Writing my Sickness Away

I woke up sick this morning; sick in my mind, sick in my body, and sick in my spirit. I feel like I may be drawn to misery in the same way that insects of the night are drawn to streetlights. Even when things are well for me I always make room in my heart for pain. Or maybe I had too much to drink last night. It’s always deeper than it is. Last night I sat across the table from an old friend who I have known for over half of my life. We probably see one another an average of once every two years so when we link up we are forced to cram everything that has happened in our lives into one conversation. How’s work, how is your daughter, who are you dating, what you been doing, who do you keep in touch with, how is your family, how is your cousin; and I then I tense up. I cover my ears and brace for the pain because the trigger has been pulled.

My cousin ain’t doing so good. He’s on the streets. He stole from my aunty. He has problems separating fantasy from reality. For him there is no real line between the past and the present. They say he’s schizophrenic. Sometimes he takes his medication but most of the time he doesn’t. But of course I don’t say all of this when she asks. “Awe you know, he’s out there doing his thing.” Then I look into my glass and take a sip. Next question please? And the small talk has just gotten a whole lot smaller.

My mother is the older sister of his father. When I was a young boy and my uncle was full of tall cans of Old English malt liquor, he used to break down in tears as he recounted the story of my mother picking him up out of the Arkansas snow because his other sister had kicked him out of the house for peeing in the bed. My mother then placed him in her bed and after he stopped shivering he slept through the night.

My cousin and I grew up really close. I signed up for football then he signed up for football. He ran track one year and the next year I did too. He was a lot larger and more athletic than me but I had a bigger personality. In essence I ran my mouth a lot but no one ever tried to fight me because they knew that he was my cousin. It worked out really well for me.

By our senior year in high school I had given up on sports while he excelled. I ended up going to college to pursue a career in writing and he got a full athletic scholarship at a division one school. It was a major accomplishment for him and everybody considered it to be a big deal. There was a banquet thrown for him and the other scholarship athletes on campus that was attended by my grandmother, his father, a few dozen other relatives, and various local media outlets that were itching to cover a positive story involving black youth. I considered the path that my life had taken to be pretty normal but his was extraordinary. After all, as young black boys growing up in the ghetto, naturally we wanted to one day become professional athletes. When we entered the 10^th grade I was about 125 pounds soaking wet with Timberland’s and I knew then that I had no chance at all of going to the NFL, but he still did. He was about to make it, unfortunately for him however, he didn’t view things that way.

He wanted to go to another school, a school that was an NCAA powerhouse and a school that a few ballers who had graduated from our high school the year before we did were attending. They sent him on an official recruiting trip and he had a lot of fun. Too much fun. He committed before they offered. He told the coach he wanted to go there, no question about it. But as national signing day approached they gave his scholarship to another kid. He couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t fair. He cried about it, he told me in confidence. He cried about it a lot. He expressed to me that the whole thing was fixed. That old punk ass coach knew he wasn’t going to offer him a scholi in the first place. That it was all a game. That people were playing with him. Why were people always playing with him?

I was a little bit taken aback by his testimony but not too much. I figured it to be a very minor setback, something that he would get over as soon as he got situated in college. There was truth to my assessment but ultimately my reasoning was completely skewed by my on denial.

He was, for his freshman year, the big man on campus. He dominated on the football field taking a starting position from a senior less than halfway through the season. He even picked up a fumble and ran it back 60 yards for a touchdown at a game attended by our whole family. In they end, however, they lost that game. They lost nearly all of their games and my cousin was quickly losing focus.

He did a lot of partying and was getting into a lot of trouble. When he came back for Christmas breaks he had several fight stories that sounded like scenes from the old Patrick Swayze movie The Outsiders. By Spring break he had revealed that he had gotten a woman pregnant and was on academic probation and by the end of the school year he was asked not to return to the University.

He didn’t sweat it much. He figured he would get more scholarship opportunities, and he did (he actually got a couple more). He spent most of the summer bonding with his newborn son.

On one day in August we took the baby on a family tour. We went to our grandmother’s house in Bayview Hunter’s Point and we took him to see our aunty on Havenscourt, and then our cousins on 90^th. The little guy slept peacefully and very rarely cried. When we took him out of his car seat and into the cold San Francisco night air he wasn’t tripping. Even when I, at the age of 19, drove way too fast over the Deep East Oakland speed bumps he wasn’t afraid. He was with men that would die for him and he knew it. He was chilling. He was good.

When we got him home his mother was exasperated. She snatched the baby and said very little to us because we didn’t matter. She was very displeased and it showed but one got the sense that she felt as though it wasn’t worth talking about. For all intents and purposes her relationship with my cousin was over anyway and when she went back to school a few weeks later she made it official. It was only then that he became truly unraveled.

As I made it through college and experienced my own fair share of drama and got my own girlfriend pregnant and was nearly ousted from school myself the women of the family began to whisper. “You know your cousin ain’t right in the head no more. He’s a little off, a little touched. Do you know what he said to me the other day…?”  And this would always be followed by their laughter, a very disturbing defense mechanism that would piss me off. No one ever really wants to deal with pain so people force humor into things that aren’t funny.

