Reginald Lockett

How I Started Writing Poetry

At the age of fourteen I was what Richard Pryor over a decade later would call "going for bad" or what my Southern-bred folks said was "smellin' your pee". I had cultivated a façade of daring-do, hip, cool, con man bravado so prevalent among adolescent males in West Oakland. I "talked that talk and walked that walk" most parents found downright despicable. They thought these were dress rehearsals of fantasies that were like Popsicles that melt and evaporate under the heat of blazing realities. There I was doing the pimp limp and talking about nothing profound or sustaining. I wanted to project the image of being forever cool like Billy Boo. He wore three T-shirts, two slipover sweaters, and a thick Pendleton shirt tucked neatly in his khaki or black Ben Davisons to give everybody the impression that he was buffed (muscle bound) and definitely not to be messed with. Cool. Real cool. Billy Boo hung out in front of the liquor store on 36Th and San Pablo sipping white port and lemon juice and talked smack by the boatloads. One day, a real hoodlum from Campbell Village, or Harbor Homes, with the real biceps, shonuff triceps, and sledgehammer fists beat the shirt, sweaters, T-shirts, and pants right off of Billy Boo's weak, bony body.

Herbert Hoover Junior High, the school I attended, was considered one of the three toughest in Oakland. It was a dirty, gray, and forbidding looking place where several fights would break out every day. There was a joke going around that a mother, new to the city, mistook it for the Juvenile Detention Center that was located further down in West Oakland on 18Th and Poplar across the street from Defremery Park.

During my seventh-grade year there were constant referrals to the principal's office for any number of infractions committed either in Miss Okamura's third-period music class or Mrs. George's sixth-period math class in the basement where those of us with behavioral problems and assumed learning disabilities were assigned. Around this time, Harvey Hendricks, my best friend, took it upon himself to hip me to everything he thought I should know about sex. We were doing a week's detention in Mrs. Belasco's art class for capping on "them steamer trunks" or "suitcases" under her eyes. As we sat there, supposedly writing "I will not insult the teacher" one hundred times, Harvey would draw pictures of huge breasts and vaginas, while instructing me the art of rapping, kissing, and seduction. He told me the pimples on my face were "pussy bumps", and that I'd better start getting some trim or end up like Crater Face Jerome with the big, nasty pus bumps that covered his face.

Though my behavior left much to be desired, I managed to earn some decent grades. I loved history, art, and English, and worked my way up from special education classes to college prep courses when I reached the ninth grade, my last year at Hoover. By then I'd also become a full-fledged little thug, and had been suspended--and damn near expelled--quite a few times for going to knuckle city at the drop of a hat for any real or imagined reason. What an efficient thief I'd also become. This was something I learned from my cousins R.C. and Danny when I hung with them on weekends in San Francisco's Fillmore district. We'd steal clothes, records, liquor, jewelry--anything for the sake of magnifying to the umpteenth degree the image of death--defying manhood and to prove I was indeed a budding a Slick Draw McGraw. Luckily, I was never caught, arrested, and hauled off to juvenile hall or the California Youth Authority like so many of the guys I ran with.

Probably through pressure from my parents and encouragement from teachers and counselors, I was forced to think about what career I would pursue after graduation from high school and later, hopefully, college. Reaching into the grab bag of professional choices, I decided I wanted to become a physician, since doctors were held in such high esteem, especially in an African-American community like West Oakland. I'd gotten it in my head that I wanted to be a surgeon because I liked working with my hands and science intriguing. Then something strange happened.

Perhaps it was the continuous violence, delinquency, and early pregnancies that made the Oakland Unified School District administrators (more likely after some consultation with psychologists) decide to put a Freudian theory to practical use. Just as I was really getting into this fantastic project in fourth-period art class, I was called up to the teacher's desk, and handed a note and told to report to a classroom on the first floor. What had I done this time? Was it because I snatched Gregory Jones' milkshake during lunch a couple of days ago and gulped it down, savoring every drop like an old loathsome suck-egg dog, and feeling no pain as the chump, big as he was, stood there and cried? Mr. Foltz, the principal, was known to hand out mass suspensions to fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five students at a time. When I entered the classroom, however, there sat this tall, gangly, goofy-looking white woman who wore her hair unusually long for that time, wore thick glasses, and had buckteeth like a beaver or hamster. Some of the toughest, roughest kids who went to Hoover were there, especially big old mean, ugly Martha Dupree who was known to knock out boys, girls, and teachers when she got the urge. If Big Martha asked you for a last-day-of-school kiss, you'd better give it up or make an appointment with your dentist.

