Rudy Francisco had the crowd entranced at his spoken-word poetry performance at the Maintenance Shop on Nov. 17.

The evening began laid back with the Natasha Porizkova and Kashaan Merchant, co-directors of the Student Union Board’s Multicultural Awareness committed, introducing the guest of the night, San Diego-based Francisco.

Francisco immediately put the audience at ease by encouraging crowd interaction by shouting out phrases during poems such as: “Mhm,” “Amen” and even “Jesus take the wheel.”

Much like the artist’s introduction, the first poems proved to be very lighthearted.

“Things I Strongly Believe In” kicked off Francisco’s set and gave the audience an insight to what he is like, including his belief that “green apple-flavored things are delicious.”

“Letter To The Apocalypse” followed and proved both a humorous- and serious-toned piece of literature explaining that no one takes the apocalypse seriously.

“Hurricanes laugh in the Apocalypse’s face,” Francisco said.

“To the Girl who works at Starbucks down the street from my house on Del Mar Heights Road; I swear to God, I’m not a stalker,” was part of his love poem medley and seemed to be a fan favorite, if just by name alone.

“Love is blind, so I write all my poems in braille,” Francisco said in “To the Girl…”

Second in Francisco’s love poem medley was “Scars/10 things I would say to my ex-girlfriend,” which found Francisco listing endless things he wish he could say to his old flame.

Once Francisco reached 10 he realized that he had gotten to the end of his list, so he kept changing his 10th item on the list in an intense and utterly impressive sequence.

“My Honest Poem,” came back into the lighthearted territory with Francisco expressing his love for frozen yogurt and his habit of uncontrollably laughing at seemingly un-funny subjects.

“To My Younger Self” included many reflections on past events, ending with Francisco telling his younger self to ask the girl at the prom to dance and assuring himself that she will say yes.

Before his final poem, Francisco opened up his set to take questions from the audience which ranged anywhere from, “What’s your favorite word?”, which was “Juxtapose”, to “Will you marry me?” to which Francisco responded, “I just met you, but we’ll work something out.”

The set same to a close with a-fan requested “The First Time You Said Hello.”

“I haven’t performed this one in years. So you may have to help me out,” Francisco said.

After a few brief moments of silence to remember his past work, the audience assisted in the completion of the final poem of the night.

Francisco provided a truly superb hour of spoken-word poetry featuring excellent wordplay and humor with plenty of heartfelt moments.