You Have a Voice…Find it...Use it

What is poetry? Poetry is an expression of innermost feelings, of the highs and lows of society, and pleasantries associated with an imaginative mind. Throughout history, aristocrats, scholars, and laymen alike have enjoyed the subtleness and tranquility of poetry, and the vim and vigor it could generate. It is a style of your own. It does not have to rhyme, the verses can be long or short, the stanzas can consist of very few lines to numerous lines. It is your personal concoction, your own ingredients. You are the conductor and you set the rhythm.

My poetic career began when my mother read to me the poem “IF” by Rudyard Kipling (also called “Kipling’s IF” by some). First verse “If you can keep your head when all about is losing theirs and blaming it on you…Last verse, “You’ll be a man my son”. It stuck with me. Even today I recite it. My ninth-grade teacher, Mrs. Jefferson, an English teacher, asked if anyone had heard the poem IF. Out of approximately 30 students, I was the only one to raise my hand. It was all downhill from there. Poetry said so much in so few words. It is the words behind the words that have the most impact!

I began writing what I considered “closeted poems” not wanting to share them or let anyone see them. In my “social circle” during that time, writing poetry was considered corny, nerdy, and I lament to say, just a “girl’s thing”. Years flew by and my poetry stacked high. While in college, I studied poets and their works of art, but I had already developed my own rhythm. And the beat goes on. Years later, I hooked up with three women colleagues at a governmental facility where I was working and we published our first book of poetry. What a feat! What a blessing! What a relief! What an accomplishment!

My pen flows based on what I see, feel, hear, think. In the early days, I would turn on my small hand-held tape recorder, place it in my car on the seat and just start talking or singing identifying what I see, feel, hear, think, hence an excerpt of the poem Ghetto Kids:

They glide and stroll in
Donning the latest fashion,
Mod hairstyles, unaware
Of their flaunting Ebonics,
Highly aware of their blatant
Body language,

Astonished she whispers
They don’t look like
Ghetto kids…

and Unemployed:

Yes, you are qualified
Your experience surpasses the pay,
The government offers CETA,
As your savior…
Believe me, you were better off
yesterday…

I attended the Million Man March in Washington DC in 1995. I wasn’t prepared to write anything. But it was a historical event. I did not have lined paper nor a pen. I had a pencil and a napkin and began scribbling my verses. That ordeal resulted in the first book of poetry written about the March, titled “Messages from the Historic Million Man March”. I gravitated and graduated to more profound social and political issues as seen in the poem Años de Lágrimas (Years of Tears):

I can hear my ancestors
They’re being taken away…
The screams piercing the air…

And the poem Race 2:

THEY’RE APPROACHING THE STARTING GATE
AAAAAAAnd they’re off…
Far Right on the left
While Racism is out in front
New Right on the right
While Racism is hidden by Special Interest…

Famous poets like Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Nikki Giovanni and Robert Frost may have had similar stories to tell. They wrote what they felt, what they saw and used poetry as a catalyst to inject it into society. We’ve enjoyed their insight, their intellect, their profound pensiveness, their play with words. I have found writing poetry to be soothing and therapeutic.

My latest book of poetry “Once…We Were Human: A Compilation of HISto-social Poetry” can be found on Amazon at this link: https://a.co/d/cTzjurU