My Pen

My pen takes me places where my voice might if I had the courage to let it.

As a kid I was told that being black my feet held a natural rhythm. When I tried them I found that it was not so and to this day they have to try a little harder when chasing a beat

When I was a little older someone put a basketball in my hand and said

"Take a shot"

I missed.

I continued to miss and miss until the bright yellow sun turned as orange as that basket ball. Through out the night I still missed and my only company was the big bright white moon. White as the baseball they gave me the next day.

Try as I might I could not throw that damn thing past second base which incidentally I had trouble running to because of my asthma.

They tried putting me on the line with the rest of the men wearing helmets and pads. The patten leather pig skin kept slipping out of my hands. It worked for a while but then the rest of the men continued to grow while little old me just decided not to show.

With my pen I wrote out the notes in music class. The trumpet was too hard, the sax the same. My hands seem to have the same affliction as my feet when I tried to coordinate the drums and just when I got the hang of that "DO, RE, ME, FA, SO, LA, TI, DO" that first "DO" went a lot lower and last "DO" I could not even hear anymore. They pulled me aside and told me that everything in between was off and that maybe my ears could not hear the tone anymore. They said I should stop, and not try anymore.

With my pen I drew stick figures in art class. My friends, now that's talent; from their minds they create wizards, warlocks, super heroes and villains. They made fantasy lands with three suns and earths with no moon. Yeah my head to hand dint work like that. My earths looked more like eggs; horses were cats; dogs were rats; and my rabbits were always said to be aliens. I never got that I mean seriously it was a rabbit.

With my pen I sat in the dark and cried my eyes out the first time my heart had ever been broken. Sade filled my ears and the pain that ripped through my soul I was convinced; absolutely sure it would never go. I finally went to sleep and when I woke my pen was still there so I decided to write it all down. Accustom to failure I hid it all away until one day, by accident really, someone said it was good, really good. I said thank you looked at my pen and thought through it all this, my pen, had been there. I then said

"Why the hell dint anybody say anything before."

©Christopher F. Brown 2009