Screams

Sometimes the cry for attention is an eighteen wheeler
jack knifing during rush hour.

Sometimes the steel cylinder bursts open leaking chemicals
that etch cries for help into the pavement.

Sometimes the pavement is a red leaf
blending into the earth as silent as a razor cuts skin.

Sometimes the razor has feelings and auburn hair,
and wonders why ripping flesh could be as simple
as breaking a pencil in half.

Sometimes the halves of pencils pretend to be broken birds.
Tumbling down three flights of stairs
praying to transform into body and bread.

Sometimes bread cries 6 times a day
and birds fly 85 miles per hour with tears in their eyes
thinking that a lightening storm would be safer than nesting

Sometimes lightening storms hiss dirges that echo
on the chilled tips of fading visitors
and keen them back to life.

Sometimes life rushes back crying
and screaming into the earth.

Sometimes the earth is warm with blood.

Sometimes it is nothing at all.

The End Of Race As We Know It

The End of Race As We Know It is an essay by Gerald Early.

I often feel disconnected when I read essays by older African Americans. Their obsession with black victimization, black place, black pride, and just blackness in general is beyond me.

I feel like a black man when I am sitting - when I am standing still. I feel black when I am idly talking to my friends, when I am at church, when I am in my fraternity, when I go to the movies, to a gallery opening, to an open mic, to a nice restaurant, to a university or school.

However, when I am moving - when I am doing things, I just feel like a man. When I am accomplishing whatever goals I want to accomplish I don't define my achievements in terms of my "blackness" but in terms of whether I am the best.

For me being the best is far more important than being black, or male, or even American.

Although never discounting my race, there is a joy in doing something that gets to the ideal of "you are just as good as anyone."

It is a joy discovered abruptly because we all know that "you are just as good as anyone" is a lie. You are not just as good as anyone until you start to actually do something. Then you will probably be worse than someone, and better than someone else.

However, that is why I am always seduced by the idea of "bestness". That in somethings I can really be "just as good as anyone" - that I can reach a level where no one is actually better than me.

And it is in this pursuit that I don't feel my blackness hanging around my neck like an anchor, or propelling me upward like a pair of wings.

I feel free, like every other man who has ever chased what made his heart flutter.

And for those moments, I am always thankful.

Keep striving upward.

Emotional Pathos - Joe Biden

There will probably be many moments on this blog when I talk about emotional connection.

Those moments when we transcend the different tribes that limit us and touch on something profoundly human, vulnerable, and beautiful.

As a male, I identified very strongly with this Joe Biden statement during the vice presidential debate:



"But the notion that somehow because I am a man I don't know what it's like to raise two kids alone, I don't know what its like to have a child you're not sure is going to make it, I understand, I understand."

Sometimes a man's entire life can be summed up in one moment.

Joe Biden did just that by reaching back to his childhood, and then commenting on the great success he has had as an adult and realizing that he has in many ways achieved beyond his wildest dreams - achieved by working hard and serving others - but even in that moment of achievement going deeper down to the underlying realness of "I understand" as Langston Hughes would say "life ain't been no crystal stair".

That just because he is a man doesn't mean he doesn't know what its like to raise two kids alone.

I think that sharing this story in a culture that routinely ignores and marginalizes fathers as fathers - was very powerful.

Being a good father is one of those things I aspire to be, if I ever have children. And I can't even imagine how hard it must be to be a single father, because frankly no one talks about the single father's - no one shares their stories.

It is always about single mothers (and for good reason!) but having Joe Biden up there almost in tears at the height of his career, his entire life up to this point, saying just because I am a man doesn't mean I don't understand, was a moment of emotional pathos.

Until next time, continue striving upward.

Charles Bukowski

When I was a teenager, Bukowski affirmed my idea that poetry can be real.

By real, I mean rooted in real things - in what is earthy, ordinary, momentary, and pathetic.

He appealed to my sense of values: swagger, confident, totally himself.

He admitted publicly many of our private fears, "where is the specialness of war and peace...i read the great poets...all i get is goddam headache and boredom...there is some trick going on here."

He wanted poetry to be more than what it was/what it is.

He said there is still room for people to come into this world and do something great.

And for me - that was and is very affirming and very hopeful.

These sentiments gave me the freedom to write poems about pissing outside, or rants about freshman girls, or driving down the highway, or the small stories that make up my life.

He made it okay to get that dirty, that plebeian, that indulgent.

In 2009, I have several opportunities to lead some creative writing workshops for young people, and I hope to be able to inspire in them what Bukowski inspired in me.

A great love and faith in the poetry of bars, bonfires, and frat houses.

Enjoy this clip and remember to keep striving upward.

Esquire's 75 Books Every Man Should Read

A friend sent me a link to Esquire's 75 Books Every Man Should Read

I went over the books and realized one of the things I aspire to come across a list like this and have read a majority of the books.

I think that reading, the reflective life, is essential to making us become more perfect people. It is one of the important ways that we learn about things that aren't readily comprehensible.

The books that I have read from the list thus far are:

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor

The Call Of The Wild by Jack London

For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

The Autobiography of Malcom X by Alex Haley

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Some of these books have helped shape my life - most notably The Autobiography of Malcom X, War and Peace, All The King's Men, and The Brother's Karamazov.

"I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there." - The Brother's Karamazov

Continue to strive upward.

A New Blog By Smart Black Boy

So I decided to start on this side project called "Aspiration"

I will be the only writer for this blog unlike my blog "Art Star" which is built on a different model.

I don't expect for this blog to become as big as Art Star because it is much more personal.

I do think that there will be a lot of good stuff for any readers of this blog.

The name says it all - this blog is all about Aspiration.

It is about those things, people, places, ideas, etc that we aspire towards.

It will also be about the journey to get there.

So, basically it is pretty open but I think it will be a cool deal.

Aight I'm out.