David Smalling' Profile

I am a Jamaican Maroon. My grandmother's father, Joseph Williams, winessed the signing of the Maroon Treaty with the British. I write poems under many pseudonyms here, using parts of my full name, David Livingstone John Lord Smalling. I have been writing poems since I was 12 years; but writing had been my blanket for loneliness since age 11. My father died when I was 13 and poetry was my therapy for pain since then. Only I wanted the world to think, feel, laugh, but not to cry. I would weep for the world alone. I had been forgotten in the grief of my father's death because everyone else needed the consolation I was denied. I became even more the withdrawn loner, and saw a world more aggressively hostile. Books became my better friend and drove me deeper into academic seclusion. I wrote thousands of poems everywhere: on rocks, trees, sand, and all over house and school - this was how I interrogate the world, and how I weep alone. Poetry was my quest and comfort. I trusted paper and pen and spoke my truths to them above all else. Yes, I am graduate, a business major, a science major, an humanities major ... still searching for consolation, love, security, and joy obtained in poetry. Then again Jamaica is such an ideal place to live as a poet; the history and memories, juxtaposed against the world, is pure inspiration.