dice queso: anthony morales, nuyorican poet

epiphany

2012-02-10T13:37:00.000-05:00

Word up Son AhA I sees I says

How do we reorganize our reason

What is the purpose behind being pointless

When you see the example

What does it mean if you don’t learn

From the mistake that made all the difference

Transition from being terrorized

Will you be properly eulogized

Entirely accurate down to the tall tales

Understand there is no need for the loathing

Creating your own pain difficult as it is to picture

Refocus the energy towards something more positive

Spend time covering the classics

Life is fantastic unrealistic when you choose

To live in the fog

Wanting studio as opposed to live concert

Of silent chorus

Echo factor causing reverberation across the room

How does the inspiration flow so easy

As you about to slide off into hasty desire

Might have to partake in multiple conversations

Just to believe what you have forgotten

Light too much flickering

For you to fall asleep comfortably

Mental aches for soul to awake

Trying to find right path for destiny to shine

Message should bleed through page

Onto the next surface you need to scratch

Beyond what’s below bonding with your blood

Last train home stalling to shuttle

How lucky is your shuffle

Switch 180 degrees toss light up what’s legal

Break in case of emergency blessings

Behind shattered glass reveals better days

Where you won’t have to pace back and forth

Causing concern to no one else

Can you enjoy yourself enough

Entertainment should be earned smiles

After dancing with disaster did demonic 2 step

To decondition your devilish programming

Infected with itch keep twisting the night away

Coal brick oven toasted confidence

Down to crust

Confessing beyond margin in stretched stressed journal

Spirits scream to be on point

Dreams determined to achieve

No doubt in face of adversity

Telling death and evil to march like lluvia

And don’t ever tell me anything opposite

Of my inevitable entropy

Towards living heavenly

peace to terryl talley. rest in power hulk

2012-02-10T13:35:00.000-05:00

Rest in Power Hulk*Star

for Terryl Talley

What was your evolution to big homie

From lil holding work in the brib

Letting my man from the Rock slide

With 5 for 40 first time I ever seen that scheme

True hustlers speak in coded language

So the outside world will misunderstand you

Completely crazy your born day before mines

Two different lifetimes both searching for

Higher levels so you won’t be distorted

6 shots to the throat won’t ever silence

Your loud memories like when I came back

From Cabo hit you with that Cuervo chocolate

Block was on fire couldn’t burn anywhere low

So we built on the bricks returning from paradise

To the humid temperatures of comfortable oppression

What lessons do we learn from each other’s pain

Wanted to converse with your bloodstain

But homicide was watching

What could you have been plotting

Creeping to put up heat too late

Crimestoppers trying to comb the streets for clues

The hood already knows but won’t whisper

Why did you let the world

Like you more when you angry

Just a cooled up scientist

Exchanging killing time for one day not having

Any left except when we remember you

As a bugged out goldfish finger eager

To pop trouble bubbles to keep breathing

As long as the ghetto air allows you to

Believe your own bulletproof fantasies

All due respect for times served substance

Right in concrete jungles soon to crumble

Until the sunshine reveals caution signs

For places we dare not enter

But did trespass because we thought we be forgiven

In those moments forever living never thinking

Of who lurks in shadows behind us

Walks around spots we chilled only reminders

Of earth we been on but where we need

To grow get weight up be healthy

Be wealthy in mind body spirit

Never fear the future

More prosperous than teardrops

And proclamations of peace but plotting getback

At sessions after uninvited wake

You went with your eyes open

Teeth clenched saying

I’m aight

I will fight

Look at you kid even preaching power

As soul takes flight

But inhaling that last breath

Even thugs are scared of that sight

Affirmative Proaction

2012-01-14T16:22:00.000-05:00

Sincere Ignorance

2012-01-14T16:19:00.000-05:00

happy 2012

2012-01-12T09:51:00.001-05:00

i know mad late, but blessings to anyone coming through here and still checking this out. been living fams, that is all. won't be kissing no one's ass to get a feature. won't be coming outta pocket to spit at your open mic. i'm happier than i've ever been just writing for the sake of. maybe one day your college will have me back and i'm looking forward to it. props to stony brook, st thomas aquinas, st johns and el museo for showing me some love. hope to get back to the nuyorican some time soon. i got the green light to be rocking so i might just pop up at your reading. but what's good with spots charging talent? all i can offer is these words, as broke as they are. hope that is enough. pa'lante gente. holla at me on facebook, twitter, and tumblr. this will always be here. for you. antmorales.tumblr.com

look what i found

2012-01-12T09:34:00.000-05:00

Upside Down

Feel the need to disconnect

My sphere of influence spinning

Diamonds in the rough

It is never enough continuous movement

On time though late mind reclined

To syncopate reevaluate

Put myself back on point

On a grind that seems to cause friction

No questioning my identity whole gangsta is fiction

Mine is more something exotic you never seen

Though connected to earth soul in the stars

So my destiny you wish for a brighter tomorrow

In the rotten manzana don’t hope to beg or borrow

Must really be thorough cause courage at a premium

Short sale on suckas you could purchase your persona on ebay

Your experience lacks references

Potential could be powerful credential

Only if you do the magnificent brilliant spectrum

Might connect your 7 powers was only if willing and able

To twist your accolades and burn in memory of

Your ancestors whose cages have shaped your lens

The morning time looks odd after battle

The bodies on the floors rendered invisible

Inventing new catharsis because the metamorphosis

Been far from easy spent enough years

Chilling with greasy handshakes mumbled what you said

I hear you exactly I’m fed by fried frustration

That got my hemorrhoids hurting

Wasn’t in preparation to ache

Though my pain

Could wake the planets shake

If you take stock

You find that your holdings are private

Congratulations are in order

As I sit right next to what might make me

Uncomfortable any other occasion

Than right now I scribe the scroll

Declaring my art will be forever outta control

With the penmanship of prior transgressions

I take the weapons away from whoever claims authority

The majority resist as the minority insist on the chance

To beg to differ at a quicker speed to decipher

The higher message almost electric how the pace

Will require you to inspire

The radio voices over the bridge

Your train of thought allow you to run local

For those still traveling slow motion

Every answer you need lies within you

Just been ignoring the heavenly séance

You might have been on

At one point

But when did you fall

Will you stand tall

To answer the final call?

My fatigue factor got me focused on

The flickering finish line

Might maybe a mirage but that image in my dream

Will keep me going forever owing debt

On that shit that don’t remain

Your tears have become refuge

Your smile my dedication

Your face rearrange the way I see mourning

Your heart make me realize a new day is dawning

Am I sincere in my purpose

Perhaps my truth makes you nervous

I meant for you to be precisely secure in your secret self

Releasing my delf but can’t declare the winner

Until we have a photographic finish

Oops the cameraman must have forgot

To reload the film

The wind has mustered

The message to make you move beyond

Stay alive child

Keep on living until you are gone

get you some

2012-01-12T09:29:00.000-05:00

Perspective

Why so glum chum

Few steps away from being a bum

Those gloomy skies match

Your vision of the future

How many moons removed

From your higher education pinnacle

Are you still broker than windows

On a rotten theory leading to your confidence demise

182’s motto was reach for the stars

But the clouds won’t break for you to make a wish

You have just missed opportunity

That slid through for your eventual uprising

Almost caught yourself sizing up your coffin

Why has lately the brain been drifting often

To your large shortcomings

Still running away from where you need to be happy

Wearing a caged bird mask adding your luggage

Under eyes still searching for what is meant

No fleeting fantasies assassinating your apathy

Life in crosshairs don’t know whether

To duck or scream

It was all a dream

Until being above 30

Pockets on Bugs’ ears have you in

Uncomfortable hypothermia

Parts of your heart are frostbitten

Warm up to where you at

You worked hard for each blessing

As you are teaching learn from your lessons

Not just burning those confessions

In every session producing more questions

Was there ever a definitive statement

Declaring your innocence

Privilege just a higher potent poison by Hennessy

Looking for enemies when you have been your own worst

Probably scribbled classic verses

Already forgotten soon as ink dries on wrinkled page

Like furrowed brow with matching receding hairline

Demonstrates how demons got you far from straight

So twisted you are crooked looking for way out

With back to wall crowd rapidly forming

Slowly breaking down while neck has

Felt the lashes of whips self congratulations

No Barry Horowitz but even he was dedicated to grind

Advanced digital age no rewind button to fast forward

Dubs of you fronting who has ever had your back

You make your own path looping around

The track to remember vital purpose

Are you working hardly enough

Do what you have to thrive

What else do you want to discuss?

rainy days make me feel like

2012-01-12T09:27:00.002-05:00

Moody Blues

Poor favors let you know

Eso si que es (SOCKS)

If you got feet I got something

That might cover the chilly chills

Make sure you read the fine print

Before signing that deal

Might have your life on auction to the lowest bidder

All that fire water makes your grill bitter

Like the sour overpowered all actions

What happened to that passion

Christ being whipped out

Had Viejas praying to the senor for bendiciones

Saying gracias for their good graces

Amazing existence hasn’t expired

Before you retire allow for some sort

Of impact contributing to the world’s rotation

Name is one of primary attributes

So don’t underestimate infinite worth

Purpose must define search

Finding whatever remains in front of perplexed puzzle

Switch up your context

Develop your content

Thoughts are true sums of where you are headed

If you declared your visions

Effort must be effective

All praises due for making that move

Elevating somewhere beyond the block

Watch alternate versions of yourself

Running away from cops as they raid the spot

Looking for invisible trap doors

Next to cracks in the ground

How does the view sound?

Like sirens lighters flicking harsh curses

Frustrated cries releasing cold bullets to fly

To places we dreamed we could touch

Rush of blood floating backwards

In congested veins bringing goosebumps

To skin’s surface

Hardest work has been overstanding the cost

Of weight attached to slumped shoulders

Every soldier eventually goes back home

Whether in a box or flawed flesh

Unable to shake fatal mistakes

That have you second guessing present actions

Progress has you considering

Against the grain struggle lack of hustle

Has resulted in your broke baller status

Cold season has only affected your preexisting disorder

Younger perspective us comtemporary character

Would be a complete slaughter

Pick up quickly whatever you left behind

III

Ain’t nothing particular holding you down

Allow the empty air to easily oppress

Cool wind discourages you to bounce

How rapidly ounces disintegrate to cloudy emotions

Potions evaporate in front of chemical reactions

Causing molecules to collide

Breakdown of atomic structure

Secondary rupture causing slippage

On your sure footing

Putting your point of view on full blast

Don’t drop the climate control setting

Frosty to brisk regretting reason

Believing in false ideas

Has you committed to false fuckery

That follows even more that fickle shadow

Have you bathing in shallow puddles

Figuring out what is currently happening

Like answers missing puzzle pieces

Destiny’s thesis lacks solid evidence

No credible references in hood’s tenements

Step foot in traps of shaky perhaps

Might land in solid maybe

Whatever your wet noodles

Don’t leave them dry without sufficient gravy

Lately really was all of a sudden

Claiming you are part of something

You are bluffing

Your mood is connected to the clouds

When hanging low feels like you could grab the sky

When split open until bright blue

Confused by too many options

Locked in uncomfortable rigidity

Typically decisions flavored by whatever

You could put off for later

Better to be a creator

How your faith manifested

Confidence be battle tested streets approved

Polyrhythmic revolutionary groove designed

To inspire conspicuous popular consumption

Assumption of apathy towards every action

Precise reaction to soul clashing

Responsibility should give you sense of proper direction

Upon further reflection

Realize few protections from inevitable struggle

Listening to same songs

Heard different melodies

Homeopathic remedies more powerful

Than prescription invented to distance resistance

So futile

Anticipating fast transportation

Road guaranteed to have pothole turbulence

Disturbance in truculent universe

Find serenity

In silent solar system

Under star that guides your path

Columbia University Graduate. Two Times.

2011-12-14T17:44:00.000-05:00

East Campus, Casa Phiota, Room 2, November 2000

Ay dios mio said the random intruder

Joann Joann in search of her line sister

Getting smoked out underneath

Scarface’s say hello to my little friend poster

Sitting comfy on futons with two mattresses

Ashtray full of clips

Incense box full of old sticks

Dusty TV/VCR combo passed on from Walt

Piggy bank half empty

Big L Big Picture 4 mic Source Review

Cellphone looking like remote control

JVC 6 CD changer surround sound

Panasonic Radio Discman

Desk overflowing with new poems

Like in the final analysis and dedication for bro

Announcement for the next open mic at the Nuyorican

Dogeared copy of Family Installments

Where great greats blew out brains with rusty pistola

Hanging on for 2 weeks before it’s over

Closet full of clothes too baggy for the future grown self

Still need room to grow echo from the laughter

Bump that computer 1 gig hard drive

Little memory skipping instrumentals from what we justblazed

Looking at the past shows how the future is made

Lil exclusive pad on Riverside Drive

In the shade watching the shadows shift

As the sunsets over Harlem

Would only step through Morningside

2 for $5 specials

Don’t let the demons catch you coming from 109^th

Way before guzzling pints

Daydreaming gazing at sights

Overlooking the waterfall carved into a cradle

Of swan and duck pond

How quickly times move on

Moments frozen like steaming on 117^th over bothshoulders

J & R CD guy outside Tom’s for early albums

The library searching for the reasons

To keep breezing through bullshit behind empty smiles

Jet back uptown to understand the freestyle

Always comes with hidden costs

Every cough connects more to the cipher

Where after many frustrated nights

Declare in the mirror reflecting the world’s skyline

I am a writer!

How the smoke shapes the smile

Takes a while for an intoxicated degree to take effect

I found the owl in the alma mater wish I come rewind time

Like Bobbito on KCR in my tape deck

Dedication to Piri Thomas Rest in Power maestro

2011-11-21T10:47:00.001-05:00

Whatever that muddafuckin word means

Piri screamed

From the rooftop for recognition

Hoping that the stars would listen

Down these mean streets

an instant classic

For struggling Puerto Ricans

Gasping for fresh air

like coquis cantando in the city

Always bendicion mama

seeking amor from his papa

Black skin misunderstood

white man’s world

Unacceptable rhythm

No dancing no flowing allowed

Like every other action

Celebrating declaring

Life prohibited

exhibited cool barrio machismo pride

When it’s on

Time for a quick rumble

Proving size of cojones

Connected to corazon

Full of rejection turmoil

breaking back to affirm

Befeo would burn

Into bistec encebollado

On marine tiger

Merchant mission for trabajo

Yearning to run as fast as possible

From abajo

Started sticking up bars

Buy a drink for everyone on the house

Before it gets robbed

Pig’s bullet hit St Christopher

In and out flesh wound

Who knew that cop he hit back

Would die soon?

