a new year's new yeah, yeah, yeahs...

its like 4milliono'clock in the morning and here i still is... turnin' gold into rubbish.
a hundred years ago, i'd still be nursing a new years eve hangover a week later. but ima old man  now.
i bought a six pack of bottled beer, my last official act of 2009... as of january 6, 2010 - i still have FIVE left!

not only am i an old man... i'm pitiful at it.
seriously, tho... im one of those fools who proclaim to look forward to the aging process. i look forward to having my locks go gray all to hell, dragging behind me as i hoveround through-out the house... i watch my grandkids get the fuck outta the way as my father luges, careens and ransacks his own motorized wheelchair through his kitchen... its funny; its just a matter of time before he squashes a hapless toddler/crushes a limb/puts an eye out... its all on the horizon.  god bless the little children...

sigh... such is life.

anyway, planning my monthly facebook and twitter log-in sometime today. i really just caint get into those fads trends... at least myspace allowed me to prominently feature my visual art and graphic design skills; these new social trends are all about 'the daily diary entry'. shit, i dont even read my own diary... i hafta fake mustering the interest in checking the postings of my online acquaintances. where are the social networks for us anti-socialists?

this feigning interest in your daily updates is killing my malaise, seriously... it should be mutual.
if it aint, you need medicines.

blogging is so much better... its really a craft that needs to be re-elevated/re-evaluated.
i run a journal, i write, i subscribe to magazines, i make art that starves me, i have dishes to do... maaaan, i aint got time to twitter! (that'd make a great line for a tshirt... i can see jesse 'the body' ventura saying that line in a predator remake)

...

okay, obviously this is a hodge-podge blog... a menage-a-blog, if you will. a digital dialog undedicated to theme, stream or consciousness. this blog could run for president...  i'm working on the campaign buttons as we speak!

...

these are my resolutions for 2010, you saw it here first:

1. finish those five remaining miller geniune drafts in the fridge before it achieves fermentation-metamorphosis.

2. officially claim a new nba team. after 30 years i stopped being a 76ers fan after iverson left; i'm even less enthused since his return to the team. i abhor all western conference squads with a behemothing vengence; there is bile and vomit and venom in my dislike for the west... i really admired the detroit pistons during their championship runs, but there's been nothing remotely like them since then... cant never ever ever see myself cheering for a celtic either. if necessary, the sixers will win out by default.

3. blog better. starting next time.

4. mesmerize random house into publishing my unpublishable shit.

5. buy a new cd, either genre, old school jazz or underground west coast hip hop. i'd been forced to relinquish the 'hip hop guru' moniker a few years ago... i'd like to earn it back; the industries been in shambles since i stepped down.

6. go vegan! vegetarian! ...vegetarian-ish... eat more vegetables.

7. read more on-paper work. my new gig is at a used bookstore; this should be a piece of cake.

8. start exhibiting my artwork again... 2008 ended on such a great high, followed by winning a prestigious award in '09 based from the work produced in '08. but other than that achievement, i went dormant last year. for 2010, im coming out hard ISWAIRBEFOCHEESE...

9. be more outgoing... (ack, huaaaaarrraaaaccckkk... cack-cack!) ... excuse me, had something in my throat.

10. actually go out and celebrate my birthday (JANUARY 21st!) ... birthdays were always ignored in my household when i was growing up (more a matter of math than indifference; me, mama and 3 sisters have birthdays immediately following christmas - christmas was a birthday-catchall).

11, read my work openly. on a stage. with a microphone. in a bar/club/cafe. with people in it.

at least eight of these resolutions will be abandoned by february. put your money down early and often.

my new blues name...

i envision myself 30 years from now as an old ass man
walking the streets with a near-busted guitar strapped
across my shoulders/beard nappy, grizzled and gray...
dreadlocks dragging the ground behind me as i walk,
sweeping up behind me... yeah... hell, yeah...

think ima change my name to sumphn like
little-tourettes "plantain" nkrumah... or blind-sugarcane lumumba...
(its tradition that a good blues name have an infliction, the name of a fruit and the name of a president
in order to be considered 'the real thing'  - and yes, nkrumah is a president, obama might be america's
'first black president' but africa been having 'em ever since the end (supposedly) of colonialism...

really, i'm wantin to write a poem from this perspective... talkabout how a juke burnt down around him
while he still played/came up out the flames smokin'/harmonica at his lips...

might even write his 'ending' - have all'a his wimmins show up at his eulogy...

always wanted a woman in black to fall on my casket with bright red panties showing as my wife and kids
looked on wonderin' just who the fuck this woman was to me... maybe have 2 or 3 of 'em do this.

