I Write The Dope.

Poet | Author | Spoken Word Artist

[rapcoloringbook]

look at these beautiful Petty LeBron James bookmarks we made – you should go get a copy of The Rap Year Book right now https://www.amazon.com/Rap-Year-Book-Important-Deconstructed/dp/1419718185?ie=UTF8&ref_=zg_bs_4511_3 – luv u 4evr

[ghdoswrites-blog]

Yoooooo these are dope.

[persephonesdaughters]

SUBMISSIONS FOR ISSUE THREE ARE NOW OPEN.

Submissions are open until July 18th for our third issue! We want your poetry prose and art. We want your stories. 

[writingsforwinter]

Only 10 days left!

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"The First 48"

The first time we made love

I remained unshowered for 48 minutes afterwards

Allowing your scent to serenade my nostrils every twelve seconds

Until I had memorized the song of your fragrance

Next to my heart like my very own birthday

That means that in less than an hour

I had spent 240 separate moments

Inhaling your essence

Just so that I could never forget what forever might possibly smell like

A reminder that God must have had a

A break in His busy schedule and

Finally gotten around to making

The perfect woman for me and

When I think about how long it’s taken to find you

I’m almost frightened at the thought of

Washing away the delicacy that you’ve left on my lips

I think of how

Just moments earlier

I sucked your nectar off my fingers and

Rejoiced in how your ambrosia made my heart flutter

Like pages of a paperback romance novel during Wilmington Beach hurricanes

I would rather asphyxiate on the lingering notes of your perfume than

Exhale and risk possibly losing your scent forever

Especially when I feel like I’m hot on your trail and

Frankly

This old dog is tired of new tricks

I want to spend

The next 27,000,000 minutes doing nothing but

Remembering how

The first 48

Changed everything

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"Like the Back of My Hand"

I thought I knew you

Like the back of my hand

But no one was more surprised

Than me

When I discovered

Half inch scars on my knuckles

I never realized were there

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"New Shoes"

They say that

If you buy a woman shoes

She’ll end up walking out of your life

Forever

But I figured

I’d buy them anyway and just

Keep her heels on my shoulders

For the whole weekend

That way

She’d be too weakened

To wander

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"The Least That I Can Do"

She has refused to surrender my hand

For the past three hours

Her crown of Senegalese twists have made

Temporary residence victim housing

Upon my right shoulder and

She just won’t stop crying

A crimson laceration connects the dots of her freckles but

She is too shaken to let anyone stitch

Her bloody cheek or

Get close enough to even

Console her with the exception

Of me

Her name is Katrina and

She’s the nine-year-old granddaughter

Of a former Black Panther who has beaten breast cancer twice

Only to see it return each time and

For the third instance in her young life

She’s scared that she’s about to lose

The only person on this earth that

She’s ever cared about

And then

There’s me

The single victim of a three-car pile-up

To survive completely uninjured and

The only person who deserved to die that afternoon since

It was my refusal to stop arguing with

A former love over the phone

That caused my eyes to veer off the road long enough to

Slam into the silver Mercedes carrying

A freshly-crowned fourth-grade spelling bee champion and

The only guardian she’s ever had so 

The least that I can do is

Hold this nine-year-old’s hand until

Her grandmother comes to and

Is able to tell her

That everything will be ok because

That’s the only thing I’ve managed to

Promise her

Since my recklessness brought us here

In the meantime I will allow

Katrina’s hurricane to continue to escape the levees

In the corners of her eyes and

Stain my t-shirt while I

Persist in letting her braided crown rest upon 

My Superdome right shoulder until

Somehow

I’m able to make good on my distorted promise

That everything will be ok

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"I Want to be in Love With You"

