“When the media began focusing on the first 100 days of the presidency, I challenged myself to 100 poems in the first 100 days,” Almustafa said. “My original purpose for writing these poems was to capture the intense ideas and emotions which came with the election of the first African-American president in the history of the United States.”
   After Obama’s inauguration, Almustafa said he was “full of hope, fear, pride, suspicion and doubt” and needed a way to express his emotions. For more than a decade, poetry has served as his outlet and way of understanding the world, so when this historic moment took place, he picked up his pen and began jotting down all his feelings.
   “These are not pro-Obama poems,” Almustafa noted. “These are not anti-Obama poems. These poems do not attempt to provide definitive answers. They attempt to delve into deep reflection and ask challenging questions.”
   “From Auction Block to Oval Office” is chock-full of powerful and oftentimes brutally astute assessments of the world as Almustafa sees it. He counts his poem from Day 24: Feb. 13 among the strongest in his collection: “I can’t help but wonder/will young black boys/one day/be gunned down/on/Barack Obama Blvd.”
   “This poem is painful to hear because ... black men are losing their lives on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevards in cities across this nation,” he said in an email. “So, in the face of this tragic precedent, this poem asks the question: will the election of a black man improve the lives of black men?”
   Other touching tomes include Day 38: Feb. 27: “When i see the Obama’s daughters/growing in their garden/i have flashes of concrete/crack vials and broken glass.”
   Almustafa’s goal is to encourage people around the world to realize it is their responsibility to help everyone move forward by asking challenging questions and having the willingness to admit that we may not have all of the answers.
   Creating 100 poems in 100 days was not the hardest part of the project, he said — the editing process was the real challenge. Almustafa would hang his poems around his house so he could see them everyday. “Often, I would be standing in the hallway, brushing my teeth in the morning, editing poems,” he said.
   Almustafa has released four previous books of poetry, his most famous being, “Growing up Hip-Hop,” a collection of 15 years of poems that is often used as an educational tool in classrooms from elementary up to university level.
   In 2002, Almustafa won the Grand Slam Championship at the Nuyorican Poets Café, located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He reached the finals of the National Poetry Slam competition in the same year.
   He is regularly called upon to perform at political rallies and marches, and often holds “Living Room Readings,” at which he reads his poetry to a gathering of someone’s family and friends.
   In the upcoming weeks, he will read selections of his book at both holiday Living Room Readings and bookstores across New York City.
   For more information about Almustafa and his projects visit his website, kahlilalmustafa.mvmt.com.