Just a Nuyorican

Trying to reach the moon

Dreaming of not dying on

A cold ghetto corner

Sentenced to 7 long times

Begging the Lord

Savior Savior please

Hold my hand

Through the belly of the beast

Got me fiend out on contraband

Determined to do the time

Not let the time do me

Only my body in prison

But mind and soul free

Hugging self kissing my own fists

Without this love

Freedom would cease to exist

When he came out made sure

No one else would live like this

Every child is born a poet

Including young Peter Juan

Words becoming butterflies

Fluttering beyond

Project buildings

Scribbling illegible manuscript

Feeling like catharsis

Almost exactly about to look it up

Finally met agent and publisher

About to hook it up

Ran immediately

Looking for Home Sweet Harlem

First draft was thrown into incinerator

Tears were the flavor

Of frustration frito

And anger asopao

Focused on future

Said

All I got is today and buncha tomorrows

if I wrote it once

I could write it again and better

Reexamined life rewrote every letter

Overcoming every obstacle

Won’t let distraction derail destiny

Released a Modern Masterpiece in 1967

Found it in Soundview Library 30 years later

Creator let us cross paths

At Agueybana en Loisaida

Where I told him in shaky trembling voice

Sir you taught me

What it is to be a Boricua

He chuckled shook my hand

said

Vaya Pa’lante Pana

Then signed my book

There is no such word as defeat

Now I’m a maestro

Who tries to freestyle wordsongs

With any beat

He taught me

To have confidence pride truth

Always a punto

After you speak

Peace CPG

2011-11-21T10:46:00.001-05:00

What’s good mo?

Someone just jumped

Outta the 4^th floor in Soundview

Sounds suspicious

Hear cat meowing outside crib

Walks around park

Just trying to live

Lights and sirens

Wonder what’s happening

Notice smalltime grafitti artists

Trying to evolve from toys

Hush of city mixed with breeze

Bitter faces brings noise

Who decides who stays alive

Many think

It is the person inside

Core fragile like egg shells

Tell everyone very well

Very fine

When it hasn’t been that way

In quite some time

Everyone assumes

Everyone on their grind

Everyone don’t care

When you outta sight

Outta mind

Rotten rotation

Repetition remains

Hard to elevate

When you hesitate to gain

No matter where you go

Everyone grow

All different but just the same

Somehow there is

Supposed to be

Structure in your pain

Educated with self hatred

Trademark stereotype

Stamped on your brain

Tell tears to transition

Into stars in your solar system

Keep going you must maintain

In my darkest hours

Words are the only currency

I have to buy back my happiness

I tell myself

Love myself

Resist temptation to telemarket

My tragedy

Celebrate myself with a sixteen

To love the reflection

In the mirror

Is the beginning

Of tomorrow’s revolution

Today begins

With affirmations

Of inevitable uprising

Embrace the evolution

Existence never isolated

Pushed pa’lante by people’s power

You are Godly

Flowers blooming

In arid desert

Time is now

Future made up

Of your poetical presence

Spiritual essence

Will keep you moving

Keep your head up

Winning even when losing

Proving that truth rarely soothing

Often cluttered confusion

Climbing mountains of people’s opinions

Avoiding painful domestic

Dominions of dominance

Seeking to elevate to pleasure

Prominence but feeling groggy

Soul feeling soggy and staggering

While worry wagering

On hope’s horse

Who’s 30-1 odds

In the last race

Of drama’s derby

If you give this world

Your best

You might make it home

Early enough

To read your own obituary

In the nite owl morning news

despierta boricua

2011-11-21T10:44:00.001-05:00

Duerme Boricua Comprende El Puno

Front row seats

To the parade

On high definition TV

Anchored by Ernie Anastos

And Brenda Blackmon

Today is designed

For you to be proud

Of your pain and scream

WEPA as loud as you can

Forget about the other 364 days

You are not allowed to wave your flag

Too much soul in your salsa

Too much coordination of your colors

When your land is far from organized

This is more like

Sancocho of politics

With flavors that are too overpowering

To taste

Each pastele has a statehood tax

Cerrullitos support the status quo

Even jibaritos heridos

Have filed claim

To their sovereignty

With their separatist t shirt

What you know

2011-11-02T17:11:00.001-04:00

Why do you wish for sweet tomorrows when right now is passed away into yesterday. Today’s news is recycled thrown like periodicos de ayer, a spun record round like discoball sparkling. Celebrations of degradation reputation must come through resume of greatness. So tired of fake shit nowadays hard to find anything sacred. You hide hurt like out in the open. Levitations of elevations for momentary gain leaves tear trails where memories remain. Salutations for everyone slain, parts of yourself wither quicker than rose petals in sun. You used to run with your hair whipping in the acidic breeze like waves on moontide. Now you slide into sessions confidence a lonely weapon against turbulent terrorism. Profession of love a possession constantly seeking perfection – but all the above added up means you still broke. Still hope for future visions of riches leftover with only revenge in vicious frigid dishes.
You step off the curb and it feels like you dropped into the neverending hole in the neverending story. Foreigners surround you and calibrate the kink in each one of your curls. They offer to give you a makeover that is 120 percent guaranteed to make you love yourself. You respectfully decline but not before carefully considering their option, after all your self esteem is in short supply. Thus the demand on your depression has been at record levels causing your mental markets to vacillate between bear and bull when the whole time, it has felt like an African lion, well respected in person, but disrespected and endangered when it’s back was turned.
Next snapshot is a barbed wire fenced in concert of your least favorite reggaeton artists, Mack y Donna, cantando their latest exito, “Damelo Duro.” The strobelights and smoke machines have both blinded and suffocated you and between blinks you see images of masters whipping their slaves with Hype Williams cinematography as the victims mouth Duro along to the beat. Your screams of horror are misconstrued as cheers of support when the manager leans over and whisper screams into your ear, I know you feeling this hot shit right?
You do a lambada Macarena on the Mun2 dancing contest. The crowd goes wild praising your artistic genius one second then decrying your offensive rhythm throwing D batteries at you. The scene shifts you are the crossover movie star of the blockbuster Ole Toro! An aristocratic Mexican trapped by bullfighters forced to fight his way out the barrio Gladiator style swashbuckling battling the commie pigs. You are appalled at your own success but not enough to dissuade you from signing on for merchandising and sequels for the next ten years. This has lead to your endorsement and by default, becoming the Latino Spokesman for Bush the 42nd reelection in 3009. Performing this crucial Uncle Tom role ensures the future domination of your family’s family’s families for millennia to come.
Smiling bittersweet, you grin and whisper, you live and learn. This exact saying was what guided your mother during her romantic genocide with your father. You consider the irony in the situation especially since you have painted misogyny by the numbers in your own relationship soon destined to perish under all this ancestral weight. You chuckle at all the broken hearts in the world and cry at how shattered your own is. Those tears drop like acid in your palms softly stinging your skin.

renaissance

2011-11-02T17:11:00.000-04:00

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Poetry Of The Nuyorican Experience

By MIREYA NAVARRO

January 2, 2002
Copyright © 2002 THE NEW YORK TIMES. All Rights Reserved.

----------
The Nuyorican Poets Cafe lures young writers like Anthony Morales.
[PHOTO: Ting-Li Wang/The New York Times]
----------
Where are my boricuas?" Anthony Morales shouted during a recent Friday night poetry slam at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, asking for the Puerto Ricans in the house.
The ethnically mixed, gentrified crowd at this legendary Lower East Side space may not have known it, but Mr. Morales was paying homage in his poem to the founders of the stage where he stood, to those

stoned crazy prophets of revolution,

giving poetic solutions to political pollution,

organizing rhythmic confusion of assimilation

to this untied states nation of eggs, cheese and bacon

upon wakin'.

One of those prophets was the poet and playwright Miguel Piñero. He is the subject of "Piñero," a new film starring Benjamin Bratt that has put the spotlight on the Nuyorican poets' scene, which came into being in the 1960's and 70's and is still going strong as the popularity of poetry surges nationwide.

----------
Miguel Pinero in 1974, the year he helped found the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and his play ``Short Eyes'' won an award..
[PHOTO: Ting-Li Wang/The New York Times]
----------

Though Mr. Morales, a 21-year-old Bronx native majoring in English and Latino studies at Columbia University, may be far removed from the heroin-infested, crime-ridden, self-destructive world of Piñero, he nevertheless belongs to the same literary tradition, born of the Puerto Rican experience in the United States. "My poetry is about trying to make sense of the world, of being a young Puerto Rican male," Mr. Morales said. "We have incredible stories we got to tell."
In 1974 the story Piñero told in "Short Eyes," a prison drama presented by Joseph Papp's Public Theater and at Lincoln Center, won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best American play. It was developed in a workshop at the Ossining Correctional Facility (Sing Sing), where he was serving time for armed robbery. That year Piñero, known as Miky, was one of the founders of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe; he died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1988, when he was 41.
His poetry, with verses in both English and Spanish, had a strong political and social foundation, using the language of the street to document urban and prison reality. What became the Nuyorican poets' movement was influenced by Beat writers like Jack Kerouac, firebrand black poets like Amiri Baraka and Puerto Rico's oral poetry traditions. And it was informed by the discrimination, segregation and other harsh experiences suffered by Puerto Ricans who settled in New York.
In the spoken word, the Nuyoricans, or Puerto Rican New Yorkers, embraced identity and culture.
"We were coming out of the 60's, and there was a switch from self-hate to self-love," said Sandra María Esteves, 53, a published poet born in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican father and a Dominican mother and who, along with Piñero, was one of the founding poets of the Nuyorican movement. "That was an important marker for us. Embrace who we are. That was very different from the messages I got when I was growing up."
Today Nuyorican poetry can range from sonnets to the frenzied verses of competitive slams, and its themes are universal: the politics of daily life, sex and love, discovery of self. The poets function in a less cohesive, more glamorized setting than in Piñero's days. This is now poetry promoted by hip-hop and delivered in a more theatrical, performance-oriented way, which some Nuyorican poets criticize as being more often about entertaining and shocking an audience than about self-expression.
Miguel Algarin, the primary founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, says poetry today takes place in a more integrated setting. "For once," he said, "America is truly brought together into one from its myriads of ethnicities – 10,000 ethnicities become sharply focused into an art form, and ironically, the North American Puerto Rican, the Nuyorican, has become the mainstream of American poetry."
But a preoccupation with the Puerto Rican condition still anchors Nuyorican poetry and gives it its bite, as it did 30 years ago.
Many young Nuyorican writers said they were driven to poetry by racist encounters in mostly white schools, by witnessing injustices suffered by family members or neighbors at the hands of the police, landlords or welfare workers, and by the need to express themselves, "to prove," as one poet said, "that I was a human being."
Some noted parallels to black and Chicano poetry.
"This is a survival thing," said Willie Perdomo, 34, a Nuyorican poet, who said he had his share of rough times while growing up in East Harlem. "When you see things that are wrong, you want to say it's wrong. It's a raw language for a raw experience."
Questions of identity are also thoroughly explored. In a poem called "Ode to the Diasporican," Maria Teresa Fernández, a 30-year-old Bronx poet known as Mariposa (Butterfly), takes on those who say she is not "the real thing" because she was not born in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rican, she writes, "is a state of mind, a state of heart, a state of soul."
Even the term Nuyorican has often come to encompass Puerto Rican poets elsewhere in the United States. The winner of this year's individual title at the National Poetry Slam in Seattle was Mayda del Valle, 23, of Chicago, who moved to New York only a year ago and competed as part of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe's team.
She won with two poems: "Descendancy," about the frustrations of being stereotyped and limited by labels, and "Tonguetactics," a defense of Spanglish.
"It's a different experience to be a Puerto Rican from Chicago and a Puerto Rican from New York, but there are similar underlying experiences," Ms. del Valle said. "The sense of not belonging in Puerto Rico and not belonging in the United States is something everyone goes through. I consider myself part of the movement and I definitely feel the connection."
The Nuyorican Poets Cafe is still home for many Nuyorican poets and remains a thriving poetry hub, but its neighborhood has become trendy and expensive and freer of crime and drugs. The cafe has broadened its audience and core way beyond its bohemian Puerto Rican roots. At the recent Friday poetry slam, about 120 people crowded around tables and lined the bar: college-age, beer- drinking, well-behaved Latinos, blacks, whites and Asians.
Nuyorican poets today also read at places like the Point in the Bronx, Bar 13 in Greenwich Village and the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery. Some earn a living conducting poetry workshops in schools and traveling for readings at colleges; others hold day jobs in the news media and publishing.
And they are often found not only reading but also acting and singing in their own shows and performance pieces. "Spic Chic," a one-man show opening at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe this month, features poetry, music, drama and monologues to portray Puerto Rican pride in surviving life in the United States.
Luis Chaluisan, 44, the show's creator, calls it "the further adventures of an unrepentant Rican with no self- pity."
"You know what a Nuyorican is?" Mr. Chaluisan asked. "It's someone who finds solutions. How do I surmount this?"
But despite the vibrant scene and the poets' increasing opportunities to read, teach and be published, the work remains largely marginalized, some poets said. Most of it is not read by mainstream critics and scholars, does not find its way into major literary journals or magazines that publish poetry and is underrepresented in bookstores, they said.
Martín Espada, 44, who has published six collections of poetry and is a professor of English and Spanish at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, says this situation partly reflects the dearth of Puerto Rican editors in the publishing industry. And he says it might also show distaste for reminders of the poor social and economic conditions many Puerto Ricans have endured in this country.
"Puerto Rican poets are chroniclers," said Mr. Espada, a Brooklyn native who cites as his early influences the novel "Down These Mean Streets," by Piri Thomas; the poem "Puerto Rican Obituary," by Pedro Pietri; and "Short Eyes," which was later made into a film.
"We write about the same things everybody writes about," he said. "The difference is that the people who populate our poems suffer from the system that we live under rather than benefit from it; therefore our work is considered political."
Nuyorican poets have expressed a wide range of opinions on "Piñero," written and directed by Leon Ichaso ("El Super," "Crossover Dreams").
Founders and veterans of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, like Mr. Algarin and Mr. Pietri, who also appear in the movie, attended its premiere last month in New York. Some, like Ms. Esteves and Mr. Espada, criticized the choice of Piñero as a subject, noting that there were other worthy poets with less sensational lives, or who transcended drugs or other problems and did not die young.
"Hollywood and Broadway gave us `West Side Story,' " Mr. Espada said. "Decades go by, and what did we get? We got `Capeman.' Why is it that our hero has to die in the end?"
Many other poets, however, said they were moved and energized by the film, which not only recognizes an American literary movement but gives younger generations a sense of being part of a continuum.
"It was validating in saying we exist," Mariposa said. "Not only are we still here, but we have a tradition and a history."
Among some of these younger Nuyorican poets, Piñero remains an icon.
"The language that he used was his biggest influence," Mr. Perdomo said. "He made the street come alive. You could hear people on the street talking the same way. He represented poets who were giving voice to the voices."
Now Mr. Perdomo and his peers are forging their own legacy. A manager at Henry Holt & Company who has published one poetry collection and a children's book in verse, Mr. Perdomo said he wrote with a sense of threat, as the Puerto Rican population in New York shrinks.
"Puerto Ricans on the Lower East Side are being pushed toward the river," he said. "People are moving back to Puerto Rico. A lot of the writing is coming from a sense of urgency."
His goal, he said, was "to leave a solid body of work behind, so that that kid on 110th Street can go to the library and have his world turned upside down and find a voice."