I want to be

In love

With you

I want you to be the reason

My bad days never seem as bad as they did

Before I met you

I want to be able to give you my heart and

Know that

Your well-manicured hands will treat it like

Gilded notes of the most beautiful music known to man

I want to do something incredibly embarrassing and

Not even care that you’re laughing

I want

Your eyes to be my alarm clock

Your lips to be my coffee

Your smile to be my breakfast

I want you to literally

Be the reason I wake up in the morning

I want to be late to family functions because

We just had to spend another 45 minutes arguing

Over who loves the other more and

I simply refused to relent until you gracefully bowed out

I want to regret ever having the audacity to

Attempt writing a love poem before

I met you

I want to trace the dent in the mattress

With my fingertips and

Feel a genuine sense of grief

Whenever you’re unable to spend nights with me

I want to miss you and

Feel helpless when you’re not around

I want to gaze at you in the shower and feel envious of the

Millions of water droplets that will get the pleasure

Of spending their last moments alive on your skin

I want to crave the taste of your earlobe when I find myself

Daydreaming about nibbling your ears

After we’ve made love

I want to be vulnerable enough to say

I love you and

Not care what anyone else thinks

Secretly

I daydream of strangers who will

See us out in public and

Talk about how in love we must be and

Say they want a love like ours

I want to wonder what we’ll be like forty years from now

When we spend Sunday afternoons after church

Reminiscing about how in love we were when we were younger and

How it pales in comparison to what we feel for each other now

I want someone to mention your name and have the ends of my lips

Curl up into a permanent smile that can only be removed by

The best of plastic surgeons

I want to tattoo doorknobs on your eyelashes and

Know that the key remains steadfast in the palms of my hands so that

When you cry

I’ll wipe away the tears and

Run my fingers through your locs (locks)

Just to remind you

That we can always be open with one another

I want to have firefighters on standby at all times

So that when we kiss

We have someone there to extinguish the fireworks

I want to consider a life without red meat and pork and

My Aunt April’s macaroni and cheese

Just so that I can enjoy your presence that much longer

Here on earth

I want to be in love with you and

Be yours

And have you be mine

Forever and ever

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"You Were My America"

Every morning

I would pledge allegiance to you

Then place the palm of my hand to my heart and

Serenade you with the national anthem

In the form of

“I love you”

You were my America

Coveted by every man on the planet

Except those who were angered

By the fact

That they could not have you

I was your most loyal patriot

I would even relinquish Hiroshima again

If you asked me to

Just so I could be in your good graces

But in the end

You enslaved me and

Felt justified in it until

You had consumed everything

I was your most precious resource

Yet you saw fit to strip me raw of 

All that was beautiful about me and

When there was nothing left to take possession of

You relieved me of duty and

Told me not to take it personally

But even still

I was foolish enough to believe that

Your emancipation was the same thing as love

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"Free Write - July 29, 9:01 PM"

I have always believed it

To be a misnomer that

Insanity is

Doing the same thing over and over while

Expecting different results

It is my opinion that

True insanity involves

Frequently attempting an assortment

Of intimate gestures

Only to achieve indistinguishable results and

Today

I will officially hold a memorial

For rational thought because

I have tried to love you

One hundred ways and

It has all been for naught

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"The Allure of Silence"

Too often

People assume that 

The decision to take one’s own life is

An act of cowardice

One that has marinated in attention-seeking or

Three a.m. overthinkings of inebriated melancholy

The unfortunate truth is that

More often than not

It has to do with

Terminating the never-ending chorus of

Spirits having a depraved revival inside your mind

The voices boom like

Aggravated ghosts with microphones and

Before long

The decibles from their voiceboxes rival

Thunderstorms at full volume

Until

You are forced with a decision

To either live with these racous behemoths 

Echoing trepidation inside the confines

Of your barricaded skull

Or consent to the fact that there is only one way

To silence them indefinitely

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"Free Write - August 10, 9:04 PM"

So I’ve been drinking and

At the bottom of my glass

All I can see is

Your face and

Every reason we should give it

One more try

For the first time

In a long time

I’ve permitted this amber elixir to

Filter my words and

For once

I don’t find myself

Overthinking all of the stupid things

That could happen

By telling you that

I miss you

And I know

I know

We’ve meandered down this old dirt road

At least a dozen times before but

I like to imagine that

These conversations are just

The world’s worst global positioning system

But

I know that if I can just keep

Giving you the directions

Eventually

You will get re-routed and

Find your way

Back to me

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"Every Step of the Way"