Nevertheless I refuted their claims for years. I even argued with my uncle, his dad, about it. I would say he’s just a little down because his football dreams are finally over. It’s only natural. He’ll bounce back I said. All ya’ll are doing way too much.

As the years went by I managed to graduate from college but he didn’t. I established a very solid relationship with my daughter but he was asked by his son’s mother not to come around them due to his strange behavior. I was able to maintain a job— no matter how lame it was—but he wasn’t.

We were about 23 years old I when I got word that he was living in a shelter in Palo Alto so, of course, I went to go see him. By that time I could no longer deny the reality of it all. My cousin was gone.

As elementary school age children my cousin and I, along with all of the other neighborhood children, would play games of hide and go seek deep into the night. Sometimes one of us would fall and scrape our knees and elbows. In which case we would cry a little bit, go inside to get a band-aid, and come right back outside to play. When we ran track my cousin pulled a hamstring. He missed a few track meets but a few weeks later he was right back on the relay team. So when it was discovered that my cousin had a mental illness I couldn’t understand why he couldn’t bring it back. I can’t express the hopelessness that I felt knowing that he would never get better. That he would never fully recover and even worse, there was nothing that I could do to help him.

I tried very hard though. He was hungry so I bought him Round Table Pizza. I saw that he needed shoes so I bought him some. I literally gave him the coat off of my back because he was wearing a dusty old blazer with no hood and the October rain was going to start coming down soon. But giving him all of those material things ultimately didn’t matter because I couldn’t give him peace of mind.

As we walked down a street close to Stanford University he spoke to me in a strange kind of whisper that seemed very distant and very loud at the same time. And he talked to me slowly, reminiscent of Master Splinter in the Ninja Turtle movies. Like he was trying to sound very wise. We passed a bar and he asked to go in. I told him I wasn’t going to buy him alcohol. He then told me that he was trying to use alcohol to stop smoking weed in the same way that heroin addicts use methadone to quit their habit.

We walked into Walgreens to get him basic necessities and he asked me to buy him some painkillers. I told him that I was not going to buy him drugs and he became irritated but quickly got over it. He asked for some candy instead and I obliged.

A few hours later we were back at the shelter and I had to leave him. He said thanks. I said be cool and that was that. Every interaction I have had with him since then has been the same way. He oscillates between his former self and some dreamy voiced person whom I wish I had never met. He goes out of his way to try to get me to remember events that I did not attend and he asks me for money. I cannot help my cousin.

I miss my cousin and it sucks to know that although he is still alive he will never come back. So many memories from our childhood are dead because he can’t remember that he was there with me. And right now I want to call him up but he doesn’t have a phone number. I want to swoop him up but he doesn’t have an address, so I write about it. I write until I don’t feel sick anymore. I write about it because really, there isn’t much else that I can do.

HerStory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-pAVMGrDs7A EPIC! That’s the first term that comes to mind when I think about the long journey of bringing “Herstory” to fruition. It was March 30, 2012 when I sat down to conduct my first interview with Niema Jordan in my shabby East Oakland living room. When we finished recording our conversation I thought the project, in its entirety, would be complete within two months. I was hella wrong.

So many bad things happened that my selective memory won’t even allow me to recall most of them. I do remember amicably parting ways with my original editor halfway through the project. I do remember at least two other people committing to the project only to back out once they were able to truly internalize the fact that I could not pay them. And well, everything else is a blank until I reconnected with a fellow Skyline High School graduate who possessed the skill set and the passion to bring Herstory back to life. It was February 11 when she committed to the project. Now seven weeks later it’s done.

I’m high right now. I mean I’m super elated. I’m glad that Herstory survived all of the abandonment that it was exposed to in its infantile stages. I’m glad that beauty still exists in this world and I am so grateful that I have crossed paths with three super dynamic black women that opened up to me and told me their stories. With no further ado this is Herstory:

The Delusions of a Creator

It dawns on me now how delusional an artist must be to persevere. When an artists’ work is rejected by company after company, publication after publication, and when he loses contest after contest then—in order for him to keep his dream vivid—he must draw the conclusion not that there is something wrong with his work, but that none of these highly respected entities know what they are doing. That his artwork is misunderstood. That there is a conspiracy in place so that his voice will never be heard. This may strike some as an illogical approach to determining why the artist has not yet found success but to the artist it is not a stretch. It is normal for the artist to think outside of the confining limitations of rational thought. After all, his identity is wholly based on his ability to do so. He never fit into any group that he felt he was supposed to belong to. He never travelled in the direction that would have made his life simple and bearable. At some point he became addicted to enthralling audiences with very well crafted portraits of his own suffering. The audiences always paid him with healthy rounds of applause but rarely with money. He always accepted this as his lot in life. He always embraced his role as that of the struggling artist until the day that he couldn’t.

