Rollin' Through the Hood (Part 4)

There's nothing worse than damaging your Metrocard with just a few days left before it expires. Sure I could've gotten a new joint with a swipe of the New World Order card but with it being such a beautiful day, I decided to take my rehabilitated baby out for a roll. Sure she's still sitting on cross-country tires (which slows her down considerably, but I had to know how much time I'd be saving/losing on two wheels instead of the iron horse. The answer is just crazy. I got here in 25 minutes as opposed to the usual 40. And that was with me missing my turn. Now that it's warm the public transpo might be over, except for on days when it rains.

But it's not so much the ride but all that you see while it's going down: teenage boys hollering at girls in short shorts from the backseat of some hooptie, her booty swinging from side to side for all to see with the lit cigarette in her underage hands, elderly women who need to retire their driver's licenses long ago, the cultural and ethnic shifts between blocks. You start off with Caribbean cats posted up on Nostrand Avenue and by the time it's over your cruising past old Puerto Rmen playing dominoes and teams of kids following mommy like ducks in a lake. I love this city...sometimes.

I had to put a stop to my erotic writing streak as I think I was giving folks the wrong idea. Ifaniyi called me at lunch like "What, you in love or sumthin?" The answer is [insert drum roll here] Nope. It didn't help when I posted that pic of me and Seda on my Myspace page. But that was just to show off our 30s-style costumes from my girl Toya's 30th b-day party over the weekend.

As for the posts as of late, I decided that I needed to channel my frustrations and impatience into something productive and somewhat enjoyable, particularly as the change in seasons has set my hormones afire. Pop warned me that I'd have to contend with this for a good 30 or 40 more years at least. He was right, as usual. But I think I'll be able to handle it.

One of the things that's so great about getting older is that it becomes so much easier to appreciate women and their many kinds of beauty without the need to chase. Though I've never been the run-up-on-every-lady kind of dude, I can remember the days of old when I'd be out and about with the crew and an ass or a pair of legs would come by that one of us would feel the need to go after. Now I just look and keep moving, especially as physicality falls lower and lower on my list of priorities. I'm looking for the complete package. Plain and simple.

Right now, even though there are three hours before I leave, I'm thinking of the ride back home, the setting sun behind me as the Daywalkers head in for dinner and TV. I'm not sure where I'll end up tonight. But there's a big part of me that's still glad to have the choice. Out.

Orange Crush

The first time I saw you behind my eyes you were wearing that outfit from your myspace page,
Gear I never saw in a spot undiscovered by my own pair of soles.

Through the lenses God gave me it was so much different,
A casual hello at a crowded pub,
The words "IRA Remember" stenciled just above your bag in black Sharpie,

He was still with you,
I was all alone.

Then he was gone, but I was caught up,
Staring out the window at that big wave idling over the beach,
Waiting to come down on it all,
A decrepit home filled with rotten rooms,
A 12-month vacation with a lifelong stranger,
A shrapnel shredded heart sent down the Hudson in a manger,
Towards its next mission.

Behind my eyes you looked up at me with fervor,
I only felt surprise,
Knowing that it wasn't real because of the colors.
My dreams are all in grayscale,
Except for when the other side speaks.

You switched speeds like Bruce Lee,
My fingers massaged your neck,
My eyes rolled backward,
My soul moving towards the white light of an Ocean Spray,
Without the sea or the berries.

Everytime I saw you after that I tripped over the words,
The ones I'd left in that box in the back of my head,
Trying not to make it so obvious,
Though I know you couldn't see it anyway.

You called on V-day for 15 minutes and then vanished into the mist,
I beat my pecs like a Gorilla in mourning,
Intellectual sensitibility vaporized by bona fide lust,
The way each cheek felt in each hand as my face melted inside of you,
You fought coming like a title was on the line,
But the scorecard was in my favor.

If we were a figment of mutual imagination then motherfuck the real.
I know how I feel.

U (part 4)

I don't know it for certain but I have this feeling that I made you a promise in lifetimes past, a promise that I would find you, no matter what it took, no matter where I had to go or what I had to do. Because you were worth it.

I think that it was a promise I made half-heartedly, as I am pretty certain that I have spent more times on this earth as a fuck-up than anything else, a soul that came close but never went the extra mile, another grill in the crowd that folded and creased his morals each and every time some kickback, some payoff, or a skirt too short with legs too long came my way.

