ps:

and if you drop by the house unexpectedly
and hafta use the restroom then dont come
calling on me to hand you a roll of toilet paper
if it runs empty. you are welcome in my home,
but uninvited visitors are not 'a guest' - i am not obliged.

thank you.

- the mngmt.

ibid scribbled at the bottom of my tombstone made a totem turnt a temple

how much scab could a hermitcrab grab if a hermitcrab could grab scab?

ok. i admit to being off my rocker today, but off-my-meds is where i need to be at every day of my life.
creative types shouldnt have to reel themselves back in for the sake of appearances... i, too, wanna walk around with my draws showing, not like the younger generations with their pantses sagging, but like our daddies used to do walking through their own houses in a t-shirt and boxers and a can of pabst in one hand, porn in the other, on the way to the bathroom while mamas were entertaining the jehovah's witnesses dropping through to talk about organized salvation.
(and yes, i said "pantses" - stfu!)

i want my art and poems to grow from a crevice. from the forgotten pot of beans in the back of the fridge that now has a rain forest growing in it. i want ... the hell if i know ... something. different. older than where we are now as a people but still future-forward. reverse-sankofa. an un-diversed dissertation on total damnation written from the hands of some dawn-dead zombies and have it be a poem of love and affection. thats what i'm wanting. to be so fkn retro its original. to sit on the Great Porch built by the hands of those forced into serving me. to be an overseer. shotgun across my lap, marcus garvey and kwame nkrumah on my ipod. reading franz fanon on my ipad. whipping my fieldhands, the scarification on their backs my folk-art; telling toby his new name is achebe.
(and yes, muhfkr, i said 'lissen'... no, wait. no i didnt. i deleted that part.
but i'm not sorry for callin you a muhfkr. live with it.)

its not that i'm antisocial (because i am), its just... i'm just not counter-cultural enough. i think.
the status quo has tainted what it means to living-up-to-your-responsibilities. i love doing what others expect of me, as long as what's expected of me is based on the name i've created for myself and not by the stereotypes associated with 'black/art/literature'.

you probably dont understand.

its not just a black thang.

its a blacker thing.

i would give anything

to own the truck currently used in my banner. that is the dopest thing on 4 wheels. i could be driver/curator for the black-apothecary-traveling-splinter-art-and-broken-lit-splitters-show...
like a new-era bingo long!

have a bell, like the old-fashioned ice cream trucks used to have. (god, how i miss ice-cream trucks! not popsicle  truck, ice-cream! remember how they useta swirl vanilla and chocolate double-barreled from the side? simply beautiful.)

my daughter calls me weird.

i dont deny it.

ding, ding, ding... we have a new champion!

and the winner by tko is
(ref lifts the arms of.... ) .... ... ... ... ... the people's champion!

okay... i can be simple and direct. i'm not always so theatrical.

i'm talknabout the blogsite AUNT JEMIMA'S REVENGE! they are holding it down!

"O" is for...

its sad when one of the freshest things in hiphop isnt actually hiphop but a homage to it...

there are exceptions, but exceptions are usually fleeting.


O from Daniele Manoli on Vimeo.

Daniele Manoli - check out his entire alphabet on vimeo.

elder solomon lightfoot michaux

"an african and an irish walk into a holler..."

black southern heritage and appalachian culture

abbey lincoln

abbey lincoln - the man who has the magic/where are the african gods?

some real good feel good...

8 goals for africa -

summer reading list 2010

(when not reading poetry submissions for mythium)

anthills of the savannah, chinua achebe
the woman of the dunes, kobo abe
fledgling, octavia butler
the electric koolaid acid test, tom wolfe
african short stories, achebe & c.l. innes
flight to canada, ishmael reed

up next:

naked lunch, william burroughs

thinking outloud online part 1

every couple of years i gather up the 20 plus years of badly written poetry, focusing on the last ten years in particular, with the intention of 'getting published'... so i read, reread and do some editing, siphon a million bad similes into 70 pages and shout to the heavens how THIS IS IT! my voice shaking the shit outta the firmaments... but then the transient taste of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment fades and i shrug; toss the manuscript back into dry-dock and go on about my business of being indifferent, literary-speaking.

i know for a fact that i'm a decent poet, but tho i consider my poetic approach 'scholarly' i have never once considered myself an 'academic'. i've spent a great deal of time studying the writers who've influenced me, but never while in a classroom setting... i've been encouraged to get an mfa in writing but again to what purpose? to teach? to sharpen the shape of my nose as i preach 'form' to the 'unlettered'? for vanity? for 'just because that's the way its done'?

