His next Columbus visit, as a performer in Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam, will be a happier occasion for Lemon than his last one.

"The Columbus show is one of the most important I’ll do because I was incarcerated there in 1997," Lemon said while on tour in Indianapolis.

The New York native was visiting central Ohio with friends.

"We were hanging out in a drug house that got raided, and I got caught," he said. "I didn’t know anybody, and I ran back to New York while they had an indictment on me."

After his arrest and 2½-month imprisonment, Lemon was released on probation.

He returned to New York, where he resumed his job at a community center and his dream of a career in poetry.

Lemon tours in Def Poetry Jam with seven other performers.

"Everybody has a different voice, and I’m the hip-hop boy," the 28-year-old said. "When I grew up, all my friends were rappers, DJs, graffiti artists or break dancers. I wasn’t anything, but I listened to the music and spoke the slang we all spoke. I got into poetry because I love how people express themselves and I love the beat poets and the black oral-narrative tradition."

One of his Def Jam poems, Toast, was inspired by his prison experience.

"Like the man in The Shawshank Redemption, I found my freedom while in jail. I found it by reading and learning that there was another world out there."

Other poems that Lemon performs: County of Kings, an "ode" to "where I’m from" (the Brooklyn borough); Shine the Stoker, the legend of a black porter who jumped off the Titanic and "made it to Harlem"; and Tito Puente, an ensemble piece about "all the hardships you go through" and "our love for this Latino who recognized that he was an American."

Revisiting the Columbus area, Lemon said, "is like winning the double."

"I never wanted to see Columbus again, but, instead of coming back in handcuffs, I’m coming back as a Tony-winning performer who won over that phase in my life."