You Look Good… As You Suffer

I wonder at the many compliments I’ve received because I’ve lost weight. This morning, the receptionist at my dentist’s office wanted to know what diet I was on. Oh, if she only knew it wasn’t an intent, but suffering.

If only I could patent suffering, mine, my longing as a diet plan, I would be a very wealthy, unhealthy person. For all to admire at how much I’ve lost in such a significantly accelerated motion.  You’d know the day it began. If you we were paying attention.

I marvel at my own response to the sudden regard. I feel like at least something “good” came out of suffering, even if I was to be turned inside out, and any person, reasonable or not, would be repulsed by what I looked like on the inside: a soul that no longer soars, but who’s wings have been clipped; a mind that is stroked with obsessive thoughts of yesterday’s one singular mistake; a diseased liver; blacken suffocated lungs; and a broken heart that can’t even catch every other beat.

Oh yes, I’m very happy to be thin!

We Have Not Seen Ourselves In this Light

Turn off the lights
because it’s ugly
looking at you this way

where anger trumps everything
it is so a situational life that is
a chemical reaction to a set of dynamics:
where opposites collide and nobody is listening

it is seen through the regretted mess
broken bright bulbs
pieces of the argument that made sense.

Yes we have failed so gloriously
if only we can talk to each other without weaponry
then those words of I love you wouldn’t be so conditional.

It is in those ways we are like our own parents
when it gets heated at least
they say things that we’re not suppose to repeat
the words we overheard them express to each other
in those unkind ways, that they know hurts the most
remaining with us like remnants waiting to be discovered in ourselves
any day now, we unconsciously say them to each other.

We vowed to never speak in their tongues
since these ways are brooding thoughts
breathing resentments and its wars

until, we met in this room, at this hour
and lived together for however long
where nobody listened to anyone
to thoughts on respect, on boundaries…

And like children now learning the language, how to live
we went even further with each other, with each word, it lead us
to Narcissus’s dead lovers and his curse:
staring at his youthfulness, unaware of anything but his own reflection
at any given moment his tantrum becomes bigger
than those opposites existing in a chemistry set.

Turn off the lights, I say
because it’s ugly
looking at you this way.

Broad Strokes Live Tonight at Nine

Tonight at nine, I will be doing my monthly radio show, Broad Strokes, on Washington Heights Free Radio (WHFR).  To listen to the show, go to WHFR and click on Listen listed on top of the menu bar.

It’s been awhile since I have done a show.  So, I’m trying to keep my anxieties at bay.

However, I am excited, because I know this will be fun.  Especially since it is for the first time this year, 2010!

The show is live and direct from WHFR’s home: an apartment in Washington Heights.

I fine this inspiring, that you can do anything once you set your mind to it.  You can have a radio show in your apartment if you can dream, believe, be flexible and most of all endure.

Because I’ve been M.I.A for awhile,  I wanted to include so much on this broadcast.  But there is no time.  What I will do, however, is explain my absence on the air web.

WHFR has been experiencing some technical and financial difficulties, such as needing a new computer, and being a non-profit/grassroots web station they have and are doing most of this out of pocket.

Bringing you stories, live events, and much more, WHFR tries and remains independent of any corporate sponsorship.  So, if you like what WHFR is doing, you can donate by contacting WHFR at joe@kracfive.com.

Playlist

She Moves She by Four Tet
Head Techician by Object
Vertical Rhythm by Gossip
Ambling Alp by Yeasayer
Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division
Down in The Park by Kirb & Chris
Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart by Alicia Keys
You Do You by Bear In Heaven
Surrounded by Your Friends by Hooray for Earth
Silver Trembling Hands by The Flaming Lips
I Quit Girls by Japandroids
Destruction by Willowz
Repetition by ZAZA
Dance Alone by Transmission
Beating St. Louis by Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers

By the way, if you know of a band(s) that I should be listening too, or you are in a band that wants to be on the program, just send me a shout out: roarplanet@gmail.com.

Who Dat?

Wha yuh tinkin bout?
Who yuh tinkin ah-bout?
Who yuh muse lovin
on a cream tea beach?
Whose taste yuh tongue savors
yuh hands softly soothes?
Whose body is warm enough
for de cold days and nights?
Whose openin yuh caged lonely love?

Wha yuh tinkin bout?
Who yuh tinkin ah-bout?
Who dat yuh lovin
someplace wey de sky is real
blue paint, a dab of real white
and real hot yellow?
Who dat yuh lovin
someplace wey de night
is ah black board for diamonds
and an old round rock
yuh hope to walk on? 

Wha yuh tinkin bout?
Who yuh tinkin ah-bout?
Who yuh muse lovin?
Who dat yuh lovin?
Who dat yuh needin?
Who dat?

Luddite

Know what it means before presenting yourself as one.

No! Luddite isn’t some fancy glasses with awkwardness.
Luddite means you shouldn’t even be reading this right now.

More than a trendy term to drop into circles
oh I’m a Luddite writer
well, we’re all writers
all of us
Luddite or not!

Yeah I know what a type is, so what
I saw what a typewriter looks like
and I saw its alphabets
and I used many of its letters.

Do you really romanticize over the lost of letters
like real letters that you get from a pigeon
because really the pigeons are out of work
and no one demands a strong letter anymore.

I was brought up on T.V.
Does that scare you?  It should if you’re a Luddite
I write on a computer, so I can easily escape
and start over
If you’re a pure Luddite it’s either telling of where you’ve grown up or your age

which one would you like to be the predicate of?

Words fight as they come and go
but this one bothers me the most

Luddite:

19C protester against technology: a worker who was involved in protests in the United Kingdom in the 1810s against new factory methods of production and who favored traditional methods of work.

Catchin de Power

Seen de mythical
floatin wind
risin off backbones
slanted it creep
two tail for shadow.

De nigger
with white freckles
paradin Devil
Dance!!
MidKnight Robber
hand holdin belly
shoulder shiverin
de upheaval
pelvic wine
de invented truth
tongue gravitatin
de senseless
jab jab
come take yuh.

Seen de mythical
floatin wind
risin off backbones
slanted it creep
two tail for shadow.

De nigger
with white freckles
paradin Angel
eyes bathed
with the Holy Ghost
wings clipped
to the palm
dust bury
de blood

say jesus
Jesus
say jesus
Jesus

Be Rid of You

You can keep your sentiments
and all your love attachments

You can keep your loneliness too
because I have my own.

You can keep everything that draws your face
or expects you coming through the door

I’m going to free myself of you, all of you
I will free myself of you and all your things

that lingers alone and anticipates
when I don’t need them anymore

I will free myself, free myself 
free myself from you!

A Jesus Birthday

At the closing of tonight
I’ll sit painstakingly reminiscing.
Reminisce over saying goodbye
then dance alone again.

My home with those many walls
keeping me still, smelling the strong aroma
my favorite dish, beef stew marinating
as the lady laboring over the stovetop cares for
making it all the better, this has been removed for
just a room filled with bitter cold things.

Reminiscing over the place that once was
still measuring the range of her laughter, and the saddness
that is like milestones, as they carted me away to the institution.
Reminisce over the fear and devastation, I found staring back at me
in those brown pools of continuous wonderings, should I even be taking this on?

Reminisce over the appearance of truth
and the presence, oh but a stagnation,  a straggling grip of desperation
where there aren’t any days drenched with tortured love songs.
But I was getting better at seeing the light.  Too late… 

Shouldn’t I’ve known this storm was coming?
Since, they say 33 is the year of the crisis, where the unexpected occurs
except no one told me, as I walked into the eye of a  hurricane.