I am an artist and a poet, creatively minded, socially critical, and spiritually aware. I was born in San Diego, where my parents met. My mother, the oldest of three children - a sister and baby brother, is from downstate Illinois. She lost her mother in a car accident when she was seven years old, and grew up under the roof of a father who loved cars, alcohol, and happened to be racist. She has been married multiple times, short-lived relationships that produced no children, and is very independent. She has lived in at least seven states in her adult life. She is currently married to a man she met over the internet. He came to the United States, got a job as a security consultant with a major airline, was charged with miscellaneous crimes, including fraud, was a fugitive from the law for a brief period of time before being apprehended by the FBI, imprisoned and eventually deported to his country of origin, and who is now banned from entering the United States. During this drama, my mother filed bankruptcy and has gone from being financially independent to living at the poverty line. My Dad is the oldest of three boys in a second set of nine children. His father migrated from Athens, Georgia to Chicago under questionable circumstances and was a deacon in a church, married to a woman of ill health. My Dad’s mother was his father’s wife’s nurse. My Dad was conceived in a closet outside the bedroom of their home. My Dad enlisted with the Navy as a medical corpsman and was stationed in Oakland and then San Diego. While in Vietnam, he received news that my mother was pregnant with me. He made it back stateside and they were married in February of 1969. I was born in July. My parents divorced shortly after my brother was born. My dad received custody of both children and drove us to Chicago. Growing up, I knew my Dad as a man of discipline, structure and logic. He was religious and had high expectations. Today, my Dad is a very spiritual person, still growing and learning, and still my best friend. I have always excelled in school, earning high marks, up until my senior year in high school. My final semester grade point average may have been a C+. College was an internalized expectation, though I had never received any career guidance, nor taken the time to sort through my talents and determine a course for my life. My interests were across the board and my strengths were numerous. I was however, undisciplined and immature. I passed on a full scholarship to the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) to accept a partial scholarship to Florida A&M University. It took ten years, three schools, and various majors, to finally earn my B.A. I got my driver’s license before I lost my virginity. I didn’t get my first car for another two years, sold to me by my mother when things were going well for her. I drove to Alabama to get it. I worked extensively in customer service, interned for a state senator, which developed into a legislative assistant position, won various awards for poetry with works published, and participated in various socio-political oriented organizations on the collegiate campus. I married the mother of my daughter, braving hell for an ideal – to give my daughter a two-parent household. Since then I have been arrested for domestic violence, lost a best friend to a car accident, survived a car accident, lost my grandmother, been estranged from my father, worked as a substitute teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, worked as a child care worker in the state of Illinois, gone through a divorce, lost my home, family, job, and possessions, managed a restaurant, been handcuffed and robbed at gunpoint, endured child custody issues, the IRS, unemployment, and my car being stolen. I am currently living with the woman I am going to spend the rest of my life with. She has two daughters by two different fathers. One is the same age as my daughter, and the other is three years old. I am a stay at home Dad, currently waiting for a criminal background check from the State of Illinois so that I may begin as a Special Education teacher’s assistant with the Indianapolis Public Schools. I want to earn a law degree for self-esteem issues and to help my Dad with litigation he has pending that will affect policy and procedure in his field on a national level.

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