Can't blame this on me, I'm sick in the head ...

I mean, I have a head cold and had to stay home today ... and there's only so much TV a boy can watch before he begins to go loopy. So I wrote this ...

An Un-Poem

I’d like to write a poem but does it have to rhyme?
I’d like to write a poem and today I have the time.
Just a simple something really not an epic or a tome,
Just a mental callisthenic for my brain while sick at home.

So, here goes … I need a topic something frivolous and light,
“The leaves that stir the breeze …” no, wait, that metaphor ain’t right.
It’s the breeze that does the stirring not the leaves let’s get it straight.
Can a thing be called a poem when the lines add up to eight?

No, still not quite there yet, I’m still a literary peasant.
I’ve already used an “ain’t” (it’s more convenient than “isn’t).
I’m just being realistic – this is not the Iliad.
Though I could be like a Homer (the one that Bart calls Dad)!

That’s twelve whole lines I’ve written, but I haven’t said a thing
I’m beginning to despair of my ability to sing.
But THAT was kinda nice -- comparing poetry with song
And now we’re up to sixteen lines and moving right along.

That last one was a little weak, how pitiful a stanza.
I guess I’ll just watch TV – there’s a rerun of Bonanza.
‘Leave poetry to poets,’ is the moral of this story.
Twenty lines and I can’t even find a rhyme for ‘story.’

So here I’ve reached the end of my poetical potential
Clearly lacking talent that is lyric’ly essential.
Here’s hoping that tomorrow this old head-cold goes away.
Lest I try another poem on another shut-in day

"Oh ... Just a little Marvin Gaye, you know ..."

I am of the belief that everybody has them ... those songs on their playlist that they don't want anybody to know that they actually listen to. You know the ones ... you've got your headphones on, listening to 'em and loving it and somebody comes along and asks "whatcha listenin' to?"
And you're too embarrassed to say ... so you turn the volume down, hide the screen on the laptop or the mp3 and say, "oh, you know -- just a little Marvin Gaye" or some other undeniably cool artist who won't reveal your inner eccentricities.

But I for one am tired of living a lie! I'm just gonna put it all out there, y'all and expose the skeletons in my musical closet. Here they are and in no particular order. Enjoy them while you can because tomorrow I'll say it was the cold medicine or the lack of sleep that drove me to such contrivances.

1. You Make Me Feel Like Dancin'

Artist: Leo Sayer (1976)
~ What can I say ... back in the day I thought old Leo was a cool white-boy with an afro and a mean falsetto. Wait, "mean" and "falsetto" don't quite go together, do they? Oh well. The sad truth is that when I am at home by myself and I play "You make me feel like dancing," I do feel like it. Sometimes I even actually do (dance, I mean). Go on, Leo ... witch BAD self.
Favorite Lyric: "You really slipped me a potion / I can't get off of the floor / All this perpetual motion / You gotta give me some more / You gotta give me some more"

2. Theme from "Mahogany"

Artist: Diana Ross (1976)
~ "That song is NOT cheesy like some of those others," remarked Mrs. O when I told her this one was in my mp3 Hall of Shame. She's right, of course. It's here because ... well, it just ain't the kinda song most dudes would admit to listening to. Of course, I could make a testosterone-charged excuse like, "man, that scene when Diana poured the hot candle wax all over herself ... I was only thirteen but at that moment I knew I was a MAN!"
~ Well, the truth is not so prurient.
Favorite Lyric: "Do you know where you're going to / Do you like the things that life is showing you / Where are you going to / Do you know?"
~ The boyish-man in me replied, "no, I don't know!" On the other hand, the manish-boy said, "Diana, wherever YOU'RE goin', that's where I'M goin'!"


3. Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Artist: Judy Garland (1939)
~ Can't be funny about this one. Back in the day, before cable TV and recorded movies, there were certain movies that came on once a year, and always around the same time of the year ... The Wizard of Oz was one of those. I was little and crushin' big time on Dorothy. When she sang that song I was entranced ... and convinced that this was the girl I would marry one day. One year we were watching and my mother said, off-handedly something like "too bad she's gone." "Gone, what do you mean gone? She's right there." She explained to me that Dorothy wasn't really Dorothy but an actress named Judy Garland who had died just recently. I asked her how she died and my mother said she was just very, very sad so she died.
~ I get teary-eyed just thinking about it sometimes and I don't really like to listen to that song. But I keep it on my play list ... after all, she was my first girlfriend.
Favorite Lyric: "Somewhere over the rainbow / Skies are blue / And the dreams that you dare to dream / Really do come true."

Sheesh ... I need somethin' a little more light-hearted after that one ... first some kleenex. Now ... on with the countdown.

4. I'm a Believer

Artist: The Monkees (1966)
~ I like this one 'cause it is just plain true ... story of my life. As a young man, I thought I was in love on about 32 separate occasions. Now most of those girls never said so much as "boo" to me. Now there were a few who noticed me ... a couple even liked me a little. But somehow I always ended up being Mr. Congeniality when Mr. Right showed up. I was always trying my level best to sweep the girl off her feet but dude would come on the scene with a vacuum cleaner. I was just about ready to abandon to pursuit of love when into the George Sherman Union building walked this pretty little girl with a gheri curl ...
Favorite Lyric: "I thought love was only true in fairy tales / Meant for someone else but not for me / Love was out to get me / That's the way it seemed / Disappointment haunted all my dreams / The I saw her face / Now I'm a believer "
~ And she's still HERE, y'all ... minus the activator, of course!

