A Look at Taylor Mali's "What Teachers Make"

This is absolutely one of my favorite works from Taylor Mali. The rest of his pieces generally share his animation and almost cinematic appeal to the crowd. However, this particular one stays with me. You can really receive the conviction of his position from his performance. Towards the end however he begins to fall into some clang and incidental rhyming that, to me, disrupts the general flow of the piece 

"Now let me break it down for you so you know what I say is true
teachers make a god damned difference, now what about you?"

These are nice lines, but when compared to the rest of his body of work in the poem itself, they stand out as a bit bland at a time when closing up the narration is a time to be concise and memorable. To me, falling back on this despite the rest of the poem kind of takes the wind out of the sails a bit of the energy he builds up throughout; here he is, putting together this intense free-verse, narrative poem, and then ends with a few lines that incidentally rhyme with each other. The flow and feeling of the work, in my opinion, takes a heavy blow to the general pathos that Mali spent his time crafting in his three minutes. Then again, it may be effective for some since it provides the listener an easy way to remember the final lines with their rhyming format.

If it is anything, it's definitely interesting way to finish out a work, and a great poem all around.