A Poem To Feed The Homeless

"Can I Kick It?""Yes You Can!"

The first annual Can U Kick It?! took place last Thursday on the second floor of Brooklyn College's Hillel Building. The event, which local celebrity and creator, Jamal "ScienZe" Monsanto, President of BC Entertainment, called "an abstract of the artful mind," was created as a way to raise awareness for the homeless youth in New York City through art, seeing as how November is National Youth Homelessness Awareness Month.

All audience members were required to bring a can of food to be admitted into the event, and all of the proceeds were donated to City Harvest, "the world's first food rescue organization" dedicated to feeding the hungry people of the Big Apple.

After another flawless performance from Brooklyn dance team, Precision, representatives from NYPIRG, which helped to organize the event, got the show going with information about the issue at hand-youth homelessness. Bogdan Ciochinaru spoke of how important it was to "do a little bit to ease the pain in our own city."

The event was hosted by the hilarious Beka Wil. The Brooklyn College Senior and Head of Public Relations for BC Entertainment looked beautiful as she made all of the announcements and introduced the various performers for the night, including the poets who "gave [her] goose bumps."

Audience members were equally pleased, along with Monsanto who watched the show like a proud papa. After all, he managed to put this amazing event together in less than a month. A lot was due to his envious number of contacts. Senior, Jonathan Rosas, who wowed the crowd with his poem "Reality", was asked to perform by good friend and lyrical peer, Monsanto. "Jamal put me onto it. He was like 'Yo. You gotta do something' and I was like 'Okay,'" said the Biology Major.

Monsanto also won over high school friend, Jalisa Bottoms-an artist and poet who goes by HERo. She performed her work "Find Your Way," stating "life is a game we are born to win." Bottoms also displayed some of her paintings for sale and donated a portion of her profits to the cause. Fellow artist, Tony Gonzalez, who has been painting since kindergarten, used the inspiration from the performances to create a one-of-a-kind painting in front of the Brooklyn audience. In the spirit of giving, upon completion, the painting will be donated to Brooklyn College.

Throughout the night, audience members were awed by performances from Urban Word NYC poets including New York City's first Youth Poet Laureate, 16-year-old, Zora Howard, who already had fans in the crowd.

Melanie Chery, of NYPIRG, drew the first standing ovation of the night with her beautiful voice; like that cool girl at the jazz club that everyone wants to meet. Rappers RichDaName, Kalil Kash and Top $ Raz brought an incredible amount of energy to the stage as they asked everyone present to "throw [their] hands in the air, and wave 'em like [they] just don't care."

"There was nothing but dopeness on the stage," said Monsanto after the night ended, "It was very diverse.something Brooklyn College hasn't seen before."

NYPIRG Project Coordinator, Jerome Furman enjoyed himself as well. "It was really successful. [It was] cool to have so many people coming out for the issue of youth homelessness," said Furman.

Monsanto called the night "a blueprint," stating that he took a risk with such an idea. The large turnout and gracious reward proved that Can U Kick It?! was a risk worth taking. He proved that he can, indeed, kick it.