Where does
one begin when they have never met the person they are writing to ??? I don’t know you….i know you even less than I
knew Will Da Real One, but we all have something very dear and special to us
that brings us together, even in spirits: Poetry.
Poetry is
an amazing thing. Writing is a powerful
source of redefinement (word I made up) …..we become equipped with the ability
to define ourselves, repeatedly, in many different ways, when we write. We are able to soar above the plains, we can
touch clouds and exist deep within the pits of the ocean…..as if we were
chilling on one of the benches that have been relaxing for decades on the floor
of the different seas. …..writing gives us abilities that sometimes we long for
in real life.......writing gives us the answers to the questions that haunt us
in the daytime, writing gives us the freedom we seek in the dark and writing
gives us the right…..
What right
???
All of them…..writing
IS our constitution and poetry is but a small yet extremely powerful piece of
the commandments our God set in forth for us in the name of eccentric thinking
and ink.….poetry is the ability to pen a lifetime in short stanza’s that
regardless what they look like on page, all have the ability to impact not just
others, but our own selves. I know I am
not the only performing poet out here who has penned a poem so powerful to
myself, that in the midst of performing it, I can feel life leaving my lips and
re-inserting itself in my body…….poetry is our answer. Poetry is our right. It
is our Write….it is our life.
Writing is
our saving grace.
But
sometimes, no matter what the word count, no matter how powerful or impactful
the poem and no matter what the resume looks like, writing poems can’t stop
fate. Even though sometimes, on that
stage, we believe that we have the key to save our lives right there in our
notebooks…..so we read sometimes and others we study until it is memorized so
that we can make direct eye contact and ask God to direct our pupils to the
person or people that need to hear and believe what we say the most…..only,
there is rarely a mirror in front of the stage….unless you are one of those
ego-driven artists who no matter what, can only see your reflection….but even
those people are just as vunerable and needy as the rest of us…..we are all
flawed…..but our flaws make for great poems and stories….if only our greatness
would save us past the morning we leave earth…..
If only our
ink pens had the power to stop bullets
Or if our
poems could re-route the anger that stops our hearts….
What if
“what if
these poems really are bullets….
And whoever
gets hit by them always remembers they were hit….the touch can be in more than
place….lives get changed, rearranged or otherwise shifted,
Folks are
lifted off the ground”
~jY,
#ShootTheMessenger
The poem
that, that small word of thought comes from is entitled “Shoot the Messenger”….i
wrote it when I first heard about the death of Will Da Real One….a poet who I had
seen perform on DPJ and had heard of from youtube clips/BoBRhyme .....a poet, a
fellow writer/performing artist, who’s life had been cut short, at the poetry
venue, by a bullet. I was so angered
when I read this…..
I was hurt,
I was enraged and my attitude took on this “how dare you” sort of attitude….how
dare someone be so detrimental to life and society as we know it that they
would actually kill a poet, at a poetry venue!!!! I felt like the chickens were
roosting in the wrong neighborhood….i felt like poets, especially this one as
far as I had known, had made great strides towards curbing violence and
speaking PEACE in the minds and hearts of not just our children, but our adults
too…..those who still need to be reminded that life is a beautiful thing that
should be cherished and not taken for granted…..
The fact
that his slam team’s name was Black on Black Rhyme and that he was killed in
what was likely Black on Black Crime was not just disheartening to me, it truly
pissed me off…..so I wrote about a man I never formally met, but who’s death
left me numb for the rest of the day…..
And I titled
it Shoot the Messenger. ….and the first
line, a line that is repeated throughout the piece in hopes of having an answer
by the end, is “ What happens when they kill the poet???” ….
Because these
poems have all the heart but not enough power to stop a single bullet from
wiping out our future ink ramblings…..
Today, as I
came into work and trolled around the facebook page that I have remained
relatively quiet on for the last few days (sans promoting an upcoming show), I happened
to see a picture of about five or six beautiful women, one of which I had met
before….idk what attracted me to click on this picture….maybe the tiny bit of
caption beneath it that didn’t tell the entire story…..i clicked on it and
learned that one of the women in the picture, who’s name was Anita Bee, was no
longer here….
On earth….
She was also
a poet……
My
curiousity continued as she looked so young, I just had to know what happened
to her…..a comment posted claimed to be in disbelief that someone’s life could
be so violently taken and immediately my brain started processing bullets…..
By the time
I was finished trolling for information on Ms Anita Bee, I had learned that she
was a victim of Domestic Violence and her life ultimately had ended in her
apartment, a victim of a shooting and that there had been an arrest in the case……
……while
others were catching last minute flights and making superbowl party plans, a
fellow poet’s family was grieving and bracing themselves for what has to be
interpreted as an Early Leave of Life……she was only 28 (?)….and she was a
mother…..
And she was
beautiful…..
And she was
a poet
She was a
writer
…..pictures
of her in mid-performance told a brief story of a poet living with a secret…..its
a hindsight story…..we never see the signs and even if and when we do, what exactly
can you say to someone who is in such a situation ???? How do you take control
of a woman’s life long enough to get her to safety…..???
And then
here’s a curb ball thought:
What if
someone is ready to leave but is so scared of what leaving will do, that they
stay in hopes of having some type of “control” over the situation ….? Now, let
me say, I don’t know Ms. Bee and I don’t know her situation, so these questions
have no bearing over her life or death, but they are questions that need asking
right ???
I have been
there
We all know
that just thru my poems and blogs……I could EASILY have been dead today….troll
thru this blog and you might find out about one of the many times a gun was
held, pointed and directed to my head by my ex….. so when I say I KNOW that
feeling, I’m not just guessing…..
