by Ms. Boye

Introduction

I’m thrilled to introduce our featured artist and Art Spark Texas, June 2024, Artist of the Month, Birdman AKA Birdman313. Birdman, author of 13 poetry books and 4 chapbooks, is also a videographer and multi-instrumentalist with a newfound passion for the bass guitar. Retired and living in Houston with his partner Dianna Simmons, Birdman has been a dedicated participant in our Lion & Pirate Inclusive, Accessible Open Mic at Malvern Books, both virtually and in person. Instead of writing about him, we’ll let Birdman’s storytelling shine. Here’s an excerpt from his performance at the June 2024 Lion & Pirate.

BIRDMAN – ‘That’s My Heart There, It’s What I Do.’

I’m gonna start with the poetry side of things. I always enjoyed writing, and I remember in the fourth grade, my fourth-grade teacher called my parents to the school and said we need to talk about your son. And I thought it was something bad. Her name was Miss Gardner, and she said, “You know what? I think your son has a career in writing because his penmanship was so good.” And then my dad, he passed away in ’95 and he never knew I wrote, and I hate that I didn’t tell him. But then again, my dad, I don’t think he would understand. And I always told him and Mom thank you because after my fourth-grade teacher told them I had good penmanship, every time they needed a letter written, I had to be the one to write it. They said, “Come here and sit down at the table. I need this letter written.” And I’m like, “Okay, but I want to go play basketball.”

“Yeah, you can do that afterward. I need this letter written.”

So, I would sit down and write the letter. Every envelope that they sent out, I would write it. One time I asked him, “So it’s cool me putting your name on this?” He said, “Just sit down and do this.” When I was in college, when I came home on the weekends, he used to have a box of envelopes and he’d say, “Oh, can you fix these envelopes for me?” And that’s what really also kept me interested in writing.

But you know, in the fourth grade, I was more into sports and music. The reason why I was into music is because my dad, he was a drummer, and he played for various bands in our area. He also played a couple of times with “Junior Walker and the All-Stars.” When I was five, he started me out on the drums because I used to always try to slip in the room and get on his drum set. They bought me a drum kit because my dad said you seem like you want to be a musician. So really, music was what I really wanted to do. Then he taught me how to play baseball because he also could have played in the Negro League, but he got drafted and he ended up going to the military.

So as time went on, I switched from drums to saxophone. Then Junior Walker came around a couple of times. He let me sit in on their practice, and I would play. And then I went from saxophone to organ. Then I went from organ to piano. Music was always in our house. Music and sports. Me and my dad used to sit up and watch sports.

I also liked to write, but no one really knew that I enjoyed writing. I didn’t really know it myself! When I couldn’t go outside to play, I would go in my room and I would just write. It didn’t make no difference what it was. I just wrote, but then I’d ball the paper up and throw it away.

As time went on and I was getting taller, I started playing basketball and I pushed writing to the side for a minute. I went to college and I played ball there. But I was still writing in the winter times when we couldn’t get out because I’m from Michigan and it snows up there. Sometimes you just couldn’t get out your door. You didn’t want to go out your door. So, I was sitting in my room and I was writing. But also, when I was in high school, I was in a singing group. The lead singer, he wrote music. And I said, “Hey man, I would like to learn how to write music.” He said, “Cool.” So, he and I would sit down and try to write music.

In college, while some of my buddies were selling weed on campus, I’m like, “Nah, that ain’t for me. That’s not something I want to do.” I decided to make mixtapes instead. Believe it or not, I was making extra money making mixtapes.

So, then I ended up, and I got a tryout out in L.A. at the Summer Pro Basketball League. Then I got a brief tryout with the Lakers. I didn’t make it, but Miss Gardner and writing were still in the back of my mind. Then one of my teammates was like, “Hey man, I’m going to start bringing my writing stuff, and I’m going to start writing.” And I’m like, “Okay cool.” So, whenever we could, we would sit and write.

Anyway, I didn’t make it with the Lakers. So, I came back home. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was still making mixtapes for people, selling them until I could get a steady job. I began applying for numerous jobs. During my downtime, I would write lyrics and send them out, hoping to get them published. Never received any responses back, so I started writing poems to express my hurt and pain.

But now writing had started. I started writing a little bit more and more, still hoping to get to write for musicians. That never happened, but what did happen was I got to try out with the Houston Rockets. That’s when I left Michigan and came down here, and I began to write constantly to relax my mind.

