brian g gilmore (aka bumpyjonas)

Poet, Public Interest Lawyer, Native of Washington D.C.

Coming up in Chocolate City, Washington D.C., that very special time in the city’s Black history, I was always told that it was going to be tough being a lawyer and also a poet. Luckily, I stuck to my path and have embraced and nurtured both parts of myself. One of them, or both, is my mistress, as the poet, Grace Cavaleri once told me.

I was in some ways nurtured to be a poet (a literary person) by my parents and family but I also wanted to be a public interest lawyer, a lawyer for ordinary people, and their rights. I was afraid to speak in public growing up and I wasn’t much of a street fighter either. I took my lumps on the city blocks trying to be kind.

There is also not much money or a big salary in the field of public interest law. I didn’t care anyway. I accepted my choice eagerly. I didn’t go to law school for the money. I went to law school because I am a poet, was a poet. Poetry would feed my social justice lawyer pursuits and my search for justice for someone would inform my poetry.

I wrote about anything at first. I read anything at first. I just liked the way words moved. Like as Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote — “We wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.” I recited that poem…