Just A Bit of Randomness (Maybe)

All for the love of the art....

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

The Occasional Crazy Rare Quote # 9

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.                                   - Robert Hughes, art critic

I embrace this, because I am doubtful.  Of myself, far more than everything else.  Not doubtful because I question my ability.  Doubtful, because I fear that I'll never know how to use it.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

(this quote was found while perusing a fabulous site, White Hot Truth, the brainchild of the brilliant Danielle LaPorte.  You should definitely go check it out!!)

Just A Bit of Randomness (Maybe)

I'm on the pursuit of happiness, and I know....everything that glitters ain't always gonna be gold....

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

Okay, Here's An Example of Where Passionate Complaints Should Come AFTER Investigation

For those of you who took the time to read my previous post, it has been brought to my attention that the supposed letter to Thomas Sayers Ellis was not real.  That does make me rest a bit better.  But if such a view of poetry does exist, at least we all know my opinion on it.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

Dear TSE: Nothing Poetic about White House Rejection Letter

About a week ago, here in this our nation's great capital, a poetry reading was presented by the White House.  I was extremely excited to be in such proximity (even though, for some reason, I found myself  not invited...lol), and proud that poetry continues to make leaps and bounds towards universal acceptance.  However, there was something else that left me a bit unsettled.   

Most of us heard the ill-conceived debate over including Common in the performance at the White House.   I will not humor Sarah Palin's asinine rants about him by repeating them here.  I will just say that attempting to scare  conservative white Americans into unnecessary mass hysteria should get old after a while.  Too bad some Republicans don't think so.

I guess I'm even mentioning the above to say that while some controversy (as pointless and idiotic as it seems to be) has received far too much discussion/media coverage, one remains untouched.  I may be moved to write a second post, highlighting the White House's efforts to continue to present poetry and spoken word within its walls, but I also feel like they are cheating what poetry represents.  There is too much exclusionary practice involved when selecting the poets for their events.  Nowhere is this more clear than in the letter sent to Thomas Sayers Ellis, following his rejection. 


If poetry is to be an outlet of expression, should it be so boldly censored?  I understand, from a political perspective, that it is often a requirement of those who run this nation to distance themselves from controversy.  Any and all controversy.  However, the hilarity of that situation is that running from one form of controversy often creates another in the direction you've run.  Politicians have long had this strange notion that you can please all the people, even if the people disagree.  But I digress.  

Upon reading the letter, I can't help but feel like Jeremy Bernard, the White House Social Secretary, is very misinformed about poetry, as well as extremely smug.  I'll let you decide.

Letter to Thomas Sayers Ellis.  (Link is to the Huffington Post, where I discovered the letter)

Dear TSE (as you like to be called, evoking a predecessor of those initials):

We appreciate your nomination for the White House poetry reading, but regret to inform you that you will not be one of the selected poets. This is not a judgment of your poetry by any means, and certainly you should feel free to apply next year. It's not unknown for a poet to be invited on subsequent tries, though at the moment we're hard pressed to think of an example. We had an interesting time puzzling over Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems. It's hard to classify this book. Frankly, we don't know where you're coming from. 

And that's a problem.

For instance, you title one of your poems "Presidential Blackness [A Race Fearlessness Manifolk Destiny]." The title alone is problematic. We don't want donors to get the wrong idea. As you know, we live in a post-racial society, so the title just brings up wrong associations. You start the poem, "We miracles. We have not known true freedom in / America or in Art, thus our work has struggled in / containers not of our own construction." Speak for yourself, buddy! The President got to where he is not because of miracles. It was hard work, make no mistake about it. In the same poem, you write, "To make an identity repair-kit of all black folk / behavior, to shine or show-off, as nuisance as / nuance, sometimes some-timey and sometimes on- / point, the slanguage of hood ornaments." We have no idea what you're talking about. First of all, who is this "all black folk?" Who are you--or anyone--to judge such an abstraction? Secondly, are you saying that black people are in need of repair? Who's going to undertake this repair? TSE, the current era is a time of healing national differences. The repairs have already been made.Your long poem, "Mr. Dynamite Splits [ James Joseph Brown, Jr.]"--We have a feeling Michelle would have a problem with these lines: "Your eeeeeeeeeeyow will never rest. / You remain proud, cold bodyheat and sweat, / that muthafucka Black Caesar, / the only one who ever murdered dying." Black Caesar is not terminology we like to use around these precincts.

