critical treats

Riot Act, April 29, 1992

2011-05-15T19:20:00.002-04:00

by Ai

I'm going out and get something.
I don't know what.
I don't care.
Whatever's out there, I'm going to get it.
Look in those shop windows at boxes
and boxes of Reeboks and Nikes
to make me fly through the air
like Michael Jordan
like Magic.
While I'm up there, I see Spike Lee.
Looks like he's flying too
straight through the glass
that separates me
from the virtual reality
I watch everyday on TV.
I know the difference between
what it is and what it isn't.
Just because I can't touch it
doesn't mean it isn't real.
All I have to do is smash the screen,
reach in and take what I want.
Break out of prison.
South Central homey's newly risen
from the night of living dead,
but this time he lives,
he gets to give the zombies
a taste of their own medicine.
Open wide and let me in,
or else I'll set your world on fire,
but you pretend that you don't hear.
You haven't heard the word is coming down
like the hammer of the gun
of this black son, locked out of this big house,
while massa looks out the window and sees only smoke.
Massa doesn't see anything else,
not because he can't,
but because he won't.
He'd rather hear me talking about mo' money,
mo' honeys and gold chains
and see me carrying my favorite things
from looted stores
than admit that underneath my Raider's cap,
the aftermath is staring back
unblinking through the camera's lens,
courtesy of CNN,
my arms loaded with boxes of shoes
that I will sell at the swap meet
to make a few cents on the declining dollar.
And if I destroy myself
and my neighborhood
"ain't nobody's business, if I do,"
but the police are knocking hard
at my door
and before I can open it,
they break it down
and drag me in the yard.
They take me in to be processed and charged,
to await trial,
while Americans forget
the day the wealth finally trickled down
to the rest of us.

"Release, sweetheart. Let it go. Let the healing power flow".

2011-04-10T13:44:00.000-04:00

The Salt Eaters, Toni Cade Bambara, 1992

Describe Yourself in Three Words or Less

2011-04-10T04:02:00.003-04:00

by Rita Dove

I'm not the kind of person who praises
openly, or for profit; I'm not the kind
who will steal a scene unless
I've designed it. I'm not a kind at all,
in fact: I'm itchy and pug-willed,
gnarled and wrong-headed,
never amorous but possessing
a wild, thatched soul.

Each night I set my boats to sea
and leave them to their bawdy business.
Whether they drift off
maddened, moon-rinsed,
or dock in the morning
scuffed and chastened --
is simply how it is, and I gather them in.

You are mine , I say to the twice-dunked cruller
before I eat it. Then I sing
to the bright-beaked bird outside,
then to the manicured spider
between window and screen;
then I will stop, and forget the singing.
(See? I have already forgotten you.)

Hauntings

2011-04-10T02:05:00.006-04:00

i've been working on a series of poems that engage ghosts--in whatever form they come in: personal, cultural, historical, literal, etc.--which means that i'm constantly looking for new ways to approach the topic, always inviting ghosts to make themselves at home in my creative den.

There are a few subjects that i've been having trouble entering, but have been poking their thirsty heads up for a drink of a poem anyway--painful relationships, family fissures, sexualized racialized violence, healing work, among others. i've tried to be both generous and honest, but it's draining and difficult work that begs a break every once in a while.

If you live in New York city, you've likely seen these ghost bikes around town:

quiet memorials to the cyclists killed in traffic, plastered in permanent white paint. This one was additionally adorned with flowers and a sign above:

Small airy grave for 169 people--travelers--the dead unrecognized. It was breathtaking in its simplicity. It was an incredibly empowering human moment to know there was a public space to mourn people i didn't know, but whose lives were bound up in mine, given our similar choices of transportation.

A welcome break from my personal ghosts. Something right about the day.

"Quit wrasslin, sweetheart, or you may go under. I'm throwing you the life line. Don't be too proud to live"

2011-04-10T01:59:00.001-04:00

The Salt Eaters, Toni Cade Bambara, 1992

poetry is not a luxury

2011-02-27T12:38:00.005-05:00

you already know.

durian: everyday valentine

2011-02-23T04:14:00.005-05:00

from dictionary.com:
— n
1.	a SE Asian bombacaceous tree, Durio zibethinus, having very large oval fruits with a hard spiny rind containing seeds surrounded by edible evil-smelling aril
	2. the fruit of this tree, which has an offensive smell but a pleasant taste: supposedly an aphrodisiac

"i use my mistakes for successes," "it's never too soon!"

