In first grade, a white kid informed me my gums were diseased; they were purple to everyone else’s white. At that moment I was the only other black student in my entire elementary school so I couldn’t double check. I went home and noticed my mother’s gums were the same rich, deep brown purple. So I figured it was a hereditary disease.

I had gotten to know the police a bit on my own, all before I hit 7th grade. An [at risk youth] I probably was. Most of my issues with anger stemmed from my household situation, but severe bullying did not help. Often times it was my insistence in being included in male only games or situations that led to taunts, teasing and sometimes rocks. The worst was when I was hanging out after school , maybe sixth grade and things got heated and some boys picked up stones and started going at it. The nicest old man was walking his dog nearby and rushed over to fend them off. These were bad kids, so they just started throwing the rocks at him and his dog instead. He was hit in the head and then fell, his little white dog nipping at his heels and him not moving. I was crouched nearby as some other people came running up. Of course those mean lil bastards of boys blamed it on me, and the other well meaning people kept their eyes on all of us as they called the police. I’m sure I was screaming at everyone in fear and terror, worst reality realized, I REALLY DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG. The cops and paramedics came, and the police were ready to take me back to the station and “sort things out” when thankfully the old man woke up and told the paramedics he was trying to help me, and that the kids had turned on him. Luckiest moment of my life, I felt at the time.

Twirls Leaps

MICHAEL You’re an idiot. You can’t live in this fantasy Faith world where good things happen to “good” people. Bad things do happen, no matter who you are. (uses finger quotation marks) FAITH You don’t understand. Bad happened. It came, it kicked it. That’s why I think this way.

MIKE Why’d you get your name on your

We were so happy to get a house, “a real house, with a yard!” said my mother. I was 6 when we moved from the apartment on Johnson to The House On McMillan. The house sat squat in an industrial park with the railroad tracks in the back. “Over 100 years old”, she said. 3 bedrooms and 1 bath. Push button light switches and a pot bellied stove. I suppose the heating worked, I remember my mother lighting the pilot with a long match during a cold winter morning, but most nights we were warmed by the stove that crackled annoyingly as I tried to shiver myself back to sleep. The childhood home where:

I take the highway in my mind Beyond those pretty costal towns

The Book Of Daniel (1999) [black screen]

there is a door that shines upon my dark a knob waiting to be turned into and on my life secrets kept and whispers not felt what is it, to not be loved? in all the wrong ways to never know the pages in the play to wish for death each and every day and have hesitation mark my skin? “if” in time I wish to tell to rise from the deepness of my well afeared and more afraid that truth will be the only answer to my tale

I wrote The Hammer poem after a newly minted friend asked if I’d ever considered therapy. He wondered if i wouldn’t get a lot of help from talking “about it. I explained that for years I had avoided therapists, as they would be obligated to inform the authorities re: current abuse in a home. How could I be responsible for sending the sisters and brother who remained at home into foster care? How could I be responsible for speaking, for telling? And so I thought to attempt to explain (and confess) via a short poem.