Juggling

Get a call from my a dear friend today as I am walking to the train station right after workshop with the wonderful senior citizens. When he asks how I am doing, I think of the never ending to do list lodged inside my cerebrum, the joyful checking off of things. In fact, I am headed home to finish layout for the next edition of the student newspaper I generate with 15 kids in the Bronx, an undertaking that devoured my weekend whole. I think of the stack of poems to critique in time for my Juilliard students tomorrow.

To his question I can only respond with: juggling, love, juggling.

Moments later I am underground waiting for the next train, the first of three to whisk me home. Something grabs the corner of my eye and I glance. And right beside me is a man in the blue overalls of an auto mechanic, three initials stitched into the patch on his chest, his neck and knuckles tattooed like an ex gang member.

One red, one white and one blue, ADF gracefully juggles three balls.

Gig @ CSI--A day of many firsts

It was a full day of many firsts. Morning with the Juilliard actors. Afternoon with my newspaper kids in the Bronx. My third gig of the day landed me at College of Staten Island where I was to present poems and answer questions for two hours.

Now that I had a tangible purpose, this was my first time venturing to Staten Island--home of Wu-tang Clan who I danced to in Denver last week, danced hard.

At the station when I asked some women where to purchase ferry tickets, they answered it was free. I was startled and pleased. Look, I hadn't even arrived in Staten Island yet and already I felt like a tourist, a tourist in my own town. I would later learn that Guiliani, who also hailed from Staten Island explains the free ferries.

My friend Tyehimba, who invited me to read at his teaching institution was there on the other side, waiting beside his motorbike Betty, an extra helmet in his hand for me. First time in Staten Island, first time riding on a motorbike. I prepared myself for this cherry pop.

Exhilerating, vulnerable. The only two words I can use to describe riding on the back of a motorbike. At first I held on to Tyehimba for dear life, loving the breeze flying through my open helmet, making my eyes water. As I got used to the ride I began to loosen my grip on him. I knew that we would be goners if a car were to clip our back wheel. That too sharp a turn could obliterate what I know as my left hip. I learned that to ride a motorbike is to not be afraid to die.

College of Staten Island has a lovely sprawling campus full of green field and new buildings. There were posters on the doors with my face on them, advertising tonight's poetry event--two hours with yours truly. The gig was held in a school cafe, a nice vibe. The last college gig I had was in December at Rutgers-Camden, so it was nice to be in front of a college crowd again. They were a nice listening audience and responsive when they found it necessary.

My feature almost entirely consisted of odes and I rattled them off one after the other with personalizing banter in between. It was good to have that amount of time because I got to speak extensively about my friend Kenneth before sharing an ode I wrote concerning our friendship "Ode to a Flower Denied," my second time reading it in public. Overall, it felt great, as always, to share my obsession with a group of curious listeners, many of whom were wonderful enough to buy my CD's and chapbooks after the show.

Afterward, Tyehimba was kind enough to offer me a ride home on his bike. That meant the expressway, the Verrazano bridge--again, my first time. Rain fell lightly. It was us, Betty and the elements, the stunning Manhattan skyline. It all seemed within reach. And the cold air rushing at me was enough to remind me of how achingly alive it feels to be me.

Classy Brothers

the last time i sat next to an interesting Brother on the plane was in 2003. i was leaving la for the east coast, magically upgraded to first class. window seat. lucky me. a brother winds up next to me. he glances at the book in my lap. he asks: my sister, do you like to read? i look at the book, look at him and say yes, thinking: now who is this lame dude? he asks: have you ever heard of a book called finding fish? i say no. he then introduces himself as the author of finding fish, antwon fisher.

on the way to denver for the awp conference, all the way toward the back, so far back you can hear the engine coughing our swanglide across the sky, so far back that if any thing were to go down, you would either die last or first, i met a Brother. we greeted one another but only connected halfway through the flight when i recognized my friend playing the saxophone on this video of a performance playing on his laptop. jazz. he is a drummer who tours the world and teaches a steady gig at a renown arts school. i let him listen to some of the tracks i'm working on (odes) and he let me listen to some of the performance. after it was all said and done we were pretty much like yeah. legit like a mo fo.

