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Dwayne Gray was born in the Caribbean in the country of Trinidad & Tobago in 1980. At the age of nineteen in the year 2000, he migrated to the United States of America to finally reunite with his mother after twelve years. She had left him and his younger sister to afford a better life for them. One year after arriving to the States he joined the US Army after the terrible event of 9/11 where he served as an infantryman for three years. He then left the military for three years and returned in 2007 as an Airborne Artilleryman and served five more years. He has been on three deployments, two of which were combat related and one peace mission. He is now a veteran, a father of two girls, a husband, son and brother. However, he has been a poet since the age of thirteen when he discovered his talent. He wishes now to share with the world his talent which he has used for so long as a personal avenue of expressing the joy, pain, anger and thrills of his life. Most of all, poetry has been his secret place to escape trials in life. A way to scream and lash out. Screaming with the heart not the voice and lashing out through writing all the heart screams. His poetry aims at relating to anyone who reads and show the world that there is no experience good or bad that is new under the sun. None should feel alone in whatever feeling their heart carries. This will be his first book ever written and published. Accomplishing this has been his dream for a very long time.
I was thirteen year of age when I discovered my talent. I grew up tough in the Caribbean, it was not all sun and sand as some imagine. Sometimes, in fact most of the time for me it was rocky, sweaty, and bloody, with some rain. We had a rough childhood, my sister and I. However it was not all bad at all. I learned at a very early age to appreciate the simple things in life which really aren’t so simple when you don’t have much. My sister and I grew up mostly separated in many different homes with many strangers and at times relatives. This was due to the fact that our mother left us while we were at the tender ages of five my sister, and seven myself. She left for the United States for work so that she can afford us a better life . My father was never in the picture except for two weeks of my life at the age of eighteen when I first met him, he died shortly after but that’s another story.
I grew up in the Christian faith and always prayed to God as a child to reveal my talent to me. I finally gave up praying for it, and that was when it happened. I had just started in high school at this particular time. I was about thirteen and there was an older girl who I admired and was very sweet on. She was older than me by far and about to graduate from high school and I knew I did not stand a chance with her but I couldn’t help but tried to get her attention every chance I got, and she entertained me. One day she approached me and told me that it was her birthday and she wanted me to write her something expressing how I felt about her. I jumped at the opportunity, and decided that I would attempt a poem. I spent the entire morning working on it during classes, trying to get the perfect words to express how I felt. It was lunch time when I finally finished. I found my way to her and presented her with the poem I toiled at so hard.
I looked at her in anticipation as she read, trying to read her facial expression as she curiously read through. Just as the page my poem was written on, my heart fell to the ground as she balled it up and threw it to the ground.
She then stated angrily that she was disappointed in me for stealing someone’s work and presenting it to her as my own, when she specifically asked me to write about how I felt. I tried to explain to her that that was exactly what I spent all morning doing, but she turned her back to me and was on her way, pissed. I was so hurt I remembered. I turned around and picked up my wrinkled up paper from the ground and began walking away almost in tears. I had an epiphany, so to speak that very moment. I thought to myself, I know I wrote these words myself, yet she can’t seem to fathom that these words came from me. Maybe I’m onto something, I thought. My cheeks began to lift as I walked away and my knocking tears were chased away. I was not quite sure yet of this ability, I thought that maybe I only wrote that well because I was so taken by her. So I began to write about random things. I wrote poems about my day, the weather, things I witnessed, whatever. I would then show them to others around me at the moment and ask them their opinions. I always got good feedback, even when I showed them to strangers. Sometimes I got some constructive criticism, but I welcomed it. I realized then that I had found my talent. I Laughed at myself as I realized that the thing for which I had been praying to be revealed for years to the point that I gave up looking, was always right here in my hands.
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