Who is the audience for this poem?

We actually do like your "Race Inauguration Day [A Short Fiction]." Sort of. You write, "So we skinned ourselves, / zipper down the body middle, / right there on the National Mall, / the moment the poet, / cold as her tone, enjambed America with "Love."" So this is on the whole wholesome. But there is too much of a dialectic going on, to use that old-fashioned college jargon. It seems like something has been fought over, something won, something is in balance. Where does that feeling come from? It's not the kind of thing we want to convey even in subtle hints. The past is a foreign country. We've moved on. So should the country.

Finally, we know that neither Michelle nor the President would care for "Wacko Jacko." The poor guy is dead. Can we all move on? You write: "Lips, a tattoo, not a relief but a permanent painting of a kiss. / Predators, like female owls, in both eyes. / Mouth, a sharp snake. Snake, a pale cave. / The wildlife in the songs comes from / the same venom stubble comes from, testosterone, the body's land / of seized porn." Just very, very offensive to Michael Jackson's memory. Why would we want to inflame the passions of those who already hate Michael Jackson by releasing--sorry, reading--this poem at the White House?

In short, we appreciate your work as one of America's finest young African American poets and wish you much success in your future endeavors. Feel free to get in touch with any suggestions, comments, or feedback. We love feedback. Also, the President's reelection campaign is on. If you'd like to contribute, go to the website. We appreciate small contributions from small donors, just like you! And remember, poetry and the arts serve to enlighten and uplift the people, not obfuscate matters by getting into needless complexities. So here's to clarity!

Sincerely,

White House Social Secretary

 ----

At first, all I could say upon reading this is "Wooowwww!!"  Is this for real?  I've searched the web for some type of outrage about this letter, but even at the Huffington Post, there was very little commentary.  Which I find interesting.  This letter is down right rude, full of statements that offended ME, and it's not even directed to me.  The statements that got to me the most:

1) This is not a judgment of your poetry by any means.....

         If this is not judgement, then what the fuck is?!?   You can't say you have no clue where a poet is coming from, call the title of one poem problematic, question whether he has an audience or who it could possibly be, basically classify his writing as "needless complexities" and then say you're not being judgmental.  Cut the niceties.  This read a bit too much like an attack.  (Plus that atrocious comment in the greeting, about referencing T.S. Elliot's  initials just rubbed me the wrong way, right from the start.  If this letter had read "Dear Wannabe", it would have felt just the same.)

2)  We don't want donors to get the wrong idea.

         Well I'll be damned.  Political staff actually admitting that the actions of politicians are donor-driven?  I don't think I need to say too much about this.  Poetry and politics are two p's that simply don't mix.  Which is backwards, since poets are often the voice of the people.  And if I hear one more thing about this so called "post-racial" society we live in.....if this society is so post-racial, why do government forms still ask for race on them?!?  

3)  Speak for yourself, buddy! The President got to where he is not because of miracles. It was hard work, make no mistake about it.

         

         Not only is this a pointless statement, it is not what the line Bernard quoted implied at all.

4)  The past is a foreign country. We've moved on. So should the country.

         If the past really were a foreign country (and I might offend some people with this one), we wouldn't be fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan, we wouldn't have killed Bin Laden, and most of the wars our nation has been involved in wouldn't have ever started.  But then again, you know how this nation's leaders do foreign countries.  Tolerate them until they get on our nerves, then treat them like they don't exist.  To me, it sounds like Bernard wanted to say is "Damn, you have a black President.  Forget all the enslavement, oppression, torture, misappropriation, displacement, and disappointment, and move the fuck on."  But I don't think he was allowed to say that.

5)  Also, the President's reelection campaign is on. If you'd like to contribute, go to the website. We appreciate small contributions from small donors, just like you!