2010-12-07T00:05:00.002-05:00

and other gem-tastic words of wisdom from one of the most visually stunning poets i've come across. plus his poems got that sweet thick-honey drip.

"He smelled what a tree smelled like when it was first cut into, the wood blood from the first wound of the ax."

2010-12-06T23:25:00.001-05:00

--Edward P. Jones, The Known World, p.101

"Don't suck on your long black braid and weep."

2010-10-13T04:27:00.000-04:00

--Marilyn Chin, from "The Survivor," The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty.

honey and sting

2010-07-23T16:34:00.007-04:00

this is the summer of the bumble bee. i've been buzzing incessantly, and my little bumble-wings are pooped. i've been spending a lot of time building up my relationships with old (nuclear family, highschool and college friends) and new (organizers and romantic bumble bees) important people in my life; organizing around old (police brutality, accountable development) and new (street harassment and gender violence, food justice) issues; and it's been thoroughly fulfilling, but exhausting. more, i've seemingly lost my ability to pump my bumble-brakes--the honey i've been feasting on has been so delicious! almost to the detriment of my personal health. after something like my tenth consecutive night without sufficient sleep, two things occurred to me:

1. i love sleep. and balance. but i've not been tending to either of those. and my heart and body know it. this hyper-busy lifestyle has got me always playing catch-up, a little on edge, stinger all poised and ready.

2. i haven't taken enough time over the past month to really reflect on my (mostly beautiful, but often trying) experiences, meditate, write consistently, or spend any time with myself. i've just been zooming through, sweet and tired.

so here is where i declare: enough. a friday pledge to more balanced living, to celebrating my own-ness, to more honey, and less sting.

i came across this poem from the devastatingly old-man-beautiful and time-tested derek walcott that made my bumble-brain gleam in anticipation of getting some alone time with myself. enjoy.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

golden nugget: harryette mullen

2010-06-30T05:12:00.004-04:00

one of my favorite things to do is to read aloud and listen to people read aloud. what can i learn from myself when i speak, distinct from what i learn from myself when i think? in what ways might someone else's voice enrich my day, my life, a single moment? the possibilities are increasing, and might never end!

here's a gem from harryette mullen. she's reading a poem called "Dim Lady"

before she reads, she shares with her audience a bit of writer's advice. what makes it golden is that what she shares is really advice for people, everywhere. she says:

"you don't always have to face the blank page; you can start with something already written."

for us writers, who often struggle with the frequently daunting task of beginning a piece, with finding the best way to articulate that exciting idea in our brains, this is good news. but for people, and activists in particular, this might be even better news to zero in on. for the world we're trying to create, for the change we envision and seek to manifest, we don't have to start from scratch. though humans are still relatively young in this world, we have a rich history to draw from!

we can build on the work that's already been done, build on the long trajectory history has offered us of people committed to liberation. in that way, writers and activists, and people of all persuasions can get the strength we need to do the important work we're invested in doing from already existing sources.

viva the wheel! and not reinventing it!

a traveling man, moving through spaces.

2010-06-30T01:40:00.012-04:00

june has graciously carried me to new locations both physical and intellectual. i was fortunate enough to be able to spend a week in bermuda at the home of a friend of a friend. while there, i gained much insight about the country's history--of slavery, of colonialism, of tourism, of change and status quo. i played scrabble. i slept late and lovely. i beach-bummed and sun-funned. i also read a lot.

one of the books, consequence: beyond resisting rape by loolwa khazzoom, managed to shift my already radical perspective on the urgency around violence against women. khazzoom discussed the relationship between street harassment, gender violence, and law enforcement. she assesses that relationship as one in which the state--and more specifically the legal system--systematically fails to adequately and appropriately punish street harassment against women, and accurately link street harassment to gender violence. in response to that intentional absence of protection and deterrence, khazzoom suggests that women begin to create consequences for the men who harass us. some are physical consequences (self-defense, and what i'll term proactive self-defense--responding physically to an aggressive verbal threat), and some are social, but all of her ideas (packed snugly inside personal anecdotes) served to begin a conversation on shifting away from a dangerous norm towards women's safety, autonomy, and self-determination.