2011-11-02T17:10:00.000-04:00

Chessboard BenchesPlease do not acquire more damageRelease the savage insideThat doesn’t allow your pride to thriveHow will these corrupted breathsAllow you to survive Dispense negative of what you inheritedCherish these moments so preciousHow could you let it goLast pull tired yawning Pacing back forth For the next shaky senseIntensely seeking spiritual blessingsMere presence doesn’t mean You been provided collided with chanceCouldn’t even explain Your business plan To overstand the world in handsHow would you change itCan’t pray away the painFigure out how to get used To captivate the cluelessAbsolutely empty mindBlind with empty banksBlank get the reaction When you hear the honkStomp out any fire burningDream chapters of lifeUnfinished diminished returnsFor no more pleasureHow did you ever keep it togetherWhatever pieces to the puzzleShuffled around with bandBanned because of contrabandStill know the cheats to contraDance knowing nothing unlimited Except love might dieTomorrow slow futureQuestioning have I been writingOnly bull when red chased with hennyAsk me about plenty of lonelyAway from spotlightWasn’t close enough to tan skinWhatever jam you inCan always smooth out rough edgesMany spots be more focused onPotato wedges than poetrySo pardon me for not making a sooner appearanceJust a few things Dealing with outside the marginBelieve so much of block bochincheBulimic to the bullshitTried to dress up pour cologneIgnoring how you burned away The breeze seize what you seeSo you can always be free

Declaration

2011-09-14T21:44:00.000-04:00

Yes
That’s what I do
Said young Gerald McGrew
I’d make a few changes
If I ran the zoo Dr Seuss

Why are these lions in a cage
With no roar
Why can’t they be the kings of the rumble
Let them play freely across concrete
Become our allies to defeat the enemy
We all striking out the same evils
The power directly goes straight back
To the people the children lead us
Towards harmony away from harm
Ring the alarm on all the lies told
Find yourself lost in the truth
Libraries overflowing
With the canon you created
To declare peace treaties
With pendejos who ignore
The poetry of life
But listen to the comedy of death
From here on
Let every breath
Be in tune with survival of Mother Earth
Who walked us down the aisle
Wiped our snot even cleaned our ass
All we doing
Trying to make that flame last
Reclaim your reasons
Reshape your reality
No more autotuning your tragedy
Your voice vindicating violation
Originally only wanted to speak your crime
Opening eyes and blinking
Even your nostrils flare
Got them besides self
Can’t understand the situation
All victims of different systems of plantations
Can’t escape the chain
Just loosened the lock as they tightened the noose
Ain’t screwed too tight
So gravity can let me swag
Never pretty boy more like gritty boy
If you understood my funk you might pinch your nose
Prose the dirt under my toes
Feeling connected to the ground
As it goes down we must make it rise
Hood should be fueled by renewable energy of cries
Every streetlight beaming
Instead of come up scheming collectively organize
Dictators assaulted my peaceful philosophy
One of my only toys was a cracked liberty bell
On the battlefield between
GI Joe and Cobra Commander
As a shorty I believed America was truly free
All that popular propaganda
Free your mind and your body will follow
Free your soul and you might smile tomorrow
Don’t let them put you in a cell
Make your chains rattle
If don’t know now you know
Knowledge is half the battle

2011-08-24T10:58:00.002-04:00

June 30th 2011, Amari Anthony Mohan Morales was born at 104 am. God bless the beautiful son. He is amazing, growing getting better everyday. Us, still figuring out how to be the best parents ever. Someone said you just gotta mess your kids up a little less than your parents did to you. Look at how well I turned out. Damn, trying to be better than however flawed I am. First sneeze, first smile, first everything. Being reborn through him has made me question my entire existence. Thanks Michael and Rachel for doing such a wonderful job to get me to this place. Now I gotta handle the rest. My moms told me to man up. She was so right.

think about it bo

2011-07-19T18:04:00.000-04:00

Dear President Obama,

Imagine 109th Street
The wind is not a kind stranger
That fabled night you arrived
In NYC with no friendly names
In your tattered phonebook
Even the corner couldn’t hook you up
With something to keep your insides warm
The heater is coughing steam
Only growls like echoes of empty stomach
In all floors above
You scramble on the stoop
Hoping the super would hear
Your silent screams
A squad car pulls up
Asking for ID because
Your shadow has no purpose
Loitering in the lobby
Of soon to be luxury condos
As you fumble with your transcript
Letter of acceptance
Credentials testifying on your behalf
You see that the declaration of independence
Dipped by with same speed
As the pope riding through the hood

Nighttime under that orange streetlamp
Colors the sunny shade of bright dreams
In the back of paddy wagon
You continue to say audacity over and over
Mostly in awe of how quick this city
Will experience your naivete
Without noticing any trace of benign neglect
This is a test
That your biracial charm
Acerbic wit and determined pragmatism
Won’t let you pass
Your last Newport was smoked on
The way to the block where
You were eager to organize the residents
If only that poster of Che
Could lead you hasta la Victoria siempre
You wouldn’t be spending
Your big apple inauguration
With a cheese sandwich buffet
All that change jingling
Won’t buy you a phone call
Back to Grandma
To explain this unfortunate set
Of circumstances confining you to this cell
However loud you yell
You are met with blank stares
Saying sympathetically I hear you
Even though the whispers of the wind
Barely believe your improbable life story
Being held hostage is not healthy
For your bills still searching for your queen
Through smoky clubs two stepping
A cha cha cha fingers pinching
That clip you stashed between the cover
Of a beaten up bible and Genesis
Moments like these will give birth
To more Jena 6
Arresting the development
Of the whole hood’s population
Mumbling the bassline
To the Emancipation Proclamation
While you feel victimized you start to sympathize
With Mumia wishing you had the key
To free all those faces similar
Looking down at their palms in grief
Of how their god loving country
Has kept them gassed up in the ghetto
Shocked at how many times
You are asked for your social security
Until your bad breath identifies you
Like a smudged fingerprint
On your permanent record destined to follow you
Like campaign promises that you won’t follow through
What type of power would you need
To push up the mountain
With your back to the wall
With the White House about to fall
On top of your high arching lefty jumper
You could change the game
From dead horse to live hope
With only trick shots on hoops with no nets
When privilege gets pressed
The pressures rises to crush your resume
As your references are rattled
And the most perfect union is shattered
Where would you be?
President of the tenants association
In some dead presidents’ projects
Patrolling the hallways to push young boys
To smoke indoors as opposed to empty staircases
Still navigating the maze searching for the cheese
All because that night
You didn’t run when
When they said freeze

yes my son

2011-07-10T18:54:00.000-04:00

You better smile with sunshine
because you don't want face stuck
On those cloudy frownys
In that shack
Shaking something turned brownies
Sprinkles on the frostings
You remember when
You heard this story before
That reminded you
Of your transcendent greatness
Moods have no loyalty
To your deliberate intentions
How horrible would it be
To die without knowing how to live
Dance with the beauty of a child
Deliver the promise of a newborn
The masterplan is to reconnect with your spirit
Let your angels bugalu through your lyrics

Your lips should tremble at the truth
Those tiny seconds become wonders of the world
Hovering through the natural facts
The actual stacked on top of
Reality painted by the numbers
Distracted by the skeletons in the closet
Moths sucking marrow from bones
Resurrect remembrance
To scream love supreme
Throughout the concrete jungle
Where hearts colder than frozen vegetables
Quick to chill slow to thaw
Emotions tightly aggy
Like denim dreams baggily tight
Outta mind outta sight
On the edge of what would drop from eyes
Cries melted wax on cement
From flickering candles
Beads bandanas bottles and blunts
In front of the building
Healing and building with feeling exhaled
Poured into puddles and piles
A homie hollered hope in the drunken freestyle
All you could say was I hear you
The peace we rest in
Allows peaceful confessions
Revenge fueled regrets
Drip off the sky like leaky rain
The arc of your eye
Could transmit various shades
Of violence vibrantly with subtle silences
Right after it all evaporates
A brand new day could wash away all the pain
How lovely is the block
In the mid morning after everyone has gone
To work on independence
From public housing colonized confidence
Much more capable than the corner
You confined to cells like rotating doors
To reveal the realness
Exchanging currency
To certify how g are your credential
You checked out before arrival
Running reckless don’t ensure survival
Could you cite you side conversations
As solid evidence of any research
Block is your cathedral
Grind spot is church
Bochinche was mixed blessings
Spoke your name in vain
Without understanding the pain in fame
All a part of a lane that connects
Those empty bottles reflecting
The fire in our guts
That get spilled right after rolling up
Take a good peek
To see how far you can reach
Those stars seem closer than ever
Through overcast weather
Matches the inner temperature
Drop below to rise above
Scratching the surface
Seeking the purpose
Trapped underground
In purgatory trying to purge impurity
100 percent art official
With natural flavorings
Liver quivering with chaos
Confusion congested chest
Spit the phlegm of how I feel
Funerals are unfun and unreal
Grown children being killed hydroponically
Cumatively count the killings chronologically
Corrupted our psychology with no apologies
Beg your pardon
For my heart starting to harden
My ice grill softens often
Thinking about you in the coffin
You are resurrected and remembered
Message won’t get returned
Homie ANT the sender

This poem wants to be revolutionary (after Mari Roberts) | En La Orilla

2011-02-10T11:53:00.000-05:00

This poem wants to be revolutionary (after Mari Roberts) | En La Orilla

Visit Me

2011-02-10T11:51:00.001-05:00

Boricuas Stand Up!

always passed by never knew what it was

2011-02-10T10:16:00.000-05:00

Woodrow Wilson Triangle

This text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project and can be found posted within the park. Clason Point War Memorial
This monument honors the residents of Clason Point who gave their lives during World War I. The seven-foot high bronze sculptural relief of a female figure, by James Novelli (1885–1940), is set within an 11-foot tall, gray granite stele. The work was commissioned at a cost of $3,500 by the residents of Clason Point in 1928.

Clason Point is a community in the central Bronx bounded by White Plains Road and the Bruckner Expressway to the north, Pugsley’s Creek to the east, the East River to the south, and the Bronx River to the west. Early inhabitants were Siwanoy Native Americans, whose villages dotted the nearby shoreline of what is today the Bronx. European settlers dubbed the peninsula Cornell’s Neck (after local farmer Thomas Cornell), and it was later renamed for Isaac Clason, a wealthy local merchant.

The sculptor James Novelli was born in Sulmona, a province of Aquila, Italy, in 1885. His family settled in New York when he was five years old, and at an early age he impressed his teachers at P.S. 23 with his natural artistic skill. Novelli returned to Italy in 1903 to study, and while a student earned an honorable mention for his artwork submitted to the International Exposition in Paris, France, in 1906. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Rome in 1908.

Returning to New York, where he resided at West 23rd Street in Manhattan, Novelli was much in demand as a sculptor of funeral and public monuments. Besides this monument, he also created the Saratoga Park War Memorial (1921; stolen and destroyed in 2000) in Brooklyn, the Winfield War Memorial (1926) in Queens, and bronze mausoleum doors in Calvary Cemetery (1923) for which he won the Henry O. Avery Prize for sculpture. In the 1930s, Novelli worked on Parks monuments conservation crew. However, during the Great Depression, his own artistic career languished, and after growing increasingly despondent, Novelli took his own life in 1940.

The City acquired this modest triangle in 1912 through condemnation when it was laying out streets in the vicinity. It became parkland in 1927, and was named Woodrow Wilson Square (later modified to Triangle) after Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), the 28th President of the United States. During his long and active career in and out of government, Wilson served as president of Princeton University (1902–1910), governor of New Jersey (1911–1913) and for two terms as President of the United States(1913–1921). He was actively involved in the World War I armistice and the creation of the League of Nations, and for his efforts was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919.

The Clason Point War Memorial includes inspirational quotations by presidents George Washington (1732–1799), Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), William McKinley (1843–1901), and Wilson. The latter, alluding to the Wilson administration’s role in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles peace agreement, reads, “That the world may be made safe for democracy.”

In the fall of 2000, the Parks monuments crew cleaned the stele, and refinished the bronze relief by Novelli. Already containing a venerable American elm tree (Ulnus americana), and existing pagoda dogwoods (Cornus alternifolia) and a Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), the surrounding site was upgraded through a city-sponsored Greenstreets contract. The renovation included new sidewalks, sod, and the inclusion of an Eastern redbud flowering tree (Cercis canadensis), an Eastern redcedar shrub (Juniperus virginiana), fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum), rose bay rhododendron, black-eyed susan flowers (Rudbeckia hirta), and a spreading English yew (Taxus baccat).

throwback post from the reverend

2011-02-10T10:13:00.001-05:00

the reverend's last interview...he prescribes what our future should be.....

"First draft is you scribbling it on a notebook, or a paper, or a napkin and you read it there. And if you make mistakes, man, it makes the poem much more interesting and exciting, and that’s when history started being made....Spanglish is not an indication of an inferior mind, but it is an indication of an imagination that should be completely fertile. You got to be brilliant, not dumb!...I want to get better. I am getting better, but not by following orders. I have to do my own thing..... There’s no end to the phenomenon, The First Draft Nuyorican Poetry Movement."

props to acentos...new shit!!!

New Bio

2011-02-10T10:06:00.003-05:00

Anthony Morales is a writer/educator from the Bronx who has appeared on HBO's Def Poetry and toured the US and Puerto Rico. He currently is a English facilitator at El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice in Brooklyn, NY. He has published three books, Story Avenue (2004), Chevere Cafre (2009), and Dice Queso (2010). Most recently, he was published in a Puerto Rican multimedia multigenre journal, enlaorilla.com. Look out for the digital wave in 2011 and beyond.