certainly receiving my mfa would potentially add weight to my credentials as i talk to 'genuine' publishers about accepting my collections, but then what? i dont particularly need the approval of a publishing house to know i'm better than what passes as an average writer (and despite that last sentence, i am quite humble in this fact/even if it only exists in my own mind) - but unless i win a substantial prize, the role of 'poetry writer' is cupboard-bare skill once fully accomplished.

but i do want to publish my work. but #2, i dont want to self-publish. writing in my own journals is self-publishing all by itself, why would i want to spend my own money expanding the look and feel of my own poetic journal entries, especially since i can only name 10 people that might be interested enough to purchase one! better to just turn my manuscript into a pdf file and just send it to them via email for free, right? but such a hassle seems too much like an inept type of hustle to me. i'm not a mic-type writer standing outside the coffehouses pushing my wares... my dilemma is this: i write for both academia AND for the non-academics. i want one word to reach them both and be equal in standing.

this means self-publishing is most definitely out. or is it?

shit. its almost 2 in the morning... wtf was you expecting from me at this hour, an epiphany?!?!?!

go to bed and forgetchu was e'en herre.

or if you're reading this after breakfast/lunch/dinner/etc, then please proceed to vomit at the commencement of this sentence.

(watch the shoes!)

siblings...

its funny how much me and my sisters have in common but yet still know very little about each other and whatever it is that motivates us... i'm the youngest and the only boy amongst 5 girls (2 sisters from mama's previous relationship, 2 from daddy's previous relationship, then me and a sis from their union)...
there is off and on tension from a sister on my father's side who i think feels 'neglected' (or annoyed) by daddy's 'new' family. i think she feels like we enjoyed vast advantages of a loving home (which we did and then sometimes we didnt - its all relative to your own individual demons)
my other sisters think i enjoyed some 'loving, common bond' with daddy, as if i adored him and had a close relationship with him (which didnt exist and has never existed. as mentioned in the previous post i had much emotional acrimony towards daddy and not until he had lost the use of his legs did he seem to have much use to stay connected with me)...

i think 3/5ths of my sisters are extremely narcissistic. one would doubt it and turn it back on me, one would say 'yeah, and?' and the other would roll her eyes and hit me in the back of the head...
(one sister is a complete angel and we would never exchange cross-words with each other...
then again, maybe i just dont her that well... and the other sister, i just dont know her that well; daddy's funeral was the first time i'd seen her since i was a pre-teen - just found out she's been living within 5 blocks of mama and daddy's house for the last 2 years!)

anyway, we all have issues and are bound to have the wrong adjectives (see previous post) placed on one another's obituary pages when those appropriate times arise...

you always want more time...

the newly began chronicling of my relationship with my father has transcended the traditionally predictable rants of father/son angst and anecdotes into something remorsefully surreal...

yes, my sentences ramble in the most awkward of badly poetic ways, i'm sorry, that caint be helped, i eschew proper school-learning, especially regarding the academics of slang - slang is my shield, my
slang-blade...

anyway, i'm avoiding the actual reason for this inarticulate post - not wanting to say it...

my father passed away in his sleep the saturday morning of July 3rd, 2010.

my last conversation with him was the friday morning before, when he called me crying; not wanting
to return to the nursing home he had been rehabilitating in. i felt his pain and sorrow, but more than that i understood the actual origins to that pain and sorrow - information he had shared with me during the 18 months (plus the 3 years since then) in which i lived with him and mama acting as his human crutch and personal errand boy (a position i held with great honor and esteem, hoping it would at last earn me a morsel of respect in his view of me) ((those issues he shared with me will be addressed in later posts/probably))...

but the man who never seemed to hold much affection for me as a child or as an adult has passed away (not to be confused with 'love' because i knew he fully loved us all, he just was reluctant or just didnt know how to show it in ways that mattered on deeper levels, at least to me) - i think he came to trust me, at least 'value' me as his sounding board, but still i didnt feel his respect for me as his son and as a man... not that such a thing is ever a requirement, its just something nice to keep stored in your self-esteem when growing into a functioning adult. esteem should grow from feelings of familial love and not from the need to prove one's self as a valuable commodity to his closest kinfolk.
how can you empower your communal ties when you keep a chip on your shoulder at all times?