         Being an asshole is not becoming of the White House Social Secretary.  This is one of those snide remarks that made this letter all the more repulsive.

All five of these irritating moments led to perhaps the most unsettling section of this letter.

And remember, poetry and the arts serve to enlighten and uplift the people, not obfuscate matters by getting into needless complexities.

First of all, how dare you tell a poet what their poetry is supposed to do.  And then to assume that poetry is merely some form of simple entertainment is a blow to everyone whose ever lifted a pen.  Sometimes, poetry has to lower the people.  It has to push them down into a pit of self-loathing so deep that they desire to better themselves and get out.  Enlightenment traverses truth, and the truth has never been concerned with what donors it might offend.  If doesn't want us to forget the past, because this is where most of its lessons emerge from.  And the truth, whether complex or simple, is always needed.

Until the White House has a more informed view on poetry, one that is less politically driven and instead more driven by a desire to spread the power found in using one's voice, then these White House Poetry events will be nothing more than censorship dressed up in an almost poetic package.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

Lmao....since it was brought to my attention that the letter was a joke, this is my response.

        

I Find Myself Thinking of Him, Often (And That's Okay!)

When a Parent Dies

the kid in you curls in

a ball, a lost blanket shuddering

in violent wind,

all of a sudden

you are too old for dreams

and very scared

of the dark

rainbows become split

between blue and

indigo, and the world

dangles helplessly,

a broken tire swing,

unused fishing rods

and rusted out bikes,

lunches that no longer

pack themselves,

nights that cry themselves

to sleep, only

wanting to be

tucked in

and fuck is a mood

not just a word but a mood,

so is shit

and they are always synonymous

with sad,

everything teeters

out of order,

chaos brimming on the edge of

each unshed tear,

bad dreams spill into reality,

no warm glass of milk

no hug to qualm the fear

living feels like

a nightlight with no bulb

and monsters

are still

very real

Woke Up, With a Smile

Today will be an awesome day.  Today will be an interesting day.  Today will be a beautiful day.  Today will be my day, because it is another day I've been gifted.  I am able.  I am willing.  I am here.  

Thankful, for today.

Tuesday Grove (Yeah, Yeah, It's Thursday...Sue Me) May 11, 2011

* A Rare Poet Notice:  I know that I haven't posted much music lately.  Hell, I haven't posted much of anything.  Guess I'm still transitioning with this move, but I promise the blog will be back in full swing soon.  *






Sean Hayes --- Powerful Stuff

From the very first moment I saw the Suburu commercial, I couldn't get this awesome ditty out of my mind.  Raised in North Carolina, Sean Hayes has one of those voices that stops you and pulls in your attention.  Even better, he is also a songwriter, a testament to this songs feel good, move many, lyrics.  Enjoy.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

Interesting Reading: Jennifer Egan

I was delighted when I managed to come across a copy of A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan's highly praised Pulitzer Prize winning novel.  I've been attempting to find it since the end of last year.  As an avid reader of contemporary fiction, I am always looking for high level writing that motivates me to explore deeper human issues.  And I love a writer who has the ability to wow, while also keeping the reader willing to engage further into a story.  Ms. Egan clearly possesses all of these abilities, and then some.  Her writing is eloquent as well as edgy, flirting in the possible realm of the perfect words chosen at exactly the right time.

The following is an excerpt from an earlier work, Emerald City and Other Stories.  It clearly demonstrated Ms. Egan's talents as a writer, which have only improved in her latest endeavor:

Sisters of the Moon

Silas has a broken head. It happened sometime last night, outside The Limited on Geary and Powell. None of us saw. Silas says the fight was over a woman, and that he won it. “But you look like all bloody shit, my friend,” Irish says, laughing, rolling the words off his accent. Silas says we should’ve seen the other guy.

He adjusts the bandage on his head and looks up at the palm trees, which make a sound over Union Square like it’s raining. Silas has that strong kind of shape, like high school guys who you know could pick you up and carry you like a bag. But his face is old. He wears a worn-out army jacket, the pockets always fat with something. Once, he pulled out a silver thimble and pushed it into my hand, not saying one word. It can’t be real silver, but I’ve kept it.

