The other day I watched a TED Talk with Natalie Merchant.
She revitalized these poems by adding music and adding costuming,
and she reinterpreted a lot of classical poetry.
I also watched one
with my friend Reeves doing a great spoken word piece
with lots of graphics on the mystery surrounding 4:00 am.
You've seen that one. Amazing.
So I kept thinking poetry needs to keep pushing.
We need to keep going further and further
in order to keep up with this generation of iPad users and texters.
We need to be able to keep poetry innovative,
so I think we should push to a different level.
And what if a poet were telling you a poem
while solving the Rubik's Cube?
Wouldn't that be like amazing?
(Laughter)
I mean, we really don't have any Rubik's Cubes lying around now, do we?
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Okay.
So since we have this cube, at this time in our history,
it isn't so amazing to see somebody solve a Rubik's Cube.
You can go on YouTube
and find somebody solving it in record time,
with one hand tied behind their back, with their toes.
I suppose the only thing
that separates the average human being from one who could solve it
is putting in the time.
Speaking of time, want to hear a poem?
(Audience) Yeah!
It seems like I'm always wasting time,
buying time, spending time, or trying to borrow some time,
but these days, time is money.
I heard somebody say that money is time.
Now, money doesn't grow on trees,
but "It is the root of all evil," my mother always said.
People who have a lot of money
seem to have all the time in the world, don't they?
But money isn't everything.
Time is of the essence,
and essentially,
in order to get more time, I've got to have lots of money,
but in order to get more money, I've got to spend time,
so time is the most valuable currency.
I would like to share time, but I have no spare time,
not even time enough to make changes -
change the world that change my mind.
Time is running out.
There's never enough time.
Getting a college degree
takes too much time and costs too much money,
so kids do crimes, end up locked up,
serving time for stealing money, doing hard time,
for about the same amount of money
it would cost to get them a college degree, but -
Meanwhile,
(Laughter)
outside the prison gates,
hunger eats away at the walls of a child's stomach.
Daddy worked overtime,
but the company accountant took some well-deserved time off
to getting some tee time and time with the kids.
You'll get your check in due time.
Meanwhile, I'm standing in the lunch line,
trying to find a moment to write a rhyme,
and I find myself sneaking off to the men's room
to steal a few minutes of my boss's time,
realizing I'll probably never have enough time,
because when I signed that dotted line, I signed away all my free …
(Audience) time.
So now my time exists before nine and after five,
and some nights I was there way past nine,
so I never had time to spend at my friends.
And though I was chasing the Benjamins,
somehow I never had any ends to spend.
When we finally did carve out a few minutes from our busy days,
and then we would simply coalesce around a common thread
and coexist inside the hays,
wiling away the minutes
discussing the disgusting parts of our dismal existences -
punching in, punching out, serving time.
Prisoners trapped inside the hourglass,
choking on the sand storm of possibilities,
wishing we could all go back in time
and remind ourselves to take the time to appreciate the gift of time.
And right now, through all the time outs,
the time on stage, the studio time,
the time and time again, bad timing,
the absent-minded time spent wondering,
"Will I get my big break this time,
or should I just throw in the towel or resign and get back up my grinding,
so I could all out the wasted times to have to make up for lost time?"
Just yesterday, oh I looked up in the sky and I saw a sign.
Technology, education, entertainment, design,
an organization dedicated with ideas in mind,
and I thought,
well,
it's about ... time.
(Applause) (Cheers)