So I finally got the manuscript done and off to the printer. It’s been a 15 years since the inception of this book’s creation, but we’re finally close to the goal line.
It started from the idea that I actually became a good poet. Mostly family and friends telling me that I was good, but those close to you is enough to give you that push, right?
I started writing poems in elementary school in class and created my first collection in 8th grade for a project in Mrs. Gibson’s Language Arts class. I thought I was cool because I typed it up on my electronic typewriter instead of a manual one. Yes, I said typewriter. I thought the poems I wrote were so catchy and clever. Not so ironically, the project was late.
Here’s the story: I didn’t put forth the necessary effort to get them done on time and tried to finish them the morning of. I got to school and tried to type them up on the school’s Mac, but suddenly felt this huge cramp in the left side of my chest. My heart was beating a million beats per minute. I went to my computer class, but as time for LA got closer, the tighter my chest got. So of course, 13-yr-old me thinks he’s having a heart attack. My sister comes and picks me up from Bates, my mother grabs me from home and takes me to emergency. In retrospect, I’m not sure why my sister didn’t take me straight to the hospital, but I think my mother thought I was full of the old doo squared. Anyway, they ran tests because I actually had a heart condition between ages 5-9, and determined that everything was a-ok. Come to find out, it was just gas, lol. Turns out, the gas was a life saver and gave me another night to finish up my project. I turned it in and got an E+ (Bates’ equivalent to an A+). That made me feel like I had the talent. I re-read the poems recently…they sucked! I guess they were good for a 13-yr-old, but um…yeah, kinda bad.
My next foray into poetry was a collection my senior year of high school. Long story short, they sucked. They were even worse than my ones from 8th grade. I thought I was being witty and channeling Sylvia Plath for an effect, but they were just bad. Like really bad. What killed them was the attempt at being over abstract because of my teacher’s insistence on “show, don’t tell”. It was so deeply ingrained in me that I lost my voice and instead, created this caricature of myself that wasn’t a true representation of who I really was. I vowed that the next time I make an attempt at writing, it would be my true self, not someone I’m trying to create.
The following summer, the movie Love Jones came out. Darius Lovehall encapsulated everything I wanted to be in a poet: cool, witty, metaphoric, smooth, and crowd-pleasing. That’s when I fell in love with poetry. Prior to that, I liked it, thought I could write, and was willing to someday give it another try.
After seeing Love Jones, all I wanted to do was write. I wanted to write to get the ladies, I wanted to write to express how I was feeling, I wanted to write to describe my environment, and I wanted to write to empower my people. Not only did I want to write, I wanted to get up in front of people and perform. More on that in another post.
Over the years, I began writing more and performing every chance I got. Every chance except a the famed Cafe Mahogany. I clamed up and didn’t get on stage. I bossed up put my name on the list once, but the time ran out before I got a chance to get up on stage. Sadly, it closed a couple of months later and I never got my chance.
This book was spawned from my need to heal. It tells tales of love, heartbreak, and exhalation. I honestly don’t know why it took so long to complete. Many of the works have been done for years, but I had to prune them to remove what I thought wasn’t good or just didn’t fit the theme. Many of them no longer apply to my life now because I’m in a different space (happily married and fathering), but they serve as a description of where I was and part of what shaped where I am today. For awhile, I doubted that it was good enough to release or that it was even necessary. However, I’m now proud of the work that I’ve done and I’m excited about the next volumes of this collection and all of the great that will come from them.
I hope you enjoy this ride with me. Stay tuned.