a jerk named jamie

just came back from louderARTS' weekly slam joint. typically they'll have an open mic, a slam, and a feature poet. tonight, the feature poet was a jerk named jamie. that's jamie dewolf, formerly jamie kennedy. he's from the east bay, white guy, about 30, buncha tattoos, and he prefaces his first piece with: where are all my perverts at? ok, i thought, a poem about sex. not a problem.

not ten seconds into the piece, he starts explicitly referencing hitting his girlfriend, tying her up, choking her, punching her in the face, holding a gun to her while "fucking her from behind"

he manipulated not only the venue, but the art itself, not to mention the fact that he had a perfect setup, rapport with the hostess, and a willing and overall well behaved audience to push his fucked up personal and private preferences into a space to contribute to an environment that was unsafe for women। period. my fantastic partner, who has good sense said: let's get outta here.

we dipped in protest. but why would someone sully such a sacred space in the first place?

"the news is making you dumb"

read the ads on the train. and they were right. recently the new york post's cover story read "vile oj...". here's the thing about subjectivity: its inevitable. and that's just the way its going to have to be as long as we continue to be humans and not robots or aliens or chairs or whatever. but that doesn't mean you can't at least try to be objective. attempt to give an unbiased account of actual events. i know, it's just racism, what am i getting all worked up over?

birthday poem

for oj

juiced black dress
was all the rage

at the nightclub,
where my loved

ones drank
and danced

and not a single
one of us

managed
to brandish

anything
but teeth.

kara walker

my super awesome someone copped me this kara walker book for my birthday, and its fantastic. she uses civil war era inspired parody drawings and paintings to give a critical reading of race, sexuality, violence and representation. and she is quite attractive. a little understated. fresh. looks a lil like erykah. just saying.

the essence of it

this past weekend i went to a conference in bethesda, md that brought folks from all fields together to engage with one another about how to get behind the cycle (of incarceration) and other wonderfully progressive things. on the first night, susan taylor spoke, mainly about the mentoring program she founded to address the crisis of de block yoot. (there was no way to write that phrase without using jamaican patois). its an awesome program and its even more awesome that susan taylor is still so actively engaged in important work post essence.

but! dwarfing that awesomeness is this awesome fact:

susan taylor is 62 and looks like she's maybe 45.

its important for you to feel me on this one. what susan taylor's existence ultimately does is reinforce the "amazing black woman" truism. this is distinct from the myth of the "black superwoman," so scratch that one.

but its true: smart, beautiful, generous, straight up visionary black women abound! they're fresh and alive and enduring!

love love love!!!

love harder? yes!! that's the only way to stop haters. they get confused by it. give hugs. give kisses.

here's a piece by awesome poet ross gay. and the audio.

Two Bikers Embrace on Broad Street

Maybe, since you're something like me,

you, too, would've nearly driven into oncoming traffic

for gawking at the clutch between the two men

on Broad Street, in front of the hospital,

which would not stop, each man's face

so deeply buried in the other's neck--these men

not, my guess, to be fucked with--squeezing through

that first, porous layer of the body into the heat beneath;

maybe you, too, would've nearly driven over three pedestrians as your head

swiveled to lock on their lock,

their burly fingers squeezing the air from the angels

on the backs of their denim jackets

which reminds you the million and one secrets exchanged

in nearly the last clasp between your father

and his brother, during which the hospital's chatter and rattle

somehow fell silent in deference to the untranslatable

song between them, and just as that clasp endured through

what felt like the gradual lengthening of shadows and the emergence

of once cocooned things, and continues to this day, so, too,

did I float unaware of the 3000 lb machine

in my hands drifting through a stop light while I gawked

at their ceaseless cleave going deeper,

and deeper still, so that Broad Street from Fairmount

to the Parkway reeked of the honey-scented wind

pushed from the hummingbirds now hovering above these two men,

sweetening, somehow, the air until nectar,

yes, nectar gathered at the corners of my mouth like sun-colored spittle,

the steel vehicle now a lost memory

as I joined the fire-breasted birds in listening

to air exchanged between these two men, who are, themselves,

listening, forever, to the muscled contours of the other's neck, all of us

still, and listening, as if we had nothing

to blow up, as if we had nothing to kill.

hate hate hate!!!

surprisingly, there are some number of white people upset about obama's election. but not just regular angry.

they're so angry (how angry are they??!)
they're SO angry, they've been taking out their aggression on black people.
(who?!)
BLACK PEOPLE!!