A poets
life was cut short….
Words on
paper never answered for her the questions that were burning in her soul when
the curtains closed and no one was there but her and maybe her babygirl….
A bullet
tore thru the air and cut off her ink ties to the page…..
A silenced
mic sits in a coffee shop open mic wondering when the next time someone will
stand in front of it and hope that “the answers” to their personal life’s
questions will show face again……
Honestly, I
don’t know what exactly I want to say in this blog…..seeing her face, knowing
her ending and knowing that when I was celebrating my birthday, she was
potentially writing, laughing, holding her babygirl or arguing …or dodging a
fist…..or crying ….searching…..all while not
knowing that the countdown to her end was on and would soon be over….
She is gone…..Just
as is Will Da Real One and probably countless other poets who I don’t know of,
have never heard of and even potential world changers who the streets and
domestic violence has snatched the souls right out of …..
In this
moment, I can’t help but think about April…..a young lady I met at an open mic
Indy…..when I originally met her, she was laid out on a floor at a downtown
college I was performing at, in the midst of an asthma attack……she would go on
to frequent the open mic I frequented and I would always remember her face
perched atop the railing on the upstairs portion of the spot…..
Her long
her was thick, her skin was light, her voice had a bit of nervousness and her
eyes were searching for that mirror….
That answer…..
That relief
we all look for when we touch that stage…..
But she
would not find it in time to save herself…….soon enough, without any
preparation, a fellow poet would knock on my door until I awoke to answer the unannounced
visit…..and he would go on to tell me that she was gone…..
She was
dead….
She hadn’t been
cancer stricken and silent about it….
There was
no freak car accident or fall that couldn’t be caught…..
It was a
violent death….
A violent
morning that would replay in my head over and over and over for years to come….someone
who I knew only briefly, but connected with via a Poem Cry and a stage that we
shared freedoms on, had gone on to the afterlife and there wasn’t anything
either I or she could have written to change that outcome…..
I started
feeling a slight bit of guilt because as a woman, how come I didn’t notice ????
How come there wasn’t something in this seemingly sacrificial life of mine that
I could have said in random conversation to preserve that beautiful smile that I
was lucky enough to witness…..
I can’t
help but think about those that have asked themselves the same thing over the
last couple of weeks…..New years always scare me…..
I always
wonder how many people won’t live to see it thru…..
We poets…..we
writers…..we performers…..artists…..
And we
write to save ourselves…..but sometimes our own ink, our own thoughts and
ramblings and shared verses STILL aren’t enough to save us from our ultimate
fate…..sometimes the stage lights are so bright, we can’t see our reflection
and minister back to ourselves, and sometimes, we spit so hard and with so much
of our soul that we DO speak back to our own selves……
But we don’t
tell anyone…..
We don’t
share our darksides, our ugly……we share our pain and our past realities, but
our present curses are often left on the cutting room floor ….
Until the
only thing left to mop up is the blood leftover from our death. ….
Dear Ms
Anita Bee,
I can’t say
for certainty that our paths would have ever crossed, even with you being as
close as Milwaukee……I can’t say that we would have ever shared a mic, a laugh
or complimented each other on wordplay, shoes and natural hairstyles……but I can
say, you touched lives……in the most simple ways, the most pure ways……
I’m so
sorry that you are touching me in the afterlife, but you are not in vain love…..there
are so many poets writing poems for you, your memory and the next person &
poet that needs it….you are still with us….maybe our poems don’t provide us
with the strength in numbers and actions the way we need them too sometimes,
but our words never leave….
“legacies
can’t be bought out by bullets” ~jY, #SHootTheMessenger
You were a
messenger…..and even in death, you are still sending messages…..your pages will
live forever….you are infinite….your daughter will grow up and realize her
mother made a century wide impact in 28 short years……beautiful Anita, may your
soul be at peace…..may Will Da Real One meet you in the afterlife and escort
you to the place where the poets go…..
May you breathe
again, the easiest you’ve ever breathed, and may that breath be wind against
skin of your family and friends and your daughter…..
And may us
poets
Who are
still here
Realize that
we are powerful beings indeed,
But know
that our power does not change our fate, our ending story or stop us from the
evils of society….and may that statement alone provoke us to LIVE more
fluently, speak more, act better, love harder and if ever possible, as much as
possible, may we see the invisible mirror that hangs from the rafters…..may the
stage lights not be so bright that we can’t minister to ourselves……if each one,
teaches one, than may we all be the one plus one…..
And with
that said
God bless
all of us
Especially us
women, who are secretly abused, battered and broken in ways that we become so
numb to, that we forget there is a scary life off stage. May the mirrors shine brighter than the lights
May the
reflection be louder than the claps
And may we each see ourselves on the receiving ends of our own words....and heal ourselves in the midst of trying to heal and help others.
Be at peace
Beautiful.
“If the gift is the curse
And the words meant to uplift do
nothing to save our own lives
Will the lives we changed remember
us….? ….can those we touched still feel
that touch….
Will the poem we were planning on
writing that night ever get written….can our spirit rise from our last breath
and reincarnate itself into the floating balloon that you never see pop….
Will we be stopped….forever in our
tracks, remembered as a statistical victim of black on black…………….”
“…………….What if the poet lives
forever…..and the queens stay queens and the messages live on cause the
VOICES get louder, to make up for he who
has become a flickering sky light…
What if what happens when they kill
the poet
Is
I ….along with hundreds of others
Begin to write
Until the poet becomes so powerful
in the after life
That he is continuously introduced
to new people in the future”
~jY #2
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