What are words, really, but letters and sounds?

When arranged into a message, words can be powerful.

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“Every word means something different in some way to someone else,” says Nico Patino. “Words really are nothing more than sounds that we give meaning to.”

Patino is a street-side poet based in Long Beach.

Nearly every day, the 28-year-old sets up his chair, desk and typewriter on the sidewalk along 2nd Street with a sign that reads “Ask me for a poem.”

“It takes about five minutes. They can give me as little as a word or a few words, but I can work with just a mood, a story, a question,” Patino says.

For a small donation, Patino begins by asking questions, writing poems for people based on their answers.

Often,

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