I think Silas fought in Vietnam. Once he said, “It’s 1974, and I’m still alive,” like he couldn’t believe it.

“So where is he?” Irish asks, full of humor. “Where is this bloke with half his face gone?”

Angel and Liz start laughing, I don’t know why. “Where’s this woman you fought for?” is what I want to ask.

Silas shrugs, grinning. “Scared him away.”

********

San Francisco is ours, we’ve signed our name on it a hundred times: SISTERS OF THE MOON. On the shiny tiles inside the Stockton Tunnel, across those building like blocks of salt on the empty piers near the Embarcadero. Silver plus another color, usually blue or red. Angel and Liz do the actual painting. I’m the lookout. While they’re spraying the paint cans, I get scared to death. To calm down, I’ll say to myself, If the cops come, or if someone stops his car to yell at us, I’ll just walk away from Angel and Liz, like I never saw them before in my life. Afterward, when the paint is wet and we bounce away on the balls of our feet, I get so ashamed, thinking, What if they knew? They’d probably ditch me, which would be worse than getting caught–even going to jail. I’d be all alone in the universe.

Most people walk through Union Square on their way someplace else. Secretaries, businessmen. The Park, we call it. But Silas and Irish and the rest are always here. They drift out, then come back. Union Square is their own private estate.

Watching over the square like God is the St. Francis Hotel, with five glass elevators sliding up and down its polished face. Stoned, Angel and Liz and I spend hours sitting on benches with our heads back, waiting for the elevators to all line up on top. Down, up, down–even at 5 A.M. they’re moving. The St. Francis never sleeps.

Angel and Liz expect to be famous, and I believe it. Angel just turned fifteen. I’m only five months younger, and Liz is younger than me. But I’m the baby of us. Smoking pot in Union Square, I still worry who will see.

********

We’ve been talking for a week about dropping acid. I keep stalling. Today we go ahead and buy it, from a boy with a runny nose and dark, anxious eyes. Across the street is I. Magnin, and I get a sick feeling that my stepmother is going to come out the revolving doors with packages under her arms. She’s a buyer for the shoe department at Saks, and in the afternoon she likes to walk around and view the competition.

Angel leans against a palm tree, asking in her Southern voice if the acid is pure and how much we should take to get off and how long the high will last us. She’s got her shirt tied up so her lean stomach shows. Angel came from Louisiana a year ago with her mother’s jazz band. I adore her. She goes wherever she wants, and the world just forms itself around her.

“What are you looking at?” Liz asks me. She’s got short, curly black hair and narrow blue eyes.

“Nothing.”

“Yes, you are,” she says. “All the time. Just watching everything.”

“So?”

“So, when are you going to do something?” She says it like she’s joking.

I get a twisting in my stomach. “I don’t know,” I say. I glance at Angel, but she’s talking to the dealer. At least she didn’t hear us.

Liz and I look at I. Magnin. Her mother could walk out of there as easily as mine, but Liz doesn’t care. I get the feeling she’s waiting for something like that to happen, a chance to show Angel how far she can go.

********

We find Irish begging on Powell Street. “Can you spare any part of a million dollars?” he asks the world, spreading his arms wide. Irish has a big blond face and wavy hair and eyes that are almost purple–I mean it. One time, he says, he got a thousand-dollar bill–an Arab guy just handed it over. That was before we knew Irish.

“My lassies,” he calls out, and we get the hug of those big arms, all three of us. He inhales from Angel’s hair, which is dark brown and flips into wings on both sides of her face. She’s still a virgin. In Angel this seems beautiful, like a precious glass bowl you can’t believe didn’t break yet. One time, in Union Square, this Australian guy took hold of her hair and pulled it back, back, so the tendons of her throat showed through the skin, and Angel was laughing at first and so was the guy, but then he leaned down and kissed her mouth and Irish knocked him away, shouting, “Hey, motherfucker, can’t you see she’s still a child?”

“What nice presents have you brought?” Irish asks now.

Angel opens the bag to show the acid. I check around for cops and catch Liz watching me, a look on her face like she wants to laugh.