shortly after returning from bermuda, i spent a week in detroit at the u.s. social forum. the workshops, cultural events, marches, demonstrations, strategy sessions, formal and informal social networking, and the celebrations! that made up the forum were all incredibly inspired. the week was energized and hopeful in the face of the desolation the city of detroit faces--along with far too many other communities of color. we covered damn near every modern and historical problem marginalized folks have ever encountered. we were almost 20,000 deep. and we were solution-oriented.

the issue-based intellectual work i did at the forum was ultimately not as important to me as the personal work i ended up engaging in. specifically, in addition to all the bonding and deepening of friendships that occurred, i had an emotional (and principled!) conversation that epitomized ideological struggle around the definitions and manifestations of sexism, patriarchy, and male privilege with a male comrade. even though he left the conversation with pretty much the same perspective he had come into it with (that men can be the targets of sexism in a patriarchal society), it was fulfilling for me because of the tedious, exhausting, but committed way! we were able to dialogue with one another.ultimately i think what mattered was the way we were both invested in listening to and understanding one another. i'm positive that the ability to engage in that way--patiently and lovingly--with each other is one of the first steps to building a new society that redefines the way power works.

my journeys have treated me well. and finally, i'm home, with no complaints. but i have a friend who is currently embarking on a road trip from detroit to oakland. from what i understand, his trip thus far has been adventure-heavy and first day of summer sweet. he's been kind enough to keep me updated on his travels and send me the occasional sunset.

<---utah!

missouri! --->

so to him, and to travelers and people everywhere who believe in the power we have to create a new and beautiful world with love and committment, i'm dedicating this poem by harryette mullen:

Roadmap
for J.R.

She wants a man she can just
unfold when she needs him
then fold him up again
like those 50 cent raincoats
women carry in their purses
in case they get caught in stormy weather.

This one has her thumb out
for a man who's going her way.
She'll hitch with him awhile,
let him take her down the road
for a piece.

But I want to take you where you're going,
I'm unfolding for you
like a roadmap you can never again fold up
exactly the same as before.

"one of the best acts of my entire life was to take a sack of oranges to langston hughes when he had the flu, about two weeks before he died".

2010-06-15T01:07:00.005-04:00

--alice walker, "duties of the black revolutionary artist," in search of our mother's gardens

practice practitioner

2010-06-14T23:30:00.007-04:00

last year, i completed an organizing fellowship that, among other things, equipped new paid organizers with practical and time-tested skills central to effective organizing. we learned about various methods of outreach, different styles of doing one-on-ones, various aspects of campaign and leadership development, various methods of centering, and on and on. all of these intensive trainings were always infused with a focus on intentional practice. intentional practice is what we constantly focused on, as distinct from default practice. the difference here is not a shocker: default practices are what we do without thinking--deep-rooted behaviors that we rely on and rarely question--while intentional practices are what we do when we make conscious informed decisions about the way we want to think, act, and engage with the world.

here's an excerpt from an article one of the organizing trainers wrote on practice:

"When we begin to look at our own practices and then practice on purpose, the first thing we want to ask ourselves is: “What matters to me?” “What do I care about? “What am I committed to?” The answers to these questions become the guide for taking on new practices."
--Ng’ethe Maina and Staci Haines
"The Transformative Power of Practice"

so it should come as no surprise that i've been thinking a lot about my personal practices, both the ones already embedded in me as well as the ones i'd like to pick up. in the latter category, i've been making some progress with daily practices of stretching, meditating, and writing. one i'd like to get in the practice of is:

reading beautiful shit aloud
(rbsa)

maybe out a window, maybe in the morning, or before i go to bed at night. but there's definitely something affirming and enriching about having feel-good words roll off the tongue. hearing your own voice repeat sounds so well-crafted and enjoyable to say, they make you tingle--creating a new space in the universe filled with positive, aurally incredible speech. that matters to me. a small intentional counter to all of the negative words, music, and sounds i'll likely come into contact with throughout the day.

