dear dad;

I nearly missed the irony that your blood son knows less about you than I —yet you were an unsolvable mystery while you were alive. not a father so much as the man who came with the couch. what I have of you are incomplete images, half remembered stories with so much time having passed they’ve matured into myths.

I found more comfort in your garage amongst the tools you left behind than I did in your company. to my childhood mind, you were the detritis strewn before you: comotose cars with their organs lined in formation, loose nuts and bolts soaking in a gas pan of cleansing fluid. a carburetor nesting in newspaper on the dining room table like a steel artichoke being peeled.

I regret only beginning to understand you after you died. it took a year of silence from your grave before I could say I loved you—yet watching you with my mother, I don’t believe I ever learned what love is. Unless true love is found in the things unsaid.

now, years too late, I have questions for you; who was I to you? what did you see looking at me? what were you thinking? did I need to ask you to love me? did i need to ask you how to be a son to you? how do you think my presense changed your marriage? what did you think of your own son, Sean, –only a couple of years my senior– and who was his mother?

for the life of me I can’t remember why I hated you. but the space my passion once held remains—the hole a missing tooth would leave. maybe I wanted you to take responsibility for the man I was afraid to become on my own. I hated you for not pushing me. maybe all that time I was the engine you could never turn over. I was the silence of a turned key that yields a dead click.

how do I apologize to you beyond the grave? I apologize for the moment that somehow never occurred to me—for not approaching you while you puzzled over a cold transmission, introducing myself as your replacement son—then asking how can I be your friend

may your spirit be blessed

jms

If my father had lived–

…well, i can’t imagine if
my father had lived
without the seduction of cancer
& his coughing up black marrow…

maybe his 80’s would ride easy
as a mule

maybe he’d reach for
shot glasses
like floating ghosts
off bars
burned down
30 years ago.

how curiously he’d frown
at the familiar archetecture
of faces
on young strangers
bowed before him
at low budget wakes…

Men he’d known
along Texas roads,
in Korea, in the longshoremen
union, these blues singing drunks

now born again,
polished, new &

Without his spilled, fractured
memory–
a thing fallen
from his clumsy hands.

maybe he & i could finally talk

about…something.
Anything

about how he felt
when i landed on his doorstep
like mis-delivered mail

maybe he’d teach me
everything
his hands could remember
about metal

maybe his brown eyes
eclipsed with gray
would look at me
or rather, thru me
to find my father
seated at his domino
table of memory

then, ask me seriously

who i was…

and when I tell him
maybe he’d grunt:

James. Yeah.
I used to know
someone
by that name.

***

I’ve forgotten my father’s birthday. Is it August 23? Or August 24? 27th? Or maybe 29th? I am as bad a son to him as he was father to me. Yet he appeared in my head this morning. He was there as of Friday– when I was leaving work, I thought, maybe for the first time in a long time, how nice it would be to visit an actual relative. To be able to sit with someone whom i had memories with, someone was my father or mother. And what they would be like now, for me as an adult. How would our relationship have developed?

I won’t ever know. I’m ready to apologize to a friend for sending them Sunday a massively long email updating them on my life and what I’d been dealing with. I did it because she and I talked about it before and I felt she ‘deserved’ a status update. But I also did it because I needed a witness and had none. I genuinely feel a bit stranded as far as family and identity. What does one do if you’re lost and there is no search party rallied for you?

I wondered what my dad would be like today. How even he would look… I’m ashamed to say how much I hated him around the time of his death in 1993, because it all evaporated when we buried him. My hatred was for nothing. I wondered if I would have ever gotten it together– to ask him about his work with cars, to ask him if we could fish together. I guess part of my mourning is not only not having any closure with him, but not having a moment or memory with him that really meant something.

Perhaps he’s in my memory now because I emotionally remember his birthday even as the number won’t fall from my tongue. And because sitting with my friend drinking Friday, I was forced to think about family– because my friend and I are as close as family– and because as he can come to me to talk, I’m not clear who I can go to to talk, to release. He can run some father/uncle/brother energy with me, but where am I going?

