#PoetryPlug: To My First Poem

It was beautiful..
The way you handled yourself that day. My first time steppin to the light. Birds flyin, you neva looked up from your piano of a position. Strings set you off easy, but today was different. You aint hesitate like you normally do, you fired off and there were frets on display. I could see your spine, how naked you were, so pure. You walked like wait, like patience, like the noblest of attributes; moved like pride, you did. Birds flyin, you neva blinked, neva pulled curtains over your words, you let yourself see cuz it was easier to breathe that way. Sometimes darkness chokes, and you faced the lights, and sang to them. I like to think that your voice is the reason winter gets silent, it anticipates your coming like spring, bold like January neva happened, like the year didnt start out cold. Like we was neva meant to be packed in third world apartments, hearts strumming underprivileged, struggling tunes. You sang like unborn lungs, pure and muffled, like we were not destined to sleep on streets covered with notes too hungry to hear, let alone make a home out of. Naw, you walked like you knew where you going, wobbling, yes; but dodging death with grace. And to think I had almost aborted you. Birds flying, your face neva dripped fear, and somehow you knew that stage lights are liars, they say heaven but give off toxic fluorescent. You had to have your own light, and I loved you for that ambition, that tone. How violent your passion is, you sing disrespect to pain, and play poverty like you wrote it yourself, and you own the music of your life. I love that, but some people hate it because they can't do it themselves, can only be instruments, and you play them too, viciously, with all the love you can muster. I've watched you rhyme enemies and dance to death threats. Double dutch music onto concrete and give it a heartbeat, who said words couldn't change the world? You waltzed me out of wounds too black and blue to be human, told me it wasn't normal for my heart to beat the way it did, that broken songs don't make sense. Birds flyin, you loved me like the sky was clear, like we were the only two people in the room that day, and I gave you away, adorned in the best of me. Though poems end, and people clap and leave, you've neva stopped singin to me. I'm a bruised tune with poetry for lips, and we say more than music.

(Written By: Demaria Forte')