How I became a poet

 

Writing about everything from opinions to the truth
Mike saying He doesn’t remember me being like this in our youth
But a lot of things have changed since then
Nowadays the Lord is the only one I call friend
It all started in English class freshmen year
The teacher had us reading the Odyssey
A story worded in a way none of us wanted to hear
I remember saying to myself, “This can’t be poetry”
When we finished she gave us a poetry assignment
I wrote a poem about what I thought life really meant
She said it was the best thing she’d read in a while
I wasn’t surprised but for some reason it still made me smile
The summer of sophomore year my first ex came on the scene
Convinced she was the love of my life she became the focus
Telling my friends, “This is what unconditional love means”
Two years later she told me she was done with us
Unable to go to the military, my plan A
I was forced to take the academic way
Class after class at a community college in Arkansas
A life I never wanted was the only thing I saw
Writing poems about being heartbroken and hopeless
Then there was my second ex and her family
The perfect girl when you took out all the nonsense and stress
Or so I thought until she left me
I was nineteen and she was twenty-two
A grown woman who still did everything her parents told her to
On top of that my mom’s fourth husband couldn’t stop drinking
Some rum and Coke and he’d yell everything he was thinking
I couldn’t take it anymore; I had to make a decision
I relocated to Arizona and took every pill in my prescription
Thirty something pills later and I was on my way to the ER
Who knew the Pearly Gates were so far
In and out conscientiousness for a week
My ex blowing up my phone wondering if I made it
My mom’s husband finally sober enough to speak
Knowing he probably drank more than he was willing to admit
Flash forward to my first time in Houston
What I’d do to live that first semester at U of H again
Three semesters and I start to realize a lot Caucasians are racists
Denying the claims with awkward smiles on their faces
I moved back to San Antonio thinking things would be different
A semester at UTSA trying to find a way to pay rent
I was desperate for any type of love and happiness
Asking God about His plans for my life
Reading the bible and going out less
Daydreaming about what’d be like to have a lot of money and a wife
Back to the hospital for surgery on my ear
It’s still healing but at least I can hear
I spent a couple of months in Austin after that
Thinking about Houston and how to get back
Roaming around the city perfecting my second art
My camera producing the best pictures you’ve ever seen
Still writing poems about from the heart
My brother talking about being society and what life means
Another kid obsessed with attractive women and money
But I had a bigger vision; that no longer appealed to me
Sending my work off, determined to bring poetry back
Your next order of Shakespeare with a side of black

Advertisement

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.