1) letting go is the same as letting things be

2) if you look behind while you move forward you’ll start tripping

3) every individual has their own unique path. to envy anothers accomplishments is to forsake the blessings that are waiting for you

4) the only thing you can control is the moment happening now.

5) the lessons learned from the pain you’ve collected over the years is like a computer program running on your desktop background. “This program is already running! Would you like to close window?” Click yes.

6) Sometimes people identify themselves by what has broken them, by the things they have survived. As if an emotional scar is an ID that needs checking. To continually remind yourself of where you’ve been is to ignore where you are now.

7) God is not a puppet master. The path you choose will be blessed, but only you can make the choice. God will bless you if you remain still. God will bless you if you move forward.

8 Which of your decisions do you accept responsibility for?

9) You often choose to suffer.

10) We learn more from those who’ve hurt us than from those whom we claim to love.

11) To offer no resistance is to accept.

12) To move forward without total certainty of where you’re going is faith in action.

13) To move forward with vision is faith in action

14) Forgiveness is a synonym to letting go

15) Breathe in. Hold it: You hold tension in your body. Look for it. Feel it. Where is it? Why is it there? Breathe out slowly. Does it remain? Where? Why?

16) Often, grudges are personal. The person you hold the most against has most likely forgotten the incident that you continue to hold.

17) To turn the other cheek is not to offer yourself as a victim. It is the starting position to walk away.

18) Hate takes a tremendous amount of energy

19) Love is effortless.

20) I love the parable of the Two Wolves, forwarded me thru my list serve:

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that
goes on inside people. He said, ‘My son, the battle is between two
‘wolves’ inside us all.

One is Evil.
It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-
pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride,
superiority, and ego.

The other is Good.
It is joy, peace , love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness,
benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.

The grandson thought about it for a minute

And then asked his grandfather: ‘Which wolf wins?’

The old Cherokee said: ‘The one you feed .’

The reading was so popular I had to sign up on the open mic two months in advance for a five minute time slot. My mentor who happened to be featured the same night championed me to the host who, “on blind faith in the poetry community” signed me up sight unseen, words unheard.

The closer the date got, the more activities began to pile on the night. The San Francisco reading was listed from 7pm to 9.

At 9, I wanted to be back in Oakland for Play Date– an adult club night centered around board games.

The reading was held in a modest bookstore nestled close to the Bart station. I wandered in, unsocialable, digging thru books on the shelves while people mulled around, chatted, poured themselves wine. There weren’t many seats and those were already taken. When the reading began, I stood in the back of the room, watched and listened. The host was a cat I knew. He came in late, holding a bullhorn– and using it. He took hosting duties strictly meat/potatoes. “Up next, person A.”

I guess I was the youngest person in the room, and I’m not all that young. Maybe the host was younger. The poets were all grayed; there were musicians on social security– one, introduced to me as The Deacon was a sax player. He played with this older brother I also knew who is blind. The blind poet performed from memory and read from huge sheets of paper on which were hand written letters big as coffee mugs. Between stanzas he would motion for the Deacon to breathe into his sax. It was a conversation between voice and instrument in which the two generously volleyed sounds back and forth. More readers. A woman who was Bette Davis thin; in black, all shoulders and long spindly arms. A man who’s name and face I remembered from years ago. One dude I saw in a documentary on Charles Bukowski, though famous as he was his words didn’t quite move me (listening to him read, I was surprised to learn he was gay, then not surprised at all). There were others. My mentor performed with a pianist. More people I knew or had at least heard of.

During the evening, one of the older brothers whom I knew and respect Very Much approached me: I didn’t recognize you, he said.

Its’ okay, I said. Ive changed a lot. I’d lost weight, shaved my moustache.

You look good, he beamed before wandering back to the other side of the bookstore to continue listening to the night. I looked at my watch & wondered if I was going to leave early. I was looking forward to what the Play Date would be like. But I waited and got on stage just before 9 o’clock.

I used my 3 minutes for There Is Sun. Earlier in the day I ransacked the house looking for my poetry notebook only to realize I’d lost it (when? where??? Unlike last April, this time I wasn’t even drunk!). I carried a printed copy in my backpocket and hit it. The poets were all Beatniks or at least of that generation. The sound in There Is Sun is something I’m very proud of and enjoy reading for folks who haven’t heard it. For me, for a one-poem shot, there was no better choice.