One day he woke up and he had an epiphany. During this moment of clarity he realized that he was tired of being broke. He was tired of dreaming. He needed success to happen in a hurry. So naturally he began to think of creative ways to package his soul in order for it to be sold to the masses. The problem arises when the artist comes to terms with the fact that, up until this point, he has been solely responsible for everything that he has created. He has been his own producer, editor, manager, composer, publicist, etc. But now in order to make a career out of his passion, he must depend on other people. He must beg for admittance into a world that he thought he was familiar with. And he must place himself at the mercy of those who have never done what he can do, and could care less about the blood that had to be shed in order to tell his story in such an intense manner. The one question that they are all concerned with is; Will it sell?

He finds himself bewildered by the question because he has never really considered it. He notes to himself that it is a very necessary question to ponder if he wants to make money and he admits that he knows very little about the business side of art. So he waits. He waits for a call back. He waits to be published. He waits until he wins a contest. He waits to make money. He waits to be “discovered.”

During this time he tries to make his style similar to the artists who are currently “making it.” He notices that they all sound the same. They aren’t necessarily bad at what they do but nothing about them is different. After a while he gives up on this disingenuous pursuit of trying to sound like someone else. He says out loud to anyone that will listen that at some point he will change the world; he only needs the opportunity to do so. In his own mind, however, he knows that he must create this opportunity for himself. And deep in his subconscious mind—percolating through his soul—he has his doubts. He doubts if he possesses the energy necessary to change the world all by his lonesome.

He openly hates all of those who are “making it” and dismisses their styles as trite and irrelevant to the general betterment of mankind. He says to himself in secret that he is better than them. That they were born with connections that he himself will never have. That the ultimate fear of society is that one day he will find a way to release all of the voices in his head and then instead of the artist slowly going insane the masses would have to recognize how truly delusional they have become.

In this way the artist must be obsessed with his own individuality and cling to his craft in the same way that a dying man clings to his life. He must only be concerned with his own interpretations and his own perceptions of reality. He must be contrarian everyday. He must relish standing alone more than he relishes success. He must worship the art and not the money, which will always cast him out of society.

A Brown Girl's Lips

I like the bottom one the best. I like the way it hangs and glistens. I like the fact that she can’t conceal it. I like the black mole that decorates the left side. I like it when she smiles and when she pouts and when she laughs. I like it when she bites it…

The top one is civilized. It’s conservative. She presses it down on the bottom one when she is trying to concentrate. It doesn’t curve as much when she smiles. Her top lip is somewhat ashamed of itself. It doesn’t portray her emotions but it compliments the bottom one rather well.

Together they bring balance. The lady meets the savage. They come together to bring her melody into the world. They come together to make sure she always gets her way. The girl is so spoiled.  I could run from her but I could never leave her. She plays the games that I like to play.  She likes the dances that I know how to do, and she always moves in my direction. She rotates around me as I spin on my axis facing her constantly. The light that I generate illuminates her and she gives me divine purpose. We understand one another and what we don’t understand we’re ok with.

I don’t love her at the moment but I find her energy to be very necessary. She isn’t one of the beautiful ones that I mistakenly let go while drunk with the hardships of my past—quite the contrary—she is the one that needed time to grow.

I don’t control her—can’t control her, but she wants me to think that I can. I like the games that she plays. It took me a long time to really confess it to myself but I do. I play games too. The truth is that I follow her lead and this is the one thing that I could never allow her to know.

YB

Notes on Christopher Dorner

Christopher Dorner has been burned alive without receiving a trial or anything close to due process of law. As more audio evidence surfaces of police officers screaming; “Burn that mother fucker down!” The more it appears to resemble a public lynching. It baffles me because we constantly speak of progress being made on the racial front in America and we point to Barrack Obama sitting in the white house as proof of this but the Oscar Grants continue to happen. The Trayvon Martins continue to happen. The executions continue to happen.

I should say before I continue that Christopher Dorner was a terrible person at the time of his death. He was a narcissist who used corruption within the LAPD as a springboard to express his admiration for Ellen DeGeneres and Tim Tebow. He killed an innocent couple and one has to draw the conclusion that he did all of these things, in large part, for personal fame. Moreover, Christopher Dorner should not be considered a revolutionary. Nor should he be considered a martyr. With that being said Dorner should also never be called a liar.

He spoke of wanton discrimination within the Los Angeles Police Department and called out a fraternity in blue that had been allowed to operate with impunity even after the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots shined a spotlight on the department enabling the whole world to see the atrocities that they were allowed to get away with. And even if we dismiss “The Christopher Dorner Manifesto” as crazy talk from an attention-hoarding lunatic, we surely cannot dismiss the fact that police departments around the state of California were aiming to kill him. Bringing Dorner to justice was never an option. Torrance PD proved this when they shot two Hispanic women on sight—one of them 71 years old—because they thought they were the fugitive. This should indicate to the general public that law enforcement feared what Dorner might say in trial or the in letters that he may have sent to loved ones on the outside. The officers who he would have surely implicated feared for their careers. Basically Dorner knew too much therefore he had to go.

