Remembering Regi Perry

Today would've been his birthday...

A few years ago I was in a creative partnership with a man who became my friend named, "Regi Perry". Regi was thin but had a big big voice. I'm not sure how we worked together so well and the circumstances of how we became performing partners was by chance.

Jeffrey King the Executive Director of, "In The Meantime" had asked me to perform a couple of poems for his birthday celebration. I said I would and had a piece titled, "Idle Worship" that I had always wanted to perform with a singer. One afternoon after church I approached Regi and asked if he would be interested and available. We had met each other through church but were not friends at that point. He got back to me and we started working on the piece. We meshed so well and were able to feed off each other easily. By that time I had heard about a poetry slam that was being held at Exposition Park and had decided to be a part of it. I asked Regi if he wanted to use that as our debut. This way we'd have a chance to perform the pieces and try them out before an audience before Jeffery's birthday. We did the first round of the slam and scored the highest. The only problem was we didn't know there was a 2 round and had nothing else prepared. We went off to the side during the intermission and I recited a couple of pieces I had memorized and he came up with a melody on the spot. We ended up in 3rd place. The placement really didn't matter to us, we knew we had something special.

Regi made transition a few years ago and I miss him dearly. It's not so much the performing which I did enjoy a lot we just fed off each other so easily, but it's the friendship and bond we created. I heard once, "a friend is someone who knows all about you, and loves you anyway" and that's was the kind of relationship we had. We talked about everything and nothing. Laughed and cried about everything and nothing. Met and got involved with different guys during the course of our friendship and were able to be there for each other.

I know his spirit is somewhere singing....