So as time went on, I was writing, working, trying to play ball. The injuries, of course, started taking effect on me. At 32, I had knee surgery. Actually, at 12 years old, I threw my elbow out, my right elbow, from pitching and messed up my shoulder, so I had switched from baseball to basketball. Then I had to have knee surgery because I was out there trying to show off. There were a few females hanging around the court, and you know how the guys are?! So, we were out there, and I said, “I can dunk too.” And the guys, they looked at me, they said, “You do jump high…” Came down on somebody’s foot, they pulled their foot back, and it messed up my knee.

That there has stopped me from playing basketball. It didn’t stop me from writing, though. It just made me write even more. As time went on, I started writing even more, and then I sent a manuscript off to a publishing company in New York. They sent me a contract back, and my agent that was trying to get me to try out with the Dallas Mavericks, I showed the publishing contract to him. He took it to a friend and he said, “You don’t want this. You really don’t want this. It’s crooked.” I said, “Okay.” I asked them to send my manuscript back, of course, they didn’t.

I just kept writing. And like I said, no one, my mom, my dad, my sister, even my first wife, didn’t know I was writing for all those years. One night she got up because she heard I was out in the living room. And she thought I was talking on the phone to someone. But I was out there writing. And then when she saw the stack, she said, “So what you going to do with that?” I said, “I’m going to try to get it published.” And she said, “Ain’t nobody going to want to read that junkie writing.” I’m like, “That’s cool. You don’t have to.” That did encourage me more. That made me, “Oh nah! Now, you know what? I’m going to get me a book published some kind of way.” So as time went on, I constantly wrote. Me and her finally divorced, and I learned writing releases a lot of tension for me. It relaxes me, it inspires me.

I remember when my first book came out, I was walking down the street all happy. I was all like, “I ain’t gonna have to work no more.” You know what? I still had to work because my books weren’t selling. And I’m like, “I’m not gonna stop writing. I love it. I enjoy it” And like I said, I just kept writing.

Short Poems

People ask me what inspires me and I tell them it’s my video. I shoot videos, I take pictures. I say music is a big influence. I watch movies and it may be a line or a couple of words in there. I’ll take those couple of words, then I do my own thing with it. The same way with I hear people talking. I may hear y’all talk and you just don’t realize you say something that clicks in my mind and so what I’ll do is I’ll write it down and then I’ll turn it into a poem. Or I tell them it’s music, it’s reading. I read books now all the time because I feel like if you read books, you can write poetry a whole lot better. And you will get a whole lot of words out of that. I do. Then sometimes I write from prompts.

I write a lot of short poems. I’m not into long poems and I don’t knock anybody who does. Some people, they can write three or four pages. Not me, the longest is going to be a page and a half. That’s just me, that’s how I write because I still keep the style of trying to write music.

And I have to say the last 10 to 12 years have been really blessed because if it wasn’t for Tom the World Poet, I would have never known about the Lion and Pirate or Art Spark Texas. I always tell him thank you. And he always encouraged me. I remember when I first met him, I couldn’t understand why he liked my poetry and I’m puzzled. I’m like, what’s up with this guy? Because my poetry was, it was very, I’m not going to say violent, but it wasn’t relaxed. Here’s an example:

Silent Visitor
I am a violent whisper ready to attack,
I come from the sky with stars surrounding me.
I’m like a brown gangster heading for death,
Slamming love with hate.
The words stick in the winds throat,
At times in cold silence.
The clouds collide,
Touching the heavens.
Trying to awaken the GODs.
Silence is felt from heaven and earth.
Chariots are beginning to rumble over the heavens,
Thunder, lightning, rain, and high winds.
The violent whisper is on the attack,
Planets and meteors pass by out of uncontrollable rage.
©Birdman, 1998 – published it in my fourth poetry book “The World in Poetry According To……. Him.”

Over the years, I tried to tone it down, less angry, more relatable. That’s thanks to my better half, Dianna Simmons. I’ll never forget we met on a dating app. We met up at a coffee house and she said, “Would you read a poem to me?” And I was like, whoa, oh okay. I don’t know why I chose this particular poem. It’s titled “A Shoulder to Cry On.” I read that poem and you know what? She’s still with me. She’s still with me.