I finish. Step off stage to applause, walk back towards the rear of the store, touch this person, acknowledge another and walk straight to the front door and exit. The reading had been one of the better ones. Though standing there in the back, watching and listening to the proceedings, I somehow felt very alone. Because everyone was so much older, and because there were so many men, I thought: this is why I have problems meeting anybody. There’s never anybody around I want to meet… In spite of being here, in spite of the reading (monday morning, they emailed me an offer for a feature ’sometime’ later) I felt out of place. Somewhere, I’ve lost my sense of belonging. Putting out these words… for whom? for what? For applause? Praise? Validation? I couldn’t say. Not that any of those things are valid. Whatever it was I wanted and felt lacking, wasn’t present in this room… Maybe at Play Date?

Not really. This room was completely different. All black men & women. Drinking. Huge hall. Connect 4. Wii bowling. Jenga. Trouble. Even Hungry Hungry Hippos. I sat with my friends and played dominoes before everybody was called to the dance floor to participate in or wallflower the group games: Twister. Musical Chairs. Redlight Greenlight. Simon Says. I stood and watched a huge woman, with ass like trunk space on a 1974 Cadillac, straddle and ride a dude on all fours during the Redlight game. For Simon Says the room had divided into to halves, exchanging Michael Jackson Thriller moves. A stranger tried pushing me out to play, but I couldn’t. I was dateless, alone (my friends, a couple, I stayed out of their way and let them have private time together– which in turn left me in silence) I’d become 10 years old again and frozen in the shadows. I thought about my childhood, being an only child, and as i watched people dance, felt out of place here, too. I didn’t know how to play anything confidently. As the room finished the game session turning the dancefloor into a matrix of the electric slide, I wondered: where exactly do I belong?

We were alright until our neighborhoods
became hard wired with a 24 carat coaxial dick
raping our imaginations
impregnating our brains with the demented fetuses of
pop culture trivia

Before then, our FAMILY was the young and restless
our grandparents laps were our history channels
and the touch football games played in twilight
where we danced to the percussion of dominoes
were not sponsored by federal express or
pabst blue ribbon

back then, our lives were powered by
stories and neck bones
not MTV and running shoes
now we’re making lemming like star treks
to the nearest Mickey D’s
to freestyle for our supper and be rewarded with
plastic Uzi’s
so that we may give our
suicidal brains Pepsi enemas

Now our kids inherit dowries full of catchphrases
and commercial jingles

Now were handing down illiteracy and complacency
as a special part of this complete, nutritious
breakfast of BULLSHIT

Our heads
have naturally selected
into slot machines
garbage in
and silver dollars drip from our tongues
into greedy corporate pockets

But it’s not too late!!

KILL THE CABLE MAN!!! HANG HIM FROM A STREETLAMP!!!

yeah, it was our fault…

We let Dracula into the house
this video Gestapo

We bought that bomb sack of soap operas and smoked it

Grandma stayed in the backroom — not going senile but
obsolete
creating crucifix’s from non-fiction books and bibles.
We fed her talk shows and sit-coms intravenously
until rich milk chocolate bled from her eyes

Meanwhile, the cable man knelt
at the glowing altar of the TV set
and like a gypsy with a crystal ball
foretold our future:
“No more standing in long lines
for movies or sporting events…” he said
“from now on they come to you!”

So, the revolution has been postponed
for late breaking coverage of Princess Di’s funeral
and the season premiere of
America’s Funniest Home Videos
with host Rodney King

The Revolution has been postponed for
infomercials peddling edible skin cancer
and Uncle Tom’s all natural tooth whitener

The revolution has been put on hiatus

until it can find a time slot

until it can find a sponsor

The Revolution will not be seen this week!
So that we may bring you this special
Malcolm X Day Marathon of ‘Good Times’.
Call the station when you see the dancing food stamp
and WIN a FREE WATERMELON and a fistful of COUPONS to
KFC

FUCK THE BULLSHIT!!!