- crystal says this fantasy is OUT and can give up the ghost on that bullshit nonsense.
if i hafta... i mean, i hear you baby!

so, anyway... who would you be if you could be a b.b.? what is your blues identity?

bloggers from another mother...

(edit - 12/19/09 - i fckd up this whole article, referencing Poets and Writers instead of Publishers Weekly...

i'm such a sloppy journalist... i'll never work in this town. anyway, if you decide to get kneedeep into my 2 cents, then i just want'd you to know what you were gettn yourself into... plus, i think i credit Deborah Willis as the photographer when that credit actually belongs to Lauren Kelley! - i'm such a hack, i should work for Fox! ...now, onto the article...)

my its weird, this blog-on-blog crime... how easy it is to take personal soundbites (in this case, the 140 character limitations of an individual's twitter page) and embed them into contextual dissertations for or against any one particular position. we all do it... or will do it, the more we live our lives thru the world of virtual communication devices. as a semi-reformed conspiracy theorist, i've done it... will probably do it again real soon.
shit, might even be doing it right now!

folks (and good folks, i might add) have been tweeting about the latest cover of Poets and Writers Publishers Weekly magazine where a woman is crowned with an afro of afro-picks - an image im personally deeply in love with as a love-child wannabe of the black arts movement. africa and african american imagery permeates every focal point of my conscious life... i am not 'me' without it. the photography of Deborah Willis could grace the walls of my home or office anytime, even if i can see how it might elicit critical glances from those driven to uphold and protect black images; every creative output deserves to have those in favor of AND critical of it as "art".
so depending on one's personal philosophy, one person's 'black pride' might be another's 'black cliche'.
neither perspective is wrong; in fact, in the right context, both can be 100% correct.

the challenge for us is knowing when to differentiate subjective arguments from objective ones.
many of us lack this ability - or if not 'lack' then at least arent fully aware of recognizing those differences when they occur. i think the internet has made us all rude(r) by nature. cultures raised on text and instant messaging have deferred their logistical abilities for egotistical ones: our surface glances of a subject matter are all that we require to fully understand the depths of that particular topic; we rush to infer and to judge the responses of our internet colleagues without fully engaging in a thorough debate on the topic at hand.
it's just the nature of the virtual beast... until it is no longer as 'virtual'... twitter commentary often winds up being outsourced to actual news agencies! often taking casual commentary completely out of context,
confusing 'social media' as 'professional (or confessional) press conferences'.

case in point, see neptuniansoul where a debate is forming concerning the Ms. Willis's artwork and those critical of the contextual integrity of it as it is currently displayed on the cover of Poets and Writers magazine.
(the above is link is just a sample; no grudges for or against those operating that site or posting their replies to it... i'll probably be adding it to my blogroll before the night is done)

i understand this debate... it is sorely needed. its just sad that it takes slight critiquing of a subject to engage us deeply within it because we too often jump into 'left vs. right' positions when 'middle-ground' is needed the most. but what fun is finding the middle-ground on the internet? no one does it...

if i say "right" no one will ask me "why right?" - the most common, most immediate response is "no, left!"

and if my tiny quip makes it to the right rss feed, then good night! - ten words online already distort my full position on a subject by default and when simplified contortions are further distorted as they are digitally repeated, then compatriots and strangers alike will jump up to label me to the confinements of those distortions, "ron didnt like that one pic with black woman with the afro picks in her hair - therefore, ron dont like black women! that fucking sell-out... who the fuck is he and wtf does he know about being black anyway?"

folks will approach me with their asses already up on their shoulders expecting my behind to be up on mine...
its "first impressions by way of the rumor-mill"... its just the way society has devalued personal experiences when applied to the generalizations of the internet. by the end of the day, someone will have said i called someone 'a nappyheaded ho' because they went through 6-links-of-separation before finally getting to my actual responses.
such is life in this day and age; i dont like it, but i accept it... plus, counting pidjin, i can say 'yo mama' in 4 different languages.

anyway, what im tryinta say is this: everything seen, heard or felt is subjective to one's own personal experiences... my public philosophies might openly defy my personal opinions; if/when it happens, dont adhere so much to the discrepancy itself as you should the context under which such discrepancies might occur.

lets not poke each other in the eye before deciding to read our fine prints.
some of the women at the center of this debate are natural dreds and/or serious black feminists and yet others outside of the debate are weighing in and calling them straight-haired, blue-eyed wannabes. the more any issue spirals out into the virtual domains its larger waves soften into smaller ripples, but its those lesser ripples that are often commented on because its easier to focus on those ripples than the object that caused the splash to begin with.

