As a preface to this, I need to admit three things…the first is that I’m a closet poetry fanatic; I love E.E.Cummings and Dylan Thomas, Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda and many many more on the traditional end – but I also have a penchant for lyrics a la Bob Dylan and word play in Rap and Hip Hop, and talented modern artists like Kendrick Lamar and Big Sean.  If you really think about it, it’s poetry over really fun music – a perfect synthesis of the senses.  Poetry plays with words like a kid plays with legos, deconstructing and reconstructing the world around us in the most unexpected and beautiful forms.  So, that’s number one.  Then, there’s two – from elementary school through High School, and some of college, I wrote poetry.  Finally, the third – and what I hate admitting – I haven’t written a poem in….at least five years.  Maybe even more.  This morning something, I’m still not sure what, hit me like a freight train carrying dictionaries and screamed at my psyche to write. So, I did.  And here it is.

—Who’s Me—
I would use a pseudonym just to be snarky,
Only want to go to Burning Man for the dope art pieces.
Window shop at Whole Foods, lost in my smart phone,
Google all the facts but I still play dumb.

My only addiction is to my addictions,
Numbing the line between love and pain.
Watch my ego grow season to season;
Down the rabbit hole I go again.

Put the pieces together but I’m still puzzled
Too humbled to admit when I’m in trouble
Mixed race in America living in a Bubble
Down on myself but I’ll keep charging uphill

Why do I always find myself when I’m lost,
Banking on hope and faith at any cost,
Fall down nine times, Spring back up ten
Conspiring with the universe to divine a master plan.

Love is light, but I’m walking around blinded,
Writing this in case anyone feels as I did:
A ball of anxiety with poor mental health,
Home is in my heart, but I keep running from myself