Vox Pop Open Mic
Brooklyn NY
10/4/09

this evening, i read three new poems i wrote. i even brought my daughter for the first time to witness me on stage. she is the one who took the photographs above.

here is one of the poems i read tonight. i used that technique that you learn in grade school where they make you spell out a word vertically and then start each sentence of the poem with the letters of that word. this is my poem c) 2009


Rape Survivor



Road to recovery is a hard one

Accepting the fact that life handed me stacks

Piles of questions doomed to be unanswered

Endless words circulating through my head



Sounds of the evening replayed and scratched out

Utter destruction pillaged through fingertips

Ravaged in the strokes of his hands

Vindictive motives pressed into me with each moan

I don’t want this cycle of events left in transit

Violence mapped on the rocky path to happiness

Order restored through healing prayers and strife

Relentless efforts to reclaim the me buried within