© 2 August 2009, The Griot Poet
“Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.” Carl Sandburg
My shadow was Mr. Tedford: science teacher from my middle school past that on my lack of completely grasping the principle of linear expansion shouted his bearded disappointment:
“No, You big dummy...!”
I faked an obviously faked laugh as the dagger he stabbed me with sunk deep.
I never told my parents, I never demanded an apology for his pomposity and his mendacity,
I self-sedated; I ate [more] massive amounts of potato chips: comfort food to medicate internal wounds.
My shadow is JROTC Cadet Colonel Wall: Aryan, standing tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed, bedecked in ribbons, highest ranking Brigade Commander of Winston-Salem, Forsyth County schools that at a casual question shot back:
“YOUR kind will NEVER get to this rank!”
(“No, You big dummy…!”)
My heart sank and I expressed my stress and angst to my parents.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” my dad said with a knowing glance and genuine pain in tearing eyes that hoped I’d never have this experience.
“You go back and tell that booger-bootch you can do anything you set your mind to with GOD on your side,” mom said parodying Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
I did: “In three years,” I said, “I’ll be wearing your rank.”
“I doubt that,” he said in arrogant confidence.
3 years hence:
Veni; Vidi; Vici!
I stood tall, African son, black-haired, brown-eyed, bedecked in ribbons,
Making history in the Winston-Salem Sentinel (no longer in circulation),
My dead mothers’ scribbled note on the article to my Uncle James Dean:
“This is Reggie… your nephew… my son.”
And I, have lost both of them and the innocence of the mythology of my beginnings,
Insurance claims, death certificates, will probates crowds out my time for grieving, economy not allowing me to evening mourn over their sealed graves,
On anniversaries of his death and my corporate denouement: August 26, 1999 and 2003;
On her recent demise two days before Mother’s Day weekend 2009:
One dagger remains:
Tedford/Science/Certification
I did not tell them;
And now I’ve lost them,
I stagger as I attempt to remove (alone) the dagger!
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
On "the Birthers" and Lou Dobbs
See: Dobbs Joins ‘Birthers,’ But CNN Pushes Back
I'm curious: would this controversy have any legs where his name "President Barry O'Bama" and his father were from Ireland?
Barack means "blessing" in Arabic, in Aramaic it is spelled Baruch and occurs 24 times in the Bible (for all you Christian right-wingers)!
5/27/2009 Briefing by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs
The White House Press Secretary, Mr. Gibbs states:
"MR. GIBBS: Lester, this question in many ways continues to astound me. The state of Hawaii provided a copy with the seal of the President's birth. I know there are apparently at least 400,000 people -- (laughter) -- that continue to doubt the existence of and the certification by the state of Hawaii of the President's birth there, but it's on the Internet because we put it on the Internet for each of those 400,000 to download. I certainly hope by the fourth year of our administration that we'll have dealt with this burgeoning birth controversy."
Snopes.com debunks it: Obama Birth Certificate
Here's a link with the seal of the 50th state of Hawaii:
Hawaii: Obama Birth Certificate with the state seal
Racism. A narcissism of self-centered, paranoia resulting from the notion that right or wrong, all things are "good" when someone like "me" is in charge.
I'm curious: would this controversy have any legs where his name "President Barry O'Bama" and his father were from Ireland?
Barack means "blessing" in Arabic, in Aramaic it is spelled Baruch and occurs 24 times in the Bible (for all you Christian right-wingers)!
5/27/2009 Briefing by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs
The White House Press Secretary, Mr. Gibbs states:
"MR. GIBBS: Lester, this question in many ways continues to astound me. The state of Hawaii provided a copy with the seal of the President's birth. I know there are apparently at least 400,000 people -- (laughter) -- that continue to doubt the existence of and the certification by the state of Hawaii of the President's birth there, but it's on the Internet because we put it on the Internet for each of those 400,000 to download. I certainly hope by the fourth year of our administration that we'll have dealt with this burgeoning birth controversy."
Snopes.com debunks it: Obama Birth Certificate
Here's a link with the seal of the 50th state of Hawaii:
Hawaii: Obama Birth Certificate with the state seal
Racism. A narcissism of self-centered, paranoia resulting from the notion that right or wrong, all things are "good" when someone like "me" is in charge.
Monday, July 20, 2009
No Prayers
© 20 July 2009, 11:59 PM, The Griot Poet
I have no prayers to utter to God…
It is not that I don’t believe in Him,
I’m definitely beset by some demon
Assigned to my overt oppression and demise…
I pray for others healings and they do recover
I slack and their marriages suffer…
Like Moses, my arms get tired sometimes
Like Elijah, I suffer depression after dueling with the prophets of Baal and Ashtoreth in groves.
Like Paul, I have thorns in my side; I am left for dead many times
Like today: on the anniversary of seeing earth from God’s front porch
I am defeated by nineteen points
Separating me from bidding on a classroom this fall…
What sin can I not be forgiven?
What sin spews back from the sea of forgetfulness?
Back to shore to chagrin me again and again?
What blocks my prayers so that after ravens feed me?
I am seeking for God… to kill me?
GIVE ME AN ANSWER!
So I can declare to my disciples that there are “more with us than there are with them.”
So I can ride a chariot of fire, translate death and give a double portion of my mantle to my sons
As I ascend before Apollo 11 beyond the sun to God’s front porch.
I have no prayers to utter to God…
It is not that I don’t believe in Him,
I’m definitely beset by some demon
Assigned to my overt oppression and demise…
I pray for others healings and they do recover
I slack and their marriages suffer…
Like Moses, my arms get tired sometimes
Like Elijah, I suffer depression after dueling with the prophets of Baal and Ashtoreth in groves.
Like Paul, I have thorns in my side; I am left for dead many times
Like today: on the anniversary of seeing earth from God’s front porch
I am defeated by nineteen points
Separating me from bidding on a classroom this fall…
What sin can I not be forgiven?
What sin spews back from the sea of forgetfulness?
Back to shore to chagrin me again and again?
What blocks my prayers so that after ravens feed me?
I am seeking for God… to kill me?
GIVE ME AN ANSWER!
So I can declare to my disciples that there are “more with us than there are with them.”
So I can ride a chariot of fire, translate death and give a double portion of my mantle to my sons
As I ascend before Apollo 11 beyond the sun to God’s front porch.
Rachel Maddow Correcting the Record
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Friday, July 03, 2009
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes...
...Who Watches the Watchmen?
(Last page of the comic novel, "The Watchmen," from Juvenal, Satires VI, 347, used during the Tower Commission Report in 1987)
See: Meltdown 101: Unemployment by the Numbers
The markets were pummeled by the news that unemployment was its highest in 26 years: 9.5 percent.
From the article:
"How bad is the current recession? Here's one measure: the United States now has fewer jobs than it did nine years ago, even though the work force - the number of people either working or looking for work - has grown by 12.5 million people since then.
"It's the first time since the Great Depression that a recession has wiped out all the jobs created during the previous business cycle, according to Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank."
I'll let you read the rest at the link above, but some thoughts as to how we're in this mess:
1. Fewer jobs: from a techie standpoint, a lot of that has to do with automation and the Internet. Remember "The Jetsons"? George's job at Spacely's Sprockets was to "push the button": he seemed the only employee needed. Jobs that had to be done in the US can now be done overseas in cheaper labor markets, results delivered in hypertext transfer protocol. (I don't support this, I'm just trying to wrap my mind around it and offer an explanation.)
2. Also, births. That is, those in 1983 - 1990 or so, those kids are now 18 - 25 and looking for something to do.
3. Lifers. I was one of them. And because the lifers are happy doing their part, their "cog" in the great wheel of industry, even though their talents and skill sets may have in many cases atrophied, they don't up and quit and start businesses: they pad their 401k and wait, hopefully for retirement (instead of layoffs = the elephant graveyard).
4. Nine years ago, we weren't as bad off as we are now. The election cycle for 2000 started with a surplus that got spent into a deficit rather quickly.
5. 9/11. Enough said.
6. War in Iraq. A "billion dollars a month" (an estimate I've heard on the news). Hm: March 2003 - July 2009 = 76 months X 1,000,000,000 = 76,000,000,000 of significant deficit reduction.
Our "Brave New World" is here, and we were not at all ready for the rapid changes that would mean. Automation may save "The Big Three" and put out green Hybrid vehicles, but a robot may be able to do what Uncle Billy used to do to put his family through school, making a upper middle class wage without a degree.
The old school sci fi flicks had us all with ENORMOUS heads and small bodies, that was obviously countered and documented in The Assault on Reason and Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. We obviously are the diametric opposite: small brains and large, grossly out-of-shape bodies.
At this point: the only advice I can offer is to read, read, READ and be ready at a moment's notice to DO something else! I had to learn that lesson the hard way, as many of you are now experiencing the lament of jobs and security that will probably never come back, until we discover Warp Drive.
Niel Postman commented on where we are (from the "boob tube" perspective) in his insightful book: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. When it takes the National Enquirer to bust John Edwards having an affair, we're at a place where only bloggers scoop the news on the street, because we're not driven by the market, ratings or stock valuations. We are the very expression of democracy, which is a contact sport, not a jingo, market-driven slogan-fest of litmus tests of how "right" or "left" one is. That doesn't come up on my monthly grocery budget, my bills, my mortgage. I've changed and rearranged things in anticipation of less for the time being, ready to evolve into something on the horizon that will be different than any economy we've ever known... for the better.
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes...Who Watches the Watchmen? WE do!
(Last page of the comic novel, "The Watchmen," from Juvenal, Satires VI, 347, used during the Tower Commission Report in 1987)
See: Meltdown 101: Unemployment by the Numbers
The markets were pummeled by the news that unemployment was its highest in 26 years: 9.5 percent.
From the article:
"How bad is the current recession? Here's one measure: the United States now has fewer jobs than it did nine years ago, even though the work force - the number of people either working or looking for work - has grown by 12.5 million people since then.
"It's the first time since the Great Depression that a recession has wiped out all the jobs created during the previous business cycle, according to Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank."
I'll let you read the rest at the link above, but some thoughts as to how we're in this mess:
1. Fewer jobs: from a techie standpoint, a lot of that has to do with automation and the Internet. Remember "The Jetsons"? George's job at Spacely's Sprockets was to "push the button": he seemed the only employee needed. Jobs that had to be done in the US can now be done overseas in cheaper labor markets, results delivered in hypertext transfer protocol. (I don't support this, I'm just trying to wrap my mind around it and offer an explanation.)
2. Also, births. That is, those in 1983 - 1990 or so, those kids are now 18 - 25 and looking for something to do.
3. Lifers. I was one of them. And because the lifers are happy doing their part, their "cog" in the great wheel of industry, even though their talents and skill sets may have in many cases atrophied, they don't up and quit and start businesses: they pad their 401k and wait, hopefully for retirement (instead of layoffs = the elephant graveyard).
4. Nine years ago, we weren't as bad off as we are now. The election cycle for 2000 started with a surplus that got spent into a deficit rather quickly.
5. 9/11. Enough said.
6. War in Iraq. A "billion dollars a month" (an estimate I've heard on the news). Hm: March 2003 - July 2009 = 76 months X 1,000,000,000 = 76,000,000,000 of significant deficit reduction.
Our "Brave New World" is here, and we were not at all ready for the rapid changes that would mean. Automation may save "The Big Three" and put out green Hybrid vehicles, but a robot may be able to do what Uncle Billy used to do to put his family through school, making a upper middle class wage without a degree.
The old school sci fi flicks had us all with ENORMOUS heads and small bodies, that was obviously countered and documented in The Assault on Reason and Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. We obviously are the diametric opposite: small brains and large, grossly out-of-shape bodies.
At this point: the only advice I can offer is to read, read, READ and be ready at a moment's notice to DO something else! I had to learn that lesson the hard way, as many of you are now experiencing the lament of jobs and security that will probably never come back, until we discover Warp Drive.
Niel Postman commented on where we are (from the "boob tube" perspective) in his insightful book: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. When it takes the National Enquirer to bust John Edwards having an affair, we're at a place where only bloggers scoop the news on the street, because we're not driven by the market, ratings or stock valuations. We are the very expression of democracy, which is a contact sport, not a jingo, market-driven slogan-fest of litmus tests of how "right" or "left" one is. That doesn't come up on my monthly grocery budget, my bills, my mortgage. I've changed and rearranged things in anticipation of less for the time being, ready to evolve into something on the horizon that will be different than any economy we've ever known... for the better.
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes...Who Watches the Watchmen? WE do!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Threes
© 26 June 2009, The Griot Poet
They say that death comes in threes:
First, my cat Felix died quietly, as mysteriously as she’d appeared on my doorstep fully grown 15 years prior, she expired after mewing on the front stoop and curled up as if to nap – from which she did not come back.
