25 / 30 : preseason.

good luck to the cincinnati bengals. ugh. pray hard, yall.

preseason

at bengals training camp 

deep in the bluegrass of kentucky

my dad

is the first person up every morning

he rubs the sleep out of his eyes

places his accent back under his tongue

like chewing tobacco snuff

shakes the limp residue of a losing season

out of his ball cap

orange and black

walks outside

waits until 5:45

holds the air horn up and 

blows

80 miles away

his daughter swears she can hear him

she is still awake at 5:45 

her eyes droop down as the sun comes up

shakes the law school worries out of her hair

places her mac down

which is perpetually on

falls asleep to 

the melody of rush hour traffic on the street

until she's startled by a car horn that bellows and

blows

there's no such thing as a preseason

there's no such thing as a summer

every moment is of the essence

every second has to count

daddy and i will not stop

until the last whistle

blows

24 / 30 : stress.

stress

i don't think of it

as being stressed out

or being too busy

i'd like to think that i'm

just really, really

overwhelmed 

by my blessings

23 / 30 : erotica.

allergiesssssssssssssssssssss DAMN!!!!! get me to school.

erotica 

if i made love to a poet

would the sight of my silhouette

a shadow slithering out of an ensemble

like a snake shedding its skin

get his 

creative

juices flowing

would he stroke me with his left hand

and jot down notes with his right

too busy trying to figure out

an elusive metaphor for my brown skin

while i wait for him to finish

in heightened anticipation

would he hold me tightly and kiss me

would thoughts of turning this moment

into intricate iambic pentameter

make his manhood rise like the eastern sun

and when he melted into the mold of me and i

moaned a melody of ecstasy

would he stop to make a mental note

of how to turn my bellows into a ballad

and when our bodies were depleted

and i put my head on his chest 

would he hold me close to his heart

until i fell asleep to his irregular rhythm

or would he push me aside

to open his mac

and attack the keyboard 

before my naked, natural scent

leaves his sweaty skin 

and he loses his train of thought

he'd be damned

a perfectly good poem evaporating

and out of reach

would he make me climax

because he loves the sound i make

or would he make love to me 

for art's sake?

22 / 30 : 21 to 12 and back.

allergies are bad today. im tired.

21 to 12 and back

in the card aisle at walmart

trying to find the perfect card for tasha

nate's sweet little sister who is turning 12

on friday

when i came to visit in chicago

and we shared a room and shared stories

i forgot for those hours that i was

applying to law school and would be

looking for an apartment in a year's time

the possibility of a high school musical 4

and how to open a locker combination

seemed much more pressing

and perusing through the card aisle today

trying to think of 

what would have made me feel like a 

princess on my big day

was no small feat surrounded by

cards screaming ROCKSTAR and

SPECTACULAR in electric colors and

photoshopped smiles being 12 years old

means figuring out how to ditch and dodge

what the media tries to jam down your throat

but i remember back in the day when

anything spice girls sent me into orbit

that part of growing up is fitting in 

then figuring out a way to stand out

so i found the pinkest purplest

happiest card that they had

skipped down the aisle like i was 12

swiped my debit card like i was 21

walked back to my car and drove off

towards my twenty-something existence 

21 / 30 : rainbows.

after a talk with my friend last week,

about the struggles he deals with being gay 

in america i felt for him and cried over the keyboard

this is for you

rainbows

i can envision you in my head

as a little boy growing up strong

in a city that could do nothing but

encircle you with endless love

and a mother who would give the world

for you 

who couldn't wait to see her son 

graduate high school, college,

marry a beautiful woman,

bring some grand babies to her front porch

to be nestled and nuzzled

with her wisdom and love

but you knew for as long as you could remember

that you were born to live out a different

existence, a destiny you couldn't fight

it was innate and 

it was internal you knew 

it would break her heart if you ever told her

after a storm and a rainbow appeared

would you peep your head outside

and look up

were you jealous of its unabashed exhibition

a million fragments of flamboyant color

arched across a conservative sky 

did you wish you could run out

of the closet

to dance in the rain puddles

spread your arms like the angel

you are

and proclaim your existence

you've been here this whole time

a victim of the system of

double-consciousness 

midwestern values strung you up

from the highest skyscraper and 

lynched your pride 

did you

hate lying to your mother 

across the breakfast table about who 

you were with last night and what

you did last night and who

you were last night because it never

seemed like the right time 

to make her cry and as the years

passed by you couldn't find the time in your blackberry

to schedule that talk with her 

you simply didn't want to 

and did she tear away at your humanity

when you finally came out of your cocoon

emerged into a butterfly before her eyes

and she rejected the man she had raised

did you want to run back to the closet

lock the door

turn off the light and

fade to black 

but there was no turning back

did you lay in your bed at night

unable to slumber peacefully 

a product of the city that never sleeps

and did you reach deep inside yourself

and prayed for God to make it all well again

whatever that meant

whatever that may be

as tears as thick as skittles

cascaded down your cheeks 

evaporated in the air and painted

the rainbows in the sky 

that you were too afraid to do yourself

i can't imagine the places 

and predicaments that simply being

who you are has put you through

it rained in cincinnati today

and even though you're hundreds

of miles away 

a rainbow 

peeked through

the clouds of my midwestern sky

and i couldn't help but think

of you

20 / 30 : a prayer for the class of 2010.

my class is the best. enough said.

a prayer for the class of 2010.