Barrios Suave Rico

2011-02-08T01:39:00.001-05:00

His purpose was not punctuality

Wore clothes three sizes too big
So they could be handed down

Dragged himself to class
Like the empty bookbag about to fall
Flat with an empty binder

Sancocho method of notetaking
Mezcla in mind

Wants everything he feels he is owed
In the future to drop from the sky

Tomorrow so that life could be easy
Without having to do work

School is just sucking
Away time I could be asleep

An even brighter idea to nod off
In the closet baba coming from
A mouth used for talking shit
As opposed to building nations

Borinken breaks its back
Everytime you get left behind

The flag flies a lil lower when you fail
Coquis stop cantando when you quit
When El Cantante sang Mi Gente
He really mean ustedes

Realize our liberty is tied
To your independent spirit

But when you feel hopeless
It is a creature of your own design

The patent is pending on you ending the pain
Your brain is your greatest natural resource
But intelligence is in short supply

Demand on dumbshit could overflow
The dow jones with shocking bondage

Chained to the corner claimed you were committed
But the ghetto’s grown on you
Like a street sign in the middle of your forehead

The sidewalk traces your steps
For guidance you growl at the gutter

Take every bit of hood wisdom uttered
To certify your authentic credentials are fitted

In the image of funnyhouse mirrors
With distorted reflections on your visions of perfection

Knowledge of self greatest weapon
Against self deception

When you are slipping
You are stuck on stupid

Your destiny gets destroyed
By decibels of ignorance screaming
I don’t give a fuck

The sky whispered
God bless
Good luck

Always be divine

2011-02-08T01:37:00.001-05:00

Even though we mixing the messages
It will be constantly sent

No ignoring the radius
Of sonic airwaves

This is available whenever
Maybe the path where
You thought you wouldn’t be

Why is me
In the middle of this exodus

Seeking genesis to remember
This anger jealous of everything

We reject project the experiment
On avenues so grand
Wouldn’t you be a little shaky

With your mystery not meant for
The misery though it loves
Franchising and outsourcing the company

Running from fear
Turning towards respect and reverence

The evidence is the experience
An expert at showing the love

Waxing gross to display raw elements
No pretending in the temple

Which continues to throb
Shopping for inspiration

Reconnect with the roots
Be fruitful with your knowledge
Never cutting off your wisdom
Most definitely saying grace

Saving those blessings
To gain interest but never for just
The end means brand new beginning
Worthy to receive immaculate
Exclusive so please don’t touch the radio

To remind of the renaissance
When discipline determination
Began testing your patience

Waited for the sign
Been posted in front of face

Never late just in time for introduction
Seduction of spirit dancing salsa

To your struggle watusi chachacha hustle
Bugalu to your blues

Not meant to be confused speaking parables
If you hearing then listen
If you seeing look closer

Exposure naked without shame
Laying blame for burning bush

Hoping you would recognize
Times wanting savior
To shake cage rattle chains

Tossing devils in fire
Temptation never tires
The Diablo a liar

Every prayer makes the warrior
Move forward on the mission

No false religion
When God on speed dial

Feel the spirit in words
When you free style

anthony morales - where are my boricuas

2011-01-30T19:16:00.000-05:00

Spoken Word Poetry THE MALE EGO

2011-01-30T19:13:00.000-05:00

Anthony Morales Story Avenue Stuck

2011-01-30T19:10:00.000-05:00

Salsa En Ingles

2011-01-25T15:30:00.000-05:00

Reminds me of the fuzzy tape
My moms used to bump
On Saturday mornings

I’ll always love you by Tito Nieves
Los Beatles turning quick cucarachas

Misplaced montuno mistaken mambo
Timbales off time sidestepping off rhythm

Repertoire been expanded
To regular crossover pop
To be accepted for radio consumption

Conjunction with salsoul y bugalu
But much more sanitized

Revision by hipster critics reviews
To certify the new sensation
Worthy of a watusi to make its way
Out the hood colonial imperialists
Consuming culture quickly disposable

Never recycled through the mic
Heard many tragedies
Like the apathy over
Irresponsible ownership left
The boogie down machine in a vacant lot

Challenge to balance
Hunts Point Palace Latin Quarters Sidestreet
Competing with Wild Palm and Havana Central

Fundamental failure to appreciate Fania
When stations tuned to reggaeton

Darselo en una manera
That never makes you te ta quieta

Only scream wepa asi

This smooth jazz won’t be sponsored
By Don Q and Bacardi

Different poisons brings same death
Those same breaths make you choke on spit
Because the riff comes with short solos

Couldn’t dare witness destruction dolo
Share the agonizing marketing vision
To distance us from ourselves

More confined to the system
Sticks tapping terrorizing timbales

Few decades passed without
Superstars gigging through sazon circuit

About to scream Capicu on the way
To court balancing paz y justicia
On uneven scales peeking through blindfold
To see freedom in funky smoky room

Make sure you bump
Official Africa groove trikita trikitu
2nd Sunday in June

Ghost Dog Exodus

2011-01-25T15:29:00.000-05:00

Funny how far
The bx 5 bus can take you

Reminiscing old flavors
To savor fresh taste of death

To former versions that never got
Edited credited to never pick up

Lift up the healing that can be
Found in quiet moments when
Volume turned down

Focus on the picture getting fuzzy

Would you love me
If you knew everything

Want to keep the pain for myself

Not pass on this spoiled milk

Far away from fly on wall
Holding up the ceiling

To catch feelings on the low
Not to annoy neighbors

Let this monotony end
With our dusty generation

Centuries unseen we making
Sunset seem sinister
Once was sweet before
Stopping for motivation

Catch the headline without
Seeing the circulation

Let the ink flow freely
Without being trapped

React to weight heavy
On shoulders as we getting older
Should be some elevation

Plateaud on platform
Searching for next level

Several to couple back to few

Let you see only you in the mirror
With set of droopy eyes

Skies been calling you
Message wasn’t sufficient to reply

For some reason
The surface wouldn’t crack
Lack of substance abuse algorithm

Apologies probably
For polygamous prophets
Kick knowledge not profit

Soul continued to lose
Regained the physical
Temple in tune with spiritual

Breeze slapping chest
Begging new epiphany

Typically tainted with ancient
Options to open actualizing

Hearing angels over demons chorus

To calculate the chaos
With leftovers to heat up

So many voices
Couldn’t hear yourself think

Paying attention
Left a down payment on deficit

Waves crash smoothly
Against all thickness

Struggle will bubble
But when will
You turn down the flame

Boogie Wonderlandia

2011-01-25T15:27:00.000-05:00

The down feels tougher than the ups

So many trips I would need
To renew my interborough passport

Make sure you have the dictionary
Ready for slang translation
What’s cracking might get you cracked
What’s popping might have you deflated

The most impoverished district in the nation
You could sell 25 cent bags at the cornerstore
Of bbq frustration
And sour power sucka shit
Deuce deuce of death carbonated cutthroat
All designed to boost your pride
To biblical hellish proportions

Caution signs along with no to every action
Fashion is impeccable the runway is the lobby

Rewrite the rainbows find the chain of gold
Underneath the bench brown paper bag
Full of work quick to get doubled

Salt in a struggle wound quick to bubble

Blood could change color of the Bronx River
Jose the Beaver eager to put condos
Close to the kingdom so
He could bring dames to his dams

From birth want you in one of those programs
With acronyms initials official systems
Of dependency chemical bureaucracy
Twice a month check has you connected to the democracy

How to slap back segregation
Is overcoming discrimination
Impatiently craving freedom without actualizing

More centralizing the glossy glare
Of eyes glazed to escape the maze
With early entrances often exiting
Without noticing promoting a headline act
But the stage show ain’t worked out
Just a bunch of hypeman screaming
Get your hands up at the crowd

All those bootlegs lost and found trying to recover
What was left behind in due time
This might become a destination vacation
Thankful the shade grows in daylight

The Bronx is yearning for its history to be told
Each corner can have its only chapter
The barrios fill in the betweens

Those covers pulled tight to chins protect that chill
One of the places in the universe understand how I feel

Sincere Ignorance

2011-01-25T15:26:00.001-05:00

Take I don’t know
Plus I don’t give a fuck
Add anxiety
Amplify attitude
Divide doubt
Multiply the mind by zero
Zone out to fantasies future
Inhale to push reality faraway
Embrace the inevitable
And forget about faith
Play hangman with hope
Ambition dipped down the fire escape
Leaving better memories behind to burn
Resume should read real shit
Experience surviving the street sucka
Education from school of hard blocks of Barrio
Culo caga’o copywritten on your fitted cap
Pledge allegiance to porqueria
Married to mierda on the mente
Much rather drink than vote for a Presidente
You feel euphoria when they mistake you for a genius
Don’t know shit and really mean this
Lack of knowledge but high IQ of nonsense
Nonchalant about chivalry
Gentlemen trembling proven uncouth ruffian
Moving distant from truth’s discussion
More interested in the fake niggas fronting
Who face you in the mirror
Even when crystal clear vision stay foggy
No being on point or alert just fuzzy and groggy
A blink renews the perspective
Gathered a collective company who loves misery
First season of episodes was bad enough
Licensing deals to sequels and trilogies
The violence could fill volumes
The DVD will have in depth interviews
Detailing the degrees of how dumbed down
The daily drama has become
We have only just begun
The record barely got spun before
Funk Flex dropped a bomb
Bottles got cracked instead of popped
Everybody saw the body drop
The crowd got quieter than feathers freefalling
The wind freestyled whatever
You went with the breeze bouncing
Like basketballs in dark courts
With streetlights illuminating the setting
For absolutely not regretting recognizing
The rhythm hidden within your veins
Develops the blood pumping in your brain
To trigger a synapse causing the collapse
Of what’s left in your physical empire
You call this artificial life
All the force has run out
And you are still trying
To get extra games with cheat codes
That have not been proven to work
Bunch of empty living
Like dying right after birth

elevation in eleven

2011-01-25T15:17:00.000-05:00

Run as fast as you plan

Been running that marathon
Bright sights bigger frights
In the gritty grabbing hold
Of BEAUTY NOT FEAR

Searching for the strength
To squeeze tears at full speed

Pace yourself
Get in rhythm with your breath
Endurance to have
Something in the tank
So you could start to cook with gas

So much stamina to stay steady
The gospel asked are you ready

You sat stunned
But you got to be quick on those feet

Seen chapters of your life
Scattered like when your bookbag was stolen
Schoolyard full of random rexographs
Where you filled in the blanks
Enough to get extra credit

Now a daily debit on your debt to society
Lack of sobriety cause your parents
Shoulders burdened carrying ancestors stones
Push those rocks up the mountain
So your spot in the sun
Would never be shady

So many other choices by other people
Lets your voice choke on every coulda
But your perspective in the Petri dish
Got you picking boogers

Because there’s nobody to play with
Except yourself but those rules
Have changed and you forgot all the games
It’s a manhunt to steal the bacon
Thundercat in hot lava can’t you see you it?

Tagging existence to proclaim
Your right to recognition
But who gives a fuck if no one is listening?

Introducing yo fux that nuh name
I don’t give a pluck who you are
So luck who you are

At the bar pulling or chugging
Can’t g the city you bugging

Will get reminders
From absent minded tour guides
Leading down a one way dead end
Without letting you know
The city is on fire

Enough breeze to leave you shaking
Mistakes around stain
In concrete where the acid got down
To ground up all night
To see destiny sold without making
The highest bid to acquire
Enough possessions that your purpose
Is unquestioned

The decade’s material
Provides enough nutritious minerals
That your typical could never fathom
Physical with atomics phantom
Spiritual a spanglish ebonics anthem
To lift cada voz
And think
Make earth and heaven
Sing I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW

To perpetually grow
Towards reflection and action
One big cipher
Where perfection is passed

So that the family
Can celebrate
Infinite bendiciones

Brindis to the block
Toast to taking it back
Salud for everything we see
Can I get a vaya for victory
Right on for revolution
An ashe for living free

esta frio

2010-12-09T10:05:00.001-05:00

Autumn Harvest

Collect the remnants
Of the realness still existing
In the stash under the benches
In the back park

So many sessions
We peaked and could only
Go downhill

Everytime we lit up
No frowny cloudys

If I could call you sunshine
Your smile better be beaming

Enough wattage
To keep the whole cipher electric

Connect with other travelers
Walking round without GPS
With the homing device
Beeping the closer you get
To relieving your bladder
At that second cuz you might
Explode if you don’t empty
What you just filled up

Cleanse your condition
Though critical upgraded to
Unstable regularity
Of monotony macabre
Moral massacre
Motivating the movement
Motion seeming slow

The secret revealed
Coulda held back but just slipped
No solid nor would you hold me down

I’m pushing up the sky
Standing on top of the pavement
In the middle of the crossroads
Wanting directions but won’t ask
To hitchhike towards the road of success

Sick with infectious intentions
Might flow looser than the Johnny pump

Let the puddle overflood
The curb reaches your stoop
Where the first step drops
You where you not ready to head

But there are no places to go
Just right where you are welcome
To keep waiting on hero
To fly over the skyline

Retrace your origins
So you can understand the foundation
To design the blueprint for the future
Reference your search
Blue notes spring from tired feet

Put up in the projects
There are thousands of fantasies

Fame’s fickle flame
Attracts fluorescent kisses
From misguided quitters
Livers besieged by liquors

Leather scuffed by weather beaten
Worry with typhoon of tears
Hellish hurricane on your hope
Thunderstorm during theatrical threats
Don’t let the stress get the best

Damelo bacon suave
With huevos fritos
Pan caliente café con leche
For the breakfast bomb to blow up

Half the time you don’t even
Show up because we all cynical
So much subliminal sucka shit
Selling out becomes so simple

Like once upon the occasion
Where the circles kept the smiles
On permagrin permanently within

Special senses lottery of lenses
No pretending inviting the conflict

To seduce survival
Into tempting tomorrow
To see one more second

Until leaves start to shift
With the seasons seizing the day
So our vidas could be extraordinary

for rs stay awkward forever

2010-11-08T21:37:00.000-05:00

Preposterous monstrosity

From the depths of my past
Fried chicken capitalism conspiracy
Sacrifices resurrects the ghosts
Of ancestors who been freestyling with your fate

Feeling like the air is speaking right to you
Listen closely

Learn to fight fight to learn

Let the world rotate burn truth be sold
From what you can remember
Couldn’t afford the price
After worthily spending any amount of saving
Down to the pocket lint and the expired mint
That won’t refreshen the lesson far from

Planned the power within hands
Could relocate mountains right next to the projects
Where the experiment with closed spaces
Has made you reexamine the basis of your philosophy

Impossible how the battle for your conscience
Is between greedy angels and saintly demons

Breathing fire when you reject your hidden desires
You have yet to discover an antidote
That will cure your insatiatable hunger

Where are you running to so fast in place
When the finish line keep going further away

Your epiphany has surcharges
That will eventually be due before activating your account

Without a doubt your inspiration will fly south
Before your evidence heads north
Feeling back on the block
Though on the otherside of town

Whatchu talking about when there is no substance
Controlling the message
Before delivering the audience
You could rewind the replay
Won’t find what you left behind
Your definition been highly fuzzy
With only guesstimates
Of the guidelines to the ghetto

