Poetry and Me

“Poetry is not a luxury “~ Audre Lorde 

What if words have soul potential?

What if words are capable of curing maladies one letter at a time

We just haven’t figured out how to “work” them yet?

What if words have a real and bitter

first kiss cosmic wormhole cool breeze

Summer sunlight promise?

What if words have veins and bleed?

What if every word is pregnant

With starlight and sunsets

Moonshine and rising tides?

My voice knows

That words can cast kingdoms

Built on veranda’s with no

Houses surrounded by moats

With no dragons.

My words throw keys

That unlock emotions

And rip through silence

With the vision of necessity

What if words could pull terror

To its knees?

Wake up addicts from their haze?

Words were meant to be a crutch

And free papers

Ice and a torch

Poetry is meant to be a

Traveling foundation

And the Bard,

The Bard is meant

To be the vessel

Where dignity swells up

Puffs out

And leaks through

The Bard smears emotions across lines, and stages, and

Crowds

And the sentiment creeps into minds

And through ears tickling spines

In a back and forth vertical motion

With familiarity

You see Poetry lives through me

But it’s owned by no one

Poetry is truly free.

“Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.” 

I was not born a poet but I made to be one. The first time I heard (not just listened to)

 poetry I was 15 years old. Staying with my Uncle Jeff in California and I saw a show called Def Poetry Jam on HBO.



I was mesmerized. It was rap without the music. It was hip hop at it’s core. It was beautiful and it lit up my soul. Every hair follicle stood on end and my toes stretched towards the screen. Poetry entered me that day and made a home in my heart.

Then I started to see poetry. In song lyrics:

I didn't mean to take up all your sweet time...
I'll give it right back to you, one of these days
- - - Jimi Hendrix

In movie dialogue:

The jail you planned for me is the one you're gonna rot in.
---Celie in The Color Purple 

In Jamaican sayings/proverb:
He who feels it knows it

I saw poetry in dance:



 And for the first time I saw my world in the colors God painted them in. . . .

Audre says that, “The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us-the poet-whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free”

My poems are my diary. What I can't say I will often write. My Poems will ideally out live me. They explain me and understand me. My poems love me and share me. They are a privilege and a honor. They were never mine to keep. When I don’t write for an extended period of time I find myself uncomfortable, unhappy and off balance. That is because I have poems that are constantly boiling up within me that need to be released.

I am a knight of expression and I place my armor on a round table of dreams and lyrics. My quest is a journey of self discovery and revolutionary dialogue. I am a warrior of passion. I leave the memories of battle laid our in verse so that I may project the truth of mankind which is neither good or bad but real.

I am a wisdom hunter. Thirsty for knowledge. Brave in desire and constantly weaving fantasy into the perception I chose to dispense among my brethen.

Poetry is not a luxury for me. It is sacred calling that combines faith, glory, honesty, gods, love, everything sublime and everything degrading into something divine. With the passing of Gil Scott-Heron I have found my footing again and my writing has increased exponentially. Art is often the mother of change. If I want to be the change I want to see in the world then I have to see myself as an artist with the potential to change the world. It's really that simple and that got damn hard.