In instances such as this one we must be careful not to read the world as if it were a Marvel comic book. That is, there is no such thing as pure good versus pure evil. We cannot say that Dorner was justified for targeting the families of the same police officers that he claimed ruined him. We also cannot say that the LAPD was justified when they cornered the accused cop killer into a cabin and shot several canisters of flammable tear gas at the structure until it started a blaze that ultimately burned him alive. (For the record I am aware of accounts of a single gunshot being heard sometime shortly after the blaze was ignited which would suggest that Dorner might have actually committed suicide. However it doesn’t really matter. The intentions of the LAPD were to burn him up. There was no attempt to wait him out or to thoroughly negotiate his surrender).

Christopher Dorner is dead but justice surely hasn’t been served. With each murder of someone deemed a terrorist be it Osama Bin Laden, George Zimmerman’s worst nightmare Trayvon Martin, or whom ever else, we move closer and closer to functioning like the fascist countries of the olden days and those third world countries that we are supposed to be showing “the light of democracy.” As a nation we need to quickly check ourselves before our collective belief in the constitution itself is murdered by the disenchanted masses.

-YB

Lines From the Piedmont Rose Garden

I sit down at the Piedmont Rose Garden but the roses do not grow; they do not blossom, they do not bloom. My inspiration hath been circumcised, butchered for its own good. It is early February and very few things can grow in the cold. The grass grows more slowly and the soil clings to itself.

Behold for I am lost-

My heart groweth cold but at least it still grows. It bends toward a sun that hasn’t been seen in years. The water in the lake is cold but not frozen. My thoughts create steam. The steam dissipates, and then I have nothing. I have nostalgia like so many baseball cards hidden underneath my bed at night. If it can’t be seen then it can’t be stolen.

The roots of the tree before me plunge downward even further than my soul does. I see cowards in the darkness. I see the weak and I distance myself from them hoping that this will make me strong. My distance disallows me to follow people so it can’t be entirely bad.

I see the ugliest things in the world wrapped in the most beautiful skin imaginable. I touched her lips before I kissed her. I sinned with her long before we lay down. I got up first. With sweat beading on the tip of my nose and soaking my brow I opened the window and allowed the winter chill soothe my flesh.

-YB

Bay Area FM Radio Has Officially Lost Its Soul

 

If you’ve tuned in to Bay Area FM radio over the past couple of years you’ll have noticed that it has quite literally lost its soul. When I was in high school there were two hardcore soul stations and now we have none. In the most heartbreaking case of corporate takeovers in recent memory Entercom Inc bought out 102.9 KBLX.

KBLX was that station that you hated when you were little because it was the only thing your parents ever listened to (grown folks music) yet when you finally got your own car you found yourself instinctively dialing it in as one of your six favorites. KBLX never played rap music. If anything they would take a hip-hop song remove the lyrics and add a saxophone solo. I do believe KBLX was very instrumental in the underground unwrapped movement (pun intended). Things, however, were doomed to fall apart. When I turn to the station now I hear the Notorious BIG, Will Smith, and other rap songs played by disc jockeys that look nothing like me. When I listen to “The New” KBLX on the way to work in the morning I don’t hear my Cousin Kevin Brown airing live from San Francisco I am forced to listen to a prerecorded broadcast of Steve Harvey. It’s an utter disgrace.

98.1 Kiss FM was also a soul station but it played more upbeat records than KBLX. If KBLX was playing Marvin Gaye then Kiss was playing The Gap Band. If Kiss had your head rocking to Teena Marie then KBLX was grooving to Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes. But now the flavor on Kiss 98.1 has been diluted. For some reason they thought it was a good idea to play 1980’s punk rock like Blondie and Eurythmics. It’s so bizarre because no formal announcement has been made as to why the change has taken place. Faithful listeners are left scratching their heads and most of them wanting to tune out but there is really nowhere else to go.

What happened to black radio with positive and charismatic black disc jockeys? Corporations are going to continue to ravage our African-American culture until we’re left with nothing unless we do something about it. We need black radio back, black owned businesses, and a sense of black worth that is not entrenched in consumerism. Dr. Martin Luther King saw the power in Black Radio over 45 years ago. It’s a shame that this too has been taken from us.

-YB

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHdnMfGtAxM&feature=player_embedded]

The Young Black Man Who Couldn't Dance

The Young Black Man Who Couldn't Dance

For all of you out there in cyberspace who support ghettosun and have wondered what my voice sounds like this is for you. I recently got a chance to share a story at www.theshoutstorytelling.com and I have decided to share it with you all. It's kind of embarrassing but then so is life, LOL. Check it out.