Whoever stands on the corner
Should have a fitted dunce cap
With engraved stitching showing your nickname

Your spit game only brings you nearer to the flame
Where your knowledge is easily disposable
Compose yourself with beautiful conduct

Whereas your abstract understanding
Has developed into concrete actions
That have deadly consequences that may revive

Redialed your regressions back to session
Where your freedom of speech equals freedom to dream

Often scheming instead of teaming
Where you so interested in seeming
not becoming fully human

Sincere integrity with severe levity
perhaps now is not the occasion for the fronting
if you care so much for the progression and elevation
please show me something

asi

2010-11-08T21:34:00.000-05:00

Don’t nothing change just another year

Snaxx Playlist
Trying to add at least half

Go up in that mafucka and take whatever I want

Can’t shake the answer

If I did that I die with that cancer

Just another poison prescribed
Analyzed the dosage just hanging on to survive

Walk with the kitten’s addiction
As the mirror desk forces you
To examine the yearbook

Add up the change

How much of the planned revolution remains
Found poetry like moving the pieces along 64 squares
Of a chessboard how the bedroom switches with no sheets

Origins of gansta rap from mean streets
Where the beast hunt with hungry teeth

Though the inspiration be brief
Continuously seek minutes to delay satisfaction
The reaction has shaped
By the grouch right next to the dusty bandera bandana

To stunt anyways possible
In a land which seeks to keep you not breathing

In a hospital land vertical to regain senses
The spirit of the benches
Mind in trenches with body in state of flux

In seconds ticking spending bucks
On what would bring closer to heavenly oasis

All praises due don’t get it confused

Si sale bien llamame en la manana
Blink for resurrection of tomorrow
Pausa para la causa to purge
To the porcelain god

Looking at the Diablo flag around ankles
For freedom to get through the night

When the stars wish upon you
To motivate creating
Somehow someway to make it out
The hood one day

Pray to power in the final hour
No flowers in the garden
Like the earth stomach starving

Mobbing with heart throbbing
Sobbing on the page
Like words cry Bronx River
To flow into higher consciousness

Critical minded you been finding
Pieces of puzzle scattered
Until you unable to add up the data

Lines you outta but connect the dots
To scribble in the block

Love in the location
Where respect marks the low spot

Lessons learned with every step
Up and down the lane

Big parks where the ghosts
Of retired jerseys claimed
Hood glory and fame

Buncha doing nothing expecting something

Rubbing the fur the wrong way producing static
Shock to the system
When the volume too loud
Can hardly hear the lyrics

Ironically stating how much we getting it
When even the breeze feels hollow
Next day more of the same
Feet so long in that place
Sprouted roots gathered moss

Brush under doo rags to keep it wavy
But what would you find if you floss

peace tio

2010-09-28T21:21:00.000-04:00

Fester from the Adams Family

This is for my uncle Richard
Still living with Babita
After dropping out in the 6th grade
He brought me to MSG
To see Hulk Hogan and Patrick Ewing
Still watches RAW on Mondays
The highlight of the week
Everything drops downhill from
The 1st to 15th to Hep C to
Metadona ta cabrona to still loving
Sylvia trife bitch faded tat
In his own handwriting
For last year’s jordans on sale
Yesterdays’ new shit turned exclusive
For beauty products from the 99 cent store
Mane & tails to wash nonexistent curls
Camay to lather dome
Disposable BICs to shave closely
Green rubbing alcohol for nicks and cuts
Faded wrestling magazines from 80s and 90s
Praising Shane Douglass and Ultimate Warrior
ECW and WCW dubbed on 6 hr VHS
Every bootleg kung fu flick
Plus horror movies with commentary
Long way from 7A 710
Fire brought flames through roof
Incinerated memories pictures report cards
Gone in wind’s puff of smoke
Was the fake Christmas tree
With liquid lightbulbs
Mirrors with stones
Plastic covered sofas
Handball in hallways
Rafaela and Artie’s room
Back where you could see the moon
Paint the skyline over the South Boogie
Like those courts
Where his invisible jersey
Returned to the rafters
Used to say he was skinny
But look how depression brings disaster
Now we getting older faster
He limps with a cane
A messed up foot
Those heels and nose are passed through generations
Cracked needing to moisturized
With meaning motivating your mind
To move one in front of the other
What would I tell him once
God forbid that day happens?
What has been your contingency plan?
Who will show that same love
That he had for Babita in quiet days
When the phone never rang
And she had only Tres and Law & Order
To keep her company
This is for Uncle Richard’s humanity
Lovingly holding on to a past
That has passed him by
I want to picture him back in the day
Jumping running balling
One word
Fly

11385

2010-09-28T21:20:00.001-04:00

Ridgewood Rigid
Let the rain clean the musty smell
Of leftovers money and food going to waste
Many good meals been forsaken
Forward motion doesn’t allow you
To rewind times to when you was getting it
Everything was Gucci
Or maybe at least a knock off
Where can you go when its rainy outside
Scribble along the page to keep your mind alive
The voices in the back attempt to distract
Wondering why those shorties running through the block
Turning up the temperature in a quest for trouble
Jumping above before searching below
The puddle shimmer while you shiver at
The distorted reflection gather your greatest perception
Might reveal your latest deception
How you tricked everyone into believing you
So gullible almost garish in your appearance
Gaudy where you are raised makes you nature naughty
Remembering those moments
Like the perfect mixtape stopped and paused
Recorded from the radio we still rip audio from the air
Eavesdropping down the surrounding sound
That inspires you inhibitions to escape outta town
Where else can ever be so familiar
Beyond first names you understand
The frustration on the front lines
But as soon as you lose faith
You have already lost face
A focused interruption
Constant corruption
Striking away instead of embracing
The natural entropy ebbs and flows
How the riptide pulls you under however long
You plan to stay submerged
Drowned in your own depths
Deciding how many separate deaths
No one will attend the services
Just tearful puffs
Saying damn that was my dude
No one wants a session with your suffering
A cipher with sad solitude
Its like yes man causes you to yearn
For everything else except your own needs
Even steal what remains after you bleed
Scavengers who won’t let you escape
Still picking the crust out your eyes after you awake
Fate depends on the next favor you aren’t willing to ask for
In the whim of a split second
You have decided dumb shit takes precedent
Over the priority of Pa’lante
Your flashback foreshadows more fuck shit
Future foggy like cars after being hot boxed
Block hot concrete like sand at the beach
Only the coast far from clear
Trying not to hear what is too difficult to see
Free when the most confined
Identify everything when blind
How can we live up to the legends of our minds
Don’t ever think loving yourself is a crime

word

2010-09-28T21:19:00.001-04:00

Say word

Don’t let that dolla dictate your dreams
Even your closest friends ain’t what they seem
You are the only person
Who opens and closes those eyes
Every midnight and morning
Everyone already got it your ideas are just dawning
You realize your company
Is worth more than the initial public offering
Always defaulting on down payments
But on time for your crooked school loan
If you clink your bones
What secrets would you reveal
You will never sell out for mass appeal
Sometimes you don’t even like you
Type to distance before getting in tight spaces
The basis for your overanalysis
Is a composite sketch of the hood’s misunderstandings
Unfriendly interactions leads to hormone laced beef
That gets grilled and served in the streets
Maybe there is a difference in dedication
Lively up your determination
Watch the imagined nation grow
You’ve got that glow
A hardened sparkle
That lights up the shadows
A dull arrow
Pointed at misguided pharaohs
The devil’s lasso
Has you far from Picasso
Great impostor
To be real you must improve your posture
How are you standing
Why them shoulders slouched
Please stick your chest out
So many reasons to be proud
But you are never loud
Even if you whisper
Emotions alone
Could still move the crowd

i miss the hood sometimes

2010-09-23T12:27:00.000-04:00

Remix the Hood

Gather the spirits inside from whence you came
20 Clason Point Lane Apt B
Bronx NY 10473
Right off the ave called Story

Trying to rewrite the scripture that still sounds amazing

A prayer for the faded pictures
Institutional degrees conferring graduation
To a different place somewhere looking like elevation

Horoscope said forget about everything outdated
But these moments which turn into the past
Have been the most sacred

Hot and Mega Millions made the Stationary retire
Took the Bruce Lee and Hogan posters without saying good bye
Chinese and Kansas new competition with Jimbos
To see who will clog our intestines the fastest
New poison in town called 4Loco
That will literally bring you through 4 stages of crazy
Denial
Ascent
Crash into Smacked/Twisted
Lean back right after

Another night sponsored by flavored Dutch Masters
The hood’s lungs have evolved taste buds
To leave the 4 wall box in the projects foggier than ever

Regardless of weather or not
The block is temperature forecast
To constantly rising

To walk around here
Is to know nothing will be surprising

The concrete has sprouted its own roots
Creates children who throw fists
To chisel how hard their soft interior will be
Recognize that nothing is free
Even your breathing will be taxed
On the next food stamp used to buy a Black and Mild

Day is bright but the night is certainly darker
Seen families who are starving
Because the cabinet was colonized by roaches and rats
Like the scavenger stranger who stay in the crib

Burning the fans in their playstation
Because they watch the world through WorldStar

The screen screamed back
You won’t go too far
Stay here we’ll be bringing more commercials
Where the money back guaranteed
You will want to kill yourself
With no questions asked

Just flickering candles wrinkle pictures
Bottles and els passed
Until the breeze blows and extinguishes the fire

Wondering why did you love the hood
When the bitch don’t love you back

You on the right track
Like back to the wall in front of a mural
Capturing the sunset in the intersection
Of Story and Soundview

You come back around the way
To find YOU

i see i says

2010-09-23T12:22:00.000-04:00

I see I says

New dawn awakening to dark midnight
Stumbling to find vision hitting the positions
Where everything clicking

Back on mission rocket pointed at middle of universe
Folded tight on top of self centered censorship

Advising the parents the children are living explicitly
The broken symmetry has
The rough outlines of their research
Misquoting the footnotes of their ancestors
Plagiarizing the past
Only see failure in their future
But that’s fallacy will all fall in the same hole
Floating in the thick air

Amazing gaining grace from the gutter
Small wonders lead to giant habits
Daily with deadlines for damage
Not your average chimney releasing smoke signals
Howling at full moon for help
Lost in the wilderness of the city

The concrete has trails of tears
If you could connect the dots
You might find constellations
In the soft sticky cement

Vivid images turn foggy fuzzy
Analyzing the ugly
You found your screwface
Resembled the ice grill and gas
Held an ace but your poker
Made you show your weak hands

Strong for simple risks
Just walking is a death defying adventure
Your attention is a terrible thing to waste

Face forward in the mirror
What is the dull reflection of your glazed pupil

Why are you used to movement all around
Except your internal affairs have been investigated
By flaw and disorder

Feed the meter with quarters
So you can keep sparking

Getting darker earlier couldn’t capture the sunset
Right next to happiness

Sadness is salivating
But your squad smacked the bullshit emotion
For violating

Confidence is changing
Rearranging the reason for breathing
Your existence never just to get even
I’d rather run up the score
Make it a blowout and slaughter

All running to catch the same train
Pull the emergency brake if you really see evil
But please be advised
It don’t look like our people

Humanity beyond color
Our veins bathe in same blood
Sweeter than azucar causing you to smile and think
Eyes wide blink examine where is the brink
What are the barriers of your barrio

Existing between borders
Brought to respect elders
Honor your history

Your perspective has peaked
Your inspiration has reached
Another level of understanding faintly everything
But mostly absolutely nothing

Your palabras only matter
If you make it to manana

stay away from that poison

2010-09-11T09:05:00.000-04:00

Fruit Punch 4Loco
Everybody got their own motivation
Choose carefully
The weapon to get your enemies shaking
Awakening from unrealistic
Not so simplistic intricate quasars
Capture your pulsar
Leave you rapid
In the vacant shade all the same cages
All so amazing how the occasions evaporated
What’s once sacred becomes befouled
Out the game resting overtime put in work
But the team outta the tournament
Every now and then bent to a different direction
More progression leaves less stressing
Infinite ways you can go loco
How can you cope
With the mechanisms of the system
Leaving you in critical condition
Confined to the chair almost electric
Has you skeptic on the hood’s health statistics
There’s a natural mystic blowing through the air
Trapped in project stairs prowled by predators
For upward mobility
Your capability surpasses your IQ
Have many Clue? tapes but won’t ask a question
Profession of every session experience
You couldn’t fathom the sheer amount
Of examining the extinction agenda
While right in the center of reflection
From the inception you came out guessing
Wondering if this is where I need to be
Free is you in the backyard
Still trying to hit something over the fences
You still huddled right by the benches
Running away from the demons
Usain Bolt was a Nuyorican reaching
Higher levels of speed through
Where you ain’t searching
No more somewhere else more positive
Tell em you gotta live
Project the image you want captured
In the rapture of revelry
You finally stepping outside
To get right back internal
How many of those rainy cloudy moments
Remembered in journals
Dusty like underneath the bed
Bouncing off four walls
Still hear the calls when it all falls down
Realness makes you recover
As you hover through how sanctified
The sacrifice of sudden appearances have been
Lessons never learned in classrooms
More like gatherings by the chessboards
Flowerpots low cribs backpark under full moons
Each trying to scramble to the next morning
Where the floor screams
How much not giving a fuck has done damage
Hope that greasy food can cure hangover
Know that each second ticking
We getting older
Far from over turning the page to the next shit
Circle quickest way home trying to collect
Inspiration from the quiet riot
Of rhythm recalculating the path
Leading you to this point
Where you are still hunting
Accept the future you are wanting

pa'lante

2010-09-10T23:48:00.001-04:00

Tryin to hold on until tomorrow
Connect a bunch of yesterdays
Back with today’s promise
If you waste away you might not
Get the courage to say what’s important
Play by play color commentator
That examines the invisible grey of the rainbow
The window reveals the world beyond
Depending on your vision
You can keep searching forever
Never find your alma in front of you
A chance to turn it upside down
Drowning in a dried up puddle
Of what we poured
Explored what is integral
The interval a participle dangling
Strangling simplicity
Intricacy of engaging while impossible
What is highly probable is your uncertainty
Surgery to your perjury
Slice apart your lies
Stitch up your truths
Sins get separated
Chaos finally coordinated
Fry your frustration
Make sure it’s neatly plated
Your entrance admission
Will increase after you lose momentum
Taxed for your tardiness
Late fees assessed
As you are leaving love behind
Library of nonsense
Multiple volumes
Allow you to reference
What’s really hood
Regarding your search