Two weeks later: my mother, Mildred Dean Goodwin expired two days before Mother’s Day weekend. Which is like her: I’ll bet I’ll never forget this anniversary as I had hers and my father’s wedding anniversary. For that, Mother’s Day will always have meaning.
David Carradine: this generation knows him as the Bill of “Kill Bill” with the enigmatic Uma Thurman, but despite his personal demons off camera, he was the star from the Bruce Lee inspired “Kung Fu” series (Bruce was a little too “oriental” for 70s producers back then)…
This week: we lost the perennial “side kick” Ed McMahon, after suffering from breathing problems and cancer. He and he only could laugh at an obviously unfunny joke by Johnny Carson and have the audience guffaw with him.
The modern-day pin-up girl Farrah Fawcett was published in Life in ‘76; it is the best-selling pin-up poster of all time, with more than 12 million copies purchased (exceeding her weekly TV salary)... her show number one because the Corpus Christi beauty admitted “we’re number one maybe because we all don’t wear bras,” lost her life, the fantasy girl of “Charlie’s Angels” to colon cancer…
Now Michael Joe Jackson: the poor boy in the stereotypical crowded black family from Gary, Indiana who’s father was a failed musician who became the “King of Pop,” became the first to star and aligned himself with a sports star – Michael Jordan and “Jam” became the standard of video and performance excellence, became the inspiration of Usher and Justin Timberlake (they were in diapers when he did “Billy Jean” and “Thriller”). His was a “rags to riches (to rags)” story. His was evidence that any dream is possible if you work your behind off and pursue it, despite your culture, color, demons or personal struggles. His is the record of best selling pop album of all time. Any goal, no matter how outrageous is worth pursuing because despite spiritual traditions to the contrary: I suspect we only have this life to pursue it and then oblivion and judgment.
They say death comes in threes:
“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” (1 John 5:7 – 8)
If this is truly our reality, then let us pursue our talents and serve Deity and humanity as we walk out our destinies – our judgment of the impact of our storied pasts will be what is said about us when we’ve breathed our last.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Meditation 17 (1623 - 1624) by John Donne
CNN Story: Teen Beating
I put the link because, apparently, their embed code doesn't work. When you go on You Tube and put in "Teen Cat Fight"... let's just say you get interpretations bordering on the profane.
Slowly... we are walking towards the guillotine, happy at our own demise as a civilization. The very thing that frees us - the Internet - enslaves us. We are detached from emotion, affection, true feelings, empathy. We carry on relationships at light speed with people distant from us. The beating of a child only prompted the announcement: "this is going to You Tube" from bystanders that wouldn't call the police.
Our knowledge is incredible; our education suffers; our respect for self and others absent; our wisdom lacking.
We die, with Cheshire smiles as we disappear - TGP
Meditation 17 (1623-1624)
by John Donne
Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris.
Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.
Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.
The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.
As therefore the bell that rings a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined that they should ring first that rose earliest.
If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? But who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? But who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Neither can we call this a begging of misery or a borrowing of misery, as though we are not miserable enough of ourselves but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.
If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me, if by this consideration of anothers dangers I take mine own into contemplation and so secure myself by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.
I put the link because, apparently, their embed code doesn't work. When you go on You Tube and put in "Teen Cat Fight"... let's just say you get interpretations bordering on the profane.
Slowly... we are walking towards the guillotine, happy at our own demise as a civilization. The very thing that frees us - the Internet - enslaves us. We are detached from emotion, affection, true feelings, empathy. We carry on relationships at light speed with people distant from us. The beating of a child only prompted the announcement: "this is going to You Tube" from bystanders that wouldn't call the police.
Our knowledge is incredible; our education suffers; our respect for self and others absent; our wisdom lacking.
We die, with Cheshire smiles as we disappear - TGP
Meditation 17 (1623-1624)
by John Donne
Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris.
Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.
Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.
The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.
As therefore the bell that rings a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined that they should ring first that rose earliest.
If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? But who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? But who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Neither can we call this a begging of misery or a borrowing of misery, as though we are not miserable enough of ourselves but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.
If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me, if by this consideration of anothers dangers I take mine own into contemplation and so secure myself by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Synapses
© 24 November 2008, The Griot Poet
I dreamt I made poetry to you in Milky Way Galaxy arms surrounded by swirls of stars in an expansive blackness that had no beginning, no ending…
I dreamt I made poetry to you [by] composing sonnets on comets passing by, the ice melting in the sunshine of your sharp gaze, your smile, its trail marking orbital passage…
I dreamt I made poetry to you as you defied physics and I heard you like a siren, serenely reciting poetic prophecies that made each area of my brain light up on an MRI screen like a Christmas tree…
I dreamt I made poetry to you in timeless space-time, so we experimented with cosmic compositions; haiku as short burst of deep and poignant rhythm and rhyme, sinusoidal wave equations, quarks and quantum, Hydrogen to Helium fusion, Schrodinger particle/wave duality… a reality beyond human comprehension.
I dreamt I made poetry to you as my last act in life, my denouement, a solar moth attracted to a red giant flame, mesmerized by all-seeing eyes, pulled in by the third that is a gravity well that heavy particles of lies cannot escape.
I dreamt I made poetry to you and like Shakespeare, heaving my last sigh in the valley made by clockwise and counterclockwise swirling nebula pouring to an abyss of nothingness into the substance of the surrounding universe of teeming life…
Then, I awoke and stared at Venus and the rays of dawn.
I dreamt I made poetry to you in Milky Way Galaxy arms surrounded by swirls of stars in an expansive blackness that had no beginning, no ending…
I dreamt I made poetry to you [by] composing sonnets on comets passing by, the ice melting in the sunshine of your sharp gaze, your smile, its trail marking orbital passage…
I dreamt I made poetry to you as you defied physics and I heard you like a siren, serenely reciting poetic prophecies that made each area of my brain light up on an MRI screen like a Christmas tree…
I dreamt I made poetry to you in timeless space-time, so we experimented with cosmic compositions; haiku as short burst of deep and poignant rhythm and rhyme, sinusoidal wave equations, quarks and quantum, Hydrogen to Helium fusion, Schrodinger particle/wave duality… a reality beyond human comprehension.
I dreamt I made poetry to you as my last act in life, my denouement, a solar moth attracted to a red giant flame, mesmerized by all-seeing eyes, pulled in by the third that is a gravity well that heavy particles of lies cannot escape.
I dreamt I made poetry to you and like Shakespeare, heaving my last sigh in the valley made by clockwise and counterclockwise swirling nebula pouring to an abyss of nothingness into the substance of the surrounding universe of teeming life…
Then, I awoke and stared at Venus and the rays of dawn.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Voyeur Exhibitionists
From: TheFreeDictionary.com
Voyeur:
1. A person who derives sexual gratification from observing the naked bodies or sexual acts of others, especially from a secret vantage point.
2. An obsessive observer of sordid or sensational subjects.
Exhibitionism:
1. The act or practice of deliberately behaving so as to attract attention.
2. Psychiatry A psycho sexual disorder marked by the compulsive exposure of the genitals in public.
At addiction recovery meetings, it is customary to begin with the admittance to the sin before any discussion can begin: "Hello. I'm John/Jane Doe, and I'm an alcoholic/addict."
Hello. I am The Griot Poet. I am a blogger.
That, of course, is not my real name. However, many who know me know me as "The Griot Poet," literally meaning "A storyteller in western Africa who perpetuates the oral tradition and history of a village or family."
At a deeper level, I'm not too different from a voyeur. I get links sent to my profile possibly because my disclosure of age attracts anyone with curves and a web cam: the game is to get me to "look" for free, then for a fee. I typically block them (though I have looked, then blocked them).
And, why am I so "high and mighty"? Am I not writing in Cyberspace to be "looked" at? Aren't we all trying to be "discovered" and famous? Who wouldn't like to make as much as the top-seed bloggers? Be interviewed on CNN, MSNBC for your pontification and comments? I don't actually have a qualification to my audience that might "look" and show interest, benign or lewd. Did Bathsheba accidentally bath in an open window where David could see her? Was it all his idea? I get the idea (translating it into modern speak), that the lady and the king after cutting gazes at each other engaged in the modern equivalent of "the hook up" and "booty call." It takes two to Tango.
That brings up a related point: The very fact I want someone to "look" makes me an exhibitionist. My genitalia are sentences, phrases, quotes and paragraphs. I, and others are voluntarily giving personal parts of ourselves to the world wide web in what once would have been a private diary. Some of it is insightful, lewd, brilliant, crass, thought-provoking and lately, dangerous.
Some of the comments I see posted, for example, at White House Correspondent's Dinner on You Tube are from other bloggers that obviously DON'T like the president. I see the words "n----r" and "b---h" bandied about and F*CK the president.
Yet, I cannot judge them. They, like me, have a "handle," and are probably our co-workers that we respect their output (if we're still employed, that is).
So, they express their First Amendment rights in a medium the Founders had no concept of. They connect with like-minded individuals and comment anonymously with abandon and freedom. The words are on Facebook and Myspace and Twitter and YouTube. And one obsessive compulsive will read them all and repeat them over and over... like a mantra.
And like the doppelganger antimatter equivalent of Langston's "Dream Deferred..." they explode.
Voyeur:
1. A person who derives sexual gratification from observing the naked bodies or sexual acts of others, especially from a secret vantage point.
2. An obsessive observer of sordid or sensational subjects.
Exhibitionism:
1. The act or practice of deliberately behaving so as to attract attention.
2. Psychiatry A psycho sexual disorder marked by the compulsive exposure of the genitals in public.
At addiction recovery meetings, it is customary to begin with the admittance to the sin before any discussion can begin: "Hello. I'm John/Jane Doe, and I'm an alcoholic/addict."
Hello. I am The Griot Poet. I am a blogger.
That, of course, is not my real name. However, many who know me know me as "The Griot Poet," literally meaning "A storyteller in western Africa who perpetuates the oral tradition and history of a village or family."
At a deeper level, I'm not too different from a voyeur. I get links sent to my profile possibly because my disclosure of age attracts anyone with curves and a web cam: the game is to get me to "look" for free, then for a fee. I typically block them (though I have looked, then blocked them).
And, why am I so "high and mighty"? Am I not writing in Cyberspace to be "looked" at? Aren't we all trying to be "discovered" and famous? Who wouldn't like to make as much as the top-seed bloggers? Be interviewed on CNN, MSNBC for your pontification and comments? I don't actually have a qualification to my audience that might "look" and show interest, benign or lewd. Did Bathsheba accidentally bath in an open window where David could see her? Was it all his idea? I get the idea (translating it into modern speak), that the lady and the king after cutting gazes at each other engaged in the modern equivalent of "the hook up" and "booty call." It takes two to Tango.
That brings up a related point: The very fact I want someone to "look" makes me an exhibitionist. My genitalia are sentences, phrases, quotes and paragraphs. I, and others are voluntarily giving personal parts of ourselves to the world wide web in what once would have been a private diary. Some of it is insightful, lewd, brilliant, crass, thought-provoking and lately, dangerous.
Some of the comments I see posted, for example, at White House Correspondent's Dinner on You Tube are from other bloggers that obviously DON'T like the president. I see the words "n----r" and "b---h" bandied about and F*CK the president.
Yet, I cannot judge them. They, like me, have a "handle," and are probably our co-workers that we respect their output (if we're still employed, that is).
So, they express their First Amendment rights in a medium the Founders had no concept of. They connect with like-minded individuals and comment anonymously with abandon and freedom. The words are on Facebook and Myspace and Twitter and YouTube. And one obsessive compulsive will read them all and repeat them over and over... like a mantra.
And like the doppelganger antimatter equivalent of Langston's "Dream Deferred..." they explode.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
The First Amendment: Comments
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
See: Who Called Michelle a Gorilla?
The Founders had no concept of the Internet, 24-hour news, emails or Radio Talk Shows (Marconi wasn't born yet).
They also had no concept of 3/5 of a person occupying the Oval Office (women couldn't vote before the Suffrage Movement).
That being said: Letterman's comments were written FOR him and in poor taste. The joke writer should be fired, not Letterman: he's going from a script he's given and teleprompter he works from. He apologized to the governor. Move on.
The email was equally in poor taste. Demographics is working against the Republican Party. They have to retool from the party of religious conservatives - a brand they picked up after the '88 run of Pat Robertson - and white males. This email and their insistent attacks on Sotomayor, without doubt the most qualified to ever approach the nomination to the Supreme Court, will turn off moderates and ethnic minorities, WHICH THEY NEED if they have a chance of getting back into power. They're own pundits advise it, but they're not listening. Ironically, Matthew 5:5 states (in RED): "Blessed [are] the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."
See: Who Called Michelle a Gorilla?
The Founders had no concept of the Internet, 24-hour news, emails or Radio Talk Shows (Marconi wasn't born yet).
They also had no concept of 3/5 of a person occupying the Oval Office (women couldn't vote before the Suffrage Movement).