KILL THE CABLE MAN!!!

NIGGA– YOU’RE UNDER ARREST!!!

–For the murder of consciousness and independent
thought

–For the satellite dishing our bowls of Ghetto
Krispies

–For teaching us blind followers of empty faith that…
It’s Good to chew gum!
It’s Good to Douche!
It’s Good to Moisturize!
It’s Good to Drink Coffee made from beans picked by
Mexican peasants

It’s Good to be Thin!
It’s Good to be Athletic
It’s Good to Kill the germs that may cause bad breath!

It’s Good to be White!
It’s Good to be White!
It’s Good To Be White!!

SNAP!!!

We have been hypnotized as easily as chickens
It’s time to wake up! Before the hatchet falls
and the grease is heated

SNAP!!!!

When I count to Three, you will NO LONGER love Lucy!!

–You will STOP masturbating with the cold black
phallus of the remote control

– You will STOP watching 24 hours of President
Clinton’s sequestered dick!!!

– You will NO LONGER settle for sound bites of
computer generated politicians OR deified pop artists,
really 21st Century field niggas picking No. 1 Hits
like cotton and eating chitlin caviar in air
conditioned cabins!

– You will NOT be satisfied with
24% fewer calories or
50% less fat!

When I count to Three, you will no longer VEGETATE

but AGITATE

One…

Two…

Three!!

kill the cable man

****

Many Springs ago, I ran across a dude I went to high school with, Tony, who at the time was writing ferociously and scooped me up for some afternoon writing sessions. Every so often I would go over his house in West Oakland. We would talk and type and exchange work and encourage each other to write by coming up with off-the-wall prompts. Tony was uniquely brilliant and was sitting on a series of short plays that I was really envious of. He had an incredible ear– his work was surreal, ghetto, and smart in a way I’d never seen done before.

Those weeks we kicked it were fun. I didn’t smoke herb at the time, but once he brought out a gallon milk jug he fashioned into a bong and we sat on his couch and watched Mandingo. I found that flick hysterically funny, mainly because I couldnt believe I was actually watching it and it really existed. (I’ve since bought my own copy– you don’t need greens to find it equally entertaining and disturbing)

Ok, he said one day. Here it is. Kill the cableman. That muthafucka be coming through this hood like a crack dealer. And the shit he selling, everybody trying to get some. But peep game, WHAT IS HE SELLING. Look at the shit these kids are watching, all these channels and what is there for us? Kill the muthafucking cable man, he said.

And I was with it. I went home to write. Remembering how i begged my parents for cable in 1979 or so… Back when HBO & Showtime didn’t air 24 hours a day. Then thinking further about my parents and uncles and aunts for whom the card table and front porch were the centers of activity in their houses– not the living room. Not the tv.

When Tony and I reconnected, we exchanged poems. Damn, he said. We both mentioned Star Trek.

***
Full Disclosure: I don’t have cable now, and in spite of the fact Nothing Is On, & I know it… I miss it…

The poem has a built in flaw, far as I’m concerned. Its conceit is its dependant upon pop culture to work. Younger audiences may have no point of reference for Princess Di, Clinton, Star Trek, Good Times. Since its been written, the prevalence of “Reality Television” would add a whole new dimension to the piece. The challenges I’m looking into as a writer is to be able to write Soap Box pieces and not lock them to any generation or time period. Making something timeless, especially with the media as the focal point, is a huge challenge.

i guess i have a mulatto
grandson now

he was born
yesterday
at 3 o’clock

you know, that hospital

is the same one
where my daughter was born in
almost
… 20 years ago?

his dad
is in that
facility
down there

in vacaville.

do
you know it?

I think the judge

or somebody

felt
sympathy for him.

cause he’s a good kid…

just got in a little trouble
for fighting

he was
defending his cousin
apparently

something about honor

& sent the guy to the hospital.

… its a shame
he missed the birth.

won’t get out
before
thanks
giving.

marquis

she named him… marquis

ever heard anybody
with that name?

is it
common?

I looked it up.

marquis de sade

where we get the word

sadism.

did you know that?