“When shall we partake?” Irish asks, reaching out with his cap to a lady in a green raincoat, who shakes her head like he should know better, then drops in a quarter. Irish could have any kind of life, I think–he just picked this one.

“Not yet,” Angel says. “Too light.”

“Tonight,” Liz says, knowing I won’t be there.

Angel frowns. “What about Tally?

I look down, startled and pleased to be remembered.

“Tomorrow?” Angel asks me.

I can’t help pausing for a second, holding this feeling of everyone waiting for my answer. Then someone singing “Gimme shelter” distracts them. I wish I’d just said it.

“Tomorrow’s fine.”

********

The singer turns out to be a guy named Fleece, who I don’t know. I mean, I’ve seen him, he’s part of the gang of Irish and Silas and them who hang out in the Park. Angel says these guys are in their thirties, but they look older than that and act younger, at least around us. There are women, too, with red eyes and heavy makeup, and mostly they act loud and happy, but when they get dressed up, there are usually holes in their stockings, or at least a run. They don’t like us–Angel especially.

Angel hands me the acid bag to hold while she lights up a joint. Across the Park I see three cops walking–I can almost hear the squeak of their boots. I cover the bag with my hand. I see Silas on another bench. His bandage is already dirty.

“Tally’s scared,” Liz says. She’s watching me, that expression in her eyes like the laughter behind them is about to come pushing out.

The others look at me, and my heart races. “I’m not.”

In Angel’s eyes I see a flash of cold. Scared people make her moody, like they remind her of something she wants to forget. “Scared of what?” she says.

“I’m not.”

Across the square, Silas adjusts the bandage over his eyes. Where is this woman he fought for? I wonder. Why isn’t she with him now?

“I don’t know,” Liz says. “What’re you scared of, Tally?”

I look right at Liz. There’s a glittery challenge in her eyes but also something else, like she’s scared, too. She hates me, I think. We’re friends, but she hates me.

Irish tokes from the joint in the loudest way, like it’s a tube connecting him to the last bit of oxygen on earth. When he exhales, his face gets white. “What’s she scared of?” he says, and laughs faintly. “The world’s a bloody terrifying place.”

********

At home that night I can’t eat. I’m too thin, like a little girl, even thought I’m fourteen. Angel loves to eat, and I know that’s how you get a figure, but my body feels too small. It can’t hold anything extra.

“How was school?” my stepmother asks.

“Fine.”

“Where have you been since then?”

“With Angel and those guys. Hanging around.” No one seems to notice my Southern accent.

My father looks up. “Hanging around doing what?”

“Homework.”

“They’re in biology together,” my stepmother explains.

Across the table the twins begin to whimper. As he leans over their baby heads my father’s face goes soft–I see it even through his beard. The twins are three years old, with bright red hair. Tomorrow I’ll tie up my shirt, I think, like Angel did. So what if my stomach is white?

“I’m spending the night tomorrow,” I say. “At Angel’s.”

He wipes applesauce from the babies’ mouths. I can’t tell if he means to refuse or is just distracted. “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” I tell him, just in case.

********

We spend all day at Angel’s, preparing. Her mom went to Mexico with the band she plays violin for, and won’t be back for a month. Candles, powdered incense from the Mystic Eye, on Broadway, a paint set, sheets of creamy paper, Pink Floyd records stacked by the stereo, and David Bowie, and Todd Rundgren, and “Help Me,” of course–Joni Mitchell’s new hit, which we worship.

Angel lives six blocks from Union Square in a big apartment south of Market Street, with barely any walls. A foil pyramid hangs from the ceiling over her bed. All day we keep checking the square for Irish, but he’s disappeared.

At sundown we go ahead without him. Candles on the windowsills, the white rug vacuumed. We cut the pills with a knife, and each of us takes one-third of all three so we’re sure to get the same dose. I’m terrified. It seems wrong that such a tiny thing could do so much. But I feel Liz watching me, waiting for one wrong move, and I

swallow in silence.

Then we wait. Angel does yoga, arching her back, pressing her palms to the floor with her arms bent. I’ve never seen anyone so limber. The hair rushes from her head in a flood of black, like it could stain the rug. Liz’s eyes don’t move from her.