We stood on a summit overlooking some other city, speaking a language no longer spoken and of a culture since suppressed by the reigns of lesser men who kept their crowns in place by a kind of force that wasn't in our nature. Perhaps I sold you onto a ship for a jug of palm wine and your younger sisters lips. Or maybe you died on me. I might have been the woman and you the man. You might have been the predator and not the prey. It's a good thing that such facts elude us now, that we can only guess. That makes it easier to try again.

I would find your footprints in places where I would stand for the very first time, your scent in the changing winds of some forest where I was stalking that week's dinner. I would see flashes of you in my dreams, never remembering the details of your profile but still sensing your presence in the buzzing at the top of my spine. You were the other part of me Mike spoke of in that studio I swept clean hours after he finished lay vocals, just a week or two before a red light run made me flatter than a pancake and a candidate for baptism through yet another birth canal.

They don't tell us about this kind of thing during orientation. Quests such as these are puzzles with missing pieces to be solved in under 30 minutes without much help from Vanna or Pat, crime scenes free of that one stupid little fiber that sunk sinner number 16 million squared. But like the lady with the big forehead I keep looking, losing myself in the sway of ass and hips, hoping for a collision on some crowded dance floor filled with sheep, a brief moment of clarity in the tub filled with white noise where I once bathed you before it shattered into a billion pieces that went on display at every other museum known to man. And yet I keep trying like Curtis and Will Downing, pushing like Monch, Sandy and Cheryl, a slave to an Obsession more abstract than those commercials in the 80s, knowing that somehow somewhere I will succeed.

I ran into an old friend from the Ice Age who joked that this world is far colder than the one where we used to hang out, gathered in that cave with two turntables, a mic and that IBM Selectric II with the built-in correction tape. Somehow, some way it is the memory of us, the rise in temperature caused by flashes of heat brought forth when I think of your thighs, your big empty filled with a throbbing column adorned with destinies, yours and mine, an infinite collabo of past, present and future, that keeps me same in this psycho ward of a republic.

Now I sit here cross-legged in the tundra, rubbing sticks together in hopes of rebuilding the flame that made us who were so long ago. I only ask for just one more life for me to get it together, one more stretch for me to track you down. When I woke up this morning an invisible voice told me your name and where you were from. I know the taste of your left inner thigh and that one toe you paint a different color. I know the texture of the broken plate in your cabinet and the make and model of the ride you push to your daily grind. It's only a matter of time. It's only a matter of time. Out.

Morning, Noon and Night

I left this for you in a special place, one lodged in a spot between the folds, an episode neatly wrapped in your own secretions, a directed commentary whispered into your canal by the light of an unwatched TV.

From time to time I like to go exploring, peel back the layers of nice and neat to find what pulses in the shadows, a sensual journey awaiting the selected souls who know how to go deep, who can slide through the fences made of inhibitions, those who can make the rest of the world disappear.

I remember when my eyes opened to find me between your lips, daylight cascading through the shutters like something I might have snapshot. But my hands weren't free. One of mine pulled you on top of me. The other brought concrete nipples to my lips, A third eased down a back lubed with sweat, a liquid slightly different from the drops that rained down on you as your calves flexed against my shoulders, the smell of fresh coffee looming over it all.

The buzzer rings at one o'clock. Unlike Bleek, my practice was made to be postponed. Parasucos and Nine West capped off with the baby tee with Sade on the front. I am not your man. But that's kind of the point. Pussy is so much better than pudding.

A Benjamin in mani-pedi is nearly smashed to bits with the way you grab the sheets as I pushed toward heaven. My tongue traces the outline of an artists rendering, an image of angel dipped in ocean blue. Our engines rev as we run for the border. Our reservations are few. You reach up under and touch as I go in. You drip when I come out, the coolness of you rolling from me to the warm fabric below.

For you there's nothing more arousing than a man who is focused, he who can give himself to a task without interruption. As my fingers find keys to articulate ideas you have a message of your own that needs translation. I do not let people into this space, a sanctuary owned by the ancestors and my own guiding light. But there's just something about long stems straddling my hips, your flesh covering the scent of the day, your voice in my ear, your fingers in my mouth.