5. Oh, Mandy

Artist: Barry Manilow (1974)
~ So, I like to blame my mild but persistent Barry Manilow addiction on my little sister Carol. I say that I like him because she likes him and his songs remind me of her. Lies, lies, lies. The truth is that it was me ... I am the pusher who addicted her to the drug of Barry when she was still young and impressionable.
Favorite Lyric: "I'm standin' on the edge of time / I walked away when love was mine / Caught up in a world of uphill climbin' / The tears are in my mind / And nothin' is rhymin' / Oh Mandy"
~ O, but, Barry, it is rhymin' ... it's ALL rhymin'. Dude, you ARE Music and you DO write the songs!!!

But, alas ... I sense my momentary vulnerability wearing off. So before I think better of it and delete the whole post, I'd better leave it at this for now. If you want to know more of my Guilty Pleasure Play List you're gonna have to come clean on some of your own cheesy-easy listenin' grooves.

So, in the words of one of my other favorite tacky songs: "There you are with yours and here I am with mine so I guess we'll just be ending it like this."

Thoughts in the wee small hours of the mornin' ...

"... four in the mornin'
crapped-out, yawning,
longing my life away ... "

Okay, so the "longing my life away" part is a little melodramatic, even for me, but the ungodly hour tends to magnify every feeling ... I am longing to go back to bed, though.

The early rising is the price I pay for the school that Sister Baby attends. She is in a special program that allows her to attend school in the suburbs and she goes to one of the top school districts in the state ... probably in the country. The difference between her current school and the very obviously disadvantaged Boston public schools tweaks my sense of justice and I occasionally feel guilty for winning the lottery that put her where she is ... but mostly I feel lucky. Maybe a tirade about the inequality in the system at a later time ..,

See, I feel better already ... just a little writing and I'm already beginning to resemble a human being again. That doesn't usually begin to happen until sometime after 8:00!


====================================================================
====But now we interrupt this program for the morning routine. Time to wake the girl and get her ready. After that I will be completely human ... perhaps even downright amiable. The li'l girl tends to have that effect on me. ============================================

So ... wham-o ... now it's like 13 hours later! I have regained and expended all the energy required to get me through the day and I am tired all over again. A little frustrating ... but I've taken the ol' laptop and set it up in the only quiet room in the house (the kitchen -- after dinner, of course) in the hopes that I might catch some random train of thought before the last one leaves the station tonight ...

Well ... I got nothing.

Oh, wait ... here's something. I can tell you about the new character I'm writing. His name is Calloway Nickel. He's the me I might have been had circumstances been slightly different. Soemtimes he's the me I wish I was and sometimes he's the me I'm glad I'm not and then there are times when he is the me I might yet become. I think I need him to tell some of the stories that have been stuck in the back of my head for decades ... so far, he's scraped a couple off the top.

The other sort of new character I have is Miracle DeVries ... who is nothing like me. She is ... how can I explain it? She is a combination of some of the women who have influenced me (positively) over the years ... She's very cool and likable. I think that's important. I've got to like someone to write them.

Actually ... that may not be a good thing. One of the things I strggle with is making the characters I don't like seem like anything more than cartoon bad guys. They tend to talk and act like characters from old sit-coms and melo dramas. Gotta work on that one, I guess.

Ink versus Pixels

I've been a bad blogger, I know ... but it hasn't been due to idleness.

Okay, so there has been a little bit of idleness, but I have been busy. Sister Baby and Brother Man have both started new schools so there was a lot of twisting, turning and maneuvering of family schedules to accommodate the change. Right now, my day starts at 4:30 AM (I know, right?). And since I used to do the majority of my writing late at night and the ol' mind only stays functional for so long before it goes into shut down mode ... well, there you have it.

The weather has been nice, though, and I have found that if I go out at lunch time and find a quiet bench somewhere on campus, the muses visit frequently and their inspiration is golden! I am working on a story that I am very excited about (and hope to share sometime soon) as well as a series of spiritual --- uh, I guess you'd call 'em essays. It's been fun.

I think there is something about the physical act of writing ... I mean, pen-in-hand, ink-on-paper ... that facilitates the process for me. I think I type faster than I think which tends toward drivel. But I write slower than I think -- or maybe at the same speed. It's not very efficient, and sometimes I get impatient with my output and throw down the ball point and trudge back to the key board but in the end I always end up back at the notebook.

But it's no excuse ... I miss my old blog and plan to be a little more faithful to it. Hold me to that, will ya.

Jared's "First" Shirt ...

This is Brother Man ... wearing his Famous Shirt. The other night he says to me, "Hey, Dad, remember when we were on are way moving from New Orleans to Boston and we stopped at that Wal-Mart in Alabama or something to buy some clothes?"