When the acid starts to work, we all lie together on her mother’s huge four-poster bed, Angel in the middle. She holds one of our hands in each of hers. Angel has the kind of skin that tans in a minute, and beautiful, snaking veins. I feel the blood moving in her. We wave our hands above our faces and watch them leave trails. I feel Angel warm beside me and think how I’ll never love anyone this much, how without her I would disappear.

********

The city at night is full of lights and water and hills like piles of sand. We struggle to climb them. Empty cable cars totter past. The sky is a sheet of black paper with tiny holes poked in it. The Chinatown sidewalks smell like salt and flesh. It’s 3 A.M. Planes drift overhead like strange fish.

Market Street, a steamy puddle at every curb. We find our way down alleys, our crazy eyes making diamonds of the shattered glass that covers the streets and sidewalks. Nothing touches us. We float under the orange streetlamps. My father, the twins–everything but Angel and Liz and me just fades into nothing, the way the night used to disappear when my real mother tucked me into bed, years ago.

In the Broadway Tunnel I grab for the spray cans. “Let me,” I cry, breathless. Angel and Liz are too stoned to care. We have green and silver. I hold one can in each fist, shake them up, and spray huge round letters, like jaws ready to swallow me. I breathe in the paint fumes and they taste like honey. Tiny dots of cool paint fall on my face and eyelashes and stay there. Traffic ricochets past, but I don’t care tonight–I don’t care. In the middle of painting I turn to Angel and Liz and cry, “This is it, this is it!” and they nod excitedly, like they already knew, and then I start to cry. We hug in the Broadway Tunnel. “This is it,” I sob, clinging to Angel and Liz, their warm shoulders. I hear them crying, too, and think, It will be like this always. From now on, nothing can divide us.

It seems like hours before I notice the paint cans still in my hands and finish the job. SISTERS OF THE MOON.

It blazes.

********

We make our way to Union Square. Lo and behold, there is Irish, holding court with a couple of winos and a girl named Pamela, who I’ve heard is a prostitute. Irish looks different tonight–he’s got big, swashbuckling sleeves that flap like sails in the wind. He’s grand. As we walk toward him, blinking in the liquidy light, an amazement at his greatness overwhelms us. He is a great man, Irish. We’re lucky to know him.

********

Irish scoops Angel into his arms. “My beloved,” he says. “I’ve been waiting all night for you.” And he kisses her full on the lips–a deep, long kiss that Angel seems at first to resist. Then she relaxes, like always. I feel a small, sharp pain, like a splinter of glass in my heart. But I’m not surprised. It was always going to happen, I think. We were always waiting.

Angel and Irish draw apart and look at each other. Liz hovers near them. Pamela gets up and walks away, into the shadows. I sit on the bench with the winos and stare up at the St. Francis Hotel.

“You’re high,” Irish says to Angel. “So very high.”

“What about you? Your pupils are gone,” she says.

Irish laughs. He laughs and laughs, opening up his mouth like the world could fit in it. Irish might live on the streets, but his teeth are white. “I’ll see you in Heaven,” he says.

On the St. Francis Hotel the glass elevators float. Two reach the top, and two more rise slowly to join them. They hang there, all four, and I hold my breath as the fifth approaches and will the others not to move until it gets there. I keep perfectly still, pushing the last one up with my eyes until it reaches the top, and they are, in a perfect line, all five.

I turn to show Angel and Liz, but they’re gone. I see them walking away with Irish, Angel in the middle, Liz clutching at her arm like the night could pull them apart. It’s Liz who looks back at me. Our eyes meet, and I feel like she’s talking out loud, I understand so perfectly. If I move fast, now, I can keep her from winning. But the thought makes me tired. I don’t move. Liz turns away. I think I see a bouncing in her steps, but I stay where I am.

They turn to ghosts in the darkness and vanish. My teeth start to chatter. It’s over. Angel is gone, I think, and I start to cry. She just walked away.

Then I hear a rushing noise. It’s a sound like time passing, years racing past, so all of a sudden I’m much older, a grown-up woman looking back to when she was a girl in Union Square. And I realize that even if Angel never thinks of me again, at some point I’ll get up and take the bus home.

