Totally uncool and nerdy –
but confident again after a long stretch
of being unconfident –
qualities I shared
with the Baby’s All Right audience
while opening for a band
the other night.
Pendulums swing back and forth,
of which “being different”
can get you both alienated and celebrated,
all at once.
Yet, the nuance of that truth
is that it makes your sense of “self”
feel like a house of mirrors.
The purpose of poetry
is to analyze the clash
between who you think you are,
who you really are,
and how all your relationships fall
in-between those thoughts.
Thus, my set was like
a character-driven literary work;
to pick a poem was to pick a life/chapter
filled with heartbreaks and wonders.
The room was not just filled
with music-lovers as much as story-tellers,
but maybe someone I had written about,
and thus was reading aloud about,
was in the audience that night,
but probably not and I am glad.
My voice felt paced and rich;
as if I was slowly dropping golden coins
rather than vocal notes.
I break down verses, again, like a literary work;
making sure they remembered
the emotional weight of poems
like one does the color of the sky
or the smell of an Autumn wind.