated by our own religions, governments, prejudices and races. And only then will we may be able to figure out the parts of humans that science cannot explain."

Blythe Baird - “The Lesbian Reevaluates”

This poem discusses the constant belittling and interrogative questions fellow bisexual and lesbian humans receive from various sections of society. Favorite line: “Recently, my mother told me that if she knew I would turn out gay, she never would have had me in the first place. This is why I am terrified to be wrong, to see the smirk on all of their faces if I ever dared to wake up one day like a white flag and in a boy’s arms- just as everyone suspected I would.”

Olivia Gatwood- “Ode to my B***h Face” [1 minute]

“B***h Face is cutting off the fire escape to your apartment willing to burn alive if it means at least he can’t get in.”

My favorite Button Poetry poem of the week is written and spoken by Crystal Valentine and is titled “Crystal Gets Taken in for Interrogation After Assassinating Donald Trump.” I understand that Trump is the remaining, most popular Republican presidential candidate for America 2016, and that Monmouth University, the school for whom I write, has taken a campus-wide poll and the results were despicable. The majority of Monmouth University sees Donald Trump as America’s next presidential representation of the entire country. I would like to hereby post the lyrics to this poem being as though every single word of this is absolute pure truth, and if I had darker skin and a bolder voice perhaps I wouldn’t mind sharing the poem aloud in front of my fellow white classmates. Hopefully no one gets too upset by reading or listening to the truth, but I honestly don’t care. Thank you, Crystal, thank you, is all I have to say.

“Crystal Gets Taken into for Interrogation After Assassinating Donald Trump."

They put me in a dark room white men all around me asking all the wrong questions, not sure what to do with this black assassin, so I figured I’d help them out. First, when it came to that man, the question shouldn’t be why did I kill him. The question should be, “What took me so long?” They say he said he’d make America great again, but America hasn’t been great ever since the Constitution split Black folk into three-fifths of a body so what he meant was, he’d make America Amerikkkan again. The question should be why would I risk my life to save this country after everything she has done to me? Which translates to what is it with you black folk and your hero complex, but man. Like who wouldn’t want to kill a potential candidate that Miley Cyrus and her [multi-millionaire friends] support. Who wouldn’t want to off a man who laughs at the question, “When can we get rid of the Muslims?” The real question is why is this a political campaign instead of a hate group. Why do we laugh with this white man, at his white man jokes that scream of genocide. Why was this a solo mission? Why in 2015 is it STILL okay to kill black bodies, brown bodies, queer bodies, women bodies, Muslim bodies, marginalized bodies, but I can’t kill a homophobic, transphobic, sexist, racist, do y’all know who Donald Trump is? This monster. This man who promotes guns in school but never had a gun pointed to his head? This man who is so privileged even his shadow is white. Don’t you hear the locusts coming every time? Don’t you hear the locusts coming every time he opens his mouth? And yes, white Republican women, y’all think he won’t come for you too? That he is only after the immigrants? That he won’t make a disappearing act out of your 19th Amendment? Don’t you know not to trust a man who makes rape jokes about his own daughter? Don’t you know not to trust a man whose smile is as fake as his toupee? Hasn’t American history taught you anything? Instead of questioning my actions, you should be thanking me. Thank you, Crystal, for saving this country that’ll do nothing but build slaughterhouses for your future children? Thank you, Crystal, from saving us from this White Devil and his hate campaign. Thank you, Crystal, thank you, thank you. And yes, America, y’all welcome.”