A Shoulder to Cry On
The feel of your hands on my body,
As you caress me so tenderly.
Moving so close together,
I know the lies that you whisper.
But your lies are all that I need,
I will stay the night with you.
But please, don’t love me,
I will leave if you start getting serious.
I’m not looking for no love affair,
I just need a shoulder to cry on.
I know love isn’t fair,
I’m leaving in the early morning hours.
With a soft kiss upon your brow,
And a note left by your pillow.
Which reads “please, forget me now?”
© Feb 2018  Birdman313

Time went on and Dianna, she looked at my old poems. I have four books that are unpublished. I have 13 books altogether. Nine of them are on Amazon. Four of them are no longer in print. So, she said, “Can I look at your poetry?” And I’m like, “Yes.” She said, “Can I edit it?” And I’m like, “Yes!” My nine books that I have on Amazon, she edited every poem in those books. At first, when she used to tell me you need to change this and change that, I used to get mad. And then she said, “I know what you’re trying to say but you want the audience to understand what you say.” I said, “Okay.” Now when she edits, I don’t say a word. She says, “Oh, this is what I changed. This is what I did.” I’m like, “Yeah okay. It’s fine with me.”

When we travel, we go to a lot of Japanese gardens. And when I walk into the garden, it feels like, oh, this is another world. I’ve written several poems and videos in Japanese gardens because when I go in there, I have my camera and I’m taking pictures, I’m shooting video. When I leave out of there, I may have a hundred pictures and I’ll have 50 videos at different angles. It didn’t start out that way at first, but this one here is one, if you click this link you can watch and listen to titled “Escape to Nature.”

Inspiring Beaches

I enjoy going to the beaches. I’ve seen the Atlantic Ocean, I’ve seen the Pacific Ocean, I’ve seen the Gulf of Mexico and of course because I’m from Michigan I lived off of Lake Michigan. San Francisco Bay too. All that vision, that kind of helped me out. It helped me out with poems. Sometimes I’ll write a poem and then I’m like, “Oh it’s got a video for that.” And then sometimes I don’t have a poem and I’ll just sit back and I’ll watch the video and then I’ll write. This one here is titled “Ripples on the Water”, click this link to listen and watch the video.

And like I said that poem came about from me visiting all these lakes, watching all this body of water, watching the ripples flow. Now I can’t swim but hey, if you said let’s go to the beach I’m there. Now I’m gonna stay far back though because I can’t swim but I’m there with my camera.

My youngest son who stays in San Antonio and I go up there to visit him. He said one day, “Dad, you have so many beach poems. Why don’t you put a book together with nothing but beaches in it?” And I’m like, “Nah people…” He said, “Dad, the hell with what people think!” He said, “Just do it!” He said, “Because a lot of people really enjoy your poetry, either you don’t know it or you just, you ain’t letting it go to your head.”

I said, “It’s a little bit of both.”

A Lonely Beach
Walking along the shore of a deserted beach,
looking straight ahead, the sun is out of reach.
The sun is high above as it shines bright and free.
The wind blows softly and creates a soothing breeze.
Footprints are seen in the soft brown sand.
Birds fly above looking for a place to land.
The blue waters sparkle on the sea.
A lonely beach is as peaceful as can be.
©Birdman – in my eighth poetry book “Elements of Life”:

The Healing Power of Nature

So, my last book that I released back in April is titled “Outdoor Memories.” It’s a compilation of nothing but outdoors. During the pandemic, I used to walk the yard for exercise. And I didn’t realize the beauty of the yard. I didn’t realize grapevines, peach trees, the flowers and I began to write a lot about that. I’ve been to some places where I read a poem and people don’t like it because it’s nature and I’ve had people make comments about it. And now I’m at a point where I say I don’t even care. You can say what you want, just don’t put your hands on it. And Dianna, like I said, she’s been a blessing to me. And I love her. And she helped me change a lot. Because boy, there was a time when I would just go off. And she’s kind of helped me to calm my nerves down. Got my blood pressure down and hey, that’s just the way it is.

I’ve had people say, “Are you making any money from your books?” That’s not why I write books. I write to inspire people. People say, “Thank you for your videos.” “Thank you for the poem. It’s because it really helped me out today” and I’ve had a lot of people telling me that and that’s really my goal. Like I said, I hand books out and sometimes I won’t even sell you a book. I just walk up to you and hand you a book and say, “Hey this is yours.”

