13 / 20 : say say say.

back from dc. crazy weekend. poet trees time.

say say say

i don't know where to begin

i don't know what to say

say

say

to you except that you

make

everything seem so simple

and easy

even a woman as incomprehensible

as me

and i don't know what to say

when it comes to my exboyfriends

and i don't know what to say

when it comes to my family's lifestyle

and i don't know what to say

when it comes to my love for arena rock

but i feel like

whenever i do figure out what to say

say

say

you'll listen with open ears

open heart

and you'll invite me in

12 / 30 : i dreamed a dream.

dc today.

i dreamed a dream

i dreamed a dream of a life worth living

and to see it go up in smoke

puff puff pass

with just one

wrong move

tears my soul in two

is there any way i can

text l. hughes and ask him

what happens to a dream

deferred

9 / 30 : beautiful.

i'm squatting here waiting for a vandy van. just finished a paper in the commons since i cant write in my room and i was helping jess unbraid her hair/provide comic relief. anyway, yeah.

beautiful

every time you see me you tell me i look

beautiful

and i can't help but blush and say

thank you

i'm usually quick with a witty retort

or i have

some smart ass comment to dispel but

you look at me like

you really believe that i looked

beautiful

last night

i've been given many compliments in my life

from many men at

various occasions but

the sincerity in your smile and

the way your eyes met mine

it was thirty four degrees outside

and it's been 20 degrees inside my heart

for awhile now but you've come along like

an early spring

thawing me out and bringing color to my days

making everything

and me

seem

beautiful

again

6 / 30 : weekend [outer space flow].

i hate papers. i hate papers. oh, goodness. but whateva.

weekend [outer space flow].

monday through thursday you are

off-limits, outer limits

and monday through thursday i often

pass right by you like a shooting star

out of grasp, out of space

your eyes are wide as a full moon as

you watch my hips roll by like a tide

lapping up against the shore

but on the weekend something

shifts

maybe the planets align or

some stars are doing some weird shit

but we are always orbiting around each other

waiting expectantly for our paths to

collide

create a beautiful disaster

an explosion in between my knees

that we'll have to clean up monday morning

before the others wake with the sun to find

the crater that our anxious chemistry

created

5 / 30 : other side of the game.

normalcy, whatever it means at the moment, is good.

other side of the game

my girls told me that

no one had ever looked so good in blue

from head to toe

just needed accessories to match

a week before we slept in a massive suite

living a life of decadence

a week later three of us on one couch

cramped and uncomfortable

when the cards were re-dealt

turning from luxury to lamentations

they were still there with me

even on the other side of the game

bless them

3 / 30 : the space between.

i slept a lot today until the mentor/mentee dinner. i love my kids and all my fellow mentors. yayayayayayay. now i have the itis.

the space between

my leg is nervously pumping under the table

and an uneasy shy smile spreads like butter

across my cocoa colored face

he speaks like philly while

he speaks of physics and philippians

he's here to get his phD in a field that is literally

out of this world but right now

he's studying my words and my smile

i can't help but to enjoy the moment

despite the fact that i'm in the middle of

a crowded restaurant near campus

and there is 2 feet of table between us 2

the space between has never seemed

so inconsequential

2 / 30 : big.

this weekend is about to be real boring. meh. poem time.

big

after i spoke to you today and you left out the door

you put the proverbial nail in the coffin

of this terrible week

may it rest in peace

while i pick up the pieces

in the commons i'm trying desperately

to appear presidential

immaculately dressed with a poker face

voice quivering out of a frozen smile

i walk off stage and take a picture

standing noble like barack with his nobel

pieces of me dance across the lens

i stand tall but i can't help but feel

so small

in the bathroom i'm washing pools of mascara

from my face

charcoal and koal dripping into the bowl

a little girl comes in with blonde hair and a bowl cut

standing on her tip toes

to wash her hands clean from paint

after she scrubbed her innocence off

she turned to me

still washing my sorrow down the drain

and said

i saw you on stage with the microphone

looked so tall

your voice is so cool

and big

i smiled and said thank you

held the door for her as she excited

and ran off to get some apple cider

i couldn't help but find it funny

that a little six year old girl helped me

grow so quick

from small to back to big

pills.