okay, so maybe it's not surprising at all.
some white people (mainly in the south, AP would have us believe) have been feeling like they lost something with this election. like something's been taken away from them. like they suddenly lost all of their magic white privilege powers. i'd argue however, that the only thing taken away from them was the privilege of being able to see a president with the same color skin. thats a big one, as it affects all types of esteem and confidence levels, but it amounts to less when you consider the fact that the country's institutionalized racist structures remain intact.

so white people, easy on the hate crimes.
think about how differently we all might be feeling if jesse jackson was our president-elect.
imagine here some type of reverse slavery...

black people, maybe a return to arms?

kidding!

give peace a chance.

peace peace peace

still though, i'll offer you this, in honor of haters everywhere.

another take on progress

or, how to make it happen. let's say it's a call for direct action. by my main damie, nikki giovanni, an OG. published in 1970.

For Saundra

i wanted to write
a poem
that rhymes
but revolution doesn't lend
itself to be-bopping

then my neighbor
who thinks i hate
asked – do you ever write
tree poems – i like trees
so i thought
i'll write a beautiful green tree poem
peeked from my window
to check the image
noticed that the school yard was covered
with asphalt
no green – no trees grow
in manhattan

then, well, i thought the sky
i'll do a big blue sky poem
but all the clouds have winged
low since no-Dick was elected

so i thought again
and it occurred to me
maybe i shouldn't write
at all
but clean my gun
and check my kerosene supply

perhaps these are not poetic
times
at all

on progress

since i'm still not ready to vomit out all of the obama analysis i'm holding inside in any coherent or useful way, here's a little note on progress.

i was reading an opinion piece in the times today that attempted to capture some of the responses to the upsetting anti-lgbtq ballot initiatives that passed on election night in four states.

of course, many people in the lgbtq community are outraged that their civil rights (the right to marry, and in some cases, to adopt while in a civil union/domestic partnership) are still being so explicitly denied, especially in the wake of this huge progressive victory with obeezy.

but the piece exposed some dangerous analysis and comparisons:

"It wasn’t that she [Jeanne Rizzo, a married white lesbian] begrudged Obama his victory. It was just that his historic triumph made the insult to her community all the more painful. An awful thought came to her that night: Now we’re the designated cultural outcasts. “It’s almost like we’re the last group you can be openly bigoted about,” she told me."

it's important to understand the analysis that informs this point of view. this idea that with the election of a black president, racism is no longer a formidable obstacle. or that somehow, the term "cultural outcasts" suddenly applies to a single group.

it's absolutely unproductive in every way to attempt to compare oppressions. people who belong to the lgbtq community experience structural oppression in a way that is distinct from the way that people of color experience it. it is not more or less, but different. the other important thing to take away from this is the obsolete nature of single-identity analysis. no one is merely gay, or simply black, just a woman, or only middle class. people have complex identities that leave them privileged and oppressed in different ways. take for instance the wealthy black gay male, who is at once privileged by his maleness and class status but oppressed by a racist and heterosexist culture...

just saying.

perhaps progress isn't so simple a thing to quantify, what with all the two steps forward, one step back rhythm we have going these days.

maybe that old adage is spot-on, and a loss for any segment of humanity means a loss for all.

"no one is free when others are oppressed."
-author unknown

nahimean?

found poetry, #1

poets.org defines found poetry this way:

Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.

A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.

so here's a lil something for ya:

while romantics
claimed paul died

of a broken heart,
the death

certificate listed
tuberculosis.

"found" in Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore by Eleanor Alexander.

this book is bananas, by the way.

historical perspective

due to all the recent excitement surrounding a certain black man, i've been particularly introspective, spending lots of time pondering the meaning of such a historical trajectory. i anticipate some prolific writing taking place around this general idea, so stay tuned.

for now, the new york times has provided me with a mo' fun take on history. or at least, more easily digested. three takes, actually:

1. on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court struck down laws calling for racial segregation on public buses.

think about how unimportant it feels today whether or not you sit in the front or the back of the bus. usually i find myself heading straight for the back, since there tends to be more breathing room and less hassle, and i don't want to crowd up the front in case any senior citizens or physically struggling people board. see how over time, the significance of a space can transform completely?

2. on November 13, 1955, Whoopi Goldberg was born.

just saying. i wonder what her childhood was like. can you imagine baby whoopi making civil rights jokes??


3 . on November 13, 1997, the Disney musical "The Lion King" opened on Broadway.

hands down the best broadway show ever. have i seen enough broadway shows for that to be a factually accurate statement, despite its subjective nature? absolutely not. still though, the animals were so real!