Notes on MLK Day

 

Nothing says nostalgia like taking a day off from work and sleeping in. Adult life is all about catching up and today I find myself catching up on all the hours of sleep that I have missed stressing out over issues that I have very little control over. It’s not a Saturday morning and Garfield and Friends as well as The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show have stopped airing a long time ago but I still feel at peace. Never mind the fact that I have pick up my daughter in a few hours and the rest of my week will be crazy hectic because none of those things matter at present. I’m lying under the covers in my underwear with the blinds to my windows closed so that rays of light must fight to enter my space. I have shelter from the unusual California cold and I am writing. I said I am writing, I am doing that thing that I fell in love with decades ago. On the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. I am expressing myself in a way that would have gotten my enslaved ancestors killed. As I put these letters to this page I realize that in terms of the very foundation of this country I am committing a subversive act. I live to rebel. There is no other feeling like the rush of blood that I get from fighting back. I have always been hypnotized by the notion of going into a forbidden place and letting everyone in there know that I have arrived. To write lines from within this skin is the equivalent of being a vanguard soldier and I will be on the battlefield until I die.

YB

Artistic Suicide Watch

How did I become so afraid? My manuscript is somewhere deep in my subconscious mind buried by my fear of commitment. That story that I began so many years ago hurts when I try to write it down. I don’t like stirring up old ghosts but I know it is the only way that I can truly release them. I’m scared of failure.

I have lived everyday of my life surrounded by death and violence. I have taken a natural attitude towards gunshots, HIV, and the threat of false detainment but somehow that unwritten manuscript frightens me to my core. Those many thousand words have remained trapped in my heart and they have become a burden on my soul only because I allow them to be. At some point I have to believe in my story enough to let it feel the rays of sun that are awaiting its presence here on Earth. I must somehow release the puss from the gory wounds of my life so that the youth of today may be forewarned and so that all of my peers who suffer in the same manner may be consoled knowing that they were never alone.

I run for at least three miles everyday from my past and when I am standing still I hide behind a goofy smile. I live the life of a coward standing on a bridge moments away from committing artistic suicide. Will I jump, will I continue to run, will I hide, or will I finally confront my pain and write?

What does the future hold?

YB

Love Happens in a Flash....

I miss everything about that woman now that she’s gone. It’s amazing how a man can take so many good things for granted. I always lust for what I don’t have but then isn’t that the very definition of lust? I mean if we had it then would we yearn for it so uncontrollably?

She was the daughter of god and I was a young heathen. Never before had a woman made me feel so wretched and not one time since. In my mind I thought that she would wait for me but in reality she already had. Love happens in a flash and by the time I looked up she was happily involved with a better man. I had no get back. I lacked the confidence to fight for her or to attempt to woo her with my words because he was simply a better man. A better environment produced him and he believed in himself in a way that I never will.

When I happened upon this young lady I didn’t act like I was happy for her. I acted like I couldn’t see the ring glistening on her deep brown finger. I made no mention of her chubby cheeks and I willed myself not to notice her caressing her protruding abdomen. I forced myself to flirt with her just like I did in the days of old but I believe I may have smiled too hard and licked my lips one too many times to be convincing. I told her I was gone holler at her, but of course I never have.

-YB

The Curious Case of Katt Williams

Have you ever taken the time to listen to a person that society has deemed “crazy” and been completely captivated? That’s how I feel when I listen to many of Katt Williams’s recent so-called rants. With that being said I would like to point out that I do not approve of any of his behavior. I am from Oakland, CA the city where he first showed that he might be at least slightly unstable when he behaved very erratically in front of a sell out crowd at the coliseum on November 16^th.

But even then he said some things on stage that I thought, dare I say it, were very insightful. He spoke about other races of people being able to get together without any problems but then black people pay their money just to boo him. Then there are his recent comments about Jamie Foxx’s decision to star in Django Unchained; "F**k Jamie Foxx and the 'Django Unchained' check he cashed. They offered me the script and I said, 'Any n***a that do this deserves to die. And the next thing I heard, Jamie Foxx was in makeup." It’s wrong for Katt to question another black man’s sexuality in such a demeaning and public manner but I actually applaud him for having the heart to publicly criticize the film Django Unchained. More people should be suspicious of a story that is supposed to be that of an oppressed group but is written and directed by a member of the group that directly benefits from that groups oppression.

Katt also seems to be annoyed by black comedians always having to wear dresses on stage to be funny. He performed a freestyle in which he lambasted several prominent black actors namely Martin Lawrence, Tyler Perry, and Jamie Foxx for doing just that.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2fJwVwAbLU]

I have a lot of respect for Katt speaking up for black masculinity when black men are constantly being emasculated. Be it by the police, at job interviews, or in stereotypical movie roles. A lot of people are aware of this but none of them have had the courage to express themselves. The fear of never working in Hollywood again keeps a lot of black actors in check but Katt, for whatever reason, is immune to this fear and that’s what makes him crazy. People are labeled crazy when society has no interest in trying to figure them out or make them “normal.” To put it another way crazy is the word that a lazy society uses to describe the individuals their words aren’t suitable to describe.

http://www.tmz.com/videos/0_my3bt3ig/

I wouldn’t call Katt Williams crazy and I wouldn’t call him funny either. If I had to label Katt Williams I would refer to him as necessary. I can only pray that he can keep himself out of jail while continuing to provide for his family. I’m pulling for him in 2013.

