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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Noticing The Color Purple...




SO...it’s another typically tedious Tuesday. Not a GREAT Day, and not a particular day of note. And so you sigh, you rise, you shower, eat, prepare to meet the blinding onslaught of daylight and the issues attached to living your life.

At work, you turn on your computer... log in to your homepage, check your email and your eyes begin to blink in messages from hungry strangers asking you to contribute to some invisible cause, bloggers requesting that you check out their latest renderings, online friends who thought enough of you to send a few short pick-me-up-messages of: ‘Hey Beautiful!’ ‘Hey Gorgeous!’ ‘Have a Great Day!’ and best of all: ‘I Believe In You.’


And taking absolutely nothing for granted, you are actually, factually THANKFUL for those few messages. Yes, you are thankful. And yet, you're also somewhat dubious, because you don’t feel ‘beautiful’ or ‘gorgeous’ or that your day will be so ‘Great’… and you sometimes even forget to ‘believe’ in yourself.



But The Creator along with the meteorologists have conspired to bring a piece of sun into your day. You realize, it’s spring, and you’re alive, and if you listen very carefully, there are birds singing outside your window.



And when last you checked, your family was healthy, