Response to an original poem

Last year, spoken word poet Grace Taylor came to my school to deliver her poetry and let us create our own masterpieces. My poem, or a "rap", was about my best friend from high school, a South Korean student. Despite not being from the Pacific Islands, the poem delivered a message that all cultures could be friends and that me and Peter (best friend) even thought we both have completely diverse backgrounds and live differently, we came together and found true friendship within.

This is the first verse to my poem:
My brother, I have another ,
But Peter Kim, there is no other

The verses are talking about my brother, also another way to describe a friend. "I have another" implies my actual brother, and finally, the last verse says I will never find anyone like Peter.

The poem was very successful among the peers, amazing how it only took about 3 minutes to create it. I was mentioned on Grace's South Auckland Poets Collective blog that July. This is how she described it:

In the final exercise of the workshop we were going around the group for ‘open floor’ as each student shared their poems. It arrived to the final person to share, which happened to be a wonderfully intelligent young man who also seemed to fall into the unpopular crowd.  Slightly awkward young man but so helpful and always engaged well in our workshops.  He announces to the class, ‘I don’t have a poem…….I have a rap”.  His fellow students are either shocked or amused in their response.  We quieten the class down and tell the young man to drop his rap for us.  It begins as a slow start and uncertain.  But then a flow in his words starts to emerge and he is actually rapping, he begins putting insanely good words, phrases and ideas together so well.  The class start cheering him on, when I joined in, I got told “sshhh” by some of the 1st fifteen boys so they could hear him.  Finally he finishes, and the entire class erupts in excitement.  People are slapping the floor, high-fiving each other, hollaring and tapping the young man on the back in admiration.  It was a priceless moment, a young man that is the least likely most awkward student in the class and probably school, literally finding his voice right in front of his eyes and being celebrated by his peers.  Now THAT is spoken word poetry.

My friendship got stronger after that, and it reminded me that everyone can be friends no matter who you are.