That being said: Letterman's comments were written FOR him and in poor taste. The joke writer should be fired, not Letterman: he's going from a script he's given and teleprompter he works from. He apologized to the governor. Move on.
The email was equally in poor taste. Demographics is working against the Republican Party. They have to retool from the party of religious conservatives - a brand they picked up after the '88 run of Pat Robertson - and white males. This email and their insistent attacks on Sotomayor, without doubt the most qualified to ever approach the nomination to the Supreme Court, will turn off moderates and ethnic minorities, WHICH THEY NEED if they have a chance of getting back into power. They're own pundits advise it, but they're not listening. Ironically, Matthew 5:5 states (in RED): "Blessed [are] the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Eighty-Eight
© 13 June 2009, The Griot Poet
He is 88… and 8 is in the English alphabet the letter “H.” So to shout his age, Vonn Brunn also gave homage to his muse and dark sage: “Heil, Hitler!”
He coldly mowed down a gentle giant, Stephen T. Johns, whose only real crime was “HWB”: helping while black.
Now the brazen act is celebrated in hypertext transfer protocol on sites reflective of his dark meditations, disavowed by the heralds of T.E.A. parties: what twisted, dark, demented dreams does Vonn Brunn have while in critical condition, the consequence of his sick mission?
“44” is not the Messiah. At 2% of the total population of presidents, he is the pariah of groups that blame their conditions on “the government” or “the other,” failing to read the first words of the Preamble of the Constitution: “We the people” are what they despise! Their conditions are the result of decisions “We the people” make in November and don’t follow-up in December (and beyond)… Elections matter!
And, it matters if your country’s leader has a C average throughout a pampered, academic career or graduates Magna Cum Laude and edits the Harvard Law Review.
It matters if your country’s leader was bailed out throughout his life by “Pappy,” or pulled himself up as the son of a single mother by his own academic bootstraps.
It matters when your wealthy friends play the same games around Memorial Day and summer vacation with the price of gas.
It matters when lay offs and outsourcing makes the middle class last FAST!
It matters when the sheer concentration of wealth never “trickled down” in David Stockton’s wet dream fantasies, but steadily for eight long years TRICKLED UP!
It matters…
It matters…
IT MATTERS!
I pray that as he dreams Vonn Brunn has vivid visions of Paradise and Tartarus (the latter the result of his choice extreme), and that he is not the root of a salvo aiming at low hanging fruit.
I pray that his generation ages, demography and eschatology favors the “meek inheriting the earth,” and like former Hebrew slaves before he possibly lives to see Canaan: his kind and his hate passes away.
He is 88… and 8 is in the English alphabet the letter “H.” So to shout his age, Vonn Brunn also gave homage to his muse and dark sage: “Heil, Hitler!”
He coldly mowed down a gentle giant, Stephen T. Johns, whose only real crime was “HWB”: helping while black.
Now the brazen act is celebrated in hypertext transfer protocol on sites reflective of his dark meditations, disavowed by the heralds of T.E.A. parties: what twisted, dark, demented dreams does Vonn Brunn have while in critical condition, the consequence of his sick mission?
“44” is not the Messiah. At 2% of the total population of presidents, he is the pariah of groups that blame their conditions on “the government” or “the other,” failing to read the first words of the Preamble of the Constitution: “We the people” are what they despise! Their conditions are the result of decisions “We the people” make in November and don’t follow-up in December (and beyond)… Elections matter!
And, it matters if your country’s leader has a C average throughout a pampered, academic career or graduates Magna Cum Laude and edits the Harvard Law Review.
It matters if your country’s leader was bailed out throughout his life by “Pappy,” or pulled himself up as the son of a single mother by his own academic bootstraps.
It matters when your wealthy friends play the same games around Memorial Day and summer vacation with the price of gas.
It matters when lay offs and outsourcing makes the middle class last FAST!
It matters when the sheer concentration of wealth never “trickled down” in David Stockton’s wet dream fantasies, but steadily for eight long years TRICKLED UP!
It matters…
It matters…
IT MATTERS!
I pray that as he dreams Vonn Brunn has vivid visions of Paradise and Tartarus (the latter the result of his choice extreme), and that he is not the root of a salvo aiming at low hanging fruit.
I pray that his generation ages, demography and eschatology favors the “meek inheriting the earth,” and like former Hebrew slaves before he possibly lives to see Canaan: his kind and his hate passes away.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Homegrown Terrorism and Low Hanging Fruit
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
I voted for Obama. I did not wear any buttons, banners, bumper stickers to identify me as an "Obamaite." Yet... my neighbors give me as wide a berth as they do my other white neighbors that PROUDLY displayed their "Obama for America" banner on their front lawns. I guess I am my own banner. If they are Supermen, my family is Kryptonite.
I had neighbors that had Obama banners complain that other neighbors...Palin/McCain supporters - came in to either steal, debase, damage or toss their banners from their yards. And, this is supposed to make us vote Republican?
I remember the accusations of his being a Muslim. The McCain rallies where his supporters announced "off with his head"; "kill him." I'm old enough to remember the deaths of Medgar Evers, John and Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
The spike in hate groups since his inauguration. The question about his birth in the US coming in the thinly-veiled GOP sponsored birthers bill. The "audacity of dopes" that follow the likes of Hannity, O'Reilly and boss Limbaugh, who compared Von Brunn to a leftist, see: Limbaugh blames liberals for Von Brunn.
How practical is it for them to go after Obama, with a contingent of Secret Service dedicated to his survival?
My fear is we are the "low hanging fruit" of the deranged, the nutcases that are threatened by a world that does not favor their right to power engineered from birth throughout the twisted history of this nation, to favor them. Somehow, their sense of self-worth is based squarely on our debasement, that our second (or third class) citizenship is tantamount to their own sense of well-being. The one thing Limbaugh and I can agree on: this mentality is deranged. The one thing we will never agree on is he and his kind feed the knuckle-draggers.
My prayer is that they consistently MISS their targets (us), and eventually, like the first generation of Hebrews freed from Egypt - die out.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Domestic Terrorism
See: Quitting, this blog, © 22 January 2009, The Griot Poet
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
[Badly] Needed to be Said (Again!)
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Originally on this blog:
Monday, November 29, 2004
[Badly] Needed to be Said
© 28 June 2004, The Griot Poet
"I think that most of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue."
VP Cheney, defending his use of vulgarity in remarks to Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy in the Senate chamber.
Fornication
Under
Consent
of the
King... George W. Bush
and his
"Fellowship of the Ring"
of Ali Baba thieves
Conceived a
Project for a
New American Century
That needed
No ties to
Reality or
Democracy
In the hypocrisy
Of FOX-y’s
“Fair and Balanced”
JedI
Mind trick
Declaration of
The latest KKK
Florida
Election
Fix!
We were
Dick-ed as
Harris, Jeb,
Baker-Botts
And Cheney
Fixed some election
Chicanery
Tossing out the
Sons and daughters
Of former slaves
Ballots
That weren’t going
To vote for them
Anyway!
Yet,
These are the
Adults
Who
Promised
“Honor and integrity”
And a return to
Civility
After a
$54 million dollar
Kenn Starr
War
Witch hunt
That took our eyes off
The ball of
Twin tower
Fires planned
By former
Bin Laden
And Saudi family
“Friends”
Closely tied
In oil business
And government
Cabals.
“We the People”
Have no right at all
To read those
Who YOU felt
Needed on
Energy policies
WE pay for!
I deplore
Garrisoned
Governments with
Snipers on the
People’s house
Resembling
Ancient & fallen
Babylon governments
Making death
Covenants
With
Orwellian
Perpetual wars
And bogeyman
Threats.
Yet,
These are the
Adults
Who
Promised
“Honor and integrity”
And a return to
Civility…
I have not
Found the
“F-word”
In the
66 books of
The canonized
Bible.
Yet,
You
Vet vulgarity
Without libel or
Apology,
As my brother and sister
Astrologies
Put star dreams
On hold
Fighting over
Sands of Eden
For an ancient
Resource: OIL!
Yet,
The party that
“Co-opted God”
Won’t apologize
Or recoil
From the obvious
Avoidance
Of Halliburton
Contrivance
In no-bid
Contracts.
Since
“Honor and integrity”
Are locked away
On a dark shelf:
Mr. Cheney -
Why don’t you
Make a plaster cast of
Your
Napoleonic,
Less-than-an-inch long
Insignificant
Male member,
Pull your pants
Down in your
Secret bunker
And joyfully
SCREW yourself!
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Rachel Maddow & Keith Olbermann Shows-Words and Murder
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Monday, June 01, 2009
For Tossed Salads, and Other Human Wastes
© 1 June 2009, The Griot Poet
(Written assisting a middle school class in East Austin)
I
Am
Infuriated at
Seed donors
That for one night’s
Pleasure
Refused to measure beyond
Liters
Or
Years
The
Impact
Of
Their
Actions…
They might as well as put the gun to their son’s heads.
1 in 3
Will spend their
Time in the penitentiary
(Instead of a university),
Becoming a useful
Member to society…
Rather than a menace and dark
Statistic…
1 in 4
Will follow 2 PAC
& Biggie,
Unraveling the mystery if “Heaven’s got a ghetto” (not!).
I want 5 minutes with
The WANNA-be
Gang-banger,
That measures his manhood, by collecting “baby mammas” repeating the desperate, death drama
Making Martin (like Marvin) “WANNA HOLLA, and throw up both his hands…,”
Laying hands on him SWIFTLY,
With the background of intellectually coming out of this kind of hell and a full 30 years of martial arts FURY!
Your baby is still crying, brother!
In a harsh world:
Bloods, CRIPS, Latin Kings, Gangster Disciples, MS 13s…
Bluffing and Bogarting his way through because he doesn’t understand: his model is “missing in action” on HOW to be a man!
(Written assisting a middle school class in East Austin)
I
Am
Infuriated at
Seed donors
That for one night’s
Pleasure
Refused to measure beyond
Liters
Or
Years
The
Impact
Of
Their
Actions…
They might as well as put the gun to their son’s heads.
1 in 3
Will spend their
Time in the penitentiary
(Instead of a university),
Becoming a useful
Member to society…
Rather than a menace and dark
Statistic…
1 in 4
Will follow 2 PAC
& Biggie,
Unraveling the mystery if “Heaven’s got a ghetto” (not!).
I want 5 minutes with
The WANNA-be
Gang-banger,
That measures his manhood, by collecting “baby mammas” repeating the desperate, death drama
Making Martin (like Marvin) “WANNA HOLLA, and throw up both his hands…,”
Laying hands on him SWIFTLY,
With the background of intellectually coming out of this kind of hell and a full 30 years of martial arts FURY!
Your baby is still crying, brother!
In a harsh world:
Bloods, CRIPS, Latin Kings, Gangster Disciples, MS 13s…
Bluffing and Bogarting his way through because he doesn’t understand: his model is “missing in action” on HOW to be a man!
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
We Are The Ones We've Been Waiting For...Remember?
Related_Article
"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.'' 1 Corinthians 13:11
I attended Galilee Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC well within the cultural demarcation point of US Highway 52, a.k.a. ''the hood.''
Every November, like clockwork, we'd get a visit from a local white politician. You can imagine, they weren't hard to miss.
They'd invariably get time at the pulpit, courtesy of our Pastor, Reverend Dr. Warnie C. Hay (deceased). Some of them had mastered ''call and response'' preaching, yes PREACHING and could really whoop! After getting us excited, calling forth Lazarus and every other near-do-wells for the power of resurrection, they would shake hands and leave... until next November. The politicians that mastered this methodology of voter registration were Democrats.
Noting the success enjoyed by their political rivals, Republicans began ''walking the walk'' after Pat Robertson's failed presidential attempt in 1988, noting his vast mail lists (pre Internet) and the power of the right placed ''spoken word.'' Never mind that the things they promised evangelicals never materialized: a ban on gay marriage (unconstitutional); a ban on abortions (would be abrogated to the lower courts if no longer federally supported); conservatism that never conserved anything except the status quo. My premise is that we all have become - Democrats and Republicans - the willing participants of a class war that pits us against one another for the sole purpose of control. As long as we have the attitude of ''us''; ''them'' we never get anything accomplished.
''We Are The Ones We've Been Waiting For''... remember? The $5, $10, $25 here and there we gave to the Obama campaign when we all decided, he might, just MIGHT have a chance. We were right. However, as vastly profound as pundits like to make the Founding Fathers, they had no political parties, Internet, 24 hour news, Talk Radio (Marconi hadn't been born yet) nor K Street Lobbyist to deal with. And yes, like those politicians of my early formative years, Prez can whoop a speech when he wants to!
So he won't forget his promises, don't forget to call your Senators and Congressional Representatives. They take polls of the for and against calls. It's relatively cheaper and just as efficacious as a lobbying firm. ''Be the change you seek in your world.''Gandhi
"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.'' 1 Corinthians 13:11
I attended Galilee Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC well within the cultural demarcation point of US Highway 52, a.k.a. ''the hood.''