***

i would mail writing back and forth to myself between home and work. notes made at work i’d forward, things i’d want to print i’d send back. “Marquis” was a note i sent to myself after one of my coworkers came in one morning while eating creme of wheat from a paper cup, sat down next to me, and spoke into the cup while saying the above. It was so provocative, his manner–still, morose–that i started writing a transcription in my mind as he spoke.   One would think this kind of announcement– grandson, daughter having her first child, etc– would be joyous or fill him with Something.  But he seemed caught between being worried & depressed.  Months earlier, his daughter had text messaged him a photo of the ultra sound and the words: this is your grandchild. 

in the earlier draft of this, i kept the cup and him eating.  I kept the reference to the cell phone photo of the ultrasound.  the poem finished with his dropping the cup in the trash. Overkill. I love the cup, love the ultrasound via text message, but going back over it, i realize everything one needs is in his words.

1) Bread;
Unrated 112 minutes B&W and Color.
In French; Portuguese; Spanish
Starring Peugot Martinique; Antoinette Dubois-Dupris

The oldest son of a poor, sick
out of work janitor
heads to town to find work. A sympathetic
bread maker
employs the boy to sweep
his stores front steps. At the end
of the day, the boy is paid with a huge, sparkling
quarter.
He hands the coin
back to the baker
and purchases a loaf of dry, day old-bread.

The boy takes the bread to his family, placing
the loaf in the center of the table.
They sit.
Baby sister. Baby Brother. Pa.
Ma. The Boy.
Each face kissed with soot.
The mother stands.
wipes her hands along her simple kitchen dress
leaving a trail like burned rubber.
She peels five slices from the loaf,
dropping them on plates
that have last known meals of dust.
She passes one to
each ash covered face.
Split screen: Five mouths.
They chew. They weep.
Fin.

2) Your Love Has Made Me Suffer;
NC-17. 201 minutes. B&W. Silent.
Directed by Pierre LaPierre. Starring Simone Basquiat.

Shot in one continuous take,
the film follows
a repressed
single, middle-aged woman
in a white dress and long dark coat
who, for one night,
goes on an exploration
of her sexuality
in a neighborhood
grocery store. While fingering
the papayas, she eyes
a 16 year old Jamaican
produce clerk and begins a
mating
dance. They circle one another
while she strokes the cantaloupes.
They flirt in frozen foods,
They hump in housewares.
They write sensual haikus
in steamed breath
on the ice cream
freezer window.
The boy leads
her to the stockroom
finally and
makes love to her with wild
abandon
on mountains of leafy mustard greens.

Naked beneath the shadow of a lifesize
tv detective holding a roll of paper towels,
the boy,
his sweaty face a thing peeled afresh
–looks at the woman. The woman
looks at the boy.
They weep.
Fin.

3) We Shall Wait.
PG-13. 99 minutes. B&W In Dutch with English
subtitles. Starring Derek Derragon and Frieda
Francois

A mature woman opens
the gate to a cottage.
She leans like a hummingbird
over a purple
rhododendron blooming
at the gates entrance. She
picks it, lifts it to her face,
embraces. She enters
the yard, holding
the flower close
to her cheek.
She approaches the house door,
turns the doorknob,
enters– Sees a mature man
seated in the center
of the rooms’ divan,
his face a stern mask.
She approaches,
sits next
to him. Says: “I shall
wait until you are dead.” She
slips the flower into his breast
pocket. She folds her now empty
hands in her lap. They weep.
Fin.

4) The Sky Doesn’t Matter (When You’re In My Arms)
PG-13 200 minutes. B&W. In French
With Simone Chateau & Herbert Hermione.

Daily, a young
couple stands at a pier over-
looking the bay.
They are very much in love.
They gaze in one another’s eyes
whispering
“j’taime,” “j’taime.”
as if were the name
of the god that brought them
together. One day,
there is an accident.
The young woman– a former gymnast– slips
from the pier,
falls into the black water
drowns.

The young man,
breaks.

Years later, the former
young man, now a gray haired man,
creaks slowly along
the same pier where he lost
his love so many years before.
He stands considering the water
which looks the same as it did
when he was so very young
and so very much in love.