The number ten [x] is the start of a whole new order of numbers and the culmination of the numbers that come before it. Thus wherever ten is found this completeness of order is also seen. Ten implies completeness of order, nothing lacking and nothing over. It signifies that the cycle is complete and that everything is in its proper order. Thus ten represents the perfection of divine order.


dear Lord,

please watch over my class
my family
as we make our way towards the beginning
of an end of a remarkable journey 

You ordained every step of our lives to make
sure that we arrived at the gates of black and
gold in august of 2006. each of us thought long
and hard and prayed that vanderbilt would be
a humbling home, an encouraging atmosphere
the night before i left i cried because i wasn't sure
if these people who were my classmates
would understand me and love me

they love me and i love them. our class
is unparalleled and unprecedented. 
from the
beginning, we fell into a massive freshman frenzy
of love for each other, stepping out to parties
in clothes freshly purchased to impress upperclassmen
and took pictures that deemed facebook friendly
and took some more that would never see the light of day
we rolled deep 
arms linked because we were all
that we had and that was 
more than enough 
we knew we were 
the flyest freshman class to do it 
we threw up the X and bowed our heads
the symbol of our beautiful struggle
nothing else to be said but 
some people
were quite vocal 
about feeling otherwise

but when times got hard we turned to each other
i visited my "uncles" on dyer 3 when i had boy drama and
kicked it with posse 17 when i wanted to get away and
ate pub fries with the girls writing on the bricks and
hit the frogback with mikey at SLC parties and
played freeze tag on the lawn until we died laughing and
rushed the barracades when ludacris came out and
baked cookies with megan for boys we were smitten with
dropped 60 on cabrides to the mall to get a party dress and
lived with the vandy/barnard girls half of the year and
sat up watching videos with zach in vaughn house and 
cried to angelica after coolio publicly molested me and
it was a crazy year

by sophomore year we had split
to different sides of the vanderuniverse
half of us in a social experiment called the commons
the other half on main campus and it wasn't
so easy to see the people we loved the most
and the workload got heavier as the days
turned into sleepless nights as we crammed and
we cliqued up and were turned off by some of the people
we had fallen in love with the fall before and before
we knew it rumors fell like snow by the time
second semester hit and unnecessary untruths 
that had been building up found their way on to
a website that had us eating and breathing gossip
had us typing furiously behind anonymity
had us sobbing. brokenhearted. ready to leave.
i was ready to leave.
but my class 
my family wouldn't let me give up and fall victim
to rumors and lies its funny 
God
how the most
unfortunate situations can bring people
back together
i wouldn't let anyone play my classmates
i gave and received calls of encouragement
we were determined not to let anyone fall apart
the struggle continued

junior year broke a lot of our hearts
and scared us to death we were that
much closer to the world outside and we
had to get realistic about who we were
and what we wanted from this experience
we turned 21 with grace
sort of
and we didn't club nearly as much
as we did when "it's goin down" premiered
freshman year but anytime someone turned up
yo gotti's that's whats up
we would throw our books aside and my class
would get it in like we did when chancellor gee
popped into the lambda house and helped himself
to a drink we buckled down and got serious
about our futures but were never too busy
to show each other love 
or to take another class x photo
for old times' sake

what i'm really trying to say Lord is please
watch over my family this year
may
14
2010
is etched into our hearts and we want it so bad
that we are spending summer nights
locked away in our rooms pouring 
over mcat gre lsat books 
falling asleep in between the pages
we're picking up these applications
hoping that a beautiful personal statement
will just come to us in a dream we are
leaders on campus who will be damned
if we don't leave a legacy for those after us and
we're excited
and a sort of sad
about moving in for the last time we have tried
our best the past three years we aren't perfect
and You know that but
together
we are a complete set nothing lacking
we are a culmination of dreams fulfilled
we are a divine perfection 
we are the class of twenty 
ten 
anything before was lacking
anything after is superfluous
all our paths were elegantly planned by you
to cross and become a family
together
we are eXcellent
in the most phenomenal way
never in my wildest dreams that summer
three years ago could i have imagined
that i would be part of the most
eXtraordinary family that vanderbilt
has ever seen
we've been through hell and back but nothing
has ripped us from our seams and i
am blessed and i 
am better because of every one of them
i pray that this year
be the best one yet but 
i'm not worried
because You have blessed me with
a family
that has always
taken care of me

in Your name,
Amen