let's practice! here's a little piece of rbsa from arundhati roy's the god of small things:

suddenly the skyblue plymouth looked absurdly opulent on the narrow, pitted road. like a wide lady squeezing down a narrow corridor...within minutes, the road was swamped by thousands of marching people. automobile islands in a river of people...the sound of a thousand voices spread over the frozen traffic like a noise umbrella.

found poem

2010-06-01T04:10:00.009-04:00

yesterday i rode my bike to a birthday dinner for my uncle and upon my arrival, my father realized--much to his dismay-- that i hadn't worn a helmet. today, he sent me the most beautiful email, conceived in concern and executed with love. i've set it up for you below.

as a refresher, poets.org describes "found poetry" in the following 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."

subject: bicycle helmet

zakia, though i know you are grown and can do any darn thing you want to.

that notwithstanding,

you have a responsibility

to stay around as long as you can to share

the awesome gifts you have.

though there is no particular value

in longevity, i think the intensity

of one's sharing of gifts

one has been born with and honed

is what counts. but why chance

shortening the time one can share

for no good reason? surely following

the police around, organizing

and struggling for change

have their dangers,

but those are chances worth taking.

riding without a helmet

is just exposing yourself

to unreasonable risk

for no good reason.

please don’t! love, daddy.

on passion

2010-05-30T06:41:00.009-04:00

more than ever, i'm in the practice of constantly considering how i can engage each of my passions equally, simultaneously, and meaningfully. my two passions, only slightly distinct from the subtitle of this blog, are:

poetry, and
liberation of all oppressed people, with a particular focus on blacks, women, and queers :)

i'll be starting an MFA in creative writing in the fall while attempting to continue to develop professionally in the field of paid community organizing. in the meantime-in-between time, i'm trying to immerse myself in both liberation struggles and poetry on a daily basis.

through my job and my volunteer organizing, i'm a part of the take back the land (tbtl) movement. it's a coalition of community based organizations and individuals from across the country who believe that housing is a human right that should be granted by any means necessary--but mostly through direct action and civil disobedience. given the reality of the homelessness epidemic, the foreclosure crisis, the gentrification boom--including the unprecedented number of luxury condos emerging in low-income communities, and the national attack on public housing, the logic behind the movement is simple:

people don't have permanent housing--distinct here from simply shelter-- not because they're poor or because they're unemployed or fell behind on their mortgage payments or because they spent all their money on their drug or alcohol addiction or got sick or have bad credit. people don't have permanent housing because in our society, housing is a commodity, not guaranteed as a human right. period. the people and entities who own the land and the housing--mainly cities, banks, and developers--would rather make a profit than provide a place to live to everyone who needs one. more than this being simply a sad capitalist fact, this is a human rights injustice.

one of the guiding tenets of the take back the land movement is borrowed from the civil rights movement: when a policy is unjust, it's the responsibility of the people to change it. so when the south was desegregated because all those beautiful courageous folks decided to sit at those lunch counters and ride those buses in a humane way, it certainly set a precedent.

the point is, i was in the bronx two weeks ago, participating in a three-pronged direct action event with tbtl-affiliated organization picture the homeless. i was utterly immersed in the scene as a part of the security contingent. by all accounts, it was a successful action but by the end, i began to feel guilty for not having once distinctly thought about poetry. where was my poetry? where did it fit?

it was everywhere. the poem was happening and it was up to me to capture it's necessity, it's urgency, to bring awareness to it, to prove it. then i considered that age-old question: if a poem occurs on a bronx spring day, but no one is there to name it, did it ever really happen?

legacy and lorraine in the closet

2010-05-11T21:01:00.015-04:00

"love's the only engine of survival"
-leonard cohen

my parents, in their infinite and beautiful wisdom, named me after a woman who had real jewels for a brain. in addition to being the first black woman playwright, creating work that would have resonance for blacks and humans decades later, and being incredibly thoughtful and critical and beautifully articulate about it, she was bisexual.

i discovered this last fact only recently and the news left a residue of gloom and hopelessness in me. it's painful to come to terms with the reality that one of my heroines thought it best--and likely, safest--to remain publicly closeted for her entirely too brief 34 years.