2010-09-10T23:43:00.000-04:00

Strife and Doubt
How can you contribute
To the rotation of the world
Keep that shit spinning
Cuz once it stops
You automatically drop
The block is your graveyard
Your stoop is your headstone
The curb is your coffin
Will you be at your own burial
How soon will you get up
With the big homie Grim Reaper
You better give praise
For your blessings or they might
Pass you by without saying what up
The best part of liberating
Yourself is finally shaking off
The heaviest chains
Live like tomorrow is guaranteed
If it’s fucked up
Check the receipt or warranty

happy b day tone

2010-09-06T23:54:00.001-04:00

Cinema Paraiso
I’ve seen why the chickens cross the road
Quickly trying to survive
Put away instincts to look behind
Right in front of has been the title for this journey
Mahalo ola nani
Thank you for a beautiful life
I want to chill with the lazy gatos in the sunlight
Fly with the sandpipers scream at the horizons
With the nene gooses
Bite on a pineapple until the juice drips to toes
Embrace the fullness of life with no restrictions
Rigid rules arbitrary regulations
Hang on defiantly like that tree atop a mountain
That might no exist or still will if you never saw it
How did the mountain goat scale that Montana
In search of something like me
Dropped from there eyes open
Still figuring it out
I’ll say good morning to whoever while
Relaxing in the shade
Incredible to take first wobbly steps outta cage
Rub that sol in your face
Stop running in place for life’s race
Continue to wrap arms around memories
New that will become old
How do you describe paradise never seen
Just pairs of dice
That still shake with you in your dreams
Like this all happened déjà vu
Having reruns of greatest episodes
With the best crew family on the planet
Can’t understand it flow with the waves
Don’t got that ground squared away
Still renting reality
Air shaky because of gravity
One day you will flap your wings to soar
We can listen to each other
Sing the struggle and smile for distances
Unnatural and scowl at the factual fallacy
Pushed to fall over
First the privates then the nipples then the shoulders
To get used to the cool temperatures
Of that aqua lava life blood of mother earth
Trying to tread water
Swim away from slaughter
Rather put order of reverence to the elements to master
The first 29 years gone faster
Than I could learn
Burning to slow down the turning of the globe
Examining the meaning on the otherside
How could you be the best facilitator of the future
Finding its fate when your mind
Has yet to awaken the significance
Of each step taken
Somehow foggy
With the clarity of crystals
Forming into blown glass
Missiles blow the whistle
Ring the alarm charmed
With the swarm of molecules
Motivating you hunter gatherer
Something from nothing
Always add up the sum of your heart’s drums
Building that rhythm
The mission to go beyond maintaining
Training for the flaming
Of Babylon travel on the road to zion
Heaven right down the block
In the next projects
Profit from the experiences
Pour pain from the pocket
Acknowledge the prophet
Who don’t got that knowledge
Staring back in the mirror
Reflects a clearer picture
Of the scripture you manifest
Man at his best
Accepts beautiful flaws
Tragic triumphs
Effort not enough
Keep marching keep sparking
Light through mental darkness
If you don’t believe then who will
We can make time stand still with the silence
Vibrant thing to be alive
And bring forth every blessing
This ain’t no messing around
This is like lost but now I’m found
Got the crown of royalty
Nothing but love and loyalty
Let the day be proclaimed
In the name of the holy trinity
The hood always in the vicinity
Within me god like divinity
Sky keep going for infinity
With the wind to my back and front
Couldn’t stunt this if I tried
So much to see
So much more to ride
We got the world in our hands
But don’t know how to hold it right
Make conversation
Crack a corny joke
To break down any anger
No frustration in this imagined nation
Toasted bread luxurious land
Liberty in all I see
NYC CPG the mecca of the universe
But the way will be more milky
With stars starting fires
To electrify the mundo
Want the next of kin to feel like a king
Never flinch an inch
In the blink of an ojo
Never be flojo
Release these words as un despojo
Cleanse the spirit
Bathe those lyrics
In melodies so your loved ones
Can hear the echoes travel
Through the islands to the ghettoes
From a concrete jungle
To visions that make you stumble
For exact descriptions
The prescriptions been written
Those knocks to the head
Will help you read better
Take a shredder to the confidential
Hug the monumental
Freestyle to the breeze as your instrumental
Plentiful fantasies
Arouse sensitive emptiness
Let the blood flow freely
To feel righteous connection
No more failing your own multiple choice
You already have the answers
Give yourself a chance
To realize why before you say no
Gather your angels before you go
Pack your pen and pad
So you can record the most exclusive flow
Stay you
Love this life
Absolutely unquestionable

Ya Understand Me

2010-06-04T11:32:00.003-04:00

Ya Understand Me?

The otherside of nuclear More like benign bombs

Never meant to blow only sit quiet wait to be broken down

No need for peace treaty

More like declaration of intentions to speak freely

Like Heal the World make it a better place

Shoulda just started on my block

They don’t want the Bronx to organize

Because our reparations would like the reservations

Neglect can negate your very existence

An insistence on instigating your instinct

Things fall apart barely hanging intact

The natural setting leaves nature sitting

The hatred simmering til the suffering steak is sautéed

Medium well the tedious spell of dizzying cycles

Riding that wave more like tidal

Before drowning in your spit puddle

Wear a life jacket in those deepwaters of reflection

Perception is more important than confessing

All those back of the closet secrets whose bones

Still rattle and clang trying to find the hood where freedom hang

Him and my mother kissing cousins but what do we face now?

An empty crib with a cat making dog growls

Pictures from yesteryears that tell you half the story

Fill in the rest thinking bout how did we end up here gets me stressed

Conventionally conveniently silent

Montage of memories that keep echoing the entropy

Mental telepathy would be amazing

Power to transport me faraway

To the fantasy side of family where

There is always a happy ending everyone says good night

Bendicion

This rendition has a reservation at the windows of my world

Beautiful night to examine the skyline of my spirit

Every valley and peak each alley and street

That hides a little bit of my hope

Behind a tree under a rock by the fence

Sit on the bench the secret note will be hidden above

Or below the brick holding the keystone

Type to roam dust between bones

Mellow all alone sleepy sometimes scared

Beware when the heart bounce

Cautiously avoid being caught up feeling like luck

Is something only a dolla might provide

Along with the public there is a darkside

Where the light don’t shine too bright we ain’t wrapped too tight

A loose pull leads to a weak push

Hard to even open the door for a quick look

Contents shaken under pressure ready to burst

Curses are symptomatic of the larger havoc

If you could open the attic only imagine what you could find

All the divine signs that have shown you

To walk the thousand steps down the path

Of Pa’lante so that nadie

can ever

Take your love from your hands

ProClaim

2010-06-04T11:32:00.001-04:00

Pro- Claim

Where’s the monument to surviving the ghetto

We only celebrate independence

To becoming dependent on this beloved country

We hold cookouts on courtyards

Of public housing named after dead presidents

Who never wanted us residents of these blessed blocks

We have holidays and days off

Commerate the closing of our culture

So where to run when we need

Moments of sincerity amongst the insanity

Let’s claim every corner in honor of fallen soldiers

Whose shadows hang over our broken spirits

The Bronx River is like Rio Grande de Loiza

You might still see Julia De Burgos

Screaming at the wind They Lie They Lie

All vacant lots have become jardines del pueblo

We plant our souls in the soil

So we can reap the revolution

With no apologies complaints or do overs

Mix blood with water in the dirt

So our past can fertilize the future

Tomorrow will bloom like bouquets of Pa’lante

Allowing the peoples smiles to blossom

Every streetlight will have inspirational quotes

From our freedom fighting writers

De La Vega will sidechalk Become Your Dream

Raimundi Ortiz will capture our heroes in murals

Yasmin Hernandez will paint each every soul rebel

Telephone booths will become recording studios

To create the next Cantante India or Pun

Newspapers should have a daily quote from Albizu

To affirm the lifelong quest for freedom

All diplomas will come with a pastele attached

So you can feed your mind and body

Bacardi will sterilize all wounds

Don Q might make you feel better

If your child is acting up

There are break in case of emergency chancletas

For all neighbors to use on sinverguenzas

Chupacabras are the boogiemen

Who invade the dark and crawl under your bed

Keeping you afraid of the unknown

Use your Dylcia and Filiberto nightlights

To push you to be brave

Ramon Emetario Betances

Said that no man should ever be a slave

Nor should your mind be trapped in a cage

I was told that freedom is like air

Either you have it or don’t

Miles from the enchanted island

Still trying to get back home

Where the trees stand testimony to our triumph

Coquis create the sound of blood through veins

We must leave a legacy

Showing that we conquered as they came

But our statues will be dancing salsa

Even our piedras will be insane

Shit to Write About

2010-06-02T13:17:00.003-04:00

Shit to Write About

After Willie Perdomo

The way the world turns counterclockwise

How the moon is in the morning sky to wish on

When the sound of the city screams sing your song

A stray cat strolls on by searching the meal

Transactions under train tracks dark midnite

Snuggled closely to a warm body

Love get defined in between dreams and nightmares

Why freedom is being auctioned to the highest quitter

Pushing the definition of real nigga

Who uses liquor for the truth serum to get in touch

With long lost ancestors who eventually abandoned

The main source of any power that comes from within

Mini crisis la Montana from a hill of ants

The precise moment before you ask the devil to dance

All those young faces in faded curled up pictures

Hidden messages behind withered scriptures

Lessons that got learned far too late

Sessions where you burned tried to escape

Unfinished masterpieces revealing ultimate secret

Characters with sketches too close to self portraits

Standing under streetlight silhoutee

Creating sexy looking shadows

To make you infatuated with the darkness

The heartless showing purpose and humanity

The soldiers staring in the mirror

Mysterious murder like the vanity

An affair that is conspicuous yet to be disclosed

A reflection that is shattered

Dropping rocks into puddles

Complex puzzles with the pieces waiting to be arranged

Finally recognizing this happy life won’t be the same

Riding the train home to parts unknown

The road less traveled towards the end of its course

The ultramagnetic force pulling you back to the block

With every teardrop comes new triumph

Still running towards destiny

When will the DJ cue Time’s Up

All those parties poppin til the breakadawn

The sun shines brilliantly on your path

Add up the disparate numbers to get fuzzy math

Where you holding on to hope for a little bit longer

When you slip how soft is the ground beneath you

When you rise how low is the see thru ceiling

If the only option is death then start planning your funeral

Find a suitable composition that might

Transition your abilities to higher altitudes

instead of lower attitudes that attach you to tragedy

combine the undercurrent of apathy

along with the subtleties of nihilism shake violently

to explode like your Tropical Fantasy

you are entitled to absolute effort

otherwise you are selling yourself a sucka for sale

you get discounts on dumb shit add taxes to intelligence

pass your prayers to the president

your responses won’t be politically correct

before you step on stage

make sure your lyrics

pass the mic check

O that yr word

2010-06-02T13:17:00.001-04:00

O that’s your word?

What can I tell you

That you haven’t heard

Let me make that regular look extra exotic

Let the same shit different day

Turn into different destiny same smile

If the world revolves around you

How can we make the orbit orgasmic

Cosmic courage that could conquer any demons

Dreaming of finding the meaning

When you define the purpose why you searching

Maybe that inspiration will drop from the sky

Let gravity’s good graces guide you out the ghetto

Make heaven echo your effort

Hell will envy then wanna trade places

Ill if grill was stuck on fuck faces

You could forecast your ecstacy to the planet

Stretch that moment into a lifetime of loving

Laugh until you reside in New Snort City

Chuckle until you choke giggle til those good times gush

Attributed fortune to luck but the divine

Donated you with your lovelies as a chance

To block the ugly

Let your blessings bubble over the lip of the sink

Run your hands through the thick air that fill your lungs

Talk your shit as loud as you can

Walk your shit as proud as you can

Wear your skin illest designer and copywritten

Pigment plantation destroys

All factories of frustration

Have you folded your future

Renewed and maintained your creases

Let the coming days off the leash

Screaming comeback you have barely trained the beast

Camouflage your code for explicit expression

Emotion is a weapon that can barely be silenced

Automatic continuation of chaos causes

Iced out chain reactions that will freeze happiness

Melt memories of dancing in the sunlight

When frivolous becomes fatal you finally

Might blink but instead you say fuck that

I’ma do me whatever that blindly means

Easily find your way into a scheme

That beams holograms of hope back

To real time horrorshows starring you

Absent minded accomplice with blood on your hands

If your brain draws blanks it prolly spits them as well

Hands tightly wrapped around bars in the cell

Visions of happilyeverafter become 3distant

After the Dutch mastered your vocals

The producer punch in your power

Adlibbing admonishment to your adversaries

Inadvertently you tripped over urgency

Like oh yeah I gotta be focused as opposed to

Stressed out and hopeless maintain the positive

As long as you gotta live you gotta give

A damn fuck or shit whatever you may choose

Whatever your choice

Voice must scream the truth

2010-06-02T13:14:00.002-04:00

friday june 4th, nuyorican poets cafe
10 pm co feature with mike mcgee

it's been awhile. props to mo browne for hooking this up. this past decade has seen some ups and downs and the nuyo has helped me through it all. a stage a mic an audience that will listen. thanks to the universe. this couldn't have come at a better time.

far cry from the first time after the 97 grand slam in the open room. i wanna say morris the stegosarus rocked before me. i read something about being 16 and trying to wake up. i remember a line like my heart is upside down roses hanging on the wall waiting to dry and wither away. damn. i still be feeling like that.

if you around come drop by. it would be cool to reconnect with folks. oh yeah i'm getting married in july. holla.

