Guerilla Poets Founder, Shane Manier, was at an open mic for Poetry Lincolnton along with fellow Poetry Lincolnton co-founders Devona Wyant and Morgan DePue in a small café called Generation Bean when something happened that would change their lives forever. 

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Shane had just got through reading a poem called Sitting Beside Death on the Fence with a Pack of Cigarettes, but when she went to leave the mic...an elderly man approached her with tears in his eyes and flung his arms around her. He said that he had no idea they were doing poetry that evening and had come in to get something to eat as carry out.

 

His plan was to go home, eat his last meal and take his own life.