forgive me. this blog might be about me, but this immediate post is in honor of my father. i didnt intend to rant on about any preconceived misperceptions about manhood and family-ties.

i've lost my father. it was hard to like him and not always easy to love him - but i did both (at least after abandoning my long-seated bitterness and hatred towards him/strictly undeserved and entirely harvested from my own emotional aesthetics) - my sisters affectionately placed the phrase 'mean and surly' in his obituary in attempts to adequately sum up his most frequent disposition - traits in which we all have, either by blood or social osmosis! - and i've inherited my fair share of those characteristics.

but i also maintain a deep-rooted sense of overpowering love and the need to visibly express it; traits i thought i had created of my own volition... and the truth i came to understand was this: these, too, were traits i had directly inherited from my father. deep within him was an overflowing well of love, one that had been capped in life by intimate reasons i may never fully know (or openly express online, at least not yet).

for so long i had misunderstood my father... but the truth became extremely clear as i had began understanding myself: if i too am 'mean and surly' by blood and against my will, then perhaps everything i feel about love and intimacy should be attributed to him as well - what reason or right had i to conclude otherwise? if visibly and by temperment daddy and i were just alike, then he too held great desires to love and be loved equally in return...

daddy's 'negative' traits were exacerbated when the life he lived proved it impossible to fully express himself through his positive traits...

or maybe he and i are just full of shit, i wont rule it out... at any rate, i found myself when going through my father just as i found him when going through myself: he was the theatrical 'dark knight' and i was just the campy ol' televised 'batman' - our origins are the same. only the cinema was different.
"mean and surly" - i know its said with affection, but to me it represents 'the unknown (and maybe now unknowable) reflections of his past' - not who he actually was but more reflective of the things in his life that made being 'mean and surly' his most adequate armor protecting whatever softer underside he may have had... in those inner-realms of himself is where my true daddy resided... reserved and calculating every single acquaintance by those conditions of an unknown extenuating circumstance - the iceberg tip to his emotional titanic.

the more i got to know daddy, the more i realized that he was soft, had grown insecure of his life choices and was badly in need of a hug, acceptance and understanding... things he was now unable to express since his mean and surly armor had long ago become the prison by which he was now held by and most commonly viewed through, condemning him to live out his last precious moments as a characture of himself to those he needed the most support and understanding from.

rother davis
1937-2010.

- in love and obedience.

daddy issues part one

my father is a hard, unaffectionate man (unless you are a friend or a cb buddy, then he is warm, exchanging blue-colored languages joyfully with them - i am so jealous!)

as a child i would side up to him while he was under the hood of the family car (motor oil was a body fluid for him) - but he would always push me back, very gruff, saying i was getting in his way; would tell me to go play somewhere else... it's sublime at first, but after awhile you look out into the garage and wonder how long it would take you to go get help if the jack slipped, trapping him beneath the pontiac he was working on. not "run off in a panic" for help... i'm talking about "IF i ran off..." would i go to the candy lady first, get a bag of pop-rocks and a pickle before returning home to tell mama "mama, i think daddy is stuck under the car."

this is bitterness. i wasnt an evil child. this is one of the many negative emotions that will eventually surface when you instill ... what's the word? ... "detachment" ... when you instill detachment in children. which still isnt the most correct term, because the bitterness you feel is most definitely attached to the person who helped nurture it!

but you grow up. i understood that daddy didnt not love me, he just didnt show it in socially recognizable terms. so, i didnt not love him in the exact same way the he didnt not love me...

i also swore blood vows to the heavens that i would NEVER love my wife and children in such a manner once i was old enough to indulge in the arrangements of adulthood! my children still might not like me, but dammit, they will sure as shit know that i love them above all else!

(let me smoother my loved ones with love... or else, let me smoother them in their sleep. their choice.)

this lovelessness-as-an-act-of-love i was shown as a child would not be permitted in my home as an adult. it has shaped the way i am now emotionally connected to the friends and family willing to fully express their love respectfully and openly. al green said, "love and happiness" -  that man was a goddamn genius. i have no time in my life for loveless, unhappy people - not just because they are a drain, but also because their very existence trudges up the emotionless-void stuck in orbit between resentment and bitterness (metaphor for the relationship between a father and his son).

at times, i have hated daddy. deeply. not the angst-ridden "i wish you was dead/i had never been born" overly dramatic, cinematically dysfunctional type of hate. just a good ol' fashioned clean, angry hate.
("if you wasnt so much taller than me, i'd fuckn kick your ass!")

 i guess this is normal for many folks. but what happens to you, as an adult, when the ancestral link begins to claim you and you find yourself FEELING, ACTING AND BEHAVING in the same exact vein as the person you abhorred?!?! - - - in my mid-20's began the realization that i was becoming my father!

not in temperament. but... well, yeah... in temperment! some damn genetic switch was thrown and the traits in my father had begun to metastasize in me!

