past days

i have been staying away from typing in my blog cause i don't wanna lose it.

i dont wanna put everything out there and harm the innocent -- or the guilty.

and that is a tiring position. i mean, i am all about truth and honesty - even though i believe in "white lies".

ya know, you don't look horrible. it isn't that bad! no one will remember -- moments. but then - there are the times that i don't want to lie.

don't want to pretend that i don't know speckles of your truth. how you sit when you think no one is looking. how slimy you must really be chasing someone when your someone is at home, waiting.

don't want to pretend that i don't remember the moments of her crying over you. because she thought this would really be the last time she would cry over you.

and i don't want to pretend that you don't deserve better than her. that her frame is worthy of your feverish banter. you are worthy of it all.

but to sit in the prescence of these beings i'd have to lie. act like my life doesnt' reflect sorted images of hysteria, that my poems aren't all autobiographical, that i don't fall victim to knives of insecurities.

that i don't love and rethink the love that's given.

that i don't wait for the other shoe to drop.

that i don't care if this doesn't make sense.

SLAM ON IT!

JAM: "5 will getcha 50" SLAM



5 will getcha 50" Poetry Slam, NYC
Calendar: Calendar
Wordz

June 27th, 2006


JAM ON IT PRESENTS: "5 will getcha 50" Poetry Slam

@ the Goodbye Blue Monday
1087 Broadway
Brooklyn, New York

J train to Kosciuszko

bad dream

so i may laugh at this later -- but i dunno...

i woke up @ 630 today, thinking: "OHMIGOD Im late getting
AMARI FROM SCHOOL!"

and i ran around getting dressed. tried to call the school
but my phone was dead and was about to feel really bad until

he woke up, told me calm down, it's only 6 in the morning!

im such an idiot

WIP - untitled...

so this week has been a bit tumultuous to say the least. but as is life. i am just blessed i have someone that understands me enough to not hold, the internal strife i keep for my friends, against me. i am beyond the airing of dirty laundry.

while sometimes, it is necessary. the real change happens with self. and even i can't, in all my bad-assed-ness, change how he treats her. i can just help pick up the pieces when he fuks up and dust her off before she does one of two things:

a) go back to the man that can't see the beauty and loyalty in this woman or b)leaves him because she recognizes the beauty in herself is worth preserving. either choice, i got her back.

so -- back to the poem. ahem:


Wind don’t bow to trees

Instead it leans into mountains
Carving ideas out of dust
Swimming particles into the
Atmosphere
Spreading the word

Love should never be a metaphor

Should never hurt to say
You are my life
Mean the world to me
Make me feel whole

And safe
And it should never cancel out one part
To make sense of the other

There are no boundaries to create/to cross

We must live like this was our last chance to
Smell the air

Taste the paprika/swallow milk with fervor

Love yourself then love me back without restraint

But restrain yourself

Tempt anger with sweets

Look in my eyes, see the honesty

Know it’s home

Carry a key in your left pocket for safe keepin’

But if you should ever wonder;

Then don’t.

This heart was never built on false hopes
Collapsing under your judgment
We are a deck of cards
Turned house to shack to pile of distrust

Find in yourself what you argue reflects in me
Then ask me if I was dreaming when I spoke a name
So unfamiliar to my tongue it tripped, stumbled
And laid waiting for you to pick it up
Dust it off
Claim it your own

But you blamed the wind
Harbored ill feelings for those storms
Of past turbulence

Scared this would be a repeat
Boarded the house with wood planks

Scurried past roots laid before you

This shouldn’t be a surprise

You’ve gambled life, in the planting of yourself

But don’t fault my strength as a shortcoming for woman:
That can’t listen
Won’t comply
Won’t lie and take it
Take it to make you feel bigger
Better

Fists enclosed around flesh don’t make you man
It’s makes you weak

Leaves you bare
Wicker palm to the sky
Waiting for answers
To questions you have yet to form
Pointing half-hazardly with sharpened tongue
We don’t take confrontation well

Will fight if we must
But rather love
Rather build homes
And babies
Maybe an army

But definitely, a future
With children holding your eyes in each palm
Your penchant for sweets
Your compassion and calmness

But if you must argue
Tread lightly,
Ready for what follows

We were built as this force for a reason

And we won’t bow
Not even for the mountains

full of shyt

that is all...