I remember when you told me

The story of Eurydice and Orpheus

And how Orpheus literally walked through hell

To bring his wife back to the land of the living

His song so mournfully melancholy that

Hades himself shed tears and

Granted him the opportunity to

Repair what had been broken

All he had to do was

Have enough faith to walk in front of her

And believe that as he wandered out of the underworld

Eurydice was trudging along right behind him 

And they would be together again

But before long

Doubt burrowed its way to the surface and

At the very last second

Crippled by the notion that

He might never see his love again

Orpheus turned around

Only to see her snatched

Back into the underworld

Forever knowing that it was

His own fault that he had lost her

I always thought that it was an amazing love story

And as time has gone on

I have grown to see how similar it is

To our situation

The difference is

I have a little more faith than Orpheus because

I believe that

No matter how far I have to walk

Through the fire and brimstone

To have you by my side again

I will just have to rely on blind faith

That you will be with me

Every step of the way

[ghdoswrites-blog]

“Deeper”

I fell in love

With grey August mornings

The first time we slept together

Not even in the sense that we

Engaged in intercourse

In fact

We just laid there

Intertwined in 600-thread-count bed sheets and

Thoughts of serendipity

Not concerned with moving things along

Physically but taking solace in how far

We had already come

I massaged coconut oil into your scalp as

You told me narratives of your teenage years

When you were an introverted high school junior

With a caramel apple afro and gapped front teeth

Who simply wanted someone to look past her frame and

Tell her how gorgeous she was

I told you that

I think we would have been

High school sweethearts and you giggled

Incessantly at the thought

I recanted past suicide attempts and

Revealed my favorite soul food recipes and 

Told you about the first short story that I had ever written while

You looked into my eyes

Afterwards

We kissed so passionately

Not hungrily like college lovers

Who hadn’t seen each other all summer and

Merely saw lips touching as a segue to their impending sexual romp

Instead we kissed

Like two people who simply loved to kiss one another

I wrapped my arms around the small of your back and

Tattooed my name into your spine with my fingertips

I yearned to inhale you when

You sank your teeth into my bottom lip and 

Suddenly

I found myself wanting to find myself

With you

For the foreseeable future

The faint glints of dawn

Penetrating through your windows’ blinds

Rain hanging overhead like mistletoe

Daring us to kiss each other over and over again

Yet

Somehow

It still didn’t seem we could kiss enough

To satisfy

The quota our hearts had laid before us

I hated having to leave

Having to succumb to the reality of

Life outside your bedroom door

We had spent the last fifteen hours

In absolute bliss and I hadn’t done much more than

Play in your hair

Indulge in your lips

Hold your hand and

Fall victim to your murderous giggle

Because Lord knows

It killed me to leave you that morning but

Honestly

Missing you is a reward within itself

It lets me know that our time spent

Together

Wrapped up in comforters and

Deliberate indulgences

Was not a moment of glorious happenstance

Or temporary newness but

The introduction of something

Deeper

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"Preserving Her Wings"

I want to make love to you tonight

The utterance cut through

Our innocent conversation as

My eyes grew wide at the words

That had just inadvertently escaped her lips and

For the first time in a long time

My usual deviant behavior is at

An empasse…

I honestly don’t want to corrupt this

Woman’s walk with God but

At the same time

This woman’s walk has been driving me crazy

Since the very first day that

I saw her

You see

I am a lustful creature

There is no doubt about that

In fact

She and I have shared nothing more than

Ice cream dates and hand-holding thus far but

That hasn’t stopped me

From imagining how the gospel would sound

Serenading my bed sheets while

My name rang out again and again

At least a dozen different times

Between the Bible verses and

Church invitations she flings at me

Every Sunday

So what’s a degenerate to do?