he was on his way to denver for a gig, downtown denver, a mile from where all the conference festivities were held. how could i resist taking up on his thoughtful offer providing tickets for me and company? so i sweet talked tiphanie and christian into accompanying me to this totally unexpected gift. flurried there like leaves in wind in an overpriced cab, a cabbie who laughed along with our jokes. tree island people in a cyar? god help him.

dazzle supper club was our destination, its neon pink sign. turns out neal was drumming with this world renowned jazz pianist with a nutsy last name. his fingers were silk gazelles darting across the keys, sweetening the air. so sonorous, the sound of his heart. the hairs inside my ears, used to shrinking from the painful screech of trains, were swaying fields of wheat in this night breeze. don't know much about music. don't know minor from major. just know what sounds good to me, and that night, the night before my panel discussion fed my spirit like coconut water feeds my mouth, even now as i write this.

poetry in motion field trip

On our search for the best

classroom ever built

Darryl and I break

from Juilliard's four walls

and slow our strolls to sheepshed

meadow in central park

west hugged

by fences closed

since winter.

Skyscrapers loom

in the near distance.

Fortunate fucks.

We arrive

as the gates open.

Sun starved

actors dash

through gates,

the races of my childhood,

dropping their bags and cares

in the meadow's ample

lap, polluting

the clorophyll ocean

with their most perfect

joy. Boys will be

boys throw off

their shirts as the women lament

the sweet double standard.

Auden carves stories

into her pink moleskin.

Half clothed boys assemble

a game of touch

empty evian bottle

their pigskin. Tyrien

pirouettes. The Sisters

and I speak

on Azania,

Black people's land.

We be cliches so

unique. Danielle

hat is

not quite

church

but holier

than cathedral

bells. My tongue is

a bell, ringing in a full

elevator, it's door closing,

closing. We sit

on the dew and stew

haiku. Lamenting

new friends from old towns.

Mark's red shoes singing

of parsley. The rusty man

hole sleeping yards

away face up

like the dead.

Its haiku

crouches under my skin

my skin my

skin my skin

high off the sun's

vitamin

E smear.

Workshop with the Seniors

Poets & Writers contracted me to teach an 8 week creative writing workshop to senior citizens, starting today! The last time they asked me to teach a senior workshop was 4 years ago, when I first moved to NYC. I adored that experience, and it will forever leave a sweet place in my memory, especially when I think of Bobbi Lynn, a woman with cerebral palsey and the heart of a warrior. Man, her pen was fierce! Bobbi Lynn went on to publish a memoir, which she had originally started in my class.

Needless to say, I was thrilled when P&W called me up again after all this time to offer another such experience. When I walked into the center, the director of senior services informed me that my workshop was going to have stiff competition--bingo. I couldn't help but smile at that. She then pointed me to a room at the end of the long vibrant hallway; she called it the therapy room. Another smile spread across my face. How fitting.

There, in the therapy room, I was greeted by a handful of people twice my age with shiny eyes, their notebooks open and ready. We fell right into lively, stimulating discussion. In a matter of minutes we traveled from Catholicism to health care to the Korean war, thanks to our veteran in the room. By the vibrations I felt like we were on our fifth week of workshop, not the first.

They had been craving this workshop ever since December, when the last one ended. Needless to say, the exchange of gratitude was the sweetest currency. Immediately I felt their trust, their trust of my expertise. They are just so open, so generous, and so game, ready to have fun with language. They brought the world to the table; everything, that got them to that point is game. Intoxicating it was to be in their presence.

I have always had an affinity for older people. I think its partly because by the time I reached 10, all four of my grandparents were dead; two of them died before I was even born. It is a void I have always walked with. What I also admire is their understanding of who they are, what they are made of and generally they could give two shits about what other people think.

We had a fun lesson today, and composed six word memoirs. Here are a few I wrote:

"Left Trinidad age seven. Returned American."

and along the same theme:

"Returned home after 20 years. Myself."

and another:

"Using the pen as a microphone."


The two hours flew. I left there smiling so hard, I thought my face was going to crack in two. I look forward to next week, and all of the wonderful writing that will emerge into the world as a result of this divine time. God knows we need it.