-YB

Reflections in Raindrops

The rain has more rhythm in its descent from heaven than I will ever have in my body. The sound of it keeps me asleep when it’s steady and wakes me up as its pace quickens. Rain always represented excitement to me. Imagine growing up in a place where rain is the most extreme weather possible. As a child I discovered that rain cleanses the flesh and the soil. Rain symbolizes the end of one year and the beginning of the next. Kisses in the rain are more special, dinner in the rain is more meaningful, a movie in the rain is more intimate. I love to go to my favorite creamery and eat ice cream in the rain, for hot chocolate on such a day would be too cliché. Ice cream taste sweet but the rain is sweeter. I’m enamored with the concept of millions of people being wet at the same time. At rainy day recess we used to sneak outside and play anyway. We would jump in puddles and make a real mess of it. As an adult I have never regularly used an umbrella. I don't like the idea of something coming in between me and god. I will receive every blessing that is sent down and I will let it wash over me. Maybe the rain will make me better. Maybe it will make me less fearful and more consistent. Perhaps it will give me a vision so I can see what I need to do to become whole once more.

YB

SOULFUL II in Review

Last Saturday I got a chance to be the host of a phenomenal literary event entitled Soulful II: Telling Our Own Stories Our Own Way. It was an extremely powerful happening that was dedicated to raising money for Kim Glanville a youth advocate who on October 27 was shot three times in a tragic case of mistaken identity. She told her story in a manner that only she could tell it; with humor, passion, and depth. It was clear that she had been feeding off of the energy left on the stage by the other performers. Sean King blessed the audience with a poem about love and an always-relevant story about police harassment. Rami Margron who is the curator of www.theshoutstorytelling.com   told a very engaging tale about an encounter with a deer, Sayre Quevedo shared a few stirring poems about what it’s like to be 20 in the year 2012, and Jezebel Delilah X straight up ripped it. And then there was the Russian literary sensation Zarina Zabrisky. I could use a thousand fancy adjectives to describe how amazing her performance was but thanks to youtube I can just let you see it for yourself.

Enjoy

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B7CVGpgA2qw]

SOULFUL II: Telling OUR own Stories OUR own Way

If you are anywhere near the San Francisco Bay Area then you must attend this event.

A night dedicated to the healing power of storytelling

Ladies and Gentlemen: Please join us for “SOULFUL II: Telling OUR own Stories OUR own Way” on Saturday December 15, 2012 at Café Rande Vu in Oakland (2430 Broadway) at 8:00pm. Soulful is completely dedicated to the healing power of storytelling and on 12/15/12 we will be raising money to cover the medical expenses of Kim Glanville who on October 27th was shot 5 times in a tragic case of mistaken identity. Kim will be telling “Her own story her o

wn way” on the 15th and in addition to that, we offer some of the hottest writers in Northern California. Check out the lineup.

Rami Margron Rami Margron is an actor and dancer. She has worked with many Bay Area theater companies, performing plays of all types from Shakespeare to experimental. She is a company member of Crowded Fire Theater and Rara Tou Limen Haitian dance company. She also hosts a monthly storytelling event called The SHOUT.

Sean King Sean King is a husband, a father, a writer, a published author, a spoken word artist, a computer geek, a community activist, a dreamer, and someone who loves life. He’s been fortunate to meet countless numbers of diverse people from all over the world and all walks of life, he’s performed on stages and in different venues across the country, and self published three books of poetry (Through My Eyes I, Through My Eyes II, and Hypnogysms) while simultaneously studying Computer Engineering. He is the mentor to numerous youth in the Northern California area and pledged Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., the greatest fraternity in the world.

Luisa Leija Luisa Leija’s work arrives in the form of dances, prayers, and invocations of a universal spirit. Her words are smoke signals, calling us to recognize ourselves within the world we inhabit; a world that equally inhabits us. Drawing from the indigenous traditions of the Americas, native culture, and Mexican culture, Luisa unifies themes of community, family, history, and ceremony into a seamless journey through the mystery of human existence. A multi-genre writer, Luisa’s talents are as diverse and plentiful as her words. A search for transformation, for truth, for connection, is ever-present throughout Luisa’s work, an endeavor that is both timely and inspiring for our present world.

Sayre Quevedo Sayre Quevedo lives in Oakland, California. He works as a reporter and producer for Youth Radio and has had worked featured on National Public Radio, Marketplace, National Geographic, Huffington Post and in the San Francisco Chronicle. He has been a featured poet at the Bitchez Brew and Lyrics and Dirges reading series'.

Vanessa Jezebel Delilah X Feminist Afrocentric Black Queer Femme Lesbian Artist Writer Performer Curious Dreamer Fighter Champion Love-Warrior Activist Faerie Princess Mermaid Gangsta Revolutionary: Jezebel Delilah X, is a performance artist, writer, filmmaker, and teacher. She is co-host of East Bay Open Mic, Culture Fuck, a member of the story telling performance troupe, Griot Noir, and one of the founding members of Deviant Type Press. She uses a combination of performative memoir, theatrical poetry, and feminist storytelling to advance her politix of radical love, socioeconomic justice, anti-racism, and community empowerment.