pills

susie wakes up every morning shaking

spiral curls from in front of her eyelashes

stretches and slides out of her sheets ready

to take a shower to start her day but she

can't go anywhere until she lysols each linoleum tile

in the bathroom stall she spends hours slumped over with scrubbing bubbles

sixty times in a slow clockwise motion to ensure

its is safe to soak in

30 times counterclockwise to get rid of the grime

invisible enemies of disease that she cannot see

she wakes up at 9 and doesn't shower until 11:30

she hides her disorder in the stall where no one can see

susie is suffering from OCD

they told her she is a hazard to herself and she's crazy

she is an unproductive nonfunctioning member of society

without her

pills

chris can't shake the countless thoughts in his cerebral

he walks down the street to the beats of several drummers

the beat is so rapid the tempo melts into fluidity

it takes him hours to plan what he will eat for dinner when

one voice is screaming sushi and the other moans for mexican

he doesn't have any friends but he is never lonely in bed

he shares his twin mattress with the 30 voices in his head

its a party every evening and he's a great host

he can't go to sleep until everyone shuts up and leaves

so he spends most of his nights talking back to himself

yelling at himself laughing with himself laughing at himself

gossiping about himself plotting with himself

in a room where he is the only resounding voice

in a world that calls him crazy

schizophrenia has torn his world into two and threes

its 11:30 PM and chris leans over his bed grabs a bottle of water

and pops his

pills

matthew is mad as a motherfucker and

sobbing solemnly at the same time

his mother doesn't get why he's so sad and his

stepfather sits sullenly at the dinner table

as matt pushes the food around his plate

not hungry enough to let it reach his palate his mother

brings up a bad grade in biology and he snaps

he throws his plate against the wall it shatters and splints

like the synapses and neurons in his skull

his serotonin is slowin to a complete halt

he runs to his room with pieces of plates

and slowly slits his wrists until the sight of his pain

dripping on to his bedspread makes him feel alive again

he's a walking corpse at 11:30 PM

his mother is downstairs rifling through her purse

desperate to fill an emergency prescription for his

pills

ashley awakens every morning with anxiety on her breath

she brushes her teeth clean every morning but cant shake the taste

scrubs her tongue in hopes that a fresh palate will make her mind placid

she doesn't know what it feels like to really relax

she spends her summers locked in her room submitting to bad habits

anything to keep herself busy and her mind off her mind

if she sneezes she thinks she has swine flu

if she coughs she's overly concerned about a cold

if she feels nauseous she knows she has pneumonia

her thoughts get carried away like a hot air balloon and take off

like a jet engine she believe it she spazzes she can't breathe

she falls to her knees and her vision tunnels she swears she cant see

her confidence is comatose at 11:30

she shutters and shakes and her mother's heart breaks

as her daughter cries out for help hundreds of miles away

she picks her defeated body off her dorm room floor

prays to God for inner peace before she takes her

pills

they used to lock and throw away the key

for crazy ass women like me who they say lost

a grip on our sanity

but instead they inject and sedate us

write a prescription and medicate us

pluck us like rogue weeds and eradicate us

dissect then re-conjugate us

strip us of our essence to desecrate us

but if i was to shout from the highest mount ain

that i am no different than you now, i wasn't then i'm just

hiding behind a wall of insecurity because of

this label you've placed on them on me

schizophrenic

depressed

OCD

anxiety

but i've been here this whole time and i'll

be here long after you're gone

and while you're still finding your niche

i'll sit here bloom blossom and become a BOSS bitch

you'd pick me up

place me down and say

this woman is obviously mentally ill

someone strap her down

dope her up

and give this crazy bitch her

pills

30 / 30 : ecclesiastes 9:11.

last poem of the month.