SHE

is worth so much more than this.
we all are her

these are the moments that i learn how to be grown

watch my tongue

watch your actions

i see you Black.

don't mistake my silence for ignorance

i watch predators

wait for them to slip

too busy to worry about a metaphor

i see you Black.

me in all my woman-ness
appreciate the chance

to work on my backhand

[ed note: this is exactly what you think it is. be careful]

bklyn sun'n

i have so much to talk about. and now, finally, more time to do so. workshops are over. and now, i have a couple of intensives that have popped up -- making the idea of a restful summer very possible.

re-editing the book for the last time as it goes to press and will be ready for purchase on july 5th! how about that?! check the artwork below, my peoples from inua created something more beautiful than im sure i am ready for -- but hey. rock on!





but until then im going back to sin sin for the house party. its really small and a bit awkward. but i miss moving to rhythm because i can. my ankle was pretty swollen the next day - but the exercise was necessary. and i miss that. laughing because it feels good. allowing fluid to become those joints that i forget exist.





so yea. that's where i'm at. practicing my team for nationals - i made coach this year. and putting the feng in my shui after amari makes her way to cali for the summer. i will miss her deeply. when she sleeps over her god sister's house, i always gush over her. she looks at me in that, "uh - -get over it!" way. but she's brilliant in her 8 year old way. somehow, she talked me into participating in career day for her school and jive and i went and convinced about 5 classes into becoming poets. better than drug dealers...no?


keep it funky,

BK to the fullest

in the absence of words pt 2

2

lily dark melodies still ring off key
and i welcome the intensity
it's the passion that will keep our children
fed
and loved
listening to jazz during breakfast
and hip hop for lunch

we can't save it if we leave it unmanaged
coarse thickened blood child
woven dreams and church anthems
like the hypocrisy ain't ironic

ask me how i know u so well
fact is, i don't
though i can picture our children
the same ones you cut from neck to torso
out of your legacy
figured death instead of life
was easier to deal in depressive corners
so you dreamt in black and white
and brown for the pretty women
i would never be

working some words out: in the absence of words pt 1

here's the first part of a piece i'm fallin for.

hope it makes you feel something, and if it doesn't i ain't doing this thang right...


in the absence of words

i.
you looked just like you do now
brilliant and beside yourself
i love it when you do that

pretend this life of words is
all it's cracked up to be
when we all know the truth

stretch your forearm into the sunlight
block blessings if you dare
but know this shine is what we were
promised

allow it to break free
allow us to just be beautiful
and then

the words will make sense
though no poetry will exist
we are beyond metaphoric confinement

i swallow you sideways and spit out the seeds
who's fuckin' with that?

atwood - again at her finest...

Spelling
Margaret Atwood
My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

*

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

*

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
There is no either / or.
However.

*

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

*

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

*

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

Mahogany interviews Melvin Van Peebles

Friday, June 9th, 2006
The Original Badass
Seventy-three years young, film master Melvin Van Peebles is still blacking out on hollywood’s racism

Posted In: Magazine, Real Life
story: Mahogany L. Browne
On the relationship between Hollywood and Blacks in the ’70s:
Nonexistent. It was a vacuum. It was close to a medieval guild system. When I first started, the job they finally agreed to give me was as an elevator operator. They tried to convince me that I didn’t have the creative skill, or the aptitude, required to be a director. Jump cut: 10 years later. I come back with a prize-winning feature film. And at that they can’t say nothing. Just like they can’t say black quarterbacks aren’t smart enough to run a team or a black manager can’t handle a baseball team.

