An Interview with Dragon
Spring, 2003

Where did you get the name Taz?

I always thought I looked like "Taz", the cartoon character.  Just his expressions.  He just wants to do a-quick-fast-one-in-a-hurry.  But he has a beauty about him.  He's just a character and I've always thought of myself as being a character.  I didn't want to use the name as a bodyguard, but I wanted to be Taz on paper. No matter what he is doing, Taz is spinning and whirling, getting from one space to another...he is fast, doing his job.

Why did you want to be fast?

I wanted to be fast because I wanted to get people's attention in my writing.  I've been writing since the late 50s but I never had a pseudonym.  I didn't like that.  I wanted to be another character where I could work through and be another person in my writing and Taz was born like that.

So you named yourself "Taz"? 

Yes.  I used to sit and think that I could make words like "Tenacious", "Anxious", "Zealous".....to write with Tenacity, being Anxious to write, to have that Zeal that comes from my words.  Dragon couldn't do it.  It was hard to do it as Dragon.  Dragon had other jobs to do.  He was bodyguarding.  But when he cooled out, he could become "Taz".  I didn't like to autograph my poems as Dragon.  It was more accurate to sign them as "Taz", because Taz was freedom.  He was a way of expression.  It's almost like when a football player puts on his pads or a ballerina puts on her shoes.  Taz is a character that I put on to write.  When I started writing, I was drawing and writing to escape.  I could get into my sketches and  drawings and then I didn't worry about anything.  Then, all of a sudden,  I had a teacher at McMichael Junior High in Detroit. Miss Gloria Tennant was her name.  She really pushed me in the direction of writing.  She was the first person to ever, ever say I had talent--and I was 12, 13 years old then.  She was just a constant spark plug.  Then I found that writing was a way of expressing some deep emotional feelings that I had seen, felt, tasted.  That's how I started writing in the early days.  One of the first poems I ever wrote was "The Poor Man's Prayer".  I am that old man now.  I am just trying to hold on to what I have.  I sensed a lot of things around me when I came home from the service.  I saw people having a hard time.  They were just trying to hold on to what they had.  Then I sat down and it just came to mind.  This old man is saying, "There's a lot of people that can't rest their feet, they don't have food,"  but he has those things and he is trying to keep what he has.  That was the first real poem I wrote with deep emotional feeling.  I remember reading it to my mother and she said "Wow."  That was my mother and she probably saw herself in that poem. 

Taz writes about life, love and social injustice.  It seems like it is easier for "Taz" to express and be heard than it would be for Robb or Dragon.  Do you feel that is true?

Yes.  That is very true.  I treat it like a glove.  I take it off and put it away...for a year, sometimes two.  Then, there comes a time when I have to put that glove on, and I write poetry and stories one, after the other.

Can you pinpoint the reason for this?  What motivates Taz to write?

The need to express.  Just the need to express.  Sometimes its anger  Sometimes its love.  Sometimes its passion.  Sometimes it is flat out injustice.

How do you write?  Do you think of a title first?  Do you think of yourself as a messenger? 

I am full of titles.  Titles come to me all the time.  It's like a maze, then I'll have to piece it together.  But I always think of titles first.  And then, what happens, in every poem that I have ever written there is a message in it.  And I always challenge the reader to find the message in my poem.  I never write a poem that there isn't a message. I always chuckle when the reader bypasses the message.  That's how I started writing poems "with a twist".  That's how it started.  For example,

I was on the road with The Temptations and I was working out, early one morning in Virginia at our hotel.  I was by the pool.  As I was working out, I was looking in the mirror.  As I was standing their punching, I saw a reflection of me in the water, reflected in the mirror.  I thought, "Image Behind the Image".  For several months, I thought about this title and how I could convey the feelings I had about that title.  I told Victor Carstarphen, The Temptations' keyboard player,  about the dynamics of the poem I was writing.  I read it to him on a flight.  He agreed that the title fit the text.  Read "Image Behind the Image" by Taz.

You mention reading "Image Behind the Image" to Victor.  Do you often read your poems to friends before they are completely done?

When I was on the road writing, I used to drive three of my best friends crazy.  They are Kerry Turman, Terry Weeks and Buster Marbury.  I used to call them everyday and read them poems.  I think that after a while they purposely refused to answer the phone, because I drove them crazy with my calls.  They were the only ones that truly listened to me and understood me about writing.  Now that's where Tenacity, Anxiety and Zeal comes in.  Because, I poured my soul out to them and they listened.  Then, before the cycle is complete, I have to have someone sit down and read the poem to me, and then I will know if the poem is finished.  Most of my friends that are close to me have to read my poems to me, because I am too close to the poems to actually hear them.

Throughout this interview you indicate writing poems and stories.  You call your company TazTales.  What exactly do you write?

In the early days, I used to write rhyming poems, "Roses are Red, Violets are Blue" kind of stuff.  They had to rhyme.  And then, I fell into free verse and I was pretty comfortable there.  Then, my nature, is telling stories.  I found that I could get my point across easier with stories.  The messages were a little clearer.  And, that's how I evolved into what I am right now.  I really don't think of myself as a "poet".  I think of myself as a storyteller.  I picture myself, sitting down with my grandchildren, telling them stories or people around me, telling them stories about something that I think is a precious moment, a painful moment or a humorous moment.  And that's how I've pictured my entire life.  And it goes back to when I was little.  It goes back to childhood bedtime stories.  I went from the listener to the teller.
 

So many of your "tales" end with the adage, "Nothing is As it Seems".  Why do you do that?

Because I want the reader to see the message.   When you look at something and you assume it is that way....there is always another side.  Nothing is as it seems.  I learned from the martial arts, and being a bodyguard, you cannot always believe what you see.  I can't believe what I see.  I can't believe what I hear.  When I worked at J. C. Penney's, I had to think like a crook to catch a crook.  When I was on the martial arts circuit, I had to think like my opponent to know how to win.  As a bodyguard, I had to think like a possible assailant to neutralize a negative situation.  "Nothing is As it Seems" is to be able to sit down and say, I want to write something that is so obvious until the last paragraph and then make a sharp left turn, then make the reader understand the true value in the message.  I call that "Alfred Hitchcocking" people.  I want them to go, "Oh man!  I didn't see that."

• Winter, 2003
• Fall, 2002