The screen switches from on to to sleep as I fold your over the end of the creaking desk. The poor piece of furniture begs us to stop. But that word ain't in our vocabulary. The clock is lit by moonlight when I think of time next. You glow the color of pain in the darkness. Even the best things have to hurt a little.

You remind me of the time I cut away your panties with scissors and of that morning I fucked you in the stairwell of your place of employ, your hands pressed against the AC compressor, your screams of passion muffled only by my hand. Like the sun it was a given that you would go down, even when I thought you hated me.

Sitting here between dusk and a morning, I can remember everything my senses told me. I can tell the tale of the tape, but the bodies in the ring have turned to dust a million times over. I always remember when Winter turns to Spring, the crossing of legs attached to a face that could have been yours. I still breathe you when the air is thin. You still feel me when flops around on top of you, using that face the dude in the porno taught him. That makes it all worth it. Doesn't it?

Stolen Moments

Four burners, three pots and a dream. Mental snapshots crafted and chiseled by the rind left after the grind. The oil dribbles from the bottle, splattered across the surface of tempered iron. A blade cuts a garlic clove into a hundred pieces before a manicured hand tosses them onto the sizzling surface. The smell of fresh cilantro is a thing of beauty as it collides with the searing of chicken pieces. The water comes to a boil. The solid strands of linguine go limp. Romaine, hot house tomatoes, green onions and shitakes are rinsed and tossed in a bowl.
She has done this nearly every night for more than a decade now.

She can feel him before they make contact, the energy of solo scattered by basic math. One and one make two. Then she can feel his breath against her neck. His exhales are heavy. Her right nipple hardens as she reaches behind, pulling him to her while the other arm continues its usual tasks.

The chicken is flipped from one side to the other. The back of her skirt begins to rise. The breeze from the fan across the room caresses the now bare flesh below her pantyline. He puts his lips to her neck, his fingers easing the thing cotton fabric down below her ankles. He knows just the right spots to hit, the proper placement to bring forth the slowest of streams from down below.

She puts the sizzling pan in the oven, stirs and pasta and slaps a top on the large salad bowl with 'Tupperware' on it. Then she turns to him.

"Xbox," he whispered, answering her unspoken question about the kid. With the shape of their home sound cannot turn corners. And even if it did the music in his room is loud enough to keep it far away from his ears.

His fingers baptize themselves in her, polishing the pearl until it glows. She loses her breath more than once. Her hands find their way through the now open corridor at the front of his jeans. She finds what she's looking for, the thing already pulsing with excitement.

He wants to lift her to the kitchen counter a few feet away. She wants him to drop to his knees and paint her masterpiece with a tongue colored silver. But there is no time in this grind. Such measures must be saved for the hours when their stores stairs closed, when the turned silver clasp marks a telepathic 'Keep Out'.

Instead she brings his lips to hers. Their tongues knot like shirts in the wash. Her insides bathe themselves in that same feeling she felt on the roof of Building C, back in the projects, before the ideas of 'I doing' ever came into the frame.

She steps back and looks at him, minding the burners all the while, t-shirt and jeans to her Georgetown tastes, the musk he was born with to her Chanel No. 5.

They don't do this every night but more than every once in a while, a few moments stolen from the former life everyone told them they would have to lose, an expected casualty in the war of what they say is normal. He exits the room in reverse, his lips glued into a grin as he studies an ass that hasn't changed as much as he feared it would. She turns back to the stove, pretending not to notice, knowing it still looks good to him. Out.

Imitation of Life

It's always said that a writer's first work has to be autobiographical. A first time out at the keyboard is almost always an attempt at some kind of catharsis for the writer, a way and means to analyze and hopefully lay to rest whichever demons might he hanging on the hooks in the closet. It's no different for little girls.

I've made a note of my little arch-enemy a few times. She is the ringleader, the stealthful troublemaker, the girl who doesn't care about teachers or classwork or anything but her little crew, the latest fashions and what new songs are on the radio. Then I read the scenes in the script she has been conceptualizing from the day one, a story of a rich little girl living in a gated community building between three rough blocks of Brooklyn. Her parents never have time for her, the both of them more focused on their new marriages and individual lives. Her friends at school matter the most to her because there's very little at home but the butler. I'm sure the picture's forming in your head too.