NOT HIS HABITS! not the way he expressed himself (not entirely, anyway) but a deeper understanding, appreciation and acceptance of why he was the way he was.  temperamentally i was wired the exact same way as he was... the switch had been thrown. or maybe it had always been there and i was just becoming aware of it. but at any point, it took being in a successfully joyless relationship for me to understand my connection to my father:

acts of lovelessness was a self-defense mechanism to hide the pain and failure of not having/living the life you wanted deeply for yourself. you love your family to no ends, but you accept the stifled confines of an unhappy relationship and simply make the best of it. i can see how having a loving, happy child running his hot wheels collection around your feet while you hide  your head inside an engine block can ruin the spa-effect of your powertool-based escapisms... once i'd understood this about daddy (though maybe not completely accurate in my own unlettered analysis) the love i had been stifling for him came rushing back into me. and in doing so, i was able to fully love the parts of me that reminded me of him; insight and perspective had freed me from that foolishness... i became calm. began talking to my gods again. understood not just what 'a good love' was, but understood how to avoid the actions in a relationship that can lead or push you away from that same 'good love'...

al green wasnt just a genius, al green is my jesus! in love and happiness i am saved.

hallelujah, aché, show you right!

fresh! for twenty-ten...

after four years of work, my Tangerine Tubman poem is 99.99013745% finished...
this has been one of the longest ongoing literary projects i've undertaken in the 20+ years
i've been writing... i am thoroughly pleased with this final result!

now to cut the cord, smack it on the ass and send it out into the world to fend for itself.
initially, i was gonna make it available as pdf file and sell it for $3 online (plus $10 for a poster
of its cover)... but most magazines consider pdf files (as well as blog posts!) the equivalent to
an electronic chapbook/self-publishing.

im wanting to avoid any unnecessary hassles, at least until (and 'if') the poem is sufficiently
rejected by the publishers im sending it to. if that happens, then i'll make the pdf available for
purchasing via my paypal account.

below is 'the cover' and also a piece of collage incorporating a couple of lines from it;
surely thats okay with any panel of judges, right?

legba walks into a bucket of blood

its my nature to swallow seeds
to have them ferment in the soils within my skull
to birth themselves from daydream/their daylight bursting
from the inseams of forehead/my whole head a calabash
uncollapsing... the daylight strands a dreadlock each,
potential breaching virtue. new gods from a nappy gourd.
the guardian at the gate of dreams draped in gonesh

and gunsmoke... his guitar smoking/his black hand
stroking the 'nations sack under his suit coat.
ask him to tell you your future...watch and see
if he dont sing/maybe he will swallow you; the seed
in my head shorn from thunder/born under a bad blues,
a Conqueroo, becoming/how how how how ------- whoa!,
babe.

upfromsumdirt, 2010

nigerian oil spills

africanliteraturenews.blogspot.com

the nigeria delta region has had the equivalent of 1 exxon valdez oil spill A YEAR for the last 50 years!

Anene Ejikeme has written a very informative opinion page letter to the New York Times concerning this seriously under-publicized ecological disaster....

follow the above link back to African Literature News and Review blog or
click here to go to the NYT article.

poefrica

african poetry blog to check out next time i get some time...

this one too!
(afropoem)

recent inspirations

1. african short stories, edited by chinua achebe and cl innes
2. flight to canada, ishmael reed
3. anthills of the savannah, chinua achebe
4. kiss my black ads blogspot
5. the jazz baroness, a documentary detailing the relationship of thelonious monk and pannonica rothschild.

how to make a book (if you lived 60 years ago)

new wimmins in video...

joi

the best videos for visual artists needing creative inspiration - part 1

 kid koala


olmecha supreme


mf dood/madvillain


killer mike


outkast

springgun press chapbook contest

• click here:
    springgun press
     - a new online and print journal.

some other people's journals

diverse voices quarterly

ryga

weave

cerise press

southeast review 

concisely

phati'tude

poetry submissions/contests

ZONE 3


FUGUE