Guante:
The new kid has a belly full of fireworks
and this school has no shortage of sparks
That new kid was me, five times in five years,
with a smile like kindling, skin like dry bark
and flint in my heart; every day was inferno;
90 college-ruled black pages in my journal
Redacted, redacted, redacted
No surprise that I learned how to write with matches
No surprise that I learned how to burn in silence
No surprise what I learned I ain’t learn in classes
Just learned a few words like magic
Learned there’s a rebirth in every urn of ashes
Let those fireworks be your paintbrush
Thin line between arsonist and artist
That fire inside can burn everything down,
but it can also light your way through the darkness

Migrate, instinct, surface, searching
deeper, we dig, seed emerging
teacher, student, secrets, perfect
eager, nervous, dream big

Kristoff Krane:
It’s just another closed door on the old invisible me
Character flawed by the ghost that lives in my genes
So sore in the bones, so soar in the sky
Stone cold to the touch, so bored I could cry
me, me me me me me a river
through a mountainside, my oh my make me remember
what it’s like to shiver in the pits of December,
the center of the circle of influence I surrender
to, to the flame that I bow to:
it told me to be silent, so I screamed; it was sound-proof
Raindrop, butterfly, chaos, chameleon
Environment shaped, different colors disobedient
Yeah, and I’m tryin’ to act my age,
back pressed tight against the wall of a cave
Birthdate states 1983, that means I’m twenty-eight
point-six-five-four-two-thirty-nine billion years away
from my birth place; stayin’ on this earth takes time
willpower by the urge of survival,
king of the hill, kill or be killed;
they tell me like that’s the only way to fly out of bird cage
I’ll sing my heart out ‘til I’m in shock
Put the key in the lock; I’d rather clip my wings
than fly in a lost flock, who fights dirty,
in flight searching, for a surface that’s perfect

Wash me ‘til I’m clean of what I’ve done
Hold me like you need someone to love
Kick me like a habit I’m a drug
Fix me ‘til I break what you made up
Wash me ‘til I’m clean of what I’ve done
Hold me like you need someone to love
Kick me like a habit I’m a slave
Fix me ‘til I break what you made up

Guante:
An open letter to myself at fifteen, fallin’
Don’t wait to grow wings or nothin’ just hit the ground runnin’
The pit of your stomach is a star collapsing
Your fist is a lit wick, far from lasting
so act, a little known fact:
everything is flammable if you got the right kind of match
So if you find a rough patch in your life it’s
just another place you can strike it
We’re all capable of so much
We’re all waiting for a sign that’s never going to show up
We’re all made from the same dust
We’re all convinced that it’s paydirt, can you blame us?
We’re all lasers pointed at the sky
Like any one of us can hit it, but can you make it ignite?
We might be prepared to lose,
but we are also prepared to fight, let’s go

Wash me ‘til I’m clean of what I’ve done
Hold me like you need someone to love
Kick me like a habit I’m a drug
Fix me ‘til I break what you made up
Wash me ‘til I’m clean of what I’ve done
Hold me like you need someone to love
Kick me like a habit I’m a slave
Fix me ‘til I break what you made up

Guante:
An open letter to my enemy: you are stronger than I’ll ever be
and I don’t measure up in any way that you can measure me
So take my lunch money, and take the love from me
and replace it with hate ‘til I break, but I’m done running
Whatever the better measure of strength,
a bully ain’t nothin’ but a nosebleed
Though if it were as simple as keeping your head up,
a lot of brothers and sisters wouldn’t never have left us
How do you miss this?
Nine suicides in two years in one school district
They say kids will be kids
I say bigots will be bigots; their kids will be just as ignorant
But we are a community
and stand together when it’s not right, and not fair
If you want to change the world, change yourself
just don’t think for a minute you can stop there