the words walked away

2010-05-19T14:31:00.001-04:00

Feels as if the words walked away

And never cam back home

Tyring to find a different objective

Examine the collective for factory flaws

Unwilling to pause the forward momentum

Too much to handle

Place candles by the window

Hoping the spirits may circle and surround

A wide open ear so you may hear the sound

Of silence that means the opposite of sweet dreams

Thin line between reality and fantasy

Who determines the exact outcomes

Imperfect obscenities plentiful

Observe humanity no one on a pedestal

How can you push proactivelyu

Against damaging floods

Blood blended into smoothies smoothly

Sliding off in search of whatever sin

Makes you smile

Your profile of your good side

Got your bad facing the shadows

Within the darkness brighter side on the flip

The greasy details of the script have been overlooked

Walking the straight line crooked

Who knew every step would lead to Central Bookings

You lost the combination to your own freedom

Steady killings the fable of once upon a time

Because the blunts beyond your mind

Have left you in critical spaces

You lack the basis for a fundamental analysis

Of overstanding the circumstances

Behind the bad romances of your barrio

Where there have been broken hearted

Walk of fame with teardrops personalized

With your signature the calligraphy

Of your confidence has been scribbled sloppily

There has been a severe lack of comprehension

Confounded by making connections

With stars that will never touch the ground

Rotation from the sun

Ill if we could shine below the sky

As clouds hold conferences

To acknowledge the positivity radiated

Gravitated towards the ghetto’s charm and grace

Could scream towards heaven and feel safe

Amongst all the voices harmonizing

Singing the same songs of struggle

Life just a scuffle between demons and angels

Who resemble strangers who strike you familiar

Like seen you before someplace like this

Exactly not quite

Precisely not really

The coordinates haven’t been mapped

To the final destination

Figure out how you are going to get

To where you are going

Before the clock expires

Kill em with Kindness

2010-05-19T14:30:00.001-04:00

Kill em with Kindness,

Or you couldn’t see your light

For Tyler

Always after the blossoms have bloomed

You ate your first cococherry icy of the summer

To let you know the season has arrived

Early morning wakeups just to survive

Make meaning out of confused sense

A twisted form of accepting reality

Your vision of the future foggy

Now you gaze groggily at the sun

Signaling a new day has risen

Let us rejoice and be thankful

Ignoring counting your blessings

Because you couldn’t do the math

The sky high price of what you lost

Has left your sense of security staggering

Speaking through broken teeth

Has you spitting on people for emphasis

Evaluating the basis of your displacement

Stagnant anticipating your next expiration date

Redemption has shown up far too late

Even with a remix attached to the bonus track

Exclusive digitally enhanced messages have gone

Undiscovered while you were deep

In discussion of dumb shit in detail

Instead of asking the mirror

What happened to your promise

What have you done for me lately

Have you said farewell to your failures

And welcome to all your wishes

It’s no wonder your dreams have dipset on your destiny

Within your energy no possibility for eventually

Only endlessly perpetually cycle of reruns

Of yesterday’s bugging whole lot of mind numbing

Nonsense to laugh at because otherwise

The flood of tears would be nonstop

Easier to wear a copywritten mask

With the bleak background of the block as you bop

If you got something on lock

Then where is the chain

Decide how you will be remembered

And what legacy remains

A stained tee shirt with wrinkled eyes almost saintly pose

A once a year candle flickering against the cold

Our souls are old but the stories still so young

Same song loud volume hard to understand words

So hard to spell out your hood

When all the letters have the same sound

Of absolute robberies triumphing over ancient philosophies

Impossible is where you have planted yourself

Paint yourself with the prophecies of your pain

Like rainbow colors of your amazing chase

Not the Same

2010-04-27T15:09:00.001-04:00

Not the Same

The crib been silent

Stories been muted

Voices with clichéd overdubs

Capturing attention

Right after these commercials

From corporate sponsors

That have colonized our family

Used to watch TV while eating dinner

No playback of each others daily highlights

Just school and work

Institutions designed to distance us

Add the finishing touches

On a montage of moments that will capture

All the laughter and disaster

Collect the remains gather the broken images

From the backwards peacock mirror

To transport you forwards towards what to come

Run around the courts and fields

To work up the sweat and appetite

Developed acquired taste

For not acting right because I’d match my mind

To the continual movement of doors opening and locking

Bed right above entrance and exit

Thought I could get precise directions

On where I should be headed

I read recognition it screamed off the page

At that age still trying to recover

Something that won’t be found

Those calls bounce through walls

Those drums dance in dreams

The unseen became in front of face

Now turned away trying to handle

Understanding with slippery grip on what I can’t
grab

Room been a lab of battling histories

Experimenting with mysteries

Examining the astrology

Of absolutely no apologies

If only it was magic everybody might reappear

Instead this is another empty night

Me and my shadow for company

Only none of these stock options have gone public

Nothing absence of space

The transferring of matter into product to say something

Your heart been a peanut shell

A door open to a cell

Waiting for the invitation

When was the last time

Faces in a picture were altogether

Like an original ensemble

Our classic hits leave me trembling

Resembling a group gathered to make history

Not fade away like colors run in the sun

Where we would squint and pinch

If only the light would last

A little longer

They will cling to you

2010-04-27T15:08:00.001-04:00

They will cling to you…..- Robert Frost

All that static will make it stick

The letter people provide the music

Patty cake patty cake

Red light green light 123

If only your grownup life

Was as easy as ABC

All these verses have vindicated your view

Please don’t get your blues confused

Muse composed of memories

So poignant you can taste fingerprints

To remember how you entered

Everywhere always with love

Lifting you higher than standing up

Could ever allow beads of sweat on your brow

Stuck on figuring the how when right now

The flow imperative to keep it wavy

Crashing it against the coast

Surfing over the flood where you able to catch

What remains below the bottom

Forever stuck in the groove

You can never lost what’s left behind

Has blessed you going forward

Fully aware of all angles

The circumference of your surroundings

Have showed you constellations of angels

Who chill with you and bounce echoes

Of the block’s brilliance to your brain

The rain reminds you of rice

Overflowing on plates

where you picked out each bean

skip right to the next chapter

on those nights where you diced your dreams

watching their elegant explosions

or how they’ve withered in the sun

the derivatives of your disappointment

are daily discussed on the Dow Jones

the misery market is in high demand

of your painful productions

short supply on happiness

hot commodity on Main Street not so much on Wall

where you been off defining your wealth

in spiritual ends not material means

mo money mo murder mo homicide

mo tears mo problems survive til solution arise

are you surprised the wind blew out

the candles before you could wish

to make an early exit before you arrived

thrive off the thrill of staying so ill

your still life would have a collage of you coughing

photo series of flavors of phlegm

no end non stop ellipsis analysis

of your culture catalyst

how will you get the fuse sparked?

The morning light

Shatters the night dark

Searching for what will stay

Stay searching

Love I’m still working

Fuck My Life

2010-04-27T15:07:00.001-04:00

Fuck My Life

Tease my temptations

Arouse my anger

Awaken my apathy

Slow dance with struggle

Strobelight my sexiness

Wink away worry

Run your fingernails along my spite

Lick my tight spot

Tongue down my terror

Make my toes curl from your chemicals

Be kind to my kidneys

Embrace my ethnicity

May my seasonings swallow your taste buds

Pound my pain

Give everyone of my openings orgasms

Until the tender places spasm

Muscle contractions massaged

With essential oils to smooth out the tension

Make your reason relax start to purr

Like a kitty rubbed the right way

Reveal my secrets in a whisper

That might heal a wounded heart

Turn me on keep my engine humming

Dry hump my hope

So my love rocket with lift off

Guarantee that you are gonna give it to me

Just the way I like it

If you work it just so

I’ll scream and make noises

I won’t fight it

Last night turned into this morning

2010-04-15T14:34:00.001-04:00

Last night turned into this morning

I’m just glad I made it back to the crib

Wobbling trying to figure out how to live

Just a kid who grew up too quick

Walking on the concrete tears make road slick

Philosophies misspelled while being overwhelmed

At the edge just blowing with the wind

On the odyssey focused on journey back where it started

Perpetual search home of the brave hearted

The beginning of the exodus

Said feels so foreign reversal of direction

Moments of introspection leave physical without protection

In school and the streets learned lessons about values

Keep going eventually you might understand

Fortuitous timing hopping on the Bx5 bus

After building with JB BC KCino and Snaxx

Seeing through the lies finding actual facts

The hood is still alive just trying to live

in the moment right now is priceless

split Sesame Chicken combo with my mama

to revive the reason for passion or legacy

hope that the spirits don’t get ahead of me

looking up to evaluate the destiny

trying to feel like home is where the heart is

on every side of the city feeling your memories calling you back

at least say what up cause you need to show that love

pumping through veins mixed with intoxicating intentions

of instigating the movement to manifest your monuments

of the wonderful ways the world has hugged you even when

you said fuck frustration and forget about future

not used to embracing the inevitable rather remember the regrettable

instead of letting go too easy to hold on to genius like a cold world

the night before when you woke up to realize your eyes are your cries

bouncing back to connect sound and sight

the precise coordinates of your capability are exactly plotted

but there is no map to guide

no sense of reflection can provide

on your path please don’t leave behind laughter

account for your blessings carry over all struggles

upchuck your agony regurgitate your reputation

wipe away your worry puke pessissm spit out silence

swallow tomorrow yak yesterday appreciate the present

refresh your revolution wherever you rest your head is heaven

Creative Consumption

2010-04-15T14:33:00.001-04:00

Creative Consumption

You want to text while brushing your teeth

Full command of the internet underneath your eyelids

In tune with intuition you stream

The revolution in real time for reality TV

you inhale the outtakes find it funny

Because your fingertips forecast the weather

Index up you broadcast tonight’s ballgame

All the same agony switch channels telepathically

Transmit tragedy by opening mouth

High definition heaven on a panoramic screen

Digital footprint twelve steps to the American Dream

Scan the barcode on your brain

To recreate your memories for Top 10 highlights on ESPN

No need to tell a friend they have previewed your thoughts

Considered guilty did jailtime in womb

Before even stepping foot in court

Nation at war that’s the theme park attraction

On Planet Earth with hologram distraction

Satisfaction from the surreal

Easy to have mass appeal

even your breathing has a 360 deal

your misery is marketed

Pain promoted and poverty publicized

Cranium is commercialized

feed off your future like culture vultures

the day you stop buying

existence is dying

it’s over

9 weeks til June

2010-04-15T14:32:00.001-04:00

9 weeks til June/Summer Break Started

Young brains on vacation

Futures float away on paper planes

All I wanna hear is gunshot

Cashier ringing then take your money

Bellies rumbling hungry

Heartful of the hood

Soul shaking towards young face

First place informality

Higher and higher on tragedy

Masters in apathy ready to declare

Deadly I don’t give a fucks

Followed by lovely don’t leave me

Caught in between the too warm breeze

Bacon egg and cheese breaths

Deblt with high interest can’t be repaid

When constantly held back in each grade

Sharp as the blade that shaped eye brows

Instead of saying what son should ask how

The right now will evaporate quicker

Than smiles after bad news

So much to prove and everything to lose

Been lost before understood

the hidden taxes and costs

can’t even cheat right

getting caught on the regular

they say lack of motivation in molecular

I believe mediocrity

Is an acquired taste

Small sips of cynicism

turn big gulps of misgivings

we are quick to forecast their fate

doors to their imagination

imagined nation

must be open late

New dawn new day

2010-04-13T14:34:00.001-04:00

New dawn new day

Waking up to birds singing

Envisioning brighter days stuck in the same place

Each minute there’s a message

Beggin to be discovered

So much original trauma you’ve never recovered

Scribbling the details with mysterious ink

Often times neighbors with the brink of insanity

But you never want to fear to pay a friendly visit

Every hood story short on specifics

Heavy innuendo with slight touch of personal hatred

Take each testimony with helpings of sodium

Hood loves to pontificate likes to hear themselves

On top of the ghetto podium

It all comes with 5 senses of urgency

Turbulence a steady part of this nutritious

Fried sustenance that might suffocate

Easier to procrastinate than elevate

Fuzzy measurements to precise equations

Results in rough outlines engrained in concrete

Cycles of vitals not found in the bible

Though these elegant angels keep searching

Every sound birthed pleasures of inevitable uprisings

As sun arises new possibility on the horizon

Relentless collection leads to pretentious depression

Without evaluating the circumstance

Predictions of happenstance

Brings death wherever you happen to stand

Capture courage at your command

These souls have sprouted flowers

Even in most treacherous of conditions

For your people you chuckle

At the miracle of their existence

Let alone yours

Standing there taking mental pictures

You hope and pray will develop

So many unopened bills still the envelope

Waiting to reveal jackpot to destiny rerouted

Impossible to scribe the summary that unlocks

The vision you have stepped right out of prison

Still have nightmares of being right there

Where you were fed Newports laced with nihilism

A cell full of self loathing

Location to love lost to reflections of real shit

You thought you may have the answer but you hear

Yo yall violated my G

Just you watch the world

Gonna wash yall lil niggas

The shorties scream at the top of their lungs

Just to get their moments in the sun

Where you wish you could walk right up

To smile laugh out loud at your dirty laundry

Indeed all our shit stink

Wonder at the beauty of your imagination

Sit back roll up

Zone out

Just think

Affirmative Proaction

2010-04-13T14:33:00.001-04:00

Affirmative Proaction

I seek endless possibility from the unseen

I tried to put my people on to a Love Supreme

They told me turn that pretty shit off

Don’t define the hustle

Around here we need sounds

Like Big Pun on the timbales and Tito Puente rappin

Like we need Jesus dropping exclusive mixtapes

With hot 16s from Allah Buddha and Ganesh

Like Hector Lavoe having a driveby on Calle Luna Calle Sol

Like Das Efx going platinum with Hip Hop is outta Control

Like Louis Armstrong having a smokefest with Snoop

Like Billie Holliday singing StrangeFruit in autotune

We need Lil’ Wayne to be the next Michael Eric Dyson

Mike Tyson to be a counselor for peace

What if Major Leagues went on strike

for illegal immigration raids

Switch the scales of justice put CEOs in a cage

Each Dutch should have a fortune

Inside after you split

The cornerstore could have maps

for your life’s destination

all malt liquor will have

the same nutritional content as OJ

High Fructose Corn Syrup

Are the new steroids

So the hood is juiced up

Producing Olympic Gold medalists

Every phone booth has a direct line

To the White House 311 center

Around here we cool with the cockroaches

because they clean up crumbs

pigeons stay shitting on you

for good luck

squirrel in they own world just trying to get a nut

all the dogs and cats out for last scraps

don’t stray from the pack

like a mosquito you quick to get clapped

ain’t too many ready to change all dat

born where the air slaps you for just thinking

College professors should give out

Political philosophy classes down at the precinct

The law school should set up shop at Central Bookings

One day I dream of smiles

instead of frowns everywhere I’m looking

the sun shine screams I love you from the sky

the stars say What up when you step outside

faith is the final frontier

the whole hood trying to go out there

next weekend

Sketching the Hood

2010-04-13T14:32:00.001-04:00

Sketching the Hood

Ill description violent prescription

Switch rearrange perspective

Shift the individual to collective

My feelings are disposable local and global

Sanitation type sanitarium

World is my oyster

Can’t swim in the aquarium

Open up the soul with a Caesarian

To empty and disinfect the womb’s tomb

At the sight of the full moon

Strange activities symbolic of doom

At once everything transforms beyond storms

Of normality upon facing reality

I see so many fatalities challenge me

To keep balance on high wires in the circus

So often feeling without the fire without purpose

Struggling to feel empowered against machines

Controlling regulating breathing

My fantasies are fleeting a swift retreat

Overstanding the outcomes

Combining the consequences within consciousness

Even courage is contagious

Like confidence quick to catch on

Prevent your pain and pity from being passed on

Like overdue bills to next of kin

Even in death you still gotta pay to win

You can lose love for free

Life will slip through fingers

Faster than grains of sand

What are the latitudes of your attitude

And longitude of your longings

If you mapped out your mistakes

Would there be an expressway for evil?

Could you dial 911 for emergency

Cause you low on energy

It’s been eating you up inside

Time to reroute the mission

Reevaluate by any means necessary

You been tragically forced into positions

Where you actually have to give 2 shits

You pass off your fiber to anyone

Who dare listen

Back to your tradition stop wasting your time

The hate of the world suspends endless rhymes

You convicted yourself before the jury considered the evidence

You evicted your greatness because of loud music and rent negligence

Your bowels have been constipated with beef intoxicating the ozone

Even if ET was long distance he still couldn’t phone home

Your cat is speaking your words right back

Allergic to apathy hard to compete with your reflection

Of a better future that lapped you and left you in the same place

Same race you been running but only memories of better yesterdays

You clearly add myths to your own history to make it shine brighter

If you don’t push this pen by no means are you a real writer

Just resting on your laurels many thought bubbles get filled

So much potential participation gets killed

So you spill quarts to the ground attempting to gather spirits around

Who all tell you to keep pushing keep looking up never down

Keep your tongue sword clashin sharpen skills to the point

Keep your people in your view tell em how our hearts sound

Subtle inequalities

2010-04-13T14:30:00.001-04:00

Subtle inequalities

Add up all your sad moments

To create a happy hour

Half priced drinks to make you smile freely

I’ll take a pint of power and a shot of strength

Give me nonstop 25 cent gold medals for living

Don’t let a papercut slice your promise

No diss song should subtract your potential

Exercise democracy over available instrumentals

Don’t waste time hyped off your most gangsta rhyme

Believe your words if they reflect in the mirror

Although tap water is clearer Poland springs are contaminated

Big gulp to quench thirst absorbing hatred

Release your waste flush it all away

Once the sun goes down tomorrow is that brand new day

Do with it what you will keep it moving

Ill do this like ants carrying infinite body weight

Can’t really escape trapped within 4 walls of barbed wire barrios

Assuredly confused absolutely blurry definitely doubtful

See where I’m at but can’t anticipate what I’m about to do

Beyond a figment stereotype your pigment melanin molds minds

Makeup like artificial painting smirks on quick work

We wear the mask haven’t removed the bandaids

From wounded frowns since back before birth

Eliminated so you were innovated renovated to realize

There are really no surprises only further pinky swear

Of broken leftovers and colder reactions

Shrug your shoulders to keep head on straight

That false sense of security will lead to

Breaches and bars and gates and fences

Remind yourself of the simple benches

You have gone far barely survived

Just woke up still got sand in eyes

Can barely focus looking for better days

In the forecast for the ones who got

Their own piece of sweetness

Sugary starch can leave you stiff

Stuck with forward momentum going nowhere fast

Standing running rapidly in case of emergency

Urgently contact closest confidant

So you can spill the cream highest of the crop

To the bottom of the bucket mistrusted the higher meaning

Disbelieved the bochinche scanned the barcodes

Let that bass boom rattle your rearview

While eyes glued in front of windshield

Can’t reveal what hasn’t been concealed

When the air rips you down the essence

Try to remember the presences of porqueria

To calm your nerves bomb your words

Across blank canvas you can cause damage

Internally exhibit extraordinary energy

The anxiety must not be entertainment

No longer allowed to dwell on premises you been evicted

Confused by which way is back home must be twisted

Engagement an exorcism of ego

Pa’lante powerfully

Exit evil

Mourning

2010-04-13T14:28:00.001-04:00

Mourning

I have lost more poems

Than I have scribbled

Midnite moments evaporate

Into memories of coulda been hits

I swear that shit was hot

Imagine the masterpiece

Theatre presentation you missed

In your mind countless ideas

Circle like autumn fallen leaves

The gaggle of geese are giggling

The flocks of birds holla

ayo in different pitches

you are accused of not being

prolific so specific yet vague

still talking yet to explain

in tune with sounds of nature

dehydration of desire

dedicated to dumb shit

more intelligent to be irrevelant

you wonder why your Pops

was in love with Jonathan Livingston Seagull

as you see gulfs between each other

ships passing blindly through day

chips devoured by night

unshakable hunger consumes

or at least is telling you to

continue though doubtful

a challenge to balance

like video games with broken controller

you are the sole owner of your soul

hard to believe

you might have to gas yourself up

to acknowledge the actual fact

in the mirror that can’t break

no mistakes jinx or bad luck

gotta keep it moving can’t be in same spots stuck

nice to visit give daps what up

same shit just a different horizon

what’s surprising is your threshold

for physical pain is papercuts

but your emotions are enlarged

across concrete canvases

merely bandages on leaking wounds

sky staring at you stars wide open

moon sticking tongue at you

like Cam said U mad?

Stretch out tight fibers

That cause you to shiver at your shadow

Quiver at the street magic

Of motion disappearing into fat air

Last light from Harlem

Fighter plane above

How can you refuse the wind

Ever abandon love

Not for a second just blink to get reminded

Of how truth tastes bittersweet

Accept it though stubborn

Shut thunder up born

Embrace your muse pushing you

To higher galaxies

If you went outerspace you might

Pass away cause you failed astronomy twice

Fingers frozen chosen to scribe you to survive

Behind every door there’s an open mic

Just for you to find it and love

It always feel so right

on the 50th anniversary of clason point gardens

2010-03-25T15:01:00.001-04:00

CLASON POINT GARDENS JOURNAL
CLASON POINT GARDENS JOURNAL; For 50 Years a Home, a Real Home
By MARIA NEWMAN
Published: August 6, 1992

A SWAMPLAND that separated the Clason Point Gardens housing development from the Bronx River 50 years ago has long been drained, and the nearby mom-and-pop stores are also long gone -- replaced by the sort of high-rises that have given public housing a bad name.

But Clason Point Gardens, the first public housing project built in the Bronx, remains to this day, remarkably, what it was meant to be a half-century ago: a good place to raise a family, and something of an oasis from the hubbub that surrounds it. With its low-slung structures that provided every family with a tiny plot of land, Clason Point Gardens was a piece of the suburbs in the city.

As they marked the golden anniversary of their community a few days ago, some residents of Clason Point Gardens said they can't imagine living anywhere else.

"I always loved it because it was like having your own little house," said Sophie Schottler, who moved into the development in the southeast Bronx in 1942 with her husband and two children, one of them an infant. Mrs. Schottler had an afternoon's worth of memories about her children -- there were four of them eventually -- playing in the courtyards with other children, and the mothers who all knew one another didn't worry about them as they went about their housework.

Mrs. Schottler's children are grown and moved away now, and much else has changed about Clason Point.

The 43 whitewashed cinderblock buildings were built to house the families of servicemen coming back from or going off to World War II. In a brown-toned photograph of the dedication of the community in 1942, the ladies gathered around a stage of speechmakers are wearing suits with stiff shoulder pads and hats on their upswept hair. The men are dressed in coat and tie. Everyone is white.

On Saturday afternoon, at a gathering to celebrate Clason Point's 50th anniversary, the sounds of a salsa band on a mobile stage poured out into the summer air. Later, a group of teen-agers wearing matching T-shirts that said "The Power of Love" crooned gospel songs.

Today, about 40 percent of the 1,020 residents of Clason Point Gardens are black, and another 40 percent are of Puerto Rican descent, according to the New York City Housing Authority, which operates the development.

"Everybody else moved out, but I was happy here," Mrs. Schottler said of her neighbors from the early days. As the population of the Bronx and the rest of the city was changing in the 50's and 60's, a generation of Clason Point families moved away, to the suburbs, to Co-op City or out of state. In some families, while the children grew up and moved out, the parents remained. Mrs. Schottler, who recalled paying $2.80 a week in rent at first, has never thought of leaving a place that to her seems almost pastoral, and removed from some of the rougher elements of the area.

"I say if you want to move, move -- I'll stay," said Mrs. Schottler, who will be 75 in December.

In 1970, Mrs. Schottler held a wedding reception for her daughter in the family's backyard. Gathered here 22 years later, the family members still laugh over what happened to the wedding cake. "One of my friends went to catch the bouquet, and my mother was walking by with the cake," said the daughter, Mary Lou Gaglio. The two ran into each other, and the cake landed in a guitar case.

"So we served it right there from the guitar case, upside down," said Oscar Nordstrom, who is married to another of Mrs. Schottler's daughters. "It tasted the same."

In the years after the dedication of Clason Point Gardens, the Housing Authority went on to build dozens of huge high-rise buildings. Now, 50 years after it was first built, common wisdom among housing advocates and developers is that the ideal way to build public housing is in the style of Clason Point Gardens -- smaller, closer to the ground, more manageable and ultimately more livable for working families.

While there have been a myriad of changes at Clason Point, one thing hasn't changed, residents said: the thread of family life continues to run through the community.

On Saturday afternoon, a family decorated the shady courtyard behind their apartment with white crepe-paper bells. They pinned white carnations to the shrubbery, and coiled white Christmas lights around the trees.

Mary Johnson, who has lived at Clason Point Gardens for 21 years, was preparing for her daughter's wedding reception. For three days, Mrs. Johnson had been baking turkeys and hams. "Today the day is shining and the stars are going to be bright," said Mrs. Johnson, dressed in a flowing turquoise dress and matching headpiece.

"It's a community thing," she said. "My daughter was raised here. Everyone has their weddings and all back here. Everybody gets along."

Map of the Bronx showing location of Clason Point Gardens.

old cpg i miss the bronx

2010-03-25T14:58:00.000-04:00

the hood

2010-03-25T14:57:00.000-04:00

This seems like a Team C Reunion

2010-03-25T14:55:00.001-04:00

This seems like a Team C Reunion

haven’t seen half this class

in about a month

Come every once in a while

during the day wasting time

on absolutely nothing

The disgusting truth is the ease of distraction

Masters at reaction instead of revolting

can wrap a dutch tighter than jeans

Mind infatuated with fantasies can never touch

flip pages while daydreaming

twist haze keep scheming

The sun will never set

wishing you could stay a teenager forever

talking shit street knowledge quite clever

disconnected from the mission

still trapped in mental prisons

wailing at the walls nobody ever listens

The back of your destiny

has been stopped by panic

man’s claws digging in your back

trying to take advantage

Handle the damage

by saying you tight or you mad

So lost yelling Wepa

don’t know the history of your flag

So amazing so young they blazing

what’s the occasion

a school high better than high school

all these shorties free lunch plus you can act a fool

your moms away at work don’t even have a clue

you alone in the streets bent with your homies

even with bills and a baby due

A mixtape describes your emotions

The intro serves purpose

You? never nervous

Give all this angry hot fire some airplay

Put that exclusive energy in rotation

Give suffering a shout out

and death no dedication

The outro outlines the point of your research

provide a solid thesis highlighting your main idea

must be freedom understood make that clear

Wish you could freeze this year

your age your privilege even your gear

those petty possessions don’t define you

can’t take it when you gone so far

off the map paranoid roaming don’t know where you are

You are the embodiment of love pain and struggle

Reflections of young moons and brave stars

God bless the youth for constantly seeking the truth

not just the child who got his own

Education from the root

This community is your home

where there is no place like it

even though you hate us

we love you don’t fight it

I am staring at a class of young minds

2010-03-25T14:54:00.001-04:00

I am staring at a class of young minds

Who have yet to take first steps

But have been running marathons

Towards the capital of nowhere fast

Thinking they have the exact coordinates

But too bold to dare say they are lost

The cost to pay attention

Comes with a high interest rate

They never want to owe

Unless it is multiple zeroes behind balance

So acquainted with death

They give him shoutouts on the radio

Dedicate steady mobbin to the grim reaper

Listen to their best friends

More than their teachers

Because pressure makes more sense than a lecture

Born hustlers still waiting for the day

The cage will trap their freedom

Evaporate their dreams away

The rainbow only exists in fairytales

Happilyeverafter was once upon a time

Perfect hybrid of hope and hurt

Kids smoke away the worse

Praying for the best vision of success

Seen on the TV screen that has become a mirror

Reflecting a reality that has been distorted

Record their revolution upload it to YouTube

Hoping you are moved to give 5 stars

A favorite or maybe add them as a friend

Means to an end means the world will end

2012 before they began living

They started planning the aftermath

Distasters last longer than invisible rubble

Only things guaranteed taxes and trouble

All the money been off the books

They never dared to crack

Judging all text by the cover

If it’s hot then it’s that crack

Relax once they relapse on ignoring the facts

Back against graffiti wall

Still trying to figure out the tags

Screaming que bonita bandera

Don’t know the history of the flag

Pants sag because they always show they ass

Conspicuously silent about real shit

Today’s youth

Become tomorrow’s question mark too quick

Foolish genius still searching though clueless

If education is their passport

What are the rights of its citizens

Must stand up instead of giving in

To the temptations of a lovely lonely ghetto

Where you are the only person

Who hears the echoes

Of children falling in the forest of the projects

Wake up to the nonsense of neglect

In all our villages

We need to raise the youth

With love

Power

Respect

Freedom is the air we breathe

2010-03-04T12:43:00.001-05:00

Freedom is the air we breathe

Feeling of floating while running

Towards the future with a smile on

Actively liberate mind from mental prison

Voice reflection of soul hoping the world will listen

Spirit grounded on firm earth

But flying amongst stars

On the toad towards peace and justice

There is no map of your destiny

Just the footprints your heartbeats made

In the bittersweet concrete

Various devils try to suffocate your screams

For worldly desires need to knowledge

Your history has been clouded by horrorscopes

Forecasting stop and frisk

Merely stepping out on the block you risk

Victory being victimized and your ambition assaulted

Your integrity will be xrayed

Inner strength examined for factory flaws

Drop your drawers to see the size of your doubt

Strip search your social security

Feel all around your ankles

Hiding knifesharp nouns you verbal vandal

Insult your intelligence equalize your IQ

Your brain waves will be bodily scanned

Masterplan for you to keep nothing inside your hands

Empty pockets and emptier pockets

Abolish your authenticity

Prevent positivity place pride in penetiatary

No opportunity for parole

This life sentence a broken slanguage

Cry of anguish they want to loop

Remix for your chart topping hit single

Make you’re a one hit wonder

Who has still yet to uncover the secret to success

Is beneath brown skin

In front of faith

Right next to your belly aching for revolution

You announce I’m officially alive

To the demons who want you to die

Embrace your energy move magically to mastery

Assassinate the apathy they have implanted inside

Fortified foreigners invade your veins

Disconnect from the mainframe

Running marathons underground

Below surface to discover the purpose

When you wake you see wanted

Mugshots of mystified worthless

Who has wasted the basic better days

Trying to find the exit through the maze

Running cynical circles around silence

Thinking your low volume won’t offend the neighbors

But your clarity must be crystal

They got missiles pointed at the mothership

Try to make you think freedom

Is some other shit

But this life

Is the only trip