People of the Water live

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmbxZ1G8FCI

This Week

Tomorrow is the Grand Slam Finals for the Detroit National Poetry Slam Team. The event is at Sweet Epiphany Detroit, on West Outer Drive by Final cuts barber shop and it costs 15 at the door, 10 in advance. Come out and support me and some of the city's finest poets as we vie for the 5 spots to represent the city in Boston this August.

Also this week I will be amongst poets Allison Bohn, Brandon Clark, and Alex Jones at the symposium for the society of the study of midwestern literature. Our reading will be early friday, the event is at Michigan State University and further details are on the symposiums website below. Hope to see you there.

http://www.ssml.org/

Next Project

The school year has ended and the result of the last poetry contest, the Howling Wolf Chapbook Contest, has come in. Poets Allison Bohn and Deonte Osayande, both very talented in their own respects and varying styles have resulted in a tie. Instead of any squabbling and pettiness the university staff and both writers have decided to come together for a chapbook that will feature writing from both poets and their respective manuscripts. I'd like to express thanks to everyone and they'll be more updates coming in the near future.

Thanks

It's been a lot of troubling things going on in the past month. I'd like to give everyone who has been supportive of me and all of my efforts thanks. I'd like to thank all the judges and competitors of both the Dudley Randall Poetry Competition and the Woman and Gender Studies Creative Writing Competition, of which I finished 3rd and 2nd respectively. I'll keep everyone posted on my next chapbook entitled Murmur, hopefully being released this summer.

When the rain stops

When the rain stops
I"ll still try to
remember what the
kiss we never had
feels like.

When the rain stops
I can no longer imagine
that you are stroking
my bare scalp once more.

When the rain stops
it will all be real
no more
wiping the nimbus from your eyes,
fingers innertwining,
feet resting parallel,
kicks from a growing butterfly in your stomach,
sweet scents of sunrised meals,
clothes used as postcards from memories,
no more parts of myself given for no reason.

When the rain stops
there is just the day
no person to look forward to
telling how the day went
just the day itself.

When the rain stops
I promise myself I won't call
a number I never had in the first place,
or think about introducing myself
to a person who barely knows what they mean to me.

When the rain stops
I'll still be here
stuck in place like
a bucket, with no handle
holding it together.

100 Things About Me In 400 Words Or Less

1. I am waking up
2. over thinker
3. over lover
4. fire and air
5. music
6. gold
7. fan of the tunes of heartbeats
8. appreciator of inner beauty
9. eye wanderer
10. matchmaker with matches
11. adversary of vanity
12. sleep practitioner
13. starved of dreams
14. architect of fantasies
15. intentional mistakes
16. a personal library
17. records of redemption
18. hip hop
19. rock and roll
20. My shoulders are pages
21. My spine holds scrolls together
22. A back stabbed by pencils
23. My poems are scarred tattoos
24. My nails are dirty
25. I am a listener
26. predictor of people's words
27. a great book
28. A track and field sprinter
29. A rain dancer
30. Very accepting
31. My favorite number is 5
32. I enjoy multiples of 5
33. Smiles are infernos to me
34. Embraces are gravitational
35. I prefer a nice personality over anything
36. A feeler of vibes
37. I was a break dancing child
38. an angry child
39. the new abstract nigger
40. lover of eclipses
41. My eyes are dried reservoirs
42. My ears are winds
43. I am a horrible chef
44. combinations of ingredients
45. I tried
46. submission
47. sorrow
48. forgiveness
49. apologetic
50. the pain
51. pain
52. pain
53. pane
54. windows withhold sunlight
55. attracting to the illiterate
56. I want to author kids one day
57. silence disturbs my sleep
58. I leave televisions on
59. my dreams clip together
60. and they fire
61. they fire
62. fire
63. fire
64. gunshots are lullabies
65. my corneas see words
66. sentences
67. mars
68. the marred
69. martyrdom
70. I feel
71. Hated
72. Loved
73. Rewarded
74. Punished
75. Unique
76. Rare
77. Original
78. Rapture
79. Joy
80. Anger
81. African
82. American
83. Black
84. Red
85. Gold
86. Green
87. Damn Dollars
88. money causing damage
89. imagination resting ideas
90. hurt creativity
91. reality doesn't sooth it
92. a girl told me she was afraid to ruin me
93. I'm too good
94. I don't want to hear that
95. Sorrows sprints after me
96. Fight or Flight
97. beyond definitions of heated tornadoes
98. I am as I always was
99. and will be beyond measurement
100. I am the loving sensation in the morning

For Those With Difficulty Speaking For Themselves

It isn't the way
you call him one
of those people
in rooms void
of his presence.
It's the way you look
down and away,
avoiding the face
and not really attentively
when he tries to speak to you.
You call things retarded
in his presence,
equating
a lack of intelligence
to something
he can't help but share.