In California at an open mic, I used to go to, I hand out all, whatever books I have. If I have six, seven, eight, I just hand them out and people say, “I don’t have no money.” I say, “No, that’s yours.” And they say, “Sir, no.” I tell them, “That’s yours.” I’ve had people say, “I’m gonna buy you a drink.” No problem, if that’s what you want to do. But I’m not asking for anything. And that’s really the joy that I get because my parents, they taught me some values. Sometimes I don’t live by them, but I try.

I try to be respectful to everybody. And like I said, The Lion and Pirate, I enjoy coming every month.  I’m going to continue to come as long as y’all accept me. The poems I bring to y’all, you ain’t got to worry about, it won’t be anything nasty. I don’t degrade nobody. Don’t get me wrong, I was on a program one time where we had to write some poems like that and afterward, I was like man, this is not me. And I didn’t like it. I tried to rap. I tried to write rap music. And then I’m like, you know what? This ain’t me. Let me go back to what I love to do and what I enjoy to do.

You know, my very first poem that ever got published is titled “Lost Souls.” It was the Black newspaper here called Forward Times in 1983 and I sent it in. I had a short story with it, so they said they wanted to publish it and I’m like, “Yeah okay!” So, the guy says, “Look, you ain’t gonna get paid.” I’m like, “Man, I just want to get my name out there.”

Lost Souls
Growing up as a child with a powerful
goal,
Lack of opportunities now leaves you as a lost
soul.
Who cares if you live or
die,
There’s no question so who ask
why.
The time to change is
now,
Look at the world because faith is lost, but
how.
©Birdman,1983 included in my third poetry book “Thoughts of Life 360 E May St B.H. Michigan”

Before it was published the guy, he came to the house, interviewed me. And my then wife, she said, “So he gonna get paid?” They said, “Nah this is a…” Before he’d even finished, she turned around, said, “I ain’t got time for this.” And she grabbed the kids and she left out the house. And I did like this, good riddance. And the guy told me then, he said, “Hey dude, you will never go anywhere with having a spouse that has that type of attitude.” I said, “Hey man, what you don’t really know is she out the door. Either her or me is going to get out the door.”

It’s funny because years later she bought two of my books. Like they say sometimes the person that you know, that, how do you put it? They don’t have faith in you all of a sudden, they are like, okay he never gave up. I now have also begun to self-publish my poetry books. I hope to publish a book once a year.

That’s what I tell a bunch of young writers, “Hey man, don’t give up. Some will like your work and some will not like your work. Don’t allow what they say to get inside of your mind, for it can be a distraction. Love what you do even if nobody else do.” And I tell them, “If you are in it for the money, especially poetry, you’re in it for the wrong reason because you can’t make a living doing that.” And a lot of them, they take my advice. And when I tell them I even give books away, they be like, “Really?” I’m like, “Yeah, I give books away because it’s from my heart.” And that’s just the way I am.

I don’t play sports no more. No, I watch. But music and poetry, oh that’s my heart there. And it’s like an everyday thing for me now that I write and I’m listening to music because I’m playing the bass guitar now. I got all these instruments behind me; all these experiences and I am really enjoying the way things have turned out.

I will always remember and be thankful for my parents, my 4th-grade teacher Mrs. Gardner, musician Jr. Walker, High School good friend Stanley McKenzie, editor/friend Dianna Simmons, and Thom “The World Poet” for encouraging me to continue with my writing journey. I always tell Tom, “Thank you for introducing me to the Lion and Pirate,” because everybody here has been very nice to me, and they accept me, and they seem, everybody says they love my poetry regardless. I enjoy reading with the other performers and hope I can continue to attend as long as they have open mics. Houston, my hometown seemed reluctant to accept my poetry, but Austin and L.A. welcomed me with open arms and friendly faces.  And I just want to say thank y’all. Anyway, I’m gonna close it with that.

Thank you, Art Spark Texas, Laura and Ms. Boye, for letting me be Artist of the Month and the Featured Performer for the Lion and Pirate Open Mic. I really enjoyed it. Hey, hope I can come back again and I hope everybody else enjoyed what I said. I hope everybody enjoyed the poems I shared here. I do have a YouTube channel with videos on it. There are a lot of my poems, but I have over 600 videos on there. If you wanna look at it, feel free. I have music, I have people with music, I have comedy, and poetry, and storytelling.

Hey. I hope you enjoy it. That’s my Heart there, it’s what I do.