The tangy taste of grape juice lingers on my tongue as Dinah Washington’s voice projects on the surround system in my safe space.
Notebooks stacked feet away from me are posted with lines of truth that took nearly five months to empty from my vault of confidentiality.
Sitting in an object-cluttered room with only the windows and a lamp to provide me with light,
My alter-ego, currently behind the scenes, tells me in a sermon delivered in last night’s dreams that there is nothing more to confess to myself.
Then I thought of all those times I spat those pieces of poetry on Thursday nights,
Surrounded by bohemian lights and my DJ scratching songs to feed my music addiction for my intro and outro…my flashbacks suddenly halt.
My glass is empty and I shut Dinah up.
A part of me is right…I’ve confessed it all,
But I refuse to let my books to sit on a shelf and hide them from the world.
If Usher can confess his infidelity and Madonna can confess on a dance floor,
I for sure can strut with American Eagle loose-fitting jeans and the fedora on my head representing strength like the hair of Samson and confess on the open mic leaving listeners like they just witnessed a 4-alarm fire!
I’ve got to put the paper down and look at my people cuz looking at the words in front of a 200 plus audience will not make me feel anything unless I retain it all in my head.
They’ve told me all my life…the preachers, the Sunday School teachers, the artists doing their versions of Def Poetry in my face…the truth shall set you free.
I have confessed it all to myself,
And now I have to confess to the world,
Whether my expressions are still cooking in the oven or packaged up and ready to go.
These are my confessions. Just when I thought I said all I could say, my chick on the side said she got one on the way…
And poetry is my twink on the side and he got one message on the way for me to write and break down into imagery.
I will confess on this mic!
My words will fly like butterflies and sting like bees.
My words will cut you like razor blades and make it worse like lemon juice,
Or they can be like the humidity in the middle of July making you sweat like a hot dog just off the grill, draining all of the water in your system, and you will pass out in the devil-infested sun.
Take me to the po-po cuz as poet, I really could care less about your mentally disordered, conformist bass (remove the b and you will get what I’m saying -no pun intended).
And when I do confess,
There is no stopping me.
I’m gonna be like the Energizer bunny.
Just keep going and going and going and going.
And this is where I place the bookmark for now.
Buh-bye!