I remembered ... we had evacuated after Katrina and had only about a long weekend's worth of clothes for everybody. So we go in the store and we decide to let Jared pick out his own clothes ... must have been the first time we ever let him do so. He picked this shirt and I didn't like it. "Man," says he, "You hated that shirt." I think I did. Or perhaps what I really hated was the fact that home boy was getting older which meant that one day he won't need me to help him with such things. Anyway, I told him to put it back ... angrily, I'm sure ... but Mammacita persuaded me to let the boy have his shirt.

"Seriously, Dad -- I get compliments every time I wear that shirt ... how nice the color is, how good it looks on me." And it still does as you can see from the picture I took yesterday. Isn't it funny how, the day after we had this conversation, he went through his drawers (which he never does) and found that very shirt and wore it. He didn't say anything about it -- just put it on. Maybe it was his way of reminding me that he is growing-up. My first thought was to be flippant and say something like "well, you chose it but who paid for it." But then I thought better of it. I stopped him on his way back in from taking out the garbage and snapped this photo. "Why're you takin' my picture."

"Just 'cause," I said. "There are certain things that fathers like to remember about their sons." And there are. And now I will.

...you're always running here and there ... you feel you're not wanted anywhere...

So ...

I was going to attempt to avoid this whole topic ... who wants to read another post about Michael Jackson? But then I remembered, nobody reads this blog anyway, so ...

I've been asking myself how one ought to grieve for someone he never really even knew. A better question is why ought one grieve. But the thing is, if you are an african-american of my generation then you grew up with Michael Jackson. I have known him {okay, known of him} since I was old enough to know anything. Over the years he became sort of like a crazy cousin ... one you never understand and often disagree with but whom you were always glad to see. His passing has made me inescapably sad, y'all. And in spite of my attempts to remain above it all, to adopt a more sagacious perspective on the spectacle that is still playing itself out, I am still just very very sad.

In the title I quoted the song "Ben," MJ's first solo #1 hit. It is about, of all things, a rat ... the vicious ringleader of a pack of man-eating rats at that. You can listen to it here . The tender song didn't really go with a horror movie ... wasn't even a very good horror movie either. In the it, Ben-the-Rat's friend was a lonely, misunderstood, abused-by-society, misfit named Willard. And at the end of the movie Ben and his rodent cohorts killed poor Willard who did kinda bring it on himself having trained the rat's to do murder at his bidding.

I suspect that, in Michael's case, a tender soul did not really go with the horror movie his life became. I think Jackson's "Ben" was his celebrity. It gave him astronomical sums of money, colossal fame and, I think, an unprecedented amount of sadness. Now, I'm not saying that some of his misery ... maybe even a lot of it was not self-wrought. But a soul is such a delicate thing, and more so the soul of an artist ... what is it about the American style of celebrity that tends to devour some of our brightest (and therefore some of our most fragile) souls? I don't know ... you'll have to ask Billie Holiday, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, Karen Carpenter Michael Jackson and all the other's whose fame seemed to shorten their trajectory and turn it prematurely downward. Here's to the hope that Rock and Roll Heaven is real and that over yonder backstage passes are plentiful and readily available.

So now, I say about Mike what I say about other departed friends and family members --"those I loved and did not understand" as Norman Mclean put it at the end of his beautiful story A River Runs Through It ...

Damn, bruh ... wish I coulda -- I don't know -- been there for ya ... Or something.

All We Are Is Dust in the Wind ...

... or maybe we're plastic letters on the fridge?

Saturday morning ... and I woke up to the very pleasant sound of Sister Baby's morning show. She has these magnetic letters on the refrigerator and each one is a different character in an elaborate drama. Funny to me that with all the high-tech (and expensive) trinkets we have attempted to delight her with, this is still one of her preferred play activities ...

Sort of reminded me of my occasionally idle mornings and afternoons when I was a kid. When the sun was just right, shooting nearly solid beams of light into the room through the windows between the slits in the curtains, I would go and find a t-shirt or a dry towel. If you wave the thing in the shaft of light you release thousands and thousands of floating specks of dust and lint. I would pretend it was a dogfight ... Allies vs. Axis over the skies of World War II Europe. The smaller specks were the fighters ... the little spitfires soaring deftly among all the flack. The larger ones were the bombers, lumbering toward their intended targets, pilots white-knuckling the controls, gunners spinning in their turrets. After waving the t-shirt, I had no control ... the dust fighters fought furiously till there were only a few left and then the victors flew slowly, gratefully and pensively home. I couldn't control it, all I could do was watch ... some of my favored pilots made it, some didn't.

I wonder if that's how God is ... having waved the T-Shirt of the Cosmos, setting this whole thing in motion. Is He waiting for the dust to settle? And after we have flown through the fray, protecting some harassing others, who among us will make that peaceful flight home?

Or is the Universe more like the refrigerator and God, like Sister Baby pulling all the strings ... lots of action and high drama ... danger, fun, love, strife, hate, bliss, misery and (occasionally a little) peace ... but in the end, everything comes out okay.