When Miss Nettlebeck finally got our attention, she announced that this was a creative writing class, and it would meet twice a week. Creative writing? What is creative writing a couple of us asked? She explained that it was a way to express what is on your mind, and a better way of getting something off your chest than beating up your fellow students. She then read a few poems to us, passed out some of that coarse school-issue paper, and told us to write about something we liked, disliked, or really wanted. What I wanted to know was did it have to be one "them pomes". "If that's how you want to express yourself, Reginald, she said. So I racked my brain and tried to think about what I liked, didn't like, and what I really wanted. Well, I liked football, track, and Gayle Johnson, who would turn her cute little "high yella" nose up in total disgust every time I tried to say something to her.

I couldn't stand the sight--even the thought--of old monkey-face Martha. What I really wanted was either a '57 Buick Roadmaster or a '56 Chevy with mag wheels tuck 'n roll seats that dropped in the front like the ones older dudes like Coop's brother Skippy drove. No, I couldn't get away with writing about things like that. I might get into some more trouble, and Big Martha would give me a thorough ass kicking for writing about mashing her face in some dough and baking some gorilla cookies. Who'd ever heard ever heard of a poem about cars? One thing I really liked was the ocean. I guess that was in my blood because my father was then a Master Chief Steward in the Navy, and, when I was younger, would take me aboard ships he was stationed on docked at Hunter's Point or Alameda. I loved the sea so much that I'd sometimes walk from my house on Market and W. Mac Arthur all the way to the Berkeley Pier or take a bus to Ocean Beach in San Francisco whenever I wasn't up to no good. So I wrote:
                                                I sit on a rock
                                                   watching
                                                the evening tide
                                                   come in.
                                         The green waves travel
                                                with the wind.
                                           They seem to carry
                                                a message of
                                             warning or plea
                                            from the dimensions
                                            of time and distance.


When I gave it to Miss Nettlebeck, she read it, told me it was good for a first attempt at writing poetry, and since there was still some time left in the period, I should go back to my seat and write something else. Damn! These teachers never gave you any kind of slack, no matter what you did and how well you did it. Now, what else could I think of to write about? How about a tribute to Miss Bobby, the neighborhood drag queen, who'd been found carved up like a Christmas turkey a week ago? Me, Harvey, and Mack used to crack jokes about "her" giving up the bootie, but we liked and respected "her". Miss Bobby would give you five or six dollars to run an errand to the cleaners or the store, never tried to hit on you, and would get any of the other "girls" straight real quick if they even said you cute. So I wrote:

Bring on the hustlers
In Continental suits
And alligator shoes.
Let ladies of the night
In short, tight dresses
And spiked heels enter.

We are gathered here
To pay tribute to
The Queen of Drag.

What colorful curtains
And rugs!
Look at the stereo set
And the clothes in the closet.

On the bed, entangled
In a bloody sheet,
Is that elegant one
Of ill repute
But good carriage.

Oh yes! There
Was none like her,
The Queen of Drag.

When she read that one, I knew Miss Nettlebeck would immediately write a referral and have me sent back upstairs. But she liked it and said I was precocious for someone at such an innocent age. Innocent? When was I ever innocent? I was guilty of almost every infraction I was accused of committing. Like, get your eyes checked, baby. And what did precocious mean? Was it something weird? Did it mean I was queer like Miss Bobby? Was I about to go snap city like poor Donny Moore had done a year ago when he suddenly got up and jacked off in front of Mr. Lee's history class? What did this woman, who looked and dressed like the beatniks I'd seen one night on East Side, West Side,* mean? My Aunt Audrey's boyfriend Joe told me beatniks were smart and used many big words like precocious so nobody could understand what they were talking about. It had to be something bad. This would bother me for the rest of the week if I didn't ask her what she meant. I did, and she told me it meant I knew about things somebody my age didn't usually know about. Wow! That could only mean that I was hip to the lip, but I already knew that.