Every November, like clockwork, we'd get a visit from a local white politician. You can imagine, they weren't hard to miss.
They'd invariably get time at the pulpit, courtesy of our Pastor, Reverend Dr. Warnie C. Hay (deceased). Some of them had mastered ''call and response'' preaching, yes PREACHING and could really whoop! After getting us excited, calling forth Lazarus and every other near-do-wells for the power of resurrection, they would shake hands and leave... until next November. The politicians that mastered this methodology of voter registration were Democrats.
Noting the success enjoyed by their political rivals, Republicans began ''walking the walk'' after Pat Robertson's failed presidential attempt in 1988, noting his vast mail lists (pre Internet) and the power of the right placed ''spoken word.'' Never mind that the things they promised evangelicals never materialized: a ban on gay marriage (unconstitutional); a ban on abortions (would be abrogated to the lower courts if no longer federally supported); conservatism that never conserved anything except the status quo. My premise is that we all have become - Democrats and Republicans - the willing participants of a class war that pits us against one another for the sole purpose of control. As long as we have the attitude of ''us''; ''them'' we never get anything accomplished.
''We Are The Ones We've Been Waiting For''... remember? The $5, $10, $25 here and there we gave to the Obama campaign when we all decided, he might, just MIGHT have a chance. We were right. However, as vastly profound as pundits like to make the Founding Fathers, they had no political parties, Internet, 24 hour news, Talk Radio (Marconi hadn't been born yet) nor K Street Lobbyist to deal with. And yes, like those politicians of my early formative years, Prez can whoop a speech when he wants to!
So he won't forget his promises, don't forget to call your Senators and Congressional Representatives. They take polls of the for and against calls. It's relatively cheaper and just as efficacious as a lobbying firm. ''Be the change you seek in your world.''Gandhi
Friday, February 27, 2009
A quote by Dickens and thoughts on the joint address to Congress...
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, English novelist (1812 - 1870)
I had two very strong reactions to President Obama's speech to the Joint Session of Congress last night: weeping and cheering.
I teared a little at the beautiful young lady next to First Lady Michele Obama: "We're not quitters." As a nation, we're not quitters, but we have been cowards, meaning we have not as Attorney General Eric Holder stated, acknowledged the impact of our past on our present global competitiveness.
Langston Hughes said in the poem "I Too": "they tell me to 'eat in the kitchen' when company comes. But I laugh and eat well and grow strong. Tomorrow, I will set at table when company comes, no one will dare tell me to 'eat in the kitchen' then."
Company has come. In the Jim Crow, segregated past, our economies were segregated as well. The world wasn't as interconnected as it is now. We are in competition with European and Asian countries that for the most part are homogeneous and had no need for a Civil Rights or Voting Rights movements due to that fact and the structure of their governments. One noted exception would be China's human rights struggles in general and specifically Tienanmen Square.
The president articulated such in his speech last night. We need "everyone at table" to be competitive globally. A failing school in a predominately African American or Hispanic district is a failure for America as a whole. To use a sports metaphor, there are less people to compete on the floor of the global basketball court and the same players are getting outrun and outgunned. When the drop out rates increase in such municipalities, the recidivism of the prison-industrial-complex is not the solution. So, everyone at table means we're going to have to solve the legacy of segregation and "Separate, but (Un) Equal" not only for this nation to be competitive, produce and sell, but to survive.
I cheered when President Obama stated we're going to stop giving tax breaks to companies that outsource American jobs. I have an Engineering Physics Bachelors from North Carolina A&T State University. I am a US Air Force veteran. I worked in the semiconductor industry in Process, Device, Manufacturing. Yield Enhancement and Product Engineering for 15 years. I was laid off August 26, 2003, my wife May 31, 2001. Our income has never recovered from our highest earnings at that point in time.
I now run into a lot of engineers and tech types that can't find employment. They may hear as I have that I'm "overqualified based on my years of experience." Technically, that's not saying I'm old, but the result of the twisted flattery is I'm currently underemployed as a commission-only sales rep and drawing on unemployment benefits. That's not the best usage of mine nor my fellow comrade's considerable talents.
I can be and a lot of others can be better utilized employed in this country, paying taxes and buying STUFF! This economy has slowed to a crawl because a lot of people like me - tech, HR and management types - have to do the delicate balancing act between dwindling assets, gearing up to pay for college and keeping a roof over the heads of our families. I honestly don't care how much cheaper you made it overseas: I eat and live over here!
I wrote an open letter on another blog regarding this to the previous administration. It's also published in the book: "Unemployed: A Memoir." I end this essay with the link to it. I doubt President Bush nor Congress read it. My hope is that it makes us all think about what we're creating for our grandchildren:
Chapter 19: Open Letter
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, English novelist (1812 - 1870)
I had two very strong reactions to President Obama's speech to the Joint Session of Congress last night: weeping and cheering.
I teared a little at the beautiful young lady next to First Lady Michele Obama: "We're not quitters." As a nation, we're not quitters, but we have been cowards, meaning we have not as Attorney General Eric Holder stated, acknowledged the impact of our past on our present global competitiveness.
Langston Hughes said in the poem "I Too": "they tell me to 'eat in the kitchen' when company comes. But I laugh and eat well and grow strong. Tomorrow, I will set at table when company comes, no one will dare tell me to 'eat in the kitchen' then."
Company has come. In the Jim Crow, segregated past, our economies were segregated as well. The world wasn't as interconnected as it is now. We are in competition with European and Asian countries that for the most part are homogeneous and had no need for a Civil Rights or Voting Rights movements due to that fact and the structure of their governments. One noted exception would be China's human rights struggles in general and specifically Tienanmen Square.
The president articulated such in his speech last night. We need "everyone at table" to be competitive globally. A failing school in a predominately African American or Hispanic district is a failure for America as a whole. To use a sports metaphor, there are less people to compete on the floor of the global basketball court and the same players are getting outrun and outgunned. When the drop out rates increase in such municipalities, the recidivism of the prison-industrial-complex is not the solution. So, everyone at table means we're going to have to solve the legacy of segregation and "Separate, but (Un) Equal" not only for this nation to be competitive, produce and sell, but to survive.
I cheered when President Obama stated we're going to stop giving tax breaks to companies that outsource American jobs. I have an Engineering Physics Bachelors from North Carolina A&T State University. I am a US Air Force veteran. I worked in the semiconductor industry in Process, Device, Manufacturing. Yield Enhancement and Product Engineering for 15 years. I was laid off August 26, 2003, my wife May 31, 2001. Our income has never recovered from our highest earnings at that point in time.
I now run into a lot of engineers and tech types that can't find employment. They may hear as I have that I'm "overqualified based on my years of experience." Technically, that's not saying I'm old, but the result of the twisted flattery is I'm currently underemployed as a commission-only sales rep and drawing on unemployment benefits. That's not the best usage of mine nor my fellow comrade's considerable talents.
I can be and a lot of others can be better utilized employed in this country, paying taxes and buying STUFF! This economy has slowed to a crawl because a lot of people like me - tech, HR and management types - have to do the delicate balancing act between dwindling assets, gearing up to pay for college and keeping a roof over the heads of our families. I honestly don't care how much cheaper you made it overseas: I eat and live over here!
I wrote an open letter on another blog regarding this to the previous administration. It's also published in the book: "Unemployed: A Memoir." I end this essay with the link to it. I doubt President Bush nor Congress read it. My hope is that it makes us all think about what we're creating for our grandchildren:
Chapter 19: Open Letter
Monday, February 02, 2009
Self-Portrait
Langston Hughes said: “I, too sing America.
I am the darker brother.”
I am the one
Burning under the hot sun
You derisively nicknamed
“Buffalo soldier”
Because of my Afro?
I am also the Cherokee:
Befriending the runaway,
Giving my daughter to him in marriage,
Joining him to my tribe,
Creating the Seminole.
I am the Irish overseer:
Bursting into the slave quarters,
Raping my own great-great grandmother,
Siring Julius Goodwin and a host more mulatto children.
I am the offspring of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming:
Some of us destined for the last class,
Others hair so straight; skin so bright to crossover as white
So, when you call me “n----r”
You obviously
Can’t see
You vituperate
A pureed pedigree
As everyone has had
Their piece of African me!
As would be the case
Someone related to Egyptian race
Would decipher the hieroglyph
“America”
Into three distinct words:
“I am race?”
Check your attitude!
For pride in
My negritude
Allows me to enlighten your case
As you point your
Jeering finger
At me through space,
You will inevitably
Pimp-slap your own damn face!
Without me, though you wouldn’t hear it
Would you have the hairstyle “The Bo Derek?”
Would dreadlocks, locks and fades have left the east side venturing to the west side?
And hip hop become hip POP?
Forced here in chains and cargo crates,
It was you who gave me great chase
Bring me to this place
That by GOD’S
Grace
The cane came together
Where Ezekiel’s dry bones
Dotted the landscape:
“Son of man: can these bones live? O Lord GOD, thou knowest! *”
I am the darker brother:
I am the Mende; the Ashanti; the Yoruba; the Igbo.
I am the Seminole; the Cherokee; the Choktaw; the Sioux;
I am the Irish; the Italian; the German; the Arab; the Jew.
I am the melting pot: I am all of you!
As Langston Hughes said,
I say again to you:
“I, too sing America.
I too am America.”
I, too!
* Ezekiel 37:3
Friday, January 23, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Quitting
© 22 January 2009, The Griot Poet
Unfortunately: there are some really sick people. That can look at the First Family – Barack, Michele, and our little angels Malia and Sasha – that look more like the Huxtables than the Sanford’s or burnt cork face Step-in-Fetch stereotype fantasies and pronounce the head: Antichrist.
From pulpits and talk radio shows over airwaves and the Internet… yet, I didn’t hear these self-righteous ingrates berate: Enron, World-Comm., Tyco, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Wall Street, AIG and Bank bailouts!
While modern-day Robber Barons and fat cats made out like greedy fat rats and fleeced the economy negatively affecting both Republicans and Democrats!
Idolatry is a dementia that ascribes non-human status so that threats to the life of the current Commander-in-Chief INCREASE after a landslide election and an economic recession caused by the Junta cabal that preceded his administration whose only current sin is an inclination towards the promise of CHANGE.
The slew-footed, knuckle-dragging, un-evolved, deranged Cro-Magnon cavemen that listen to Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Sean Hannity (minus Combs), like their every twisted, politically-poled-to-manipulate-the-base word came from Mt. Sinai on holy tablet writ!
I QUIT trying to make sense of people whose twisted self-esteem is based on my Step-in-Fetch debasement.
Speaking of Holy Writ: The Scriptures says Antichrist appears after the rapture of the church from the earth, so my question to all those esteemed, evangelical, political biblical scholars: “Why are YOU still here?”
Unfortunately: there are some really sick people. That can look at the First Family – Barack, Michele, and our little angels Malia and Sasha – that look more like the Huxtables than the Sanford’s or burnt cork face Step-in-Fetch stereotype fantasies and pronounce the head: Antichrist.
From pulpits and talk radio shows over airwaves and the Internet… yet, I didn’t hear these self-righteous ingrates berate: Enron, World-Comm., Tyco, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Wall Street, AIG and Bank bailouts!
While modern-day Robber Barons and fat cats made out like greedy fat rats and fleeced the economy negatively affecting both Republicans and Democrats!
Idolatry is a dementia that ascribes non-human status so that threats to the life of the current Commander-in-Chief INCREASE after a landslide election and an economic recession caused by the Junta cabal that preceded his administration whose only current sin is an inclination towards the promise of CHANGE.
The slew-footed, knuckle-dragging, un-evolved, deranged Cro-Magnon cavemen that listen to Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Sean Hannity (minus Combs), like their every twisted, politically-poled-to-manipulate-the-base word came from Mt. Sinai on holy tablet writ!
I QUIT trying to make sense of people whose twisted self-esteem is based on my Step-in-Fetch debasement.
Speaking of Holy Writ: The Scriptures says Antichrist appears after the rapture of the church from the earth, so my question to all those esteemed, evangelical, political biblical scholars: “Why are YOU still here?”
Monday, January 19, 2009
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Thursday, November 06, 2008
After Jericho
(c) 6 November 2008, The Griot Poet
The significance of the election of the first African American president holds meaning in the biblical story of Moses and his protégée Joshua.
Moses could not go into the Promised Land but was allowed to see it from a mountaintop. The nation of Israel, freshly freed from Egyptian slavery, still had a “slave’s mentality.” They esteemed themselves “as grasshoppers” in the sight of their adversaries as ten out of twelve spies reported. The minority – Caleb and Joshua – said for all intents and purposes: “Forget that! We can take them!”