Continue reading this story in the July/August 2006 issue of KING (#32).

day THREE

so yea. that order of pechuga de pollo al ajillo was slamming. the filete en salsa was much better but - hey, i had camarones to cover up the hardness of it all.

oh yea, that means the diet is still on pause.

whatever

im a loser

day TWO

so i sux. on so many levels.
i had to stop the diet because i was told i was doing it wrong, again -- with direction reading. so i ate raw foods. to get my body prepared. then i went to sleep. woke up with a terrible stomach ache. prayed to the porcelain god and realized, i don't need this crap...

maybe i will give it a go again when amari doesnt need to have food cooked for her -- or when i have more of a back bone. whichever comes first

day ONE

the next ten days will mark the dealings and going ons of my new lemonade/cayenne pepper diet (the same diet beyonce used to get ready for the dreamgirls role). so, im sorry ahead of time. no poems, no musings on my so called crazy life until i can get 10 pounds off this waist and thigh area because though JAMAICA doesn't mind big girls, my ankle does.

it's been cracking, locking and carrying on for the past couple of months and alot of that has to do with the extra weight acquired during my bedrest. anyway, enough back history. today is DAY ONE.

and so far, it stinks. i made my first two batches (20 ounces) with too much cayenne pepper.
if you know me, you know i hate reading directions. and these are the things that happen because of that... so yea. now im gulping 2 tbsps of red pepper from my concoction, rather than 1/10 of a tbsp...

result:
me coughing -- alot
burning throat
and sniffing until i sound like an old man with a cigar and booze habit

its raining out -- i wonder how this will sit with my two classes?

umm, ok...

it's 6am... i felt creative for the first time in a while...


the walls spoke of your infidelity
but i ignore the creaks that houses make during settling
look past the paint peeling, you're ugly
understand this is what comes with the years

worn
wear and tear
all these realtor friendly words slamming flesh
to floors hysterically
as if they have any idea of how tired these bones are from smiling
so hard
we'd laugh instead
ignorant to the bliss that doesn't exist
till enamel chips

i am left ragged
spewing some old maid's tale about cats
when the simple fact is,
i really love cats
more than you at times

wonder why i sleep near them more than you
these days?

pet their fur, free their fangs of wooden remains
and carpet shreds
rub their stomach
wait for the purrs to drive me insane
content with being appreciated and loved
slick insides intact
expectation-less this body sits
free to touch my pussy
without your eyes pleading

machismo: uncertainty bridging the silence
fallacle gods taunted by the feline
svelte canal of form -- fitting hour glass and candlesticks
countered by whimpers of omission
begging of understanding
of what this all means

Mahogany Browne in the TIMES!

so i was in the New York Times last week. pic and all

who knew?
once i get mista to scan this for me - i will show ya'll the pic. until then - enjoy article

m

Life as a Runaway; Do These Pants Rhyme?


TEXT BY RUTH LA FERLA (NYT) 264 wordsPublished: May 25, 2006AT the mike the vibe is earnest; the succession of performers at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in Manhattan lob verbal grenades at targets as disparate as the R&B star R. Kelly and the war in Iraq.
But the crowd is something else. Jamming the long, narrow barroom on East Third Street on Friday nights for regular poetry slams is a colorful gathering of seminary students, artists, actors, scholars and exuberant gawkers. Most are dressed to the nines in a playful pastiche, their get-ups a vibrant riposte to the moody rants on stage.
They watch their host, Nathan P. (below) tip his fedora and urge an effusive welcome for marquee attractions like the poet Mahogany Brown (large photo, top).

''I'm an English teacher, so obviously I dig this. I love the diversity,'' said one audience member, Carlton Powell of North Carolina, who had pinned a Malcolm X button to the lapel of his coat.
Kiandra Parks, (center, far right) signaled her enthusiasm by jumping up to show off her raspberry-pink dress and parrot green bolero designed by Luella Bartley for Target. Priscilla de Jesus, (bottom row, second from right) a bartender from the Bronx, had methodically worked out her look: oversize Planet Earth men's jacket and baggy trousers held in place by a Superman belt.

In contrast, Alexei Zagdansky (bottom, far right), affected a Sinatra-like nonchalance. ''What, this?'' Mr. Zagdansky, an art director from Fort Lee, N.J., asked as he touched the brim of his checkered hat. ''I picked it up from a street vendor just before I walked in.''
Photos (Photographs by ELIZABETH LIPPMAN)

new word for woman rightousness

BAAALLLLOOOWWW! (pronounced: BLAW!)

that is all

one week of work to go than we got thangs to talk about :)


m