The winos have drifted off. By my Mickey Mouse watch it’s 5 A.M. I notice someone crossing the square–it’s Silas, the dirty bandage still around his head. I yell out to him.

He comes over slowly, like it hurts to walk. He sits down next to me. For a long time we just sit, not talking. Finally I ask, “Was it really over a woman?”

Silas shakes his head. “Just a fight,” he says. “Just another stupid fight.”

I straighten my legs so that my sneakers meet in front of me. They’re smudged but still white. “I’m hungry,” I say.

“Me, too,” Silas says. “But everything’s closed.” Then he says, “I’m leaving town.”

“To where?”

“South Carolina. My brother’s store. Called him up today.”

“How come?”

“Had enough,” he says. “Just finally had enough.”

I know there’s something I should say, but I don’t know what. “Is he nice,” I ask, “your brother?”

Silas grins. I see the young part of him then, the kind of mischief boys have. “He’s the meanest bastard I know.”

“What about Irish?” I ask. “Won’t you miss Irish and those guys?”

“Irish is a dead man.”

I stare at Silas.

“Believe it,” he says. “In twenty years no one will remember him.”

Twenty years. In twenty years I’d be thirty-four years old, my stepmother’s age. It would be 1994. And suddenly I think, Silas is right–Irish is dead. And Angel, too, and maybe even Liz. Right now is their perfect, only time. It will sweep them away. But Silas was always outside it.

I put my hand in my pocket and find the thimble. I pull it out. “You gave me this,” I tell him.

Silas looks at the thimble like he’s never seen it. The he says, “That’s real silver.”

Maybe he wants it back to sell, for his trip to South Carolina. I leave the thimble in my hand so that if Silas wants it he can just take it. But he doesn’t. We both look at the thimble. “Thanks,” I say.

We lean back on the bench. My high is wearing off. I have a feeling in my chest like feathers, like a bird waking up and brushing against my ribs. The elevators rise and fall, like signals.

“Always watching,” Silas says, looking at me. “Those big eyes, always moving.”

I nod, ashamed. “But I never do anything,” I say. And all of a sudden I know, I know why Angel left me.

Silas frowns. “Sure you do. You watch,” he says, “which is what’ll save you.”

I shrug. But the longer we sit, the more I realize he’s right–what I do is watch. I’m like Silas, I think. In twenty years I’ll still be alive.

On one side the sky is getting light, like a lid is being lifted up. I watch it, trying to see the day coming, but I can’t. All of a sudden the sky is just bright.

“I wonder what people will look like in 1994,” I say.

Silas considers. “Twenty years? Probably look like us again.”

“Like you and me?” I’m disappointed.

“Oh yeah,” Silas says with a wry grin. “Wishing they’d been here the first time.”

I look at the blue bandanna tied around his wrist, his torn-up jeans and army jacket with a Grateful Dead skull on one pocket. When I’m thirty-four, tonight will be a million years ago, I think–the St. Francis Hotel and the rainy palm tree sounds, Silas with the bandage on his head–and this makes me see how everything now is precious, how someday I’ll know I was lucky to be here.

“I’ll remember Irish,” I say loudly. “I’ll remember everyone. In twenty years.”

Silas looks at me curiously. Then he touches my face, tracing my left cheekbone almost to my ear. His finger is warm and rough, and I have the thought that to Silas my skin must feel soft. He studies the paint on the tip of his finger, and smiles. He shows me. “Silver,” he says.

The Occasional Crazy Rare Quote # 8

"I'm about to drive in the ocean...I'ma try to swim from something

                     bigger than me....   kick off my shoes

                                       and swim good
                                       and swim good

                     take off this suit.......   and swim good.  and swim good.   good...."

                                                         ---  Frank Ocean, "Swim Good"



We all have a few things bigger than ourselves that we feel compelled to escape from.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet

The Blogger Returns

Earlier today, I remembered I had a blog.

That’s not to say that I actually forgot.  But sometimes, the realization escapes me.  And then a need for expression takes over.  Often, blogging is an excellent means for venting.  Today, it feels like a godsend.