The new nation’s lack of faith gained them the chastisement of wandering the wilderness for 40 years until Joshua and a new generation walked through a parted Jordan in similar fashion to parting the Red Sea into the Promised Land. The land “flowing with milk and honey” was rich in resources that needed workers to harness them, and had many battles – starting with Jericho – to maintain their claim to it. The new, younger nation had to WORK for their reward.
A wall has fallen, just as significant as the Jericho wall that a new nation marched around in silence for seven days, increasing their circuit proportionately matching each day’s number, shouting on the seventh and fighting to claim their prize.
I was five-years-old and a month from graduating Bethlehem Community Center, a still mostly all-black kindergarten in Winston-Salem, North Carolina when Martin – our Moses – ended his address to the Sanitation Worker’s Union in Tennessee with “I’ve been to the mountain top.” History reports he afterward collapsed in the arms of his aids, exhausted and depressed due to death threats and self-inflicted stress from his extramarital affairs. Tearfully, my class would learn from our teachers our Moses prophesied his own demise to the coincidental annual date of his opposition to the Vietnam War.
It has been forty years since Martin, and Obama is inaugurated the day after we celebrate Martin Luther King Day. Joshua. Obama as our first man of color as Chief Executive represents a mere 2.3%: 1/44 presidents in the office.
We are the remnant that has wandered the wilderness after forty years of measured progress in Civil Rights post Emmitt Till: separate water fountains and schools, forced integration, prison recidivism, black exploitation films, de facto re-segregation, the Rodney King Riots, O.J. Simpson, James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, questionable police killings, Oscar snubs, negative images in the media and seeing others progress their own agendas – women, immigrants, Hispanics, Gays and Lesbians – using the same tactics birthed in the basements of black churches. Now they with us are a coalition along with seventeen percent Republican voters that supported the candidacy of Obama and are the first evidence that maybe, we as a nation have “grown up” a little from our ignorant past.
However, Google “anti-Obama sites” and see what you pick up. The right-wing is in a dual quandary of an identity crisis and the open sores of a significant political loss. No less than Newt Gingrich is poised to oppose any Obama policy that is even center-right. As I see it: the identity crisis Republicans suffer are from the confusing mix of (1) traditional fiscal conservatism (a stance I think they should return to), (2) evangelicalism and its aversion to science, (3) neo-liberalism and its devotion to laissez-faire “trickle-down” Stockton, Chicago Friedman style economics and (4) neo-conservatism and its now defunct “Project for a New American Century” which staffed much of Bush 43’s foreign policy philosophy in the quest to expand the American Empire in a post-modern version of the Pax Romana (Peace of Rome) to a Pax Americana by force of arms.
So, it’s up to us.
As Maya Angelo stated poetically, we are truly on this new “Pulse of Morning,” the black, the white, the straight, the gay, young and old, men and women that supported this historic election can’t just shrink away and think Obama can govern by himself. He can no more do that than raise record sums in campaign contributions by himself.
Walls fall after a might shout. Victories are won after effort, struggle and a fight. You’ll still need to be engaged after the glow of the election is over. Email President Obama from www.whitehouse.gov after January 20, 2009; call your local Congressional Representatives and Senators.
Stay engaged: pray for Obama. We have a history of martyrs and a culture of violence that must change. Politics in the age of the Internet is no longer a bench-warmer sport; you can’t just vote and hope everything works out OK. Blog and email; chat and post; write poetry and essays. Your ideas are viral contagion, as has been observed and can be spread and shared by all of us benefiting all of us.
The old model observed by Noam Chomsky – Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at M.I.T. – was defined as “the bewildered herd” reacting to sloganeering, mantra, rumor and dogma versus making informed decisions as an electorate. This, of course, benefited business interests that controlled the electoral process with their well-heeled dollar donations to the campaigns. YOU shattered that. This was without a doubt, the most informed decision as an electorate we’ve made for our future. We survived the specter of Jeremiah Wright and charges of socialism, communism and “Joe the Plumber.” That herd was expected to respond like Pavlov’s dogs, then “fade away” after the election and let the business chosen elites govern them. You are not helpless anymore and President Elect Obama needs our help. The economy is in a shambles, the jobless number is bound to be terrible tomorrow and since two-thirds of our economy is dependant on consumerism, it’s unfortunately going to get worse before it starts to get better.
Your mission is simple: make President Obama not only a barrier breaker, but he and Vice President Joe Biden the most successful administration in the history of this nation that proved on November 4, 2008 that we are as good as our promise to all peoples; “We the people.”
The significance of the election of the first African American president holds meaning in the biblical story of Moses and his protégée Joshua.
Moses could not go into the Promised Land but was allowed to see it from a mountaintop. The nation of Israel, freshly freed from Egyptian slavery, still had a “slave’s mentality.” They esteemed themselves “as grasshoppers” in the sight of their adversaries as ten out of twelve spies reported. The minority – Caleb and Joshua – said for all intents and purposes: “Forget that! We can take them!”
The new nation’s lack of faith gained them the chastisement of wandering the wilderness for 40 years until Joshua and a new generation walked through a parted Jordan in similar fashion to parting the Red Sea into the Promised Land. The land “flowing with milk and honey” was rich in resources that needed workers to harness them, and had many battles – starting with Jericho – to maintain their claim to it. The new, younger nation had to WORK for their reward.
A wall has fallen, just as significant as the Jericho wall that a new nation marched around in silence for seven days, increasing their circuit proportionately matching each day’s number, shouting on the seventh and fighting to claim their prize.
I was five-years-old and a month from graduating Bethlehem Community Center, a still mostly all-black kindergarten in Winston-Salem, North Carolina when Martin – our Moses – ended his address to the Sanitation Worker’s Union in Tennessee with “I’ve been to the mountain top.” History reports he afterward collapsed in the arms of his aids, exhausted and depressed due to death threats and self-inflicted stress from his extramarital affairs. Tearfully, my class would learn from our teachers our Moses prophesied his own demise to the coincidental annual date of his opposition to the Vietnam War.
It has been forty years since Martin, and Obama is inaugurated the day after we celebrate Martin Luther King Day. Joshua. Obama as our first man of color as Chief Executive represents a mere 2.3%: 1/44 presidents in the office.
We are the remnant that has wandered the wilderness after forty years of measured progress in Civil Rights post Emmitt Till: separate water fountains and schools, forced integration, prison recidivism, black exploitation films, de facto re-segregation, the Rodney King Riots, O.J. Simpson, James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, questionable police killings, Oscar snubs, negative images in the media and seeing others progress their own agendas – women, immigrants, Hispanics, Gays and Lesbians – using the same tactics birthed in the basements of black churches. Now they with us are a coalition along with seventeen percent Republican voters that supported the candidacy of Obama and are the first evidence that maybe, we as a nation have “grown up” a little from our ignorant past.
However, Google “anti-Obama sites” and see what you pick up. The right-wing is in a dual quandary of an identity crisis and the open sores of a significant political loss. No less than Newt Gingrich is poised to oppose any Obama policy that is even center-right. As I see it: the identity crisis Republicans suffer are from the confusing mix of (1) traditional fiscal conservatism (a stance I think they should return to), (2) evangelicalism and its aversion to science, (3) neo-liberalism and its devotion to laissez-faire “trickle-down” Stockton, Chicago Friedman style economics and (4) neo-conservatism and its now defunct “Project for a New American Century” which staffed much of Bush 43’s foreign policy philosophy in the quest to expand the American Empire in a post-modern version of the Pax Romana (Peace of Rome) to a Pax Americana by force of arms.
So, it’s up to us.
As Maya Angelo stated poetically, we are truly on this new “Pulse of Morning,” the black, the white, the straight, the gay, young and old, men and women that supported this historic election can’t just shrink away and think Obama can govern by himself. He can no more do that than raise record sums in campaign contributions by himself.
Walls fall after a might shout. Victories are won after effort, struggle and a fight. You’ll still need to be engaged after the glow of the election is over. Email President Obama from www.whitehouse.gov after January 20, 2009; call your local Congressional Representatives and Senators.
Stay engaged: pray for Obama. We have a history of martyrs and a culture of violence that must change. Politics in the age of the Internet is no longer a bench-warmer sport; you can’t just vote and hope everything works out OK. Blog and email; chat and post; write poetry and essays. Your ideas are viral contagion, as has been observed and can be spread and shared by all of us benefiting all of us.
The old model observed by Noam Chomsky – Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at M.I.T. – was defined as “the bewildered herd” reacting to sloganeering, mantra, rumor and dogma versus making informed decisions as an electorate. This, of course, benefited business interests that controlled the electoral process with their well-heeled dollar donations to the campaigns. YOU shattered that. This was without a doubt, the most informed decision as an electorate we’ve made for our future. We survived the specter of Jeremiah Wright and charges of socialism, communism and “Joe the Plumber.” That herd was expected to respond like Pavlov’s dogs, then “fade away” after the election and let the business chosen elites govern them. You are not helpless anymore and President Elect Obama needs our help. The economy is in a shambles, the jobless number is bound to be terrible tomorrow and since two-thirds of our economy is dependant on consumerism, it’s unfortunately going to get worse before it starts to get better.
Your mission is simple: make President Obama not only a barrier breaker, but he and Vice President Joe Biden the most successful administration in the history of this nation that proved on November 4, 2008 that we are as good as our promise to all peoples; “We the people.”
Monday, November 03, 2008
Tomorrow
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
”To the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools
the way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
”Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Tomorrow.
Not just tomorrow: November 5th.
I explained to a friend: Martin for all intents and purposes became "Moses" with his "I've been to the mountaintop" sermon. Prophetically uttered the day before his assassination.
In "April 4, 1968" by Michael Eric Dyson, Martin was said to be suffering from depression. Possibly preaching lifted his spirits a bit, but the constant death threats and juggling what was by history's reckoning a very recreational extra marital sex life, he was approaching a nervous breakdown.
40 years.
We've likened ourselves to the ancient Hebrews in so many ways: about 12 million Jews in the entire world today; we're about 12 percent of the US population. They were enslaved in Egypt 400 years; we were enslaved in a new Egypt 400 years. God sent Moses; we assume He sent Martin. Joshua and Caleb took the remnant into the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
40 years ago I was five years old. Mrs. Wooten and the teachers sat our kindergarten class down and explained "Dr. King was killed."
I learned later, coincidentally it was one year to-the-date he spoke out against the Vietnam war. I knew that this significant personality would not be around to see my formative academic years: we all cried at the news, and graduated the next month in May. We all started the fall in a world without our saints: Medgar, Malcolm and Martin.
Forty years: Blacksploitation movies, Vietnam protests, all-volunteer force, recession, Reagan, "trickle-down" economics, the Republican Revolution, 45% of the prison-industrial-complex, recidivism, lack of self-help, still lacking education, not taking care of the babies we make, blamed for welfare while giving corporate welfare, the usual suspect for rape, murder, theft, frisked in King's Department store at 14 ("shut up, boy! I know niggra's steal"), a reprieve from the Bill Cosby show, booty-call-I'm-gonna-get-you-sucka-blacksploitation-movies (again), a few Oscars from liberal Hollywood, a brief solace under the Clinton years, "Oruborous [the world eater] unfettered" as every crazy Friedman/Stockton/trickle-down theory got its day under DUBYA.
400 years. 40 years. 8 years in purgatory. Moses. Martin. Joshua. Obama.
We have this reverential fear of "tomorrow." What will it mean on November 5th?
”To the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools
the way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
”Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Tomorrow.
Not just tomorrow: November 5th.
I explained to a friend: Martin for all intents and purposes became "Moses" with his "I've been to the mountaintop" sermon. Prophetically uttered the day before his assassination.
In "April 4, 1968" by Michael Eric Dyson, Martin was said to be suffering from depression. Possibly preaching lifted his spirits a bit, but the constant death threats and juggling what was by history's reckoning a very recreational extra marital sex life, he was approaching a nervous breakdown.
40 years.
We've likened ourselves to the ancient Hebrews in so many ways: about 12 million Jews in the entire world today; we're about 12 percent of the US population. They were enslaved in Egypt 400 years; we were enslaved in a new Egypt 400 years. God sent Moses; we assume He sent Martin. Joshua and Caleb took the remnant into the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
40 years ago I was five years old. Mrs. Wooten and the teachers sat our kindergarten class down and explained "Dr. King was killed."
I learned later, coincidentally it was one year to-the-date he spoke out against the Vietnam war. I knew that this significant personality would not be around to see my formative academic years: we all cried at the news, and graduated the next month in May. We all started the fall in a world without our saints: Medgar, Malcolm and Martin.
Forty years: Blacksploitation movies, Vietnam protests, all-volunteer force, recession, Reagan, "trickle-down" economics, the Republican Revolution, 45% of the prison-industrial-complex, recidivism, lack of self-help, still lacking education, not taking care of the babies we make, blamed for welfare while giving corporate welfare, the usual suspect for rape, murder, theft, frisked in King's Department store at 14 ("shut up, boy! I know niggra's steal"), a reprieve from the Bill Cosby show, booty-call-I'm-gonna-get-you-sucka-blacksploitation-movies (again), a few Oscars from liberal Hollywood, a brief solace under the Clinton years, "Oruborous [the world eater] unfettered" as every crazy Friedman/Stockton/trickle-down theory got its day under DUBYA.
