heah it go!

inspiration is like a baby. you know how when babies are really little, everything they do when they first get home is absolutely amazing? their little eyes, their gassy smiles, their teeny weeny toes - and it just gets better and better the more growth they experience. it's awe inspiring. inspiration gives me a similar feeling - this "wow" type of high.

my latest inspiration happened at the open mic last night. i write poems about what happens there, but i try not to do that too often, since my ultimate goal is to

you ain't said nothing

but a word,

i got my pen and pad

right here

write stuff anybody can relate to, and not everybody frequents open mics. however, a poet was on stage, and i was listening, and reacting, and thinking, and then the next thing you know, i leaned over and whispered in my homie's ear the thing i was thinking, and then she was right there with me in agreement, and then i said, "i should write a poem about it!" my most quotable words for the 2005 and beyond. then i rebounded, "no, we should write a poem about it, a collabo." and of course, my homie, an accomplished poet with an appreciation for poetry and a respectable body of work, agreed. we didn't wait until the evening was over. as a matter of fact, after discussing when we would coordinate the poem, my partner said, with the bravado that only the truly inspired could muster, "we could do it now." to which i replied, as if i was being challenged to a schoolyard fight, "psssssh, you ain't said nothing but a word, i got my pen and pad right here." so we excitedly birthed lines here and there in snatches until we'd both read it out, trading stanza for stanza, and let me say, a la s.alt n pep.a, "my mic sounds nice."

by the end of the night, we had a spoken word piece and a plan. which is beautiful, because i've been asked to collaborate before, but it's always, later/i'll call you/you call me/we'll brainstorm until the next thing you know, months done passed and then somebody randomly asks, "wasn't we supposed to work on a piece together?" i really didn't want to point this out, but perhaps it may be notable that my other didn't-wind-up-happening collaborations were with men, whose idea it was to collaborate in the first place. hmmm... LOL! but not last night. let's hear it for female ambition. one minute we were thinking, we should write a poem. a couple of hours later, we were like, "wrote a poem about it, liketa heah it, heah it go!" it will be a definite crowd pleaser. i'm telling you, watching something grow from an idea to filling up what used to be a blank sheet of paper is amazing, like a baby's adventures in crawling. i'm glad to be blessed with the ability to witness it in action and see the results. now all i have to do is remember my part in the piece so that i can perform it without the raggedy marble composition notebook it's scribbled in by next thursday... *gulp*