it's been crazy, crazy crazy.

thank you for reading. ive enjoyed the criticism and encouragement.

start your own. keep writing. and reading.

everyone's a poet.

ecclesiastes 9:11

i woke up this morning 

for the first time in four months

without my mother down the hall

to the sound of an incoming message

to my phone

i lazily rolled over 

in my freshly washed linen

in my freshly cleaned room

to a text from her that

declared

the race goes not to the swift

nor the strong

but he who endureth 

in the end

ecclesiastes 9:11

right now i'm in the race for my life

to make sure my future fits 

securely in my palm and snug

in my pocket 

pressed and panicked

each stroke of the clock would set me

off 

but reading that

from the wisest woman that i know

made me smile and i slowly

relaxed

fell back asleep

29 / 30 : being back.

laying in bed next to angie [no homo] on the bsa retreat. back to vandyland. welcome to senior year.

being back

rolling up to towers two

i walked in the front door like

i had hundreds of times before

and it didn't even feel like 

i hadn't been back in four months

in fact it felt like i never left

and as many times as i 

prayed desperately to leave

now i'm holding on to these days

with the jaws of life

28 / 30 : it's the end of the world as we know it [and i feel fine]

all packed. will be back for the last time in t-minus 12 hours.

this is exciting and terrifying, all at the same time.

it's the end of the world as we know it [and i feel fine]

three years ago i begged my mother

for an rainbow colored bedspread 

that was over her budget

as most things are

i promised that i would take care of it

and do my laundry every week

she said as long as i didn't have sex 

on that 100 dollar bed set

she'll buy it because it'll last

four years

tonight i lugged my bedspread

out of the mildewy mess of our basement

i couldn't help but stick my nose in the fabric

and inhale

it smelled like the first day of school

when i lived in lupton house

i had lain my outfit on my bed

with deliberate care my boyfriend and i

had bought it for that very occasion

he said i looked beautiful in it

and he kissed me on the cheek

i'll never forget the night i left him 

for a new life back down south and how

i cradled his 6'2 frame in my arms as he

sobbed secrets in my shoulders telling me

how he loved me so much 

and he'd catch the first bus down 

when he could scrounge up the change

but by the time he showed up 

baggage in hand and a smile on his face

i had changed

it sort of smells like sophomore year tears

a salty and relentless odor of unrequited love

and girlish gossip that sent me

over the edge one day that

cold winter

i sobbed in my bedspread, bare feet on the floor

my heart wanted to be at ohio state

i didn't want to cry anymore because tears

were not enough to keep me

enclosed in the halls of gillette house

i wanted out but angie and michael

wiped away my watery woes and gave me

the good sense to see beyond that day

that week that month

and gave me clarity the three of us

the triumvirate 

were tighter than thieves and if

i didn't have them then 

i'd be bleeding scarlet and grey

along with half of the high school  

i tried so hard to leave behind

i closed my eyes and i could smell the

scent of sexuality from junior year

so strong that bleach couldn't wash it out

i needed a calendar to keep up with

the dudes i was talking to and i was forgetting

the names of the guys who stopped through

they would always make themselves at home

on my bed spread, expecting me to strip 

tease them 

ease them out of their clothes but 

my chastity wouldn't let me

but i can still remember being wrapped together

like poetry and prose

under my covers 

with him and the gust of wind 

he blew in on

as we struggled to find a label

that fit

for what we were 

and weren't

and i can't forget the one who

would drive miles to get underneath my sheets

sneaking him upstairs 

and how he gave me chills he was

ice cold but he promised to warm me up

and he did

he wanted to turn the heat up full blast

but i had to cut him off and he began to 

melt

but the one who held me tight every night

who could very well say my bed was his

and i couldn't get enough of the way he

touched me

saved me 

the best way he knew how

from the coldest winter ever 

by just being there

and shielding me

from my nightmares

and as i folded up the bedspread

tightly

a testament of the dreams and schemes

of the past three years

each one different in every way possible

than the year before it 

i slam the car door shut

with my whole life peeking at me

out of the back window

heading down I 71 for the last time

and it's the beginning

of the end of the world as i know it

but

i feel fine

26 / 30 : mother goose.