400 years. 40 years. 8 years in purgatory. Moses. Martin. Joshua. Obama.
We have this reverential fear of "tomorrow." What will it mean on November 5th?
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Rain
© 29 October 2008, The Griot Poet
Rain touches my face
after 40 years of wandering the Wilderness of Sin – lynch ropes to frighten us from education, beatings for votes, bombing churches and buses, police batons, German Shepherds, pressure hoses, poll taxes and marching – round and round Mount Sinai,
outside the Promised Land promised by
Moses
who had "been to the mountaintop"
and prophesied
his own demise
but that you and I
Vickie
would see
this Promised Land.
But, we were "as grasshoppers" in our own sight
and we assumed, those of our adversaries,
those that would use devils devices
and apothecary
to defame
a new Joshua
that would refrain
a hope that the slaves
of previous generations
could not conceive
because their yoke
could only be thrown off
by a "renewal of their minds"
for in the economy of God
what is unseen is more real
than Wall Street
Main Street
is under His sovereignty and
CEOs
His feet.
Your husband and your children
rise up and call you blessed,
and you are the wife
dressed in white
of Leon's youth.
What the world will see
is what you have taught
the fruit of your womb
that when they are old
"they will not depart from it"
for we/they are this new
generation
that finally emerges
from this Wilderness of Sin
into a future
of
HOPE.
For Mrs. Vickie Nowlin’s birthday, NC A & T Alumni, English Major, Principal, and friend (I was best man in their wedding)...
James 5:7 "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain."
Rain touches my face
after 40 years of wandering the Wilderness of Sin – lynch ropes to frighten us from education, beatings for votes, bombing churches and buses, police batons, German Shepherds, pressure hoses, poll taxes and marching – round and round Mount Sinai,
outside the Promised Land promised by
Moses
who had "been to the mountaintop"
and prophesied
his own demise
but that you and I
Vickie
would see
this Promised Land.
But, we were "as grasshoppers" in our own sight
and we assumed, those of our adversaries,
those that would use devils devices
and apothecary
to defame
a new Joshua
that would refrain
a hope that the slaves
of previous generations
could not conceive
because their yoke
could only be thrown off
by a "renewal of their minds"
for in the economy of God
what is unseen is more real
than Wall Street
Main Street
is under His sovereignty and
CEOs
His feet.
Your husband and your children
rise up and call you blessed,
and you are the wife
dressed in white
of Leon's youth.
What the world will see
is what you have taught
the fruit of your womb
that when they are old
"they will not depart from it"
for we/they are this new
generation
that finally emerges
from this Wilderness of Sin
into a future
of
HOPE.
For Mrs. Vickie Nowlin’s birthday, NC A & T Alumni, English Major, Principal, and friend (I was best man in their wedding)...
James 5:7 "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain."
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Enough!
© 25 October 2008, The Griot Poet
First: he’s accused of being a “closet Muslim” (no one asked my NOI cousin),
Then: a pedophile (for a while).
They’ve run the gambit: eight-years-old when Ayers was so rudely bold and “pals around with terrorists,”
Explaining his heart to “spread the wealth” to “Joe the plumber”: Aha! He’s a socialist!
Even though the Berlin Wall (like Jericho’s) did fall: he’s now a communist!
They haven’t tried Satanist (yet), though after previously being labeled “the antichrist” on right-wing blogs, I think technically that would be a demotion!
A former, noted military man and statesman’s devotion to his party turned on its head as he endorses without fear or dread: “one with style and substance,” “a transformative figure,” “steadiness” with “intellectual curiosity”
According to Rush, though the general wrestled for months before his decision, obviously racially motivated (And…: Scott McClellan’s endorsement?).
We have experienced eight long years of an “Oedipus complex” run amuck. Ross Perot’s “sucking sound” now NAFTA plus 10 billion bucks a month to a war that shouldn’t have been, nearly 5,000 lives and 500,000 mortgages owned by the bailed-out banks (still failing), potentially replaced by another who’s grandfather and father finished their naval careers at flag ranks above his Captain.
He MUST one-up them and insight the nightmare of President George Washington’s “warring factions” invoking the worst in us, skewing unity beneath the Orwellian sign: “Country First.”
This is a referendum on 25 plus years of Friedman/Stockton “trickle down” schlock economics, divisive politics birthed from “the great communicator”: “welfare queens,” “Willie Horton,” “the ’92 LA riots,” “the lesser of two evils,” “right-to-life,” “PNAC Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” “tax cuts for the wealthy,” “swift boating,” “lipstick politics,” “ROBO calls from Giuliani,” “Unpatriotic,” “Traitor,” “terrorist…” ENOUGH!
I invoke Langston Hughes as I say to you all:
We too, are America! VOTE!
First: he’s accused of being a “closet Muslim” (no one asked my NOI cousin),
Then: a pedophile (for a while).
They’ve run the gambit: eight-years-old when Ayers was so rudely bold and “pals around with terrorists,”
Explaining his heart to “spread the wealth” to “Joe the plumber”: Aha! He’s a socialist!
Even though the Berlin Wall (like Jericho’s) did fall: he’s now a communist!
They haven’t tried Satanist (yet), though after previously being labeled “the antichrist” on right-wing blogs, I think technically that would be a demotion!
A former, noted military man and statesman’s devotion to his party turned on its head as he endorses without fear or dread: “one with style and substance,” “a transformative figure,” “steadiness” with “intellectual curiosity”
According to Rush, though the general wrestled for months before his decision, obviously racially motivated (And…: Scott McClellan’s endorsement?).
We have experienced eight long years of an “Oedipus complex” run amuck. Ross Perot’s “sucking sound” now NAFTA plus 10 billion bucks a month to a war that shouldn’t have been, nearly 5,000 lives and 500,000 mortgages owned by the bailed-out banks (still failing), potentially replaced by another who’s grandfather and father finished their naval careers at flag ranks above his Captain.
He MUST one-up them and insight the nightmare of President George Washington’s “warring factions” invoking the worst in us, skewing unity beneath the Orwellian sign: “Country First.”
This is a referendum on 25 plus years of Friedman/Stockton “trickle down” schlock economics, divisive politics birthed from “the great communicator”: “welfare queens,” “Willie Horton,” “the ’92 LA riots,” “the lesser of two evils,” “right-to-life,” “PNAC Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” “tax cuts for the wealthy,” “swift boating,” “lipstick politics,” “ROBO calls from Giuliani,” “Unpatriotic,” “Traitor,” “terrorist…” ENOUGH!
I invoke Langston Hughes as I say to you all:
We too, are America! VOTE!
Friday, October 24, 2008
Epiphany
http://blackmenformccain.com/2008/10/18/barack-obama-for-president/#comment-747
Stephen King in "On Writing" often referred to writing, or the process of writing as I believe "excavation"; "sculpting."
Ray Bradburry in an interview on the 50th anniversary of "Fahreinheit 451" noted a lot of his stories "wrote him," and that he relied on his "secret voice" to make sense of the worlds he created.
There is a boldness in penmanship that you otherwise would find yourself tongue-tied to express. In politics, that makes you "unsure," 'unsteady," "not ready." In academia, you may just be thinking of a reply.
I do not know this writer at all. He is/was a black republican. I respected his views as I read them even if in many cases I did not nor could I not agree.
He (the writer), like a lot of pundits and republicans, struggled mightiliy to excavate the "2000 maverick McCain" from now distant memory. Once labeling the religious right as "agents of intolerance," McCain embraced them at Jerry Farwell's Lincoln University. Once saying he "fought for the stars and stipes, not the stars and bars," McCain allows the vilest vitriol to emanate from his supporters: "terrorist, kill him, socialist, communist," evidence of a campaign that like the man at the helm of the ship has clearly lost control of the rudder that should guide it. A cool iceberg, unrelenting is in front of him off the bow of the sinking ship. He need not hit the behemoth: his Titanic is sinking.
The writer knows this, and I sympathize with him because of the mention of the pending death of his father. Mortality has a way of taking the sureity out of your lifespace, the inevitable memory of the last conversation you had with your loved one before their demise, the helplessness of staring at a coffin when the essence of themselves - their laughter, their warmth, their smile, their hugs and their tears - no longer exists in this realm. Reviewing the tape over again in your mind: "this person used to be alive, and I loved them." It births anger and raises doubts.
What is poignant is the evolution of his whole person: political, emotional and yes spiritual.
Like Bradbury, this blog "wrote the writer." One of the reasons I [personally] voted for Obama was frankly how well he wrote in "Dreams from My Father." I feel if you can write, you can think, therefore reason and then apply critical thinking skills to a myriad of situations. The political and sadly, the American education system "soundbites" this process into meaningless "gotcha" momemts.
I also voted on a cool Monday morning at 7:10 AM in Cedar Park, Texas because http://outsourcedamerican.blogspot.com is more than my story now. It's no longer just me and doubts about whether I "played the game" or "pleased the right people." No. The system is broken, and someone needs to fix it.
Writing is almost a lie detector test even in fiction: the worlds you create must have rules, "make sense" in those rules and follow them to the end. In nonfiction, you try to be narrative and honest and trust where the story leads. The writer swung wildly from blind support, to doubt about Sarah Palin, to applauding her speech at the RNC, to doubt again and to switching his support.
He has excavated the corridors of his mind and found more questions than answers. The whole blog, good points and not-so-good, irreverant, reflective and sometimes funny, is a scuplted masterpiece. Don't just read the most recent post: take time to paruse them all.
Stephen King in "On Writing" often referred to writing, or the process of writing as I believe "excavation"; "sculpting."
Ray Bradburry in an interview on the 50th anniversary of "Fahreinheit 451" noted a lot of his stories "wrote him," and that he relied on his "secret voice" to make sense of the worlds he created.
There is a boldness in penmanship that you otherwise would find yourself tongue-tied to express. In politics, that makes you "unsure," 'unsteady," "not ready." In academia, you may just be thinking of a reply.
I do not know this writer at all. He is/was a black republican. I respected his views as I read them even if in many cases I did not nor could I not agree.
He (the writer), like a lot of pundits and republicans, struggled mightiliy to excavate the "2000 maverick McCain" from now distant memory. Once labeling the religious right as "agents of intolerance," McCain embraced them at Jerry Farwell's Lincoln University. Once saying he "fought for the stars and stipes, not the stars and bars," McCain allows the vilest vitriol to emanate from his supporters: "terrorist, kill him, socialist, communist," evidence of a campaign that like the man at the helm of the ship has clearly lost control of the rudder that should guide it. A cool iceberg, unrelenting is in front of him off the bow of the sinking ship. He need not hit the behemoth: his Titanic is sinking.
The writer knows this, and I sympathize with him because of the mention of the pending death of his father. Mortality has a way of taking the sureity out of your lifespace, the inevitable memory of the last conversation you had with your loved one before their demise, the helplessness of staring at a coffin when the essence of themselves - their laughter, their warmth, their smile, their hugs and their tears - no longer exists in this realm. Reviewing the tape over again in your mind: "this person used to be alive, and I loved them." It births anger and raises doubts.
What is poignant is the evolution of his whole person: political, emotional and yes spiritual.
Like Bradbury, this blog "wrote the writer." One of the reasons I [personally] voted for Obama was frankly how well he wrote in "Dreams from My Father." I feel if you can write, you can think, therefore reason and then apply critical thinking skills to a myriad of situations. The political and sadly, the American education system "soundbites" this process into meaningless "gotcha" momemts.
I also voted on a cool Monday morning at 7:10 AM in Cedar Park, Texas because http://outsourcedamerican.blogspot.com is more than my story now. It's no longer just me and doubts about whether I "played the game" or "pleased the right people." No. The system is broken, and someone needs to fix it.
Writing is almost a lie detector test even in fiction: the worlds you create must have rules, "make sense" in those rules and follow them to the end. In nonfiction, you try to be narrative and honest and trust where the story leads. The writer swung wildly from blind support, to doubt about Sarah Palin, to applauding her speech at the RNC, to doubt again and to switching his support.
He has excavated the corridors of his mind and found more questions than answers. The whole blog, good points and not-so-good, irreverant, reflective and sometimes funny, is a scuplted masterpiece. Don't just read the most recent post: take time to paruse them all.
Friday, October 03, 2008
One-Fifty
© 3 October 2008, the Griot Poet
What was socialism on Monday became capitalism on Friday.
What we needed was some pork barrel spending to sweeten the stinking pot of gruel:
- A provision repealing a 39-cent excise tax on wooden arrows designed for children.
