~Middle school ~

Forgotten like socks
Underneath teenage beds my existence lied hidden from my eyes
In grade six
Until Caucasian lips
Forced poetry into lesson plans
Witch then forced my mix hands
To feed words onto blue lines
Giving me the freedom to regurgitate memories for a grade
Dried tears lied in the middle of note books and these note books became my own history books because in grade seven it became apparent that
Yellow skin does not have a section in social studies text books
Suicide thoughts came from pen points like thunder in a rain storm
I drew my scars with pried only to hide the pain I felt
Then I fell for a stuttering slam poet
Whose poetry never stuttered and if it did
Well poetry taught me how to look past that
Funny how our eyes only met between stanzas
Poetry helped our hands meet in every line brake
I carved memories of a beautiful mistress on lose leaf
Verbally drew salted water falls on scrap paper
And fought bipolar battles with ink

I have written my auto biography
Not up to now but up to last night

September 7, 2006
the first day of 8th grade came 4 years to soon

See I wasn’t ready to be all grown up but time waits for no one
So sitting alone in a class room filled with familiar faces I found myself
Internally tripping over the words
Witch fell from the same Caucasian lips that forced poetry to spill from my finger tips in grade six

See this year we would be slam poets
Not myspace fiends
Not tempted to tag a cutie on tagged
Or give our faces to face book
We would be slam poets
I’m not talking about that snap your fingers after I perform my poem type poet
I’m talking about that stomp your feet scream
Clap your hands type poet



So we had to step our game up
And we did
We lied until our clothes were stained
Freed innocent fairy tales from juvenile jails
Found children who didn’t complain
And after this we
Had the munchies for some true friends because we only had a few
And this hunger
This hunger
Brought my mind back to those young days when I didn’t know what I was living for
When the only writing I did was neatly folded and passed
By middle school hands
From notes to note books I watched my pen do back flips on peal pages stories of how
Daddy became father were woven in to pages of
Poetry
Blades kissed wrist leaving stained like red lipstick on unfaithful coalers
And I wrote until mommy couldn’t find her first born anymore
Because she was covered by
Verbs
Nouns
Adjectives
Metaphors
Similes
Haikus and sonnets
I drowned my self in poetic
Thoughts and it was beautiful
I mean it was pure ecstasy
No need to roll blunts
Just roll ball point pens on paper and smoke poetry become
Poetically high and have the munchies
To update your vocabulary
Poetry allowed me to revisit memories
Four stanzas ago
I was 3 all over again
And when tears fell from my eyes pregnant with
Disappointment poetry was standing by holding a box of tissues
From being my
Enemy
To my best friend
From a male voice telling me a poem existed
To me actually giving birth to premature words
Poetry left scratches on the walls of my womb
So now even I
Celebrate mother’s day
Poetry helped me recreate my own reflection and made my finger prints match my personality
This was the foundation of staying sane
See some how
Sanity and poetry coincided when it came to me

When it came to me poetry
Touched my soul like the cries from
Abandoned bellies
And you know what
poetry is the reason I don’t stress over the fact that I can’t fit into
A size 0
See no matter how big I get a pen
Will always fit between
My thumb and index finger
Figured
Never would I have figured that
The purpose that was once forgotten like socks underneath teenage beds
Would’ve been found in middle school
Note books