Zarina Zabrisky Zarina Zabrisky moved to San Francisco from Moscow to escape the aftermath of a collapsing communist empire. Her work has appeared in Eleven Eleven Journal, Bluestem Magazine and other publications in the US, UK, Canada and Nepal. Her debut short story collection "Iron" explores the nature of oppression, revolt and survival.

Kim Glanville Kim was born in the Bronx New York 1982; 2 years after her mother came from Kingston, Jamaica. She comes from a line of Strong women that are no nonsense, independent and hard working. Her passions and commitments to community transformation through social movement and accountability have been the driving force in her personal and professional development. Her healing mechanisms are purging with the power of the pen and dancing to Soulful House. She is currently a grad student at the USF School of Education Human Rights program. On October 27th she was murdered into excellence by surviving attempted murder without fear, and thus owned her freedom to live.

Hosted by Roger Porter

PS Suggested minimum donation of $4 to the Kim Glanville fund or suggested purchase of Iron by Zarina Zabrisky….no one will be turned away. See you on the 15th of December.

This event will be Simply Beautiful and oh so SOULFUL (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOxFl4dna3o)

Notes on Jovan Belcher

 

It’s been less than a week since Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs killed his girlfriend and himself with a gun and it’s been a little over a year since someone broke into my home while I wasn’t here and left the place completely disheveled. They stole my laptop, a safe (which was completely empty), and my digital camera, among several other things. In the moments right after I discovered that my home had been burglarized, I couldn’t help but to wonder what if I was at home with my gun when those cowards broke in? Would I have enough rage in my heart to shoot them all dead? Now of course all of this is deeply hypothetical because in actuality I don’t own a gun. Unlike both of my parents I am not from the rural south and therefore I never went hunting for diner. In urban California guns represent human death. Their prevalence played a major role in the murders of several of my childhood friends. In short, I really hate guns. I believe that guns make it too easy to kill. One must ask if Belcher did not have access to a gun would he have actually carried out those gruesome murders?

Obviously there were multiple factors that played into Belcher’s actions. He had to be under severe emotional distress, and from listening to other people’s accounts of him it sounds like he must have suffered from multiple personality disorder as well. But now he as well as his girlfriend is gone, and the weapon used to carry out the deed was a gun.

About once a year I seriously contemplate buying a gun. Having a growing daughter to protect and living in a rough neighborhood are just two of the reasons that make me want to purchase a firearm. Another one is that I’m a man and men play for keeps. Meaning if I get into a physical confrontation with a guy and I come out victorious then chances are he may run to get his gun. In which case, since I don’t have a gun, I would just have to run.

What always keeps me out of the gun store is the other side of the equation. If I bought a gun then about a month later I woke up in the middle of the night and caught a person trying to steal my car, would I actually have what it takes to take another human beings life? Could I actually justify putting a gaping hole in the flesh of another man because he attempted to take one of my possessions? I don’t know that I could.

I’ve seen contorted bullet riddled bodies lying just beyond yellow caution tape on the concrete. I’ve seen a half-empty misshapen head propped up in a casket a week after a man had gotten his brains blown out. I’ve heard fatal shots, I’ve listened to horrible screams, I’ve seen the shell casings, I’ve heard mothers cry, and I’ve seen a once victimized kid stand prouder than Superman on the street corner once he got his hands on his first gun. I never wanted that.

I always wanted to move as far away from that world as possible, but alas, I have yet to do so. Those heartless savages kicked in my back door and stole my daughter’s piggy bank and took my camera with all of those beautiful family images that I had never gotten developed. They left boot prints on the very bed where my daughter lay and of course my neighbors saw nothing. They heard nothing. They knew nothing and in that moment that I discovered how wantonly I had been violated, so help me Jesus I felt like I could do it. I wanted to kill them all. No matter how young, how old, or how pitiable their lives were. Needless to say those feelings dissipated. At the end of the day I was grateful that I wasn’t hurt, nor was anyone in my family. I decided then, like I always do, that a gun wasn’t worth it. I don’t want to even have the option to do what Jovan Belcher did just because I’m having a hard time. I want to live freely without having a justifiable homicide on my conscious. But I also want to be prepared.

For there is always a time when a man must defend himself. People don’t fistfight anymore, everyone is toting steel and if I am to protect my house and my family I fear that one day I may have to adjust to the times. That day, however, is not today. Today I am thinking of another way out. Today I am still thinking about Jovan Belcher and his 22-year-old girlfriend. Today I am thinking about life.

-YB

Growing as a Parent

Sometimes thoughts explode in my head like firecrackers packed with blinding light and other times they wash over me very slowly. This one took about three years to finally reach the shores of my conscious mind but in order for you to fully understand its significance then you must know a little bit about me.  I’ve been a parent nearly my whole adult life, and for most of those years I have been single. Therefore I have been on several dates with a car seat in the back, and I’ve invited a few women over the house on Saturday nights after my daughter has gone to sleep. Over the years I’ve hung out with women and gave them a lot of my time but almost none of them have ever met my little girl. I’ve kept the two entities separate for multiple reasons. The most important by far being that I never feel like the woman that I am dating is worthy enough to meet my daughter. I don’t look at her and see the lady that I want my daughter to be. And this is what brings me to my point.

The concept that I have just recently grasped is this: If the women who I date are not worthy of meeting my daughter then I should not be dating them.

My Broke Ass Poem

I am educated and yet I am very broke and that is a problem.

It affects my confidence in the worst way. Like it’s hard to ask a woman out on a date when you can’t pay her way.

Well at least for me it is.

When I was living that bohemian lifestyle as a graduate student studying creative writing I never thought it would result in some chick named Sallie Mae taking almost half of my check every month. Damn it’s ugly.

My Internet bill has gone up, Christmas is coming up, and the first of the month won’t come soon enough. Not that it matters much anyway because by the time the 2^nd comes I’ll be broke again. It’s hideous.

In undergrad it used to be cute to be broke but now the shit just won’t go away. I look at my brothas on the corner hustling everyday and I think it’s a shame that they have to destroy another person in order to feed themselves but damn, at least they ain’t in debt.

In hindsight college loans were such a bad idea. Why the hell would I pursue something that I can’t afford? What a day, what a day?

My god.

-YB

Telling OUR own Stories OUR own Way

I’m tired of being a ventriloquist dummy in the movies. We do have our own voices you know? We do have beating hearts and amorphous souls. We exist in every dimension. We exist at great distances and we exist in focus. We do not want to rape your virtuous young maidens (Birth of a Nation, 1915). We are not your ride or die servants (Gone With the Wind, 1939). We are not your wise yet shockingly docile sidekicks (Casablanca, 1942). We are not here to prostitute the innocence of your daughters (The Mack, 1973) and kill your hardworking, blue-collar, tough, rugged, but loveable fathers (Colors, 1988). Nor do we want you to make us feel good (Monster’s Ball, 2002).

We are not circus lions who only roar when cracked by the lash but are otherwise harmless creatures (Ali, 2001) and our stories don’t necessarily end happily when we finally achieve your capitalistic wet dreams (Ray, 2004 The Pursuit of Happyness, 2006).

Our stories are told in beauty shops, on front porches, and in barbershops. They’re told at bus stops, in county lines, and in the county jail. They’re told in study groups, at Baptist churches, and in hot kitchens. And our stories are told the best when you aren’t there; therefore, you really don’t know us. What you do know is essentially nothing more than a shadow. Yes this shadow is dark like us but it is not nearly as soulful. It is not nearly as dynamic. It is not complicated nor is it multifaceted. It’s not multidimensional or unique. It isn’t bodaciously shy or passionately indifferent.  See the thing is that when you tell our stories you are guessing and we know that. We also know that when you tell our stories you’re telling them to an audience of your own peers and that we really don’t matter. We know what’s real.

We can tell the difference between your voice and Big Mama’s. We know that our stories come from Arkansas and Tennessee. The Delta here and The Delta back there. Our stories were carried up the river by Pharaohs before they were carried down the river by slaves. Our stories are told with fingers in faces, knuckles slapping against hands, shoulders rolling, and tongues clicking. Our griots spit game to judges and parole officers and for the most part they never make it to Hollywood because they’ve been trapped in the hood.

Granted, sometimes when you tell our stories you get it right but you are still guessing (I suppose that some ventriloquist are better than others). And let me just say that when you do your film on Nina Simone The High Priestess of Soul, I hope that you get it right for your sake. For the time is rapidly approaching when we will be speaking for ourselves and we will leave you to your own guessing games. Yeah, imagine that? Close your eyes and try to guess how our voices sound when you are not around. Imagine a day when we control our own bodies, our own minds, our own shadows, and our own reflection, and all you can do is sit in the back of the room and listen to us speak. I can only smile at the thought of such a revolutionary exchange.

-YB

Write or Run

 

It’s come down to this. My need to perfect my craft has been overcome by my urge to run away from time. My fear for the future has moved me into the past and my detachment from reality has created an unrealistic sense of nostalgia.

I work hard during the day and I often times bring my work home with me. I have a child who lives with me on most weekends. I have a 2^nd job that isn’t quite as demanding as the first but it still requires my time. I also have to dedicate at least five hours a week to my personal crusade against obesity. For my metabolism has gone down quite considerably as my age has pushed past 30 and the last thing I want is to become a fat ass. So I run.

As you can see there are many things that pull me away from my writing but, alas, none of these things should be enough. In my youth I had ambitions of being the literary voice of my generation and for many years I actively tried to make that happen; but as of lately I have been immersed in a prolonged state of reflection. My production has slowed down. There are so many thoughts in my head that need to be released; I need to know what I’m feeling.

It has been a while since I’ve been on the literary scene. I haven’t performed at a reading since July but I think I found a new venue. I went to a place last week and the people read work that came from all angles. There were poems, essays, and declarations and there was an abundance of culture. Last week I checked it out and perhaps next week I’ll perform. Then maybe once I have an audience (that I can actually see) I will write more.

-YB