- subsidize renovations of restaurant franchises
- cut import duties on wool and wood
- Virgin Island and Puerto Rican Rum (Section 308)
- American Samoa (Sec. 309)
- Mine Rescue Teams (Sec. 310)
- Mine Safety Equipment (Sec. 311)
- Domestic Production Activities in Puerto Rico (Sec. 312)
- Indian Tribes (Sec. 314, 315)
- Railroads (Sec. 316)
- Auto Racing Tracks that will save Nascar track builders $109 million this year(317)
- District of Columbia (Sec. 322)
- Wool Research (Sec. 325)
- A research tax credit worth about $8.3 billion PER year for:
- Microsoft Corporation
- Harley-Davidson Inc.
- and subsidies for the overseas financial services earnings of U.S.-based multinational corporations such as General Electric Co. and Citigroup Inc.
also known as: the same old offshore SHELL game!
Do they take us for fools?
Hank Paulson originated this while chairman in thief of Goldman Sacks.
And, he's ransacked
the futures of our great-grandchildren knowing full well this will only delay the inevitable:
recession.
"Dick" is currently at an undisclosed location adding up how he's set up
the economy to fund his retirement.
Check Bush and Cheney's exchequer after "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" ride off into the sunset.
What was socialism on Monday became capitalism on Friday
with bipartisan support from both parties
as they flipped-the-script
and made this
150 BILLION dollars
MORE of our tax dollars spent!
And yet: I can't forget the prophetic utterance one of the Founding Father's advised:
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."
What was socialism on Monday became capitalism on Friday.
What we needed was some pork barrel spending to sweeten the stinking pot of gruel:
- A provision repealing a 39-cent excise tax on wooden arrows designed for children.
- subsidize renovations of restaurant franchises
- cut import duties on wool and wood
- Virgin Island and Puerto Rican Rum (Section 308)
- American Samoa (Sec. 309)
- Mine Rescue Teams (Sec. 310)
- Mine Safety Equipment (Sec. 311)
- Domestic Production Activities in Puerto Rico (Sec. 312)
- Indian Tribes (Sec. 314, 315)
- Railroads (Sec. 316)
- Auto Racing Tracks that will save Nascar track builders $109 million this year(317)
- District of Columbia (Sec. 322)
- Wool Research (Sec. 325)
- A research tax credit worth about $8.3 billion PER year for:
- Microsoft Corporation
- Harley-Davidson Inc.
- and subsidies for the overseas financial services earnings of U.S.-based multinational corporations such as General Electric Co. and Citigroup Inc.
also known as: the same old offshore SHELL game!
Do they take us for fools?
Hank Paulson originated this while chairman in thief of Goldman Sacks.
And, he's ransacked
the futures of our great-grandchildren knowing full well this will only delay the inevitable:
recession.
"Dick" is currently at an undisclosed location adding up how he's set up
the economy to fund his retirement.
Check Bush and Cheney's exchequer after "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" ride off into the sunset.
What was socialism on Monday became capitalism on Friday
with bipartisan support from both parties
as they flipped-the-script
and made this
150 BILLION dollars
MORE of our tax dollars spent!
And yet: I can't forget the prophetic utterance one of the Founding Father's advised:
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Bootleg
© 25 September 2008, TGP
Chinua Achebe would say “Things Fall Apart”:
Big government bureaucrats become socialists and print $700 billion dollars not supported by gold or mint and give Hank Paulson a blank check with no oversight attachments…
When you have no spirituality: you enlist an evangelical leggy, ex-beauty queen; political Viagra for a limp, flaccid campaign as your poll numbers had you fading from the scene, that’s herself under an investigation for ethics violations: either firing the top cop for not firing her ex-brother-in-law or his zeal to appeal to Congress to redress the impact of sexual predators in Alaska – take your pick! “Roads to nowhere” end where “bridges to nowhere” should have begun!
Three interviews – Charles Gibson (Hard); Sean Hannity (Soft) – avoiding the Yin/Yang calamity by using leggy photo ops with Heads of State at the UN (talked about Hamid Karzai’s new baby to my chagrin), Katie Couric made the girl WORK because she couldn’t pull her usual Jedi skirt-above-knee testosterone mind trick…(“Why don’t I research that, Katie and get back with YA!”) avoiding at all cost tête-à -tête with the diminished 4th estate, now known in its epitaph as “yellow journalism.”
- Cheney first on the search committee for his candidate, then changing his residency from Texas to Cheyenne, Wyoming so HE could run (for shadow president);
- Hurricane Gustav used to conveniently “un-invite” Bush and Cheney from their own party’s convention;
- Palin selected as last-minute intervention after one meeting, a phone call and calling that vetting a Vice Presidential Candidate;
- The deregulator-cum-regulator-cum-“the economy is sound”-cum-“I meant the American worker is sound”-cum-current crisis manipulator…
Throws his most recent “Hail Mary” pass because he’s a PUNK running completely scared and out of gas faster than price-gouged pumps on the east coast! Winning, not “Country First” is what matters to him most.
Because: political life is scary when you bootleg a “mandate for change” because you were part of the need FOR it, that’s why lipstick politics, bitter comments and charges of elitism – when YOU have 7 houses and 13 cars – matter more than reality, and you have on your own, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to say!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Friday, September 05, 2008
A Very Selective Amnesia
© 5 September 2008, The Griot Poet
Dear John: One of the first stages of dementia is a mild case of amnesia.
So, it was unpleasing to me NOT to hear anything about the economy during the RNC
Spiteful spit fest that jested against community organizers trying to fix this mess that bureaucracies like yours and Karl Rove’s attempted permanent Republican Majority rule chose to ignore…
So, John:
How do you implore us to “throw the bums out”… when you were ONE?
Voting 90% of the time on tax cuts, oil drilling and what you have intimate experience with: torture. Each of which you were against before you were FOR (flip-flop)!
With a draft-dodging drunk and a punk that had “other priorities” during the same war you refrain again and again that shaped you.
It was quite a coup using Gustav to make them “stay away.” (Wink, wink) They did less this time with FEMA than Katrina, but at least you kept The Penguin away from booze, buckshot; his best friend’s face: and quail hunts in Austin, Texas!
As you tortured our common senses with some uncommon verbal Ju-Jitsu:
You both praised George W. Bush and Dick-the-stick Cheney and damned the last eight years of their administration: 6 of which YOURS was the dominate party!
So, you and the e-Bay, hockey mom, beauty queen, “Hot Governor/Cool State (slogan button), born-again DOMINIONIST that you picked at the last minute are supposed to ignite your party base – Rural, Suburban and Blue Collar Archie Bunker on the street – while Cindy McCain wears $350,000 of dress and jewelry and Barack and Michelle are the uppity elites?
Did you think we forgot the last 8 years and 7 houses that you can’t remember?
Unlike my cousin, your father’s station gave you a choice to leave your Hanoi Hilton. The same privilege that got you into Annapolis and graduated in the bottom fifth!
And, Cindy was your 25-year-old hootchie when your first wife Cathy’s injuries no longer made her worthy to be married to you: for better or for worse; in sickness and in health. You had to BEG Nancy Reagan for her endorsement she’d locked away on a pissed-off shelf!
But, like Bristol Palin’s teen pregnancy, that spiritual baggage has been put on the shelf, even James Dobson and Bill O’Reilly has had second thoughts about the subject, when if the teen was named Sasha or Malia Obama they’d be having conniption fits!
One of the first stages of dementia is a mild case of amnesia.
So, John:
How do you implore us to “throw the bums out”… when you were ONE?
I guess that’s what fits when your real fear is what year 2050 demographers and Public Enemy prophesied:
“Fear of a Black Planet”
Dear John: One of the first stages of dementia is a mild case of amnesia.
So, it was unpleasing to me NOT to hear anything about the economy during the RNC
Spiteful spit fest that jested against community organizers trying to fix this mess that bureaucracies like yours and Karl Rove’s attempted permanent Republican Majority rule chose to ignore…
So, John:
How do you implore us to “throw the bums out”… when you were ONE?
Voting 90% of the time on tax cuts, oil drilling and what you have intimate experience with: torture. Each of which you were against before you were FOR (flip-flop)!
With a draft-dodging drunk and a punk that had “other priorities” during the same war you refrain again and again that shaped you.
It was quite a coup using Gustav to make them “stay away.” (Wink, wink) They did less this time with FEMA than Katrina, but at least you kept The Penguin away from booze, buckshot; his best friend’s face: and quail hunts in Austin, Texas!
As you tortured our common senses with some uncommon verbal Ju-Jitsu:
You both praised George W. Bush and Dick-the-stick Cheney and damned the last eight years of their administration: 6 of which YOURS was the dominate party!
So, you and the e-Bay, hockey mom, beauty queen, “Hot Governor/Cool State (slogan button), born-again DOMINIONIST that you picked at the last minute are supposed to ignite your party base – Rural, Suburban and Blue Collar Archie Bunker on the street – while Cindy McCain wears $350,000 of dress and jewelry and Barack and Michelle are the uppity elites?
Did you think we forgot the last 8 years and 7 houses that you can’t remember?
Unlike my cousin, your father’s station gave you a choice to leave your Hanoi Hilton. The same privilege that got you into Annapolis and graduated in the bottom fifth!
And, Cindy was your 25-year-old hootchie when your first wife Cathy’s injuries no longer made her worthy to be married to you: for better or for worse; in sickness and in health. You had to BEG Nancy Reagan for her endorsement she’d locked away on a pissed-off shelf!
But, like Bristol Palin’s teen pregnancy, that spiritual baggage has been put on the shelf, even James Dobson and Bill O’Reilly has had second thoughts about the subject, when if the teen was named Sasha or Malia Obama they’d be having conniption fits!
One of the first stages of dementia is a mild case of amnesia.
So, John:
How do you implore us to “throw the bums out”… when you were ONE?
I guess that’s what fits when your real fear is what year 2050 demographers and Public Enemy prophesied:
“Fear of a Black Planet”
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Sarah Palin-Gender Card (Comedy Central)
Doublespeak Good
Originally published on this blog: © 20 November 2004, The Griot Poet
Inspired by Jonathan Schell article, “What Happened to Hearts?”:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2014_
we will fight
with the steadfast resolve
of an unusual, artful draft dodger-in-chief
along with his veep
who both couldn't be bothered
when they were young men
to shed blood
for a war in Vietnam
that they steadfastly
believed…
in others bleedings.
we will fight
with strong delusions
guiding our common sense,
lies becoming truth
as greater than seventy percent
still believe Saddam was a threat
and involved in the attacks of 9-11
despite his rival Osama
referring to him
as an infidel.
oh, well!
we will fight
the constitution
with Patriot Acts I, II, and III,
calling it democracy.
we will fight
and twist words of peace
from Palestinian Prophets
into what Cornell West would call
"Constantine Christian"
diatribes, slogans and dogmas
to shepherd
Noam Chomsky's
"bewildered herd"
into the accepted
brainwashed,
corporate-controlled
network germ:
"war is peace.
"freedom is slavery.
"ignorance is strength."
we who bubble forth like fountains
see George Orwell's prophesy
becoming reality,
and General Tacitus'
observations
becoming most poignant in this season:
"they made a wasteland, and called it peace."
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Sarah Palin-Wonder Woman
Source: Moveon.org email.
Transcript follows (TGP):
TRANSCRIPT:
Mike Murphy, former McCain advisor: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor work. Engler, Whitman, Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. And these guys, this is all like how you want to (inaudible) this race. You know, just run it up. And it's not gonna work.
Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter: It's over.
Murphy: Still, McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.
NBC's Chuck Todd: Don't you think the Palin pick was insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too (inaudible)
Noonan: I saw Kay this morning.
Murphy: They're all bummed out.
Todd: I mean, is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?
Noonan: The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political [B.S.] about narratives and (inaudible) the picture.
Murphy: I totally agree.
Noonan: Every time the Republicans do that because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at and they blow it.
Murphy: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism and this is cynical.
Todd: And as you called it, gimmicky.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The Reluctant Eulogist
© 10 August 2008, The Griot Poet
Like "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
I find I am a "Speaker for the Dead"
speaking of endings
and beginnings
in two days having lost
Bernie Mac,
Now Isaac Hayes
"He was a bad mother... shut your mouth!"
He brought style to baldness before MJ,
Chocolate was never as sweet as when he sang,
Back in the day
If you HAD no luck with babes... you played a 45" by Isaac Hayes,
And she, felt gorgeous for his refrain...
He wore chains before Run DMC, Mr. T or gangster wannabe's,
He rapped before Ludacris or Nelly,
He was the foundation for disco, urban contemporary music,
midnight love videos, Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross and Barry White...
Yes, I am a speaker for the dead,
and something about us is passing fast
into the past,
into oblivion,
into the cloud of witnesses...
I quote myself in the piece "Last Days":
I lament the death of soul music:
born of marches,
riots,
Civil Rights songs.
It was OUR marching music,
the beat of OUR drums,
when we sang out
we gave NEPHESH *
back in spirit-filled medley.