a whole lot can be said in 140 characters or less... unfortunately, what is often left out is usually the position that defines us the most.

it's an age-old story:

the hebrew interpretation of cain and abel suggests that cain was actually the son of the serpent that seduced eve in the garden, explaining his 'evil' nature...

thats the nature of almost all sibling rivalries. in my case, my sister karen is the bad-seed and im the good one (however, in my own mind, i dont die - i just beat the shit outta her - its payback... or karma... but belee me, she has it coming/she's earned it.)

its actually a beautiful feud; i think we both enjoy 'cant standing' each other sometimes. where we grew up, thats how we showed familial affection - a scratch, a bruise, a scar, etc (except mama - there was none of that shit going on between her and daddy - they battled, but it was more like tupac vs. biggie/west coast vs. east coast; all stage/no street)

karen whines that i had a small milkcrate sized tv in my room and she didnt, tho she's 5 years older and was old anuff to work and buy her own damn tv... crybaby.

i whined that she's the reason i dont like poets and have refused to call myself one, even tho i've been writing poetry for 20 years - karen was a poet, but because i couldnt stand her those emotions bled over blanketing all poets everywhere... plus, the poets she hung out with were fullashit (except mary, mary was cool/she still cool!)

i dont know why but karen gave up trynta kill me in my bassinet as well as consistently writing poetry some years ago... incompetence, maybe?
but she started channeling her inner Malissia Pettway and has been making art-quilts professionally for several years.

but i love my sista. and from this day forward i promise to stop referring to her as "that ol' stankhead heffa" behind her back... i mean, we're 'grown' now right?
bygones anshit.

anyway, i pulled a book off the shelf yesterday to take to louisville while crys teaches at spalding university for the week, 'halala madiba: nelson mandela in poetry'. as poetry editor for mythium i'm always looking out for black and other ethnic writers, researching the genre, what's out there and in what form... halala madiba is pretty thick volume of work full of many familiar favorites: Keorapetse Kgositsile, Kamau Braithwaite, Ntozake Shange, Wole Soyinka, Kalamu ya Salaam, Karen Davis, Haki Madhu- -wait!- KAREN DAVIS?
WHAT'S THAT STANKHEAD HEFFA DOIN' UPPINNAIR?!?!?

"caint i have a day of peace without having that ol' albatross show up and ruin my day?

damn...

well... let me see what she done did... maybe its a whole 'nother different karen davis..."

karen davis, FOR MANDELA (1988©)
(printed without permission and with complete and utter disregard for what might be said and/or done should i see karen sunday at mama's house)

The chokers of "The Resistance" foolishly
watch their hands bleed and swell against the edge
of the struggle, your life, the people
entwined like a three strand rope
tying into a hangman's noose
for the death of apartheid

_____


a real short joint, but a completely effective use of the public outrage our activists used to wear badge-like on their shoulders when condemning those who utilized oppression as a major weapon in controlling a people.

strong, eloquent and to the point... entirely reflective of karen's personality.
as a fan of poetry, i hate that there's little else publicly available for me to read of her. and as a sibling-critic, i publicly blame her absence helping to create the chasm that became 'conscientious black poetry' during the 1990's (inspired by rap-attitudes and black propaganda more than the black literary canon that dominated in the 1970's and early '80s).

in fact, there are tons of black poetry (including my own!) that have mimicked what karen had written, only we did so without simile or craft, only with poetic attitude, making us what i hated about poetry to begin with - politically superfluous and poetically empty.
(for my own endeavors, my intentions were good/i swairfogawd! and i think the maturity in my work has developed the more humility i devoted in regards to understanding the craft)
((and yes, my punctuation sucks - but to hell with all yall that might criticize, i was an art major, not an english one! plus, i take the license to call bad punctuation "my personal aesthetic" - non-grammar majors are allowed to that, right?))

strong, steady voices are few and far between in the black poetry field (at least, in what passes as 'popular' black poetry) - there are tons of talented writers out there, but we put too much of our egos and our own personae into our work... so instead, we wouldnt have this type of genuine mandela poem, we'd have (insert poet's name here) doing his/her mandela poem, playing to the crowd and not the cause.

karen's poem reminds me of the secret reasons i wanted to write to begin with; works that read well as well as attempted to make or reinforce a political/social change in society; to have work that stood on its own two (or more) feet without always having it reference back to "that poet who wrote it" for it to be accepted.
karen wrote because it mattered to her and it shows in her work.

or maybe she just got lucky, but what she coulda ever done to have earned such good karma is besides my knowing...