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GREENSBORO - Their dance with language started, of all places, in a dimly lit bar.

A few years back, Amaris Howard stood inside L's Sports Bar on Randleman Road and saw a man as big as a door walk onstage in jeans, a baggy T-shirt and a fitted hat pulled down to his eyebrows.

It was open-mike night, and he delivered. Afterward, Amaris didn't hesitate. She wanted to meet this 6-foot, 300-pound poet who looked so gangsta. So, Amaris - 5-foot-3, not even 100 pounds - walked up and introduced herself.

"What you said was sick!'' she told him.

That's how it began between this big man and tiny woman. Amaris Howard and Demetrius Noble are a team, joined by their love for poetry and their undeniable ability to dissect the country we live in with lines that bite.

They syncopate language like an improvising jazz musician in the zone. And like a muscled boxer bouncing his opponent off the ropes, Amaris and Demetrius hit you hard. Over and over and over and over.

What they say will make you uncomfortable, even angry. But it'll make you think.

They see a world where education is built on scores rather than knowledge. They see a world where a collegiate pipeline spits out well-trained workers bent on making money rather than educated individuals bent on asking questions.

They see a world where Big Brother government protects the status quo, keeps a prison industry in business and oppresses the black and brown, the poor and undereducated, so much their voices are whispers in a crowd. And our historic election, where a black man or a white woman will occupy the highest offices in our land? Just symbols, they say.

Amaris and Demetrius will perform next week. Along with Durham poet Ebony Noelle Golden, they'll offer free workshops, community discussions and performances at the central library and N.C. A&T.

They call themselves Righteous A.I.M. As in, artistic ... intelligent ... militant. The acronym fits.

They want us to wrestle with the "What ifs?'' or the "What could be?'' They want us to plow our own intellect and rattle our comfort zone so we'll challenge our ideas rather than remain blind to what's around us.

That's what next week is all about.

"We can't afford to wait,'' Demetrius says. "We're living in a perpetual retrograde society. Everything is going backwards, and we can't afford to be apathetic because lives are at stake.''

It's the troupe's third residency at A&T. But this spoken-word thing isn't their full-time gig.

Demetrius is 29, a Greensboro native, the middle son of a bricklayer, a graduate of UNC-Charlotte with a degree in communications. He works as a supervisor for American Express.

Amaris is 26, a native of Hampton, Va., the middle daughter of a musician, a graduate of A&T with a degree in architectural engineering. She'll get married next week and move to Utah for her husband's post-doctorate work.

But Righteous A.I.M. will carry on. This troupe, created by two physical opposites, a big man and a tiny woman, has tapped into something that Amaris calls "powerful and divine.''

They turn language into jazz and lines into jabs. And during this political season - when the word "change" seems so meaningless and the phrase "Drill, baby, drill!'' sounds like a rallying cry before a big football game - we need to listen.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com