I lament the death of soul music
and the architects of its pentameter,
journeymen and master musicians
as capable of 'da FUNK'
as arranging a Philharmonic Orchestra
without sampling past hits,
shocking lyrics
or "lip sync."
I lament the death of soul music
with the sincerest tears...
In twenty years:
Music that calls our women "hootchies, B's and 'hos,"
Music that calls our men gangsters, N's and thugs,
Lyrics so FOUL as to attain the label "parental advisory"...
will
BE
the oldies!
* NEPHESH - Etymology, Hebrew: "Living soul."
Soul, self, life, seat of the appetites, seat of emotions and passions, activity of mind, activity of the will, activity of the character
Soul Music
Date: 1961
: music that originated in black American gospel singing, is closely related to rhythm and blues, and is characterized by intensity of feeling and earthiness
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Bernie Mac - Celestial Effervescence
© 9 August 2008, The Griot Poet
Heaven just got a little funnier,
For a time, our memories
of Bernie will be the only sunny
things that brings smiles to our
visages.
He
was on a mission
to dismiss
his previous
existence
in poverty:
raised on Chicago's south side
by mother, grandmother, Deacon grandfather,
being "from the 'hood" he wore with pride
and a badge of honor:
not dropping his drawers
and acting thuggish
(OK, a few films in a sophisticated way, maybe)
but acting and making people laugh
that garnered him and fellow comedians Cedric the Entertainer, Steve Harvey and DL Hughley
nomination for a Grammy.
Doting father and grandfather,
he carried himself with dignity, honor
and wide-eyed
delight
with laughter
and a joke behind
each smile:
"I ain't scared of nobody!"
And nobody need be afraid:
Heaven just got a little funnier.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
The Chitlin' Era: an essay on TheRoot.com article
On the Chitlin' Era: I never ate them as a child, having the notable experience of seeing (and smelling) fresh-slaughtered bowels at a family reunion: as I recall, flies avoided the aroma. Hot sauce does not cure every taste.
On Obama: I was a late convert to the "Obama bandwagon," and I never viewed myself as a swooner, nor a disciple looking for a political Avatar to follow. I decided on his first book: "Dreams From My Father." Recall that our first stab at commentary about him was that he wasn't "black enough." My observation is the same as Carter G. Woodson [paraphrased]: we are well-conditioned to “know our place,” and react almost violently (Jesse’s “cut his nuts off” comment) when one of us looks to move beyond the crab bucket. It takes all the excuses away for sure. Anyone who can write well is a person with organized thought patterns that can take new information, make an informed decision and go in a particular positive direction. Also, that same intellectual prowess allows one, president or pauper, to admit to mistakes and learn from them.
We've had eight years of "stay-the-course-steadfast-non-flip-flopper-decider" mentality from a person who's not the least bit intellectually curious, the only person in his family (from Connecticut) to speak with a southern drawl; an economy that's been a boon for his REAL masters and our reputation abroad evidenced by the boos and cat calls when our president shows up and the rock star attendance when Mr. Obama speaks in Europe.
Michael Eric Dyson said on Larry King that Mrs. Clinton all but had the nomination sewed up except that "history broke out in the person of Barack Obama," and you want to label this the "Chitlin' Era?"
Forty years ago, we lost Martin; a few years before that Malcolm and Medgar. We owe a debt to them as well as the women in the movement for the kind of world we have now: not perfect, but without the overt signs on bathroom stalls and restaurants.
What will change with an Obama Administration? Nothing overnight except the possibility of young black males growing up to be president and not "ballers and rappers"… An Obama Administration should be held accountable to the US Constitution, unlike the current one that circumvents it almost daily and at will. Pulling the lever, filling the square, punching the chad is not the end: politics is a participatory sport and there are no bench warmers when your premise is rule by the people. If he fails, that's called a term limit and it has no reflection on us as a people or culture. Senators and Congressmen fail and get reelected: that's called apathy.
Though I found your comments witty, “Chitlin’ Era” is almost an apology: a conciliatory mea culpa to the waning majority now moving from the suburbs back to gentrify the inner city to feel a sense of control and lower their outlay of money at the gas pump, and that [majority] will be decidedly browner by the year 2050. It is apologizing for a black man having the audacity to run a credible presidential campaign raising funds and breaking records with the power of the Internet.
If Mr. Obama wins it will be because the last eight years gave him the framework to “break out in history”: now was his time. If McCain wins, then the US richly deserves the inheritance it will get from that decision and the continuation of Bush’s policies: the whirlwind.
“Chitlin’ Era” is on par with his opponent comparing him to Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton: it’s what you say when you’ve run out of material.
On Obama: I was a late convert to the "Obama bandwagon," and I never viewed myself as a swooner, nor a disciple looking for a political Avatar to follow. I decided on his first book: "Dreams From My Father." Recall that our first stab at commentary about him was that he wasn't "black enough." My observation is the same as Carter G. Woodson [paraphrased]: we are well-conditioned to “know our place,” and react almost violently (Jesse’s “cut his nuts off” comment) when one of us looks to move beyond the crab bucket. It takes all the excuses away for sure. Anyone who can write well is a person with organized thought patterns that can take new information, make an informed decision and go in a particular positive direction. Also, that same intellectual prowess allows one, president or pauper, to admit to mistakes and learn from them.
We've had eight years of "stay-the-course-steadfast-non-flip-flopper-decider" mentality from a person who's not the least bit intellectually curious, the only person in his family (from Connecticut) to speak with a southern drawl; an economy that's been a boon for his REAL masters and our reputation abroad evidenced by the boos and cat calls when our president shows up and the rock star attendance when Mr. Obama speaks in Europe.
Michael Eric Dyson said on Larry King that Mrs. Clinton all but had the nomination sewed up except that "history broke out in the person of Barack Obama," and you want to label this the "Chitlin' Era?"
Forty years ago, we lost Martin; a few years before that Malcolm and Medgar. We owe a debt to them as well as the women in the movement for the kind of world we have now: not perfect, but without the overt signs on bathroom stalls and restaurants.
What will change with an Obama Administration? Nothing overnight except the possibility of young black males growing up to be president and not "ballers and rappers"… An Obama Administration should be held accountable to the US Constitution, unlike the current one that circumvents it almost daily and at will. Pulling the lever, filling the square, punching the chad is not the end: politics is a participatory sport and there are no bench warmers when your premise is rule by the people. If he fails, that's called a term limit and it has no reflection on us as a people or culture. Senators and Congressmen fail and get reelected: that's called apathy.
Though I found your comments witty, “Chitlin’ Era” is almost an apology: a conciliatory mea culpa to the waning majority now moving from the suburbs back to gentrify the inner city to feel a sense of control and lower their outlay of money at the gas pump, and that [majority] will be decidedly browner by the year 2050. It is apologizing for a black man having the audacity to run a credible presidential campaign raising funds and breaking records with the power of the Internet.
If Mr. Obama wins it will be because the last eight years gave him the framework to “break out in history”: now was his time. If McCain wins, then the US richly deserves the inheritance it will get from that decision and the continuation of Bush’s policies: the whirlwind.
“Chitlin’ Era” is on par with his opponent comparing him to Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton: it’s what you say when you’ve run out of material.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Father's Day - a Letter to Sons of the Promised Land
Fatherly angst blogged - TGP
I grew up in a ghetto, glorified in rap videos and CDs that demonstrably are urban reservations for the systemic problems of a society that hasn't grasped the concept of cause and effect, reaping and sowing, chickens coming home to roost.
I now live in a suburb with better access to more expensive drugs and white high school students convicted of counterfeiting - a federal offense - and not serving a day in jail.
I live in a time where the office of father is camp buffoonery in "Good Times", "All in the Family," "The Cosby Show," "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," "The Wayans Brothers," "Family Guy," "American Dad," "The Simpson's" and "The Boondocks." I list them as I've watched them and laughed at them all, similar to blacks laughing at the minstrel show "Step-n-Fetch" in burnt cork faced self-derision.
Then, I demand respect.
But I do live in a time where the Democratic Party decided to be the first to field an African American as their candidate - the Republicans had their chance with Colin Powell in '96 (his wife's mental illness a litmus to his "fitness to command," despite having been National Security Advisor and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan and Bush), and Alan Keyes who said and believed what evangelicals like candidates to say and believe - was summarily thrown out of the Republican National Convention in 2000, though he "still believed in the party." I applaud his faith.
My motivation to be a father was from my example of fatherhood: a man who had no recompense when the supervisor called him "nigger Bob" at work. Human Resources did not exist. They had personnel then, that only served as on-site bean counters, intervention only solicited when things at the workplace got almost hopelessly bad and out of control. I treated him with respect in his home because outside to bring a paycheck home, he literally went through hell...
What do I want for father's day?
I don't want to feel like I'm living by myself anymore.
- If the lawn needs mowing, mow it.
- If done with the computer, shut it off (before midnight preferably).
- If done with video systems, turn them off.
- If done viewing television, ditto.
- If the sink's dishes need washing, wash them (and put them up).
- If your clothing in the laundry room needs folding, fold them.
- If done, then ask "what's next?"
All should be done without thought of compensation. No one calls me "nigger" to my face as my martial skills are well known and respected.
I am the only one in a small company that does not have much in the way of diversity training. Since we're tied to the defense industry, I am not political at all as my candidate is insulted daily, especially since he won his party's nomination. I am making 20% less than my pre-lay off salary, but I have a mortgage and college tuition to pay. My daily hell is less overt than grandpa's, but I, like he, have responsibilities.
You will each be fathers someday, managing your own households. How you behave now is what you [should] tolerate from your own offspring without complaint.
All I ask is not extraordinary or expensive. In a 24 hour day, we each have 1,440 minutes. All I ask is a few minutes of your time, 20 per day at the least of tasks listed above, 120 for the lawn. 1,320 - 1,420 minutes left to sleep, eat, play videos, surf the Internet and generally lead your lives as the values your mother and I model should govern you accordingly.
That is more priceless than a Hallmark card given on a contrived day of "respect."
1 Corinthians 13:13
"And now abides faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these [is] charity (love in action)."
I grew up in a ghetto, glorified in rap videos and CDs that demonstrably are urban reservations for the systemic problems of a society that hasn't grasped the concept of cause and effect, reaping and sowing, chickens coming home to roost.
I now live in a suburb with better access to more expensive drugs and white high school students convicted of counterfeiting - a federal offense - and not serving a day in jail.
I live in a time where the office of father is camp buffoonery in "Good Times", "All in the Family," "The Cosby Show," "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," "The Wayans Brothers," "Family Guy," "American Dad," "The Simpson's" and "The Boondocks." I list them as I've watched them and laughed at them all, similar to blacks laughing at the minstrel show "Step-n-Fetch" in burnt cork faced self-derision.
Then, I demand respect.
But I do live in a time where the Democratic Party decided to be the first to field an African American as their candidate - the Republicans had their chance with Colin Powell in '96 (his wife's mental illness a litmus to his "fitness to command," despite having been National Security Advisor and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan and Bush), and Alan Keyes who said and believed what evangelicals like candidates to say and believe - was summarily thrown out of the Republican National Convention in 2000, though he "still believed in the party." I applaud his faith.
My motivation to be a father was from my example of fatherhood: a man who had no recompense when the supervisor called him "nigger Bob" at work. Human Resources did not exist. They had personnel then, that only served as on-site bean counters, intervention only solicited when things at the workplace got almost hopelessly bad and out of control. I treated him with respect in his home because outside to bring a paycheck home, he literally went through hell...
What do I want for father's day?
I don't want to feel like I'm living by myself anymore.
- If the lawn needs mowing, mow it.
- If done with the computer, shut it off (before midnight preferably).
- If done with video systems, turn them off.
- If done viewing television, ditto.
- If the sink's dishes need washing, wash them (and put them up).
- If your clothing in the laundry room needs folding, fold them.
- If done, then ask "what's next?"
All should be done without thought of compensation. No one calls me "nigger" to my face as my martial skills are well known and respected.
I am the only one in a small company that does not have much in the way of diversity training. Since we're tied to the defense industry, I am not political at all as my candidate is insulted daily, especially since he won his party's nomination. I am making 20% less than my pre-lay off salary, but I have a mortgage and college tuition to pay. My daily hell is less overt than grandpa's, but I, like he, have responsibilities.
You will each be fathers someday, managing your own households. How you behave now is what you [should] tolerate from your own offspring without complaint.
All I ask is not extraordinary or expensive. In a 24 hour day, we each have 1,440 minutes. All I ask is a few minutes of your time, 20 per day at the least of tasks listed above, 120 for the lawn. 1,320 - 1,420 minutes left to sleep, eat, play videos, surf the Internet and generally lead your lives as the values your mother and I model should govern you accordingly.
That is more priceless than a Hallmark card given on a contrived day of "respect."
1 Corinthians 13:13
"And now abides faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these [is] charity (love in action)."
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