imagine what more she could've done had she been able to be her full self--her best self-- all the time!

her era and it's people failed her--shirked their responsibility to her to allow her the space to be her best self.

and how much further along are we, as a community of thinkers and women and men and humans today?

enter gloom.

also, enter soapbox.

queer people of color in communities of color continue to be under attack within their communities. it's disheartening to be engaged in the same conversation today that people have been engaged in for the past fifty years. what's different?

what's different when two black men jump out of an SUV in the hood in brooklyn because they see two latino men holding onto each other and assume they're gay? what's different when they scream homophobic and anti-immigrant epithets while beating the two brothers, beating one of them to death? what, when the black men are sent to prison, but not for a hate crime?

what if we had allowed the sucuzhanay brothers to be their whole and best selves? what if hakim and keith were taught to be their whole and best selves? their loving selves? what if we all began to take responsibility for one another, for the type of world we're creating with our interactions?

what then?

lorraine's legacy is newly bittersweet. one that both inspires and cautions. while she publicly championed civil rights and self-determination for blacks in the political and cultural spheres, she felt that she could only anonymously champion the rights of women and gays. she was forced to siphon off her identity into digestable and acceptable pieces in order to survive. her complex analysis of the way sexist and homophobic oppression are linked was by all accounts visionary, and years ahead of her time. it's phenomenal that despite the climate of homophobia she lived in, she found a way to communicate her analysis and concern. but it's heartbreaking that her contributions to such a radical, accurate, and useful gender analysis have been largely ignored , along with her sexual identity altogether.

finally, lorraine hansberry and malcolm x share the same birthday, may 19th. though malcolm was five years her senior, they both died in 1965, a month apart.

what types of lessons about legacy does history want to teach us with these two?

was malcolm allowed to be his full and best self in ways that lorraine wasn't?

why?

should some new-age, technologically savvy lorraine and malcolm emerge from these times, how might we treat them differently, here in the future? to what new heights might they travel, and how might we all benefit?

dance dance dance!

2010-04-26T02:22:00.004-04:00

rita d. drops knowledge on craft:

"Poetry is a kind of dance already. Technically, there's the play of contemporary speech against the bass-line of the iambic, but there's also the expression of desire that is continually restrained by the limits of the page, the breath, the very architecture of the language--just as dance is limited by the capabilities of our physical bodies as well as by gravity. A dancer toils in order to skim the surface of the floor, she develops muscles most of us don't even know we have; but the goal is to appear weightless. A poet struggles to render into words that which is unsayable--the ineffable, that which is deeper than language--in the hopes that whatever words make the final cut will, in turn, strike the reader speechless."

rita dove on post-racial literature

2010-04-26T02:17:00.001-04:00

there are a few different ways to complicate this, though i identify with the heart of what she's saying. while it would certainly be easier if black reference points were universally understood and valued and the notion of "mainstream" was expanded to include all types of references, there's definitely something valuable in writing from a culturally distinct standpoint. more than simply insisting upon their presence, i think black arts movement writers did invaluable and necessary work to affirm a black aesthetic at a historically critical point.

its frustrating to me that she finds it frustrating to have to explain black reference points in a poem, and even more frustrating that she thinks she has to explain them in the first place.

when it comes to writing--our love work-- easier can't be the goal. instead, work that's informed by honesty, whatever that truth ends up being, is the only way forward.

and, co-sign: of course "we" haven't had the conversations about race and privilege. i'll take her "we" to be a "they," and what they look like, crazy? they definitely aren't tryna undo all this on GP. even when there exist such flowery phrases as "post-racial," freddie d's wisdom still stands: power concedes nothing without a demand.

june jordan throwbacks

2010-04-26T01:46:00.007-04:00

from "white english/black english: the politics of translation," 1972 in civil wars:

"I am one among a growing number of Black poets and writers dedicated to the preservation of Black language within our lives, and dedicated to the health of our children as they prepare themselves for life within this standard, white America which has despised even our speech and our prayers and our love. As long as we shall survive, Black, in white America, we, and our children, require and deserve the power of Black language, Black history, Black literature, as well as the power of standard English, standard history, and standard literature. To the extent that Black survival fails on these terms, it will be a political failure: it will be the result of our not recognizing and not revolting against the political use of language, to extinguish the people we want to be and the people we have been. Politics is power. Language is political. And language, its reward, currency, punishment, and/or eradication--is political in its meaning and in its consequence."

bed-stuy's standard for a poet-activist gets her shine on.

here's the bangin audio of "A Poem about Intelligence for My Brothers and Sisters"

A Poem about Intelligence for My Brothers and Sisters

A few years back and they told me Black

means a hole where other folks

got brain/it was like the cells in the heads

of Black children was out to every hour on the hour naps

Scientists called the phenomenon the Notorious

Jensen Lapse, remember?

Anyway I was thinking

about how to devise

a test for the wise

like a Stanford-Binet

for the C.I.A.

you know?

Take Einstein

being the most the unquestionable the outstanding

the maximal mind of the century

right?

And I’m struggling against this lapse leftover

from my Black childhood to fathom why

anybody should say so:

E=mc squared?

I try that on this old lady live on my block:

She sweeping away Saturday night from the stoop

and mad as can be because some absolute

jackass have left a kingsize mattress where

she have to sweep around it stains and all she

don’t want to know nothing about in the first place

“Mrs. Johnson!” I say, leaning on the gate

between us: “What you think about somebody come up

with an E equals M C 2?”

“How you doin,” she answer me, sideways, like she don’t

want to let on she know I ain’

combed my hair yet and here it is

Sunday morning but still I have the nerve

to be bothering serious work with these crazy

questions about

“E equals what you say again, dear?”

Then I tell her, “Well

also this same guy? I think

he was undisputed Father of the Atom Bomb!”

“That right.” She mumbles or grumbles, not too politely

“And dint remember to wear socks when he put on

his shoes!” I add on (getting desperate)

at which point Mrs. Johnson take herself and her broom

a very big step down the stoop away from me

“And never did nothing for nobody in particular

lessen it was a committee

and

used to say, ‘What time is it?’

and

you’d say, ‘Six o’clock.’

and

he’d say, ‘Day or night?’

and

and he never made nobody a cup a tea

in his whole brilliant life!

and

[my voice rises slightly]

and

he dint never boogie neither: never!”

“Well,” say Mrs. Johnson, “Well, honey,

I do guess

that’s genius for you.”

“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.”

2010-04-06T05:42:00.004-04:00

--allen ginsberg

so poets are superheroes after all, just as i suspected.

and its our month!

so there is much to celebrate!

including the fact that it's spring even though winter tried to suck all the juices from us.

i feel pretty good that i get april to formally celebrate my identity as a poet, and february cuz i'm black (too black too strong) and march cuz i'm a G.

just kidding, i celebrate every month.

see?

won't you celebrate with me

by Lucille Clifton

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

a real G!

2010-04-06T04:29:00.005-04:00

i was recently forced to move from my beloved apartment of two years due to some excessive slumlording conditions that came to a head. over our heads. look for the post about hundreds of dollars worth of water-damaged books, no heat, and no electricity in january coming soon. but the beauty in that misfortune, aside from the oodles of natural light streaming through my new living room, is the rinky dink library i moved next door to.

the brower branch of the brooklyn public library system is a goldmine, precisely because it's a one-story building with seating for 38 adults and 20 children.

their poetry collection is bananas, literally overflowing with black classics!
they had two copies of a wreath for emmett till. one in hardcover!

i found my girl gwen breezy in there, chillin. shinin. delightin and crowd excitin.

so, here's my birthday present to you:
excerpted from mama gwendolyn brooks' "the third sermon on the warpland" in to disembark:

West Madison Street
In "Jessie's Kitchen"
nobody's eating Jessie's Perfect Food.
Crazy flowers
cry up across the sky, spreading
and hissing This is
it.

The young men run.

They will not steal Bing Crosby but will steal
Melvin Van Peebles who made Lillie
a thing of Zampoughi a thing of red wiggles and trebles
(and I know there are twenty wire stalks sticking out of her head
as her underfed haunches jerk jazz).

A clean riot is not one in which little rioters
long-stomped, long-straddled, BEANLESS
but knowing no Why
go steal in hell
a radio, sit to hear James Brown
and Mingus, Young-Holt, Coleman, John, on V.O.N.,
and sun themselves in Sin.

However, what
is going on
is going on.

Fire.
That is their way of lighting candles in the darkness.
A White Philosopher said
"It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness."
These candles curse—
inverting the deeps of the darkness.

GUARD HERE, GUNS LOADED.
The young men run.
The children in ritual chatter
scatter upon
their Own and old geography.

The Law comes sirening across the town.

here comes the sun

2010-04-05T19:03:00.006-04:00

a few weeks ago, i was fortunate enough to travel to new orleans for a few days of patois: the 7th annual new orleans international human rights film festival. i sat on a panel about housing and displacement with staff and members from my job, and other housing activists from miami and new orleans. the festival was phenomenal, and i learned a lot about the specifics of state-sanctioned displacement and gentrification in new orleans.

it was worse than i suspected.

to make a long, awful, though resistance-laden story short, new orleans' city council voted to destroy virtually all of the city's public housing before katrina even hit. months after the storm, when many public housing residents hadn't yet returned, all of the public housing developments were boarded up and since then, all but one has been destroyed. even the ones that hadn't suffered any damage from the storm--which was the majority of them. what this effectively did was ensure that even if those low-income, primarily of color, displaced new orleanians made it back to new orleans, they would literally have no place to live.

despite the grim outlook, there was some sunny business:

1. mayday new orleans rocks. they're one of the kick-ass organizations down there doing amazing work to prevent the demolition of the last public housing development. bonus: the head of that org's name is samuel l. jackson. and he's the best kind of local celebrity.

2. sunni patterson. she functions as the cultural mouthpiece of nola. born and raised in new orleans public housing, she's one of the most respected spoken word poets up in that piece. i got a chance to see her perform and she killed it! or, brought it back to life. she's also mad fly and super pretty. black girls keep rockin it...

a jerk named jamie

2009-04-14T02:48:00.005-04:00

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"

2009-04-03T00:32:00.002-04:00

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

2008-12-09T06:13:00.004-05:00

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

2008-12-09T05:36:00.004-05:00

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

2008-12-08T19:14:00.009-05:00

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!!!

2008-11-18T19:09:00.008-05:00

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!!!

2008-11-18T16:49:00.006-05:00

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

2008-11-14T17:23:00.004-05:00

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

2008-11-14T16:05:00.006-05:00

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

2008-11-13T14:21:00.008-05:00

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.

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

2008-11-13T13:27:00.008-05:00

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!

the "p" word

2008-11-12T18:18:00.005-05:00

i'm a poet after all. what? here's a piece of sweet potato pie from allen ginsberg that i recommend reading out loud:

America

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January
17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back
it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle
Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
individual as his automobiles more so they're
all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and
sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
cere you have no idea what a good thing the
party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power
mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'
Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
tions.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us
all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes
in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Berkeley, January 17, 1956

popped bubbles and such

2008-11-12T17:39:00.005-05:00

today, in a fairly long conversation with my super awesome boss, i discussed (this is new for me) politics. specifically, politics in relation to the work we do (drug policy reform in communities of color). even more specifically, we had a lengthy back and forth about the current political climate and how we could use it to advance our own (ingenious!) agenda. we agreed that we were wallowing in peculiar waters given the unprecedented national air of optimism occurring simultaneously with some of the most depressing statistics in history. and i mean that across the board: incarceration rates, unemployment rates, infant mortality rates, etcetera.

surely though, optimism can't be the worst of our troubles, can it? of course not. the trouble is the real shit. feeling good about the way things are going when everything is bad is like using cocaine (of course, coke can be replaced in this context with any other drug that offers a high) to escape the pressures of life. you feel good, sure, but your circumstances remain the same, and bc you've opted to not proactively address them, they will likely even worsen.

thats right, hope plus no change in action = cracked out.

so the task at hand here in the strange political place in which we've found ourselves, is to galvanize all those bright eyes and bushy tails into action and remind them that feeling good simply isn't enough when things are so very bad.

also, nothing wrong with a little mary jane.