mikel k

 

 

I hope you have love

It is Saturday morning. We make love. She makes coffee. I drop a couple of live crickets into my frog’s box, turn on my turtle’s light, feed the dogs, and feed the cats. We ‘re trying to beat The Gas Company, so we have the heat turned down enough, in the house, that I need to use a space heater in my office. The heat feels good. The day feels good. I am glad to be here. I am glad to be alive. I have heard it said that, as you age, you become more at peace with the world, less angry. This is a good thing. I can feel it happening to me. Love is a good thing. I hope you have love.

 

When Mikel K was heading off to college for the first time, he told his father that he wanted to be a writer. His father looked at him, and said, “One in a million make it at that game; I don't think you have it in you.”

K listened to his father, as he had most of his life, and did not pursue his dream. He joined a fraternity in college instead, chased sorority girls, and drank so much that he could not pass the final class that he needed to get his business degree at Florida State University.

Still drunk, in Atlanta, Ga., nearly a decade later, K wrote his way into a weekly music column gig, and became a weekly music columnist, primarily concerned with the local scene. While drinking, and watching bands, he started to scribble poems in the notebooks that he was taking notes about the bands in finally overcoming his father’s negative voice.

K sobered up and continued to write poems and memoirs. He got an Engilsh degree with a Journalism minor at Georgia State University. Mikel K is proof that dreams do come true. He was voted Best Local Poet in the city of Atlanta by readers of the large local weekly, Creative Loafing in 2012 and 2013.

 

 

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