The Stories Behind The Fly Girls, III.

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Let's jump right in:

11. Fly Girls: The Assassin -- Part of the process for coming up with poems for this project involved asking folks what they dreamt about. Some folks took this literally, some less so. One young woman said she had weird dreams while sleeping, then said that her waking dreams were often about becoming an assassin and going to cool parties. There was no way I was passing that scenario up. Writing this piece gave me a very ninja feeling, and those of you who know me know how I feel about ninja feelings.

12. The Way a Drug Haze Is -- Okay. So there are times in life when you think you know exactly what's going on. You think you see things the way they are. And you do. Partially. And if you're a poet, or a writer of any kind, you get your thoughts about that moment in time out onto paper, and it helps you put your foot in front of the other. And that's a good thing. And your thoughts are therefore down on paper forever, and that's a good thing, because later on you can go back and look at them, and you can see that while you may have been right, and you may have understood what was going on at that point in your life, you might not quite have seen the whole thing. But you stand behind what you wrote, and you stand behind what you thought, and you write some new stuff to help make it all make sense, and hopefully, for the rest of your life, you're learning more and solving and resolving your initial issue. So yeah. This poem is the early part of working out something. There are other poems later that continue the process. And that's all you get.

13. Teaching, Part Two -- The second poem in the "Teaching" series has the same kinds of origins as the first. It's based on real life, and it's using the economy of poetry to distill my emotions into as few words as possible. It's all a coping mechanism. Sadly, I don't have much follow-up information on the kids involved in the incident described in the piece--I believe the boy ended up incarcerated for a while (maybe still), and I'm just hoping the girl graduated and is moving on to bigger things.

14. There is a City -- Sometimes you write serious poems about serious topics. Sometimes you write ridiculous poems about serious topics. And sometimes, when you're lucky, you get to write serious poems about ridiculous topics. The instructions I was given for this piece were simple: "write a poem about my foot." I had never seen the foot in question. I really kind of don't like feet in general. Still, somehow it became clear to me that there was only one image that worked for this piece--a village underneath a foot, not frightened by the possibility of being crushed, but thrilled by the benefits of location. I wish I could draw, because the image is pretty clear in my head, and I love that image just as much as the poem.

15. Fly Girls: Give Me -- I really love to watch good singers sing. Some folks get onstage and look like they belong there. This poem is about one of those people. We talked a little about why she sings, how she feels when she sings, stuff like that--and all that made its way into the piece--but I ended up more interested in what she looked like when she sang. The dialogue we had just reinforced exactly what I had already thought. She was at peace with the world when music was pouring out of her. I know the feeling with words, so I tried to do her justice.

And you know what? We're going to go ahead and do the next five poems while I'm here!

16. Mindful -- A lot of these poems were written online, as part of a very supportive community of writers. Two of these writers were being honored one month, so I went ahead and wrote pieces based on their screennames. And that's pretty much all the backstory for this one. I ended up in love with the idea of a back-and-forth visual on the page, and somehow, it stuck--the poem doesn't work for me if it's all straightforward and aligned. I think there's only a handful of poems in this book that work that way for me. Either way, this is really just a piece written for a writer I really dig. Buy her book here.

17. The Pineapple -- This is almost part of "Teaching" series, except it's not based on real events. It is, theoretically, based on real kids though--I'm not sure how they worked their way into my head when I was given the instructions to write about "throwing a pineapple off an overpass," but I'm kind of glad they did. It's also based on (full disclosure) some real, real, realy stupid stuff I did when I was a kid. I won't go deep into detail, but I'll say that water balloons and pieces of fried chicken were sometimes involved. Man, kids are dumb. At least I was dumb when I was a kid. Thank god I didn't have any pineapples on hand.

18. First Love -- It is what it is. I do want to say that a lot of times things are overstated to make words and ideas fit--not saying whether or not that's happening here, but it happens. And I'm not saying this is even necessarily based on real experiences. In short, no backstory. Sometimes you gotta mix things up.

19. Teaching, Part Three -- Coaching basketball gave me a different perspective on teaching than teaching did. I got to see young men in their element, being themselves, taking care of each other, looking out for each other, and most importantly, learning from each other. The first part of this poem is based on that. I was trying to get these kids to run faster, and I told them that the last person to finish his sprints would have to dance at center court while everyone watched. I forgot, however, that I was dealing with a bunch of b-boys on my team. One of them slowed down, let everyone pass, then moved to the center of the court and set off a cypher. Good times. Not long after that, the incident described in the second part of the poem went down. Not good times.

20. In The Face of Change -- This poem was born on a birthday card for a friend who was struggling through a bunch of change. Big change. She dealt with it as well as I could possibly imagine. So I wrote about her.

And that's all for now. More liner notes next weekend. Maybe.