went shopping for school stuff today. next year i will be at ikea apartment shopping and shit. CRAZYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

mother goose

i think i should be in the Guinness book

21 year old student from Cincinnati, Ohio

is a mother of 81 children 

i think that is something noteworthy.

and i don't remember the day that

they turned into smedium strangers

into my kids that i would go hard for

but it happened right under my nose

it's so standard now to 

get 8 am texts that scare the shit out of me

thinking its some sort of serious matter

and it's just one of the kids saying

good morning

and if i go more than a week

without playing a trashtalking session

of uno with them something is seriously

out of wack

and i've given advice on everything from

where to go to church to where to drink

what to wear and what is the least amount

to get away with without being called a skank

on books on boys on professors on pearls

on style on sexuality on school books on slow grinds

nothing really surprises me

anymore

and every once in awhile i'll talk to

one of my kids and they'll feel uninhibited

and express whatever is plaguing them and

i listen and it feels as if we have know each other

for far longer than two months

and every once in awhile i'll share

part of myself with them it is 

impossible to keep it all strictly business

we have made friendship bonds that i hope

are tight like glue

and even when i feel like all 81 of them

are asking me 81 different questions

all at the same time and i'm overwhelmed

i wouldn't change it 

for the world

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

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

14 / 30 : the LSAT.

the LSAT

i just want to be successful

above all else

and i just want a good score

so i can move on 

september 26th

will alter the course of my life

and i wish i was being

overly dramatic

i am tired of sitting at a desk

poring over logical reasoning when

my friends and family

are treating me in the most illogical ways

bullshit doesn't come with a scantron

it doesn't add up and it doesn't

make sense so how the fuck

am i supposed to concentrate

on an analysis of suzie's paper

on seal clubs from the artic circle

3 hours and 35 minutes

that can change the fate of me

the very thought

the very prospect of

doing poorly has me 

sobbing in my bedroom

is seven weeks

enough time

to save and salvage

my life's dream

before it's deferred

and i'm deferred

from law school

13 / 30 : impossible: to the class of 2013.

poem 13.

couldn't think of a more fitting time to write something

to/for my babies.

impossible: to the class of 2013.

to my children. all 83 of yall.

as much as nate and i have done our best

to shower you with knowledge and wisdom

of our collective experience at vanderbilt

there are some things that 

unless you've been here before

are impossible to understand.

there's something about college,

my college,

his college,

your college, especially,

that challenges your definition of

impossible

right now it might seem impossible 

to write two 20 page papers in an 18 hour span

no napping, surviving solely on naked juice,

muffins, and caramel macchiatos

turn them in, turn around

put the freakem dress on and party with the crew

like its 1999

even though you haven't slept in two days

and it might seem impossible 

to get to a poppin party in antioch

on a dry saturday night

when you have no car, no friends with a car,

and no cabfare

but with a will, a way,

some sketchy dudes with a van traveling down I-40

and a few quick prayers

you'll be eating at the waffle house reminiscing in

no time

nothing is impossible because

vandy kids

don't 

quit. 

we are creative.

even if you can't swipe into a towers 2 suite,

there are literally 200 other illegal ways to get up.

and when you inevitably oversleep a test

you studied all night for, a little

bargaining and begging will get you

a second chance.

