Bladensburg poet dreams of many fields

Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007

Bladensburg poet dreams of many fields

by Maya T. Prabhu | Staff Writer

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Bryan Haynes⁄The Gazette

Bladensburg poet Justin Morris recites excerpts from his poetry book at the Rose Dream Bar & Lounge in the District Tuesday night.

Bladensburg resident Justin Morris doesn’t understand why people always ask him when he first began writing.

‘‘Do many writers have a start date of when they started writing? I’ve been writing almost as long as I can remember,” he said.

When he was around age six Morris said he started writing a newspaper about his neighborhood.

‘‘I would write articles, or almost like a blog, of my thoughts,”

About five months ago the 23-year-old, also known as Rhyme Cypha, started performing poetry at numerous open mics around the Washington, D.C., area and recently self-published his first book of poetry, ‘‘With Love, Rhyme Cypha-The Maxi Single.”

‘‘With Love” is about the many facets that come with being in relationships including love, lust and heartbreak, which Morris said is some of his most honest poetry.

‘‘I was writing a lot of poetry because I was going through some things,” he said. ‘‘So I decided that since I had all this poetry based on this one subject then it should be in a book. So then I started working on making that happen and that’s actually how I ended up performing.”

The whole process of writing and self-publishing his book took Morris about two years, he said, and the poetry spans the past five years.

When he decided he wanted to put his book out, Morris said he spent a lot of time and energy researching to figure out how he was going to go about it.

Morris said he is working on making his book available in a few different bookstores, but ‘‘With Love” is available on his Web site, www.rhymecypha.com and www.lulu.com. The book costs $15.95.

He will re-launch his book, which was officially released Jan. 21, in the Baltimore area at A Good Book, 2101 Gwynn Oak Ave., Gwynn Oak, on March 25. His book will be available at A Good Book on that date.

But poetry isn’t where he wants his career to end.

‘‘I want to own a multi-media company. I’m using my book to start a publishing company and I’m trying to figure out how to use my publishing company in conjunction with some other people to be able to tell the stories that haven’t been told by the other big publishers.”

Morris said he has a number of other projects in the works. He’s working on a DVD documentary, an album, a clothing line and two more books.

‘‘My focus is that I don’t want to just do a lot of things for [myself], but I realize that there’s a lot of people who have dreams. And I realize that if you help enough other people to get what they want and what they need then God will suffice and give you everything that you want and everything that you need,” he said. ‘‘So my focus is to be able to create opportunities and business that other people will be able to benefit from.”