(originally conducted by Black Entertainment Television)

DENISE STOKES: All the poetry is about experiences that I've had in my life.

POETRY: I used to be a cute little girl, sucking on lollipops, riding my big wheel.

DENISE STOKES: When I was going into 16, I was looking at it like, "You're going to drive. You're going to wear lip gloss with color."

POETRY: I was Momma's baby and Daddy's little queen.

DENISE STOKES: You're going to go out with boys. You're going to go to the prom.

POETRY: Then one day I was on my way to the store, he just rolled up and opened his door.

DENISE STOKES: We lived middle to upper middle class. My mom worked really hard and gave us nice things. And - but we didn't talk a lot in my home.

POETRY: He told me to slide inside and don't say a word and that's the last time this little girl was ever heard.

DENISE STOKES: And, um, when I was 13 years-old I was raped, and that's how I lost my virginity. And I found out a couple of years later also how I got infected with HIV. I didn't know I was going to be hungry and homeless and HIV positive and, you know, just terrified of what was going to happen next.

When I got diagnosed with HIV - and I'll say this because it's true - I thought that if you drink a cup of vinegar immediately after sex you wouldn't get pregnant because it would sterilize the sperm and you couldn't get pregnant. Okay? So that's how much I knew about my body as a woman. HIV? That was way beyond, way beyond me.

It's not something that I felt comfortable talking about at the time that it happened, so I just kept it to myself and I thought it was this bad thing that I had done. And, you know, life changed. It got very different very fast.

When I got raped that really drove me so deep into myself that, you know, actually the only way I communicated from that point on was to write poetry. And then I wouldn't let anybody read the poetry, so I was really just there but not there. From that point on it was, um, it was a very fast progression. I went from, you know, trying to hang in there and graduate high school and actually making something of my life, to just being completely pissy drunk on a daily basis.

I spent basically from 16 to 21 being high. You know, because I moved very quickly from drinking to other drugs. I mean I was, um, on crack before you could blink your eye. It happened so fast. I was trying to find an absence of pain. There was so much that hurt me. You know, not just being diagnosed with HIV, but my whole life prior to that.

It was amazing to be there. Me on crack? Not "Miss Brainiac." They called me "The Nose" in school, and not because of my actual nose. They said, "Nobody knows like Denise knows." [laughs] Any question the teacher asked, I had a long answer for it because I had read everything. Everything I could get my hands on I read. I was so interested in everything. So, for me to end up on crack was like the ultimate insult to hope.

I knew that, and that was hard for me because I had dreams so big my head couldn't contain them. I had dreams so big. And, um, I just became suicidal. And I was angry too because AIDS was supposed to kill me, and it hadn't and I was very insulted by that.

My nights were long and cold and hard. And my days were desolate and hungry and depressing. And nothing changed. Every single day was like that. My life emotionally was so painful that it hurt me to breathe. I would breathe and say, "Damn it. I'm still alive. Why is this happening to me? Death be kind to me."

And once I decided to commit suicide, I saw a sign on the side of a building that said "Tidelands Mental Health Center." But the words "mental health" stuck out for me. And then when I saw that sign I thought, you know, "Maybe you're crazy." Maybe there's something wrong with your brain that nobody picked up on, and for that you can get help." And see, that's all I needed was a reason to think that something or somebody could help me.

And really I think on that day I started to become an activist because even though there were very few people to talk to, there were other people in that treatment center that were HIV positive and they told me they wouldn't tell anybody else and I held their confidentiality.

You know on - within a day the average person might wake up and you know, worry about what's going on at work, worry about whether the kids are doing well in school or not or how can they solve this situation with their son. You know, worry about their Roth IRA. [laughs] And, um, you know I might get up and worry about the same things, in addition to will my lungs work, are my kidneys going to fail, will my liver just hang in there for me just one more year, you know, am I going to die today? That's always the bottom line.

I get sick with something major about twice a year on average, kidney stones or some major infection or something. And I do minor things about every three or four months. I'll have like a minor allergic reaction or I'll get dehydrated or, you know, just something that can be taken care of by going to the emergency room, getting what I need and coming home or, you know, by going into the doctor's office.

Well, I guess that means I spend about a month a year in the hospital, huh? About two weeks a pop. So yeah, I guess I spend about a month in the hospital total. Which isn't bad. You've got to remember I have a terminal illness. People forget. I don't know if it's politically correct to say that or not. But guess what, there's no cure for HIV. That means it's a terminal illness. Yes there's hope. Yes we can live with it a long time. But bottom line, I'll probably one day die with AIDS. So, sometimes people don't like to hear me say that, but I believe that if I keep my feet rooted in the ground I can live in the clouds. My head can reach as far as I want it to as long as my feet are grounded in reality. So, the reality is I have a terminal illness. Fatal. Incurable.

Well, right now I've gone from heavy artillery to handguns in my battle against HIV. I was on protease inhibitors for quite a while. But this year I came off of protease and I've gone to a triple nuke therapy, and that's where I'm taking, you know, a lesser class of drugs, not as strong, not as potent because the protease inhibitors have gotten me to a point where my T-cells have come back up, my viral load has come gone down. My health has kind of stabilized. And so now the idea of the triple nuke is just to keep that going without hammering it. One of the biggest problems that people face in HIV therapy is fooling around with the medicines, and half taking it and half not taking it. Then you develop resistance, and then nothing works for you. Then you have nothing to fight with.

I'm the motivational speaker of HIV and AIDS, but not just to stop there I think just a motivational speaker across the board. Because for me it's not just living with HIV, it's about overcoming other obstacles and overcoming HIV as an obstacle.

I had my first dream stuck in my head. I said I want to be a writer. I want to write. That's what I want to do. It's what's in my soul. So I have an opportunity now to take my life as I lived it, and to put it in that form, and to put it out there for people. And you know that's really my legacy is the poetry I'm going to leave behind. And feels good to me.