Receipts

I wish not to dread any day that passes. Because each day, even the worst days, are gifts--even if it seems broken off of something and given just so, no gift wrap, no explanation.

But here we are, back here, again. Tax season. And its time to bite the bullet with my front teeth.

All year this shoebox has been staring me. It once carried winter boots. Now it contains every bank statement, credit card statement, bill, and receipt from 2009. The box has been waiting patiently for me to open its belly like a surgeon and sort through its guts, a highlighter my scalpel.

As a writer, performer, aka independent contractor, everything is a tax write off. For the past few years, I have conditioned myself to expense everything. Every cup of tea I drink outside. Every film or play. Every book I buy or outfit I snatch off a store hanger.

It is time to go in there and make sense of it all. To reminisce on every dollar I spent last year, and see how that matches up to every dollar I earned. I hope it all works out in my favor. I am crossing my fingers and toes. Please tax gods. Please don't make me pay.

Chinua Achebe at the 92Y

Chinua Achebe at the 92Y


Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was a great wrestler who for seven years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaine. He was called the Cat because his back would never touch the earth.

Ah, the opening lines of “Things Fall Apart,” Chinua Achebe’s monumental novel that captures the humanity inside the colonization of Africa—Nigeria specifically. It had been years since I read this stellar text and I found myself falling into its rabbit hole of story, enchanted by its magic all over again as the 4 train shot me uptown to the 92 Street Y where Achebe was to be speaking.

It occurs to me now that Achebe never touched the stage--fitting. Paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident, Achebe appeared to us in a wheelchair. A man well into his golden years, he spoke to the sold out auditorium with the heft of a person steeped deeply in the totality of the human experience. How he spoke: imagine an endless sting of pearls in his belly. To speak was to pull each pearl, each word, from his throat one by one—making him easy to transcribe. All around me, I could hear the furious scrawlings of fellow note takers.

I am deeply intrigued by various responses to oppression, as it is a conversation that circles right back into the question of human nature. Etheridge Knight’s “A Fable” is a timeless examination of this and I return to this poem often when certain questions resurrect like dust in me. Achebe’s obsession as a writer has been the examination of how Western customs impacted traditional African societies. His father, a teacher, was one of the first to become Christian in his village, soon after the missionaries arrived. While other Nigerians deeply resisted the inevitable, his father considered this “new faith” the path to salvation, truly believing Christianity would solve the problems of the world, a commentary in itself on his dissatisfaction with the affairs of the day. I wonder if Achebe's father would still feel that today, if he were alive in present times.

As a boy, Achebe attended a government college and described walking into the library as being in another world. His school had a law called the Textbook Act. Three days a week students could not touch a single textbook after school and were only allowed to read novels and biographies, for excessive bookwork they deemed dangerous.

Achebe described himself as “skeptically grateful” of some of the things Westernisms brought to African society—as the good things came with a price. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first president, received an American education and returned to enrich West Africa with the concept of free education for everyone, resulting in Nigeria’s fecund literary tradition, or as Achebe said, less illiterates reading the newspaper upside down. On the flip, Achebe was shocked to hear of extremist Christians in his village back home destroying shrines, deeming them idols. Ah, the heartbreaks of cultural erasure. I think of my buddy Bob Holman, who has travelled to West Africa on his mission to preserve endangered languages. His question is: why should we care more about endangered animals than about entire systems of consciousness?

Achebe discussed his extraordinary love hate relationship with Nigeria, which sounded similar to how say, Chicagoans and Trinidadians speak about their homes. This precise tension Achebe speaks of spells the undercurrent of my own life, my own relationship with this beautiful and terrible world. My love and hatred for it are one in the same. I don't know if or where one ends and the other begins but its totality is what fuels my odes and lesson plans; informs my decision to disconnect the cable and overdose on reggae. It is why I see an ad for 1-800-Flowers and think of the flower fields in Ethiopia, and indulge in frivolous delights, like hibiscus sorbet. It is why I smile when I wake up and slap my insides when I catch myself complaining about anything. Why I stay inspired.

It gave me a charge, seeing Chinua Achebe. To listen to him was to drink more fuel for the conflagration that already rages in me like the brush fire that loves its forest.