I logged off of the virtual open mic and said to myself, "I want to write a spoken word poem."

My poetry tends to be somewhere between spoken word and literary poetry. I'm trained in a more traditional genre of poetry, the kind that can stand alone on a page and what you'd find in literary magazines or poetry books. But I've always written with the stage in mind. So poetry that flows off the tongue, written for the sounds it creates, has always been the backbone of my style.

At this particular virtual open mic I saw one of my favorite local spoken word poets perform. I hadn't seen this person share poetry for probably a decade and felt so inspired.

I knew that the only way to write is to just do it, so I found myself laying on my bed, phone in hand, and started typing into a note.

What came out what this poem, titled, "Whatever It Takes." I think it’s one of my best poems ever.

As I say in the piece, I had no idea where it was going to end up. But what came out felt like all the things that had been swimming around in my body and being for the past two years. In a lot of ways it sums up my inner journey, at least where it had been up until that point.

Here's a video of me performing this piece last October at the GrowHouse Haiku and Art event as their featured poet. The video was created by Hank Hurst.