Kids will tell you everything if you ask the right questions. The other day I had to calm a little girl down because she's gotten in trouble for talking in class and her mother had been called. She was crying because her mother was known for "hitting hard", for beating her with whatever was around, including sticks, wire hangers and the like. She told me that hadn't committed the crime for which she was accused, but when I offered to write a note on her behalf as her after-school teacher she said it would only make things worse for her. My most talent and dysfunctional student called the new Dominican girl in the ESL section a lesbian as soon as she walked in the door, mainly because she's prettier than her, stays out of trouble and ignores the screams, tantrums and falling all over the floor that everyone else finds a way to tolerate.

A mother, tall and leggy, barely my age, sat in the school office waiting for her son to complete his in-house suspension, complaining that they could have gone to see Iron Man together if he hadn't gotten the silly idea to come to school. She openly admitted to a teacher that she didn't know how to teach her son how to study so she hoped that the school would do it for her. The same went for the mother who dropped her ADD daughter into our program thinking it would solve all problems. The girl can't focus long enough to complete a single worksheet in 90 minutes.

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, but as my tenure as instructor slowly creeps towards its end I'm reminded of all the things that I pushed to the back of my brain in trying to get through the day to day. Most kids aren't born bad on their own. School merely becomes their canvas for all the things they can't explain about home.
That doesn't excuse their behavior, as they definitely know better, but it does remind me of something one of my sister's teachers said to me on that boat ride Friday night.

He reminded me that most people don't get a chance to choose the life they want. They just let things happen. The drills that I was given about condoms and lubricant, fights, crime and the like, were a preparation that most boys my age went without. Hell, my Pops ended up giving about as much advice to my boys as he did to me. Our house is often a safe haven for the friends of hours without the same kind of structure. As I believe that I chose my parents before I got here, I can say that I made a good choice.

As we approach the month of May I can't believe that I've gotten this far, that I've found ways to endure all that's been thrown at me, from the snack thieves to an indifferent administration, to a school that functions more as an internment camp than anything else. I've never seen student who will say they don't have anything to write with and then reach into their bag to pull out a pen. When I ask why they didn't do that in the first place they've said on more than one occasion that it was too much work. Oh how the children are our future.

I'm getting ideas for more things that I want to do creatively. But as usual the question is going to be funding. As I didn't get a grant I applied for, I have to see who I can talk into writing me a check for doing something that no one has done before. My life story, right? But I'm good with it, as I hope that at least a few of the things I do might survive my lifetime, that when the dust clears, the folks whom I least expect to will remember whatever little marks I made on the world.

I bought a little stuffed Penguin for my goddaughter. I'm sending it in the mail today. My plan is to send her one once a year until she graduates from junior high, a little something for her to remember, a tangible piece of my love for the baby I saw in my dreams, my little Eskimo girl on the road to taking her first steps. I am so proud. I am so humbled. I can't wait to see what she's going to learn next. Out.

The Big Empty

I was smiling,
Looking out at the world from the tower's point of view when something tapped me at the top of my spine,
A voice whispered that it was time to go,
So I left,
Then the tower fell.

I was surrounded by the heavy that is hot water accented with salts and oils,
Steam rising from the depths opening passages long clogged and closed,
Itunes asking me if it was a crime that I still loved a her from way way back in the beginning,
But I'd left the soap on the sink.
I stepped out to get it and the speakers fell into my former resting place,
There's no point to heaven if it can't cleanse you of sin.

A steak filled with billions of angry cows fell on the floor,
The bullet with my name on it misfired in the chamber,
Conversations killed every hope I had off falling off the wagon and into something that wasn't what I deserved,
I am driving slow in fog and rain,
Visibility is zero.

This big empty used to a world of a thousand drunken dreams gone dry,
The scent of a woman was a trap set by a little boy who only wanted for the whole world to be happy and healthy,
The smell of french toast and sliced pears with a side of veggie patties and maybe some scramble tofu,
The sounds of a sale called in from the coast to my left,
Time plays tricks on your in a nebula made a choices.

One day soon I will tag and anchor on my arm that's been made into a crossbow,
It's arrows sharp and ready as it is shield by the seven tooks of a builder and destroyed,
I will cross the river Red sea once it has turned blue.
The crust of this big empty will be filled with a honey-dipped world made brave, fluid and brand spanking new.



Out.