and when you are trying your damnedest 

to get to the dorm but the vandy van driver

insists on taking the long route

faking drunken insanity will get you

dropped off at your doorstep

you are running headfirst into 

the gateway of 'the best years of your life'

its lame and cliche but so sincere

there will be nights you'll swear you need

a camera crew to follow you

and there will be nights you won't remember

unless a camera crew was following you

there will be those study sessions with that

cute dude or chick in your econ class

that'll make you never late for econ again

and there will be those study sessions with classmates

when you don't even crack a page of the text

but you learned more than those pages could offer

and yet

there will also be those days that you wish

you could rewind time back to high school 

when shit was simple and placid 

and there will be those test grades that will

absolutely break your heart and you'll find

the life you planned out for yourself might

have to submit to an unexpected plot twist

and there will be those nights that the person

you were peepin at the party is cuddled up

with a muchhh wacker version of you and you're hurt

and there will even be those days

that nothing seems to add up anymore

you'll cry home to your parents

ready to pack your bags and start again

somewhere new

but you probably won't. because

vandy kids are tough. 

despite the drama and the bullshit

i have endured the past three years

despite the tears ive shed and dreams deferred

i'm tougher because of it and

i've grown like a rogue weed. its

crazy. the friends i came in with are

my family. i'm convinced we have the same genes

in our systems and you'll feel the same way

about your crew too. at your first game you'll be

convinced you do indeed bleed black and gold

and you will start talking shit to anyone

wearing that obnoxious UT orange.

you'll start living off of chilis and tgifridays

no need for a menu, its memorized,

and you'll go to cafe coco when you want to

decompress and philosophize. you'll learn

when is the perfect time to make a grand entrance

at a party and you'll figure out the quickest

route possible to get from commons to buttrick

when you wake up late [8 minutes, if u slightly jog]

you'll do all these things and much much more.

and eventually you won't need to text

nate and i for questions about housing

you'll be hitting us up letting us know

where the party is at for the night

[thanks for lookin out, in advance]

and eventually, you'll be sophomores

and juniors

and seniors

like me. and you'll be blessed and honored to mentor

"lil mothafuckas"

like you.

who'll look up to you and 

for wisdom and guidance

and ask you

questions that can only be answered

with a semi embarrassing anecdote

a dissertation of an explanation

or sometimes, can't be answered at all.

some phenomena are simply 

impossible to explain

and some phenomena you won't

believe it until you see it

and you won't see it until you breathe it

and like my co-chair so eloquently put

"i don’t believe
in letting kids open
Christmas gifts
before the 

25th"

i don't either.

i can't wait to sit back and watch

with a content smile that an exhausted parent dons on

christmas morning

as you all unravel and unwrap the impossible

for yourselves

when you finally 

arrive

3 / 30 : pacific standard time.

real talk... since i've gotten back home from chicago, i've felt disturbingly listless. i hate doing nothing. i hate worrying. whatever. poem three.

pacific standard time

dg,

you're usually the only one 

up

who

keeps me sane at 5 am, my 

preferred bedtime during the summer months

because the sun always bids me adieu

before it does you

on the california coastline

and we usually chat about silly shit

like queso cheese dips and the

absurdity of a restaurant being called

in and out and we'll discuss your dreams

however lofty they may be

of becoming a producer turned mogul

on some diddy shit

but last night, for you,

this morning, for me,

i called you up crying

something i rarely do these days

and i spit my problems out 

like stale milk on the tip of my tongue

with passionate intensity as if i cried hard enough

they would be waiting on your doorstep

next to the morning paper

and in true demetrius style you listened

and told me to relax and chill. 

while

i've heard that so many times before

from so many people who swallow 

those very words when misfortune tracks them down

ive never seen you break a sweat

despite the circumstances the last three years

have brought you so when you say it i

chill

and quietly for hours we talk 

about the things that really matter

on the fact that even you

get rattled from time to time and that

i'm far stronger than i'll ever give myself

credit for and what will happen to us

to all of us 

in the year to come and

we laughed and we groaned and we grew

quiet 

as moments ticked tocked into thin air

and i want you to know that after i hung up

the pain that, at first, seemed too much to bear,

a mere few hours later seemed

to have evacuated my broken heart, 

leaving me with the capacity to sleep

for years we've been summer pen pals

having virtual slumber parties in june

becoming party partners in crime again 

come august

but its good to know that 

you care enough about me and 

you'll never ever front

even though

you're three hours behind