For some reason, I wasn't running up and down the streets with the fellas much anymore. Harvey would get bent out of shape every time I'd tell him I had something else to do. I had to be turning punkish or seeing some girl I was too chinchy to introduce him to. This also bothered my mother because she kept telling me I was going to ruin my eyes if I didn't stop reading so much; and what was that I spent all my spare time writing in a manila notebook? Was I keeping a diary or something? Only girls kept diaries, and people may start thinking I was one of "them sissy mens" if I didn't stop. Even getting good grades and citizenship and making the honor roll didn't keep her off my case. But I kept right on reading and writing, looking forward to Miss Nettelbeck's class twice a week. I stopped fighting, too, but I was still roguish as ever. Instead of raiding Rogers Men's Shop, Smiths and Flagg Brothers Shoes, I was stealing books by just about every poet and writer Miss Nettelbeck read to the class. That's how I started writing poetry.

What A Great-Uncle Told Me His Father Told Him
His father, a slave then,
had reached adolescence right before
the Surrender.

Small bands of Confederate soldiers
would straggle through his master’s property,
fleeing Sherman’s advance,

whipped, dragging rifle butts
through red Georgia dust,
filthy and ragged.

Officers commanding ten,
sometimes five troops
so hungry,

they picked kernels of corn
from hog shit.

A Backyard Boogie of the Spirits

for Yusuf Al-Waajid, Sculptor

Enter the backyard.
A bronze sculpture,
ancient and new
greets visitors.

Follow the music
of Booker Earvin,
Sonny Rollins,
Miles, and Trane
along the path
past a tall stevedore
carved in wood
cool posing
at the threshold
of an Orisha's workshop
nestled among plum trees,
collard greens, tomatoes,
and squashes.

It is here
purple, pink,
and spring stone
from Zimbabwe,
a blue and white rock
from Brazil,
and a Caribbean green
chiseled into orbs
and ancestral visages,
and wood from
Malaysia, Latin America,
Mindanao,
and a vacant lot
across the street
carved into stools,
and intricately etched forms
keep the past, present,
and future alive.

Listen to their joy!

Hear them sing!

See them prance!

Watch them dance!

Witness the blooming
and fruition
of old and new spirits
in this garden
of wood, stone,
and edible delights
that melts into visions
and cleanses souls!

Take to heart and mind
the teachings
of a Master Sculptor
of the Gods
who works here.

Each visit
is a rite of passage
in a backyard in Oakland
where the spirits come
to praise and bless
an humble man's celebration
of their good
and bountiful gifts.

Marion County, 1959

The last people to own
my great-great grandmother
and her children were the Culbertsons
who later sold 400 acres of pastures
and pine forests to my great-grandfather.

As children, me and my cousins,
trekking through the woods
to catch crawdads, perch, and catfish
at the Flat Branch Creek,
sensed that we should not venture
beyond the fence that divided
the Culbertsons' property from ours.

From a distance, hidden among
the oaks, magnolias and wild pecans,
we saw blank white faces we knew
to stay as far away from as we could.

Stocking Caps, Doo-rags, and Plenty of Grease

for Amaud Jamaul Johnson
and after India. Arie

Before locks, fades,
Geri curls, shags, naturals,
the Lord Jesus, perms,
the process, and marcels,
there was Murrays Pomade,
stiff as wax applied
with a wet towel, hot
as a brother could stand it.

A mother's, sister's,
or grandmother's discarded
cinnamon or black hose
with rips and runs in them,
cut halfway to the elastic,
tied into an a knot at the top,
fashioned into a stocking cap,
or one of their scarves
folded and tied in a bow
above the forehead
worn as doo-rags to keep
in place what we swore
were waves, curls, or even
straight hair cut close
to the scalp.

Later, there was the front
that stood like a wall of naps
teased slick into pompadours
with Dixie Peach, or hot comb
and Royal Crown.

Mothers and fathers hated them.

One day I went to the barbershop
for a trim and line.
Mr. Smart chopped off
my beautifully teased front
with his scissors
per my mother's instructions.

I shed defiant tears.

We were all about our hair.

July 22, 2006
New York

Cover Design: Joseph McNair