In the beginning was the word and the word begat a moment; a laying on of hands to carefully tear the pages from my spine. This is one of the small ways in which the spirit has come to know flight. Much like how bitter medicine can be good for us, I keep still and listen. Every part of what I keep safe in journals, on my rainy day music playlist, in my chest and whispered inbetween my palms before bed is expertly conjured out of me and laid bare in another’s voice. The woman on stage holds my entire self in her breath, telling my whole life in her rhythms. She leapt out of an anthology/left behind a country/stepped out of her anxiety to read me before a room full of strangers. She came here; all open heart and steady hands with her art in her voice, to speak existence, and is this not the best thing?
The best thing life could have given me is the love I carry for this old griot magic, poetry. Ever since I was thirteen years old and too caught up in my teenage angst to appreciate that I had not even begun to scratch the surface of “why is my life so hard?” I was drawn into a new world where words hold infinite power. The words that belonged to a song, a preacher, or even an amazing book could do more than a lot but not quite enough. The way poetry revealed itself as meaningful was gradual, like learning a word or phrase for the first time and then suddenly seeing and hearing it everywhere afterward — making you wonder if it had even really existed before you stumbled upon it — but making your life and worldview that much richer now that it had been found.
I found that poetry, especially the kind that one experienced from the writer’s own mouth, was as familiar and as inviting as a memory; these doors in our minds are forever open and all it takes to usher us back in is a smell, a sound, a story. Something deep inside me takes flight each time I am fortunate enough to witness an amazing poet at work. It always feels like discovering a song that narrates my life perfectly or even a church sermon that, uncharacteristically, touches me but even better — that allure of plain speech sprinkled with metaphors, rhymes, and poetic devices containing mutual experiences that form the inimitable human connection between art and audience. During different parts of the show, each of us looking up at that stage is played back to ourselves. It’s healing to hear. It’s soothing to know.
Knowing that I moonlight as a poet, to do as they do, is a balance between bouts of anxiety and a wholesome exercise in bravery. At the very least, I have to acknowledge the courage involved in gathering myself — my honesty, my hurts and my triumphs — to share with people. In being my harshest critic, that one fact always has to be given its due, regardless of how much others or myself are picking me apart. “I’ll never be perfect but at least now I’m brave,” sings Alicia Keys in “Brand New Me,” and it resonates. Beyond the charm of an applause, a beaming audience, and some recognition, the silver lining in having to share some of my worst parts and foulest times is the simple gift of knowing that I survived whatever it was enough to be able to speak on it. That is the magic and maybe the attraction that turns the spectator into the inspired, the inspired into the poet, the poet into the performer, and the performer into the spectator once more. Even when I find myself at a point where my mind and heart are struggling to process a series of experiences into things that can be made sense of, there will always be a poet who my soul can trust to articulate me perfectly. It makes me feel so good to know that being a poet means that one can give so much of themselves — can create so much feeling in others without losing any part of what makes them special. The gift is endlessly multiplied in the sharing.