I’ve been warring with God for years now

Oftentimes I wonder why

He has brought so much pain my way or

At the very least why

He seems so content with my unhappiness

At my worst

I’ve pondered if He really cares for me at all

Considering that almost everyone else who has told me

They loved me

Has left me

What’s to keep God from doing the same?

At the same time, I respect Him enough

To be wary of veering one of His angels off her path

So even though she’s looking at me right now

Like she wants me to push her up against this wall and

Tear her clothes from her body

Before ravaging every single inch of her

I can’t

I don’t want our time together to be riddled

With guilt and regret

I’ve seen the tears of the Christian woman who feels as if

She has disappointed her Father and

While the atheist might not be moved

The sinner can’t help but feel apologetic

Because he knows that He knows

That he knows it is the sinner’s fault

His angel has wavered in the first place

So instead of succumbing to what I desire the most

I look into her eyes

Move the hair cascading across her forehead

I kiss her ever so sweetly and

Ask her

To pray with me

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"My Precious Gerbera"

She hated when I called her

My little African daisy or more simply

My precious Gerbera

To her

It meant that I thought she was

Fragile and dainty and delicate to which

She informed me that

She was not as harmless as she seemed

I chuckled to myself and assured her that

I meant no harm in calling her that and

Took it upon myself to tell her the story of my grandmother

The world’s most incompetent botanist who

Dreamed of having a beautiful garden filled

With lush flowers that would frame her yard and

Show the world of her contribution to nature

She cared for them with reckless abandon

Nothing was too much for her potential blossoms

Even going so far

As to sing them ‘60 soul music

In the hopes that they would grow tall and strong for her

Now I love my grandmother but

She sings about as well as she gardens and

There is no doubt that she meant well

But everything she planted has either mercilessly shriveled

Or most assuredly committed suicide in an attempt to

Finally find remedy from her throat-cracking crooning

That is

Except for a single Gerbera daisy

It was the color of saffron tea

Resplendent and intrepid

Like an angel amidst holocaust

Its petals outstretched like it anticipated a hug

At any given moment

It simply grew and never once thought of self harm and

I am almost certain that I once saw

It dance in the wind the last time my grandmother

Sang her rendition of “Love and Happiness”

That flower became her prized possession and

Soon it became clear

That all of the others that had wilted weeks prior

No longer mattered

She had found the one that made all of the other failures worth it

So understand that

When I call you my little African daisy

It is not because you are delicate and harmless

It is because you are beautiful and resilient

You are my prized possession

You are my precious Gerbera

That made all of my other failures

Worth it

[ghdoswrites-blog]

"Free Write - September 2, 6:46 PM"

Last night

I tasted something foreign in

Your goodnight kiss

It was regret

-

You had found in someone else

What you had not been able to discover within me

For the longest time

You found excitement

And passion

Or whatever the fuck you called it

And for you

That was enough

You found comfort in the hysterics of it all

The novelty of me had lost its luster and

I had become boring to you

Good morning beautifuls and

Flowers with no motive were nothing

Special to you anymore

That expression of love was only memorable

Coming from someone else

-

Which is why it hurt so much

To taste that disappointment in your lips last night

It was because your anguish

Didn’t stem from you loving another but

From having to come home

To me

[ghdoswrites-blog]

Excerpt from "No One (Ever Calls Black Boys Beautiful)"

No one ever calls black boys beautiful

We are nappy-headed

Nasty little niggers

From the time 

We take our first steps as men

Never seen as potential kings

No one ever seems to understand that

Little black boys are expected to

Inhale mustard gas and

Exhale caramel-covered iambic pentameter

To a world that only wonders

How high we can jump

How fast we can run

How good we can fuck

But somehow

We’re expected to love rationally

With hair-triggered atomic bomb hearts that

No one ever showed us how to use

We have to use crooked smiles and fake bravado to

Cover up our insecurities and

All people ever seem to see is

The monster behind the mask

Yet

No one seems to inquire

Why we feel the need to

Use a disguise in the first place…