Boy meets world
Boy greets world:
"Hello world! I'm Cory Matthews"
short and average, head full of curls
The year, nineteen-ninety-three
we see two boys who lack both brains and brawn
Cory Matthews and Hunter, a Hunter
comma Shawn
Hair parted down the middle,
jacket made of leather
Alas!
One man's trailer trash
is another man's treasure
Boy meets world,
Boy meets girl
Topanga, Topanga, Topanga
beats the heart of Cory
a story
as old as time
Daughter of hippies
name of a gypsy
"TOPANGAAAAA!"—Cory cries
for he tries to mock her
until,
shocker!
a reluctant kiss by his locker
Hair standing on end
no longer just friends
a love
that could not be dodged
no-body,
not even a snow bunny
in a ski lodge
could come between them
you should've seen them
the journey they then took
from sandbox to Pennbrook
College
the knowledge they gained
came not from a witch or a genie
but from a teacher, a neighbor,
a mentor, a savior
a man named Mister Feeny
(or, as Eric would say:
Fee-nay
FEE-HEE-HEE-HEEEEEE-NAY!—
the Feeny call
for he was always just steps away)
Mr. Feeny did not leave them
he believed in them
pushed them
again and again
to be their best
you know,
to overcome the Eskimo
eating the ice cream cone
when it's super cold
and make it to the Super Bowl
and then, at the end
not as teacher, but as friend
One las' adress-
one final less-
-son
"Do good"
"Do good"—he says
as tears swell
"Don't you mean 'do well'?"
Topanga stammers, hung up on grammar
he understands her
but no,
"Do good"
he makes clear
(as he should)
for he was always there
for Cory
as his story unfurled
as this Boy meets World, Boy meets girl
Boy meets wife, Boy meets life
as his students file out of the room
like children from the womb
or spirits from the tomb
Feeny sighs, stands at the empty desk
with gloom
takes a moment to recall
and reminisce
"I love you all"—he says to himself—
"Class dismissed"
The above poem was performed by the renowned demigod actor Samuel L. Jackson on the April 1, 2014 episode of The Tonight Show hosted by Jimmy Fallon. Jackson sported a beret and an electronic cigarette during the performance. True to the style of slam poetry, meter is almost never regular and there's no pre-defined structure. Instead, voice and speech patterns are crucial components of the poem itself, giving an auditory structure to the performance. This is why unfortunately, the written commitment of slam poetry often falls short of its intended impact.
In this particular writeup, I use indentation more or less as I learned from Benedetti, using it as indication of a pause or stress of some kind. It is, of course, tinted by my own judgement about how the words should be arranged and as such is an imperfect solution, so I highly recommend hearing the poem for yourself, using this writeup as a guide rather than the definitive version of this poem.