A seagull approaches,
Landing on the railing next to him.
The man regards the gull.
The gull regards the man.
The gull whispers:
“J’taime”.
The man weeps.
Fin.

5) How Can I Love You (If You Won’t Lay Down?)
NC-17. In French and Italian. 100 Minutes. Color.
Starring Isabelle Perotte and Phillipe Droutte

See the man holding a silver
mailbox beneath his arm
as he stands on a subway platform.
The train approaches.
He enters a train car
cradling the mailbox as if it were an infant.
He sits across
from a woman
who is reading a newspaper. She
looks up at him briefly; kind, friendly.
She returns to reading
but, feeling his continuing glance
she looks up at the man
again. He
opens the mailbox and reaches inside.
He quietly, slowly, pulls out
a huge fish. He gently
papers the woman’s lap
with newspaper, then
quietly places the fish across it.
She looks up at him.
He smiles.
She places her hands over her mouth, nose.
“Papa?” She whispers.
She weeps.
Fin.

This is years ago– when folks got into an uproar over how the SAT tests were deemed ‘racist’ or didn’t apply to folks in the innercity (Why does that just sound… WRONG!??)

Its not like my math skills were All That. I remember at the time attending community college, thinking about “racist SAT’s” and I grabbed my math book and began thumbing thru it. How did people even write word problems?

Most art comes out of asking questions– Mine was, what would an appropriate math test look like to kids in the hood?

God help us.

A friend on my list serve today asked about math centered poems and I remembered this. Fortunately had a digital copy in my sent email folder and thought I’d share it.

Its fun for me to read aloud– curious if this even works on the page…

One night, I read this at La Pena and I looked down in the front row and saw a white kid making notes trying to keep up with me. Afterwards he asked to clarify the last question: How far away could Donald get the car away from where it was parked to count it as ’stolen’?

***

LET X=X

1) Santa Rita state prison covers 410 acres while
Soledad state prison covers 187 acres. How many more
Niggas can you fit into Santa Rita?

Let X=X

The fastest growing industry
in this corporate minded country
are condo jail cells for the underclass!
Don’t sweat rent, potna. You’ve already paid
your first and last just by having a black ass.

In this equation of inequality 1+4=3 (strikes)

For every ONE brotha walking the sacred grounds
of a University there are FOUR walking the ebony
league halls of our state penns–
the Projects for the 21st Century

2) Leroy bought a jacket for $42. If he paid the
clerk with a $100 bill, how many supervisors had to be
appear from backrooms to verify that the shit was
real?

Let X=X

All true Niggas are born polynomial
Take the integer of a positive brotha
multiply his ass against a negative society
and he comes out Niggative

Find the sum, if…
ONE full time gig at Home Depot PLUS
ONE Part time security watch at Sears EQUALS
JOB SQUARED
MINUS (Car Payments + Insurance)
MINUS (Child Support + Taxes)
EQUALS Top Ramen (Carry the peanut butter sandwiches)
TIMES a strip search at the mall by flashlight cops in
house shoes for using an old school $100 bill without
the signature of a white employer.

Solve for the Unknown if
NIGGA plus MONEY equals THIEF

3) Maria made $758 turning tricks in Defermery Park
for 7 1/2 hours. What does Maria earn hourly and what
is Maria’s take home pay if Pookie doesn’t make bail
before midnight?

Let X=X

The nightly news can only see
the best any of us can be
is a pimp or a whore
saith the righteous ‘Nevermore’
wearing out their knees
in pleas for black boys born in need
with silver handcuffs in the mouths
and preachers baptizing the fatherless child in
graffiti

In multiplying negative funds against RENT + FOOD
round off your booty to its nearest whole.

Find the sum in None! Find the sum in None!

4) If it takes Donald 3/4 of a minute to break into
and steal a Honda Accord, how many cars can Donald
stead in a half hour?

Let X=X

Put on the breaks of our fate
laid down on media tracks hyper-wack
like a pacifier of crack. It’s time to attack
images like that…

Round a race to its nearest whole number
Place parenthesis around all people of color
then omit all digits inside the parenthesis

Find the area for racism if racism equals ignorance
divided by X.

Let X=X