28.6.08

Haikus: Love and Politics


I:
Your features wake me
I taste the curve of your lips,
My morning breakfast

II:
Speeches and Discourse
A + for you Obama
please do not fail Truth

III:
I trip over you
like a voyage to the sky
catch me if I fall

Throwback: Fall 2006


































( photos by Alicia Karpetsky)

I met some amazing souls during my time at AUP. The spoken word crew was tight. When we first started it was only a handful of us. We would invade someone's apartment, light up and just breathe poetry. Each person had their own style, their own personal platforms and their exclusive passions. I heart those days. When the calm streets of the 7th quarter were sleeping , we were just beginning our climax- spitting verses while wiping away tears and sharing emotions at the top of our lungs - expressing our love, anger or admiration of any one thing, event, person, idea. Fall 2006 is etched in my memory. Sophia had exchanged emails with a Spoken word collective from the Bay area , Ill-literacy, and they were interested in coming to AUP to perform. The idea of an AIDS conference was born from a lot of hard work and determination. I had never seen AUP host such an event. I mean, hip hop culture in Europe generally does not go beyond the most mainstream of the mainstream, let alone spoken word...but when i think about it, what better place to live spoken word than Paris...a city that holds art as one of the most sacred of gifts to humans...

So0000, this is part of a poem that I wrote for our spoken word performance in commemoration of International AIDS day (we made it international ma'freakin aids WEEK up in dat biiiatch). Joe and I worked on this poem together and turned out a beautiful duo piece but i haven't included the parts we did together cos I havent spoken to him in forever and a day...if i track down his globe-trotting behind ill see if i can get his blessing to publish the whole piece.

That being said,

What Next?
It's a question asked, but often missed
hiding behind God’s prayer and below his mist
I rest no hopes on his future’s hiss
We live to die amongst each other’s midst
Foggy and blue
lives loosen around my finger tips
and its my felt tip with which words inscript my wish to live
Beyond crypted lists of ten commandments
And wishlists of things we should do
But fail

Frail hands eclipse the shadows of death that surround my loved ones hips
They surface on his figure
Prints
Of his life reduced to minutes,
His physical thighs diminished
from years of insistence on living life
To images of soars bleeding strife, beyond violations of human rights
His fight
Was to mate with the memory of what was, his life

How can I bear Witness to What’s next
When my future has been displaced years behind today’s current events
I live his yesterday’s dreams like it’s the present tense

Because he
did not deserve to die bent over his knees trying to defeat death
He
did not deserve to cry
in the reflection of his daughter’s eyes
Watchin’ her father release his last breath
And I ask myself where does God draw the line
so fine and meticulous
so divine and articulate
when he says, “It’s Time”…

27.6.08

Organization and Freedom: Do they mix?

I depend heavily on my planner. Given my poor memory and the many things I hope to accomplish in a given day, I write it all down and assign symbols to my different levels of accomplishment or the lack thereof . I'm a prisoner of my diary. Even if I don't complete something on my to do list I insist on recognizing it with some kind of x mark or frowning face, depending on my mood and the importance of the task. Sometimes I wish I could just be free from deadlines...

Freedom
She lingers between the lines of my to do list
And plays hide and seek amongst my pen strokes
Dodging my efficiency in hopes of blending into the ink of my scribbles
Freedom forms an entity with the various checkmarks and symbols
Watching as they bring me closer to feelings of accomplishment,
Freedom follows their rhythm
She simulates abolishment by lingering in the smudges left behind by my left hand
Freedom’s timing
It’s perfect
Finding my psychological clock, she works it back to a time collapsed in my memories and confined in compartments of incompletes
Freedom defeats the pillar of due dates and flirts with those who have escaped the reach of tomorrow
She follows them back to yesterday and treats them to a cocktail of justifications
Falling asleep between hope and determination
Freedom wakes to the stark realization that actually,
She had fucked failure
She had tasted the flavors of laziness and licked the spine of procrastination
Feeling braver, her tongue explored the depths of inability and tickled the contours of defeat
Her feet began to tingle
Signaling the anticipation of her climax and the instability of her senses,
She grips false intentions in search of balance and challenges her very nature, begging for a final throttle that will release her
Feasting his eyes on freedom he cannot resist testing his limits, he expands her legs, contracts his thighs,
And decides

Fuck it, I don’t feel like doing it

18.6.08

She, My, Phoenix, I

I was born to a Phoenix

She is my winged goddess

Her nest of cinnamon twigs nourish my growth

Her flames, they're modest but golden

Tamed, but emboldened when She fears danger has found me

It is me She tricks.... her fatherless clone

When time comes to migrate west

A time zone adequate for survival

I think its our primal quest

but no

We've been exposed

Danger has crowned us the ultimate prey

And Her immortality... it's just not what it used to be

She

My winged goddess

Once lawless and unrestrained

Her flames blazed pathways of eternal odysseys

and laid traps against the wind's chorus

She made way for rays of light that would illuminate night's darkness

and torch the fortresses made to protect locusts of hate

Until Her focus

Became me

She

My winged goddess

Trading in Her destiny of endless renewal and giving me Her power to regenerate life

forfeited duels against impossibles and made me the eye of Her eternity

I, not She

Became destined to rise brilliantly and light the sky with fire she had instilled in the deepest depths of me

Releasing high degrees of richness and intensity, I sear hostility and solder enemies of dialogue

I wrap creativity in a fog of forever and present her at the alter of my almighty Sun-god

My protector of freedom, my preceptor of love, my soldier of peace

She was a Phoenix

And I am her release from life, my seed was Her sacrifice

My birth Her wingless destiny

I am the dove she left nesting in the abandoned olive tree

My winged goddess has left me

Heart breathing heavy,

She leaves in search of forgiveness