From the moment I opened my eyes this morning, several little nuisances slowly elaborated into a serious need to vent.  Many of these nuisances came into existence according to the actions of my niece and nephew.  Although I love them dearly, at the ages of five and six, these two have an ability to make patience a task.  It didn’t help the situation that I had just spent an uncomfortable night sleeping in one of the most awful positions possible for a back and neck.  My morning had begun with aching joints and enough noise to make a house party envious.  Okay, perhaps I’m exaggerating the noise, but the screams of giddy children seem to bring some kind of exaggeration into play.  And then they ate all the breakfast.  Followed by the replacement breakfast.  Then, an email I received reminded me of the pleasant realities I’m currently facing:  a new city without a job, an issue at school that might require me to change my degree program and therefore forfeit financial aid, and an overwhelming sense of “pause” currently placed on my life’s ultimate goals.  Basically, I could tell a moment was coming.

It wasn’t going to be one of those overwhelming moments when, in mind, a levee breaks, and emotions flood like unconstrained currents.  This was more of a slow leak.  But everything that is displaced has to go somewhere.  This, I’m sure, is some basic principle of physics, although I barely managed the high school class with a low C.  My slow leak of emotions was moving into a bout with “fuckedry”. 

(A quick note about “fuckedry”:  “Fuckedry” is that feeling when every adjective to describe everything is, with unabashed bias, the word “fuck”.  Life is fuck, and all the people in it fuck.  Bills you can’t afford to pay are fuck.  Stupidity is fuck.  Even the very thought of thinking leads to a harsh, debilitating fuck.   “Fuckedry” is not the greatest of moments.  And so, I digress.)

It was during a mental adult tantrum that my mind grafted an uplifting thought from the waves of self-pity.  Even when life isn’t where you want it to be, living has always been at the discretion of the liver.  I know that this sounds like a bad saying from some stale fortune cookie, but it makes sense.  Quality of life may not always be in your hands, but the quality of living, or how much you enjoy your life, will always be in your hands.  Getting pissed off by little things, and even depressed about the major things, only subtracts from quality living.  And subtraction is the last function I want to be doing these days.  I’m trying to multiply my opportunities and add a whole lot of happiness.  It’s hard to do that if I’m somewhere moping. 

After this quasi-epiphany, I felt a lot better.  I could smile a bit more.  And a few little nuisances every now and then didn’t seem like such a bad thing.  Besides, they remind me of the most awesome place to vent in the whole wide world. 

At What Price, Freedom?

Impressions: in Red, White, and Blue

we were born into this,

nurtured, raised

in belief that some types of killings aren’t wrong,

some deaths are hindrance to terror,

and duty trumps murder

every time,

‘war crimes’ is a relative term

for which the enforcer can never be convicted,

so we turn blind eye to

similar sins,

knowing sometimes violence

cannot be prevented

at least, this is what we tell ourselves,

in order to sleep at night on

colluded beds,

because even if we never pull one trigger

we applaud the round

that cuts down the head

it’s a dark and thankless feeling

in the moment when you know what exists

behind the system,

where evil and good are identical twins,

too hard to tell

the difference

I will always love my country,

but I hate the way it holds against my tongue,

like some unheard profanity

fighting to leak out,

vulgar, seeking to

lash and destroy,

as kids, we learn we must

whisper bad words,

and there are places where America

is the ultimate curse,

bringer of tears,

utterance of death,

so bad, its name is whispered reminder

a sudden loss of breath

for we are a nation that openly

counts the hands we feed,

overlooking the ones we boldly cut off,

bravado, as if lesser evil

doesn’t reek the same, or some forms of

filth are easier to wash off

we will ache for a day when

all our wars end,

and we will attempt to mend

our broken name,

we will try to erase nightmares

patch-worked beneath our lids,

after we’ve put down our guns,

packed up our honor,

and tried to wash the blood that stains,

will we teach our kids the truth of this nature?

how patriotism is often death to save life,

necessary torture,

or an awkward beast,

we have stuck our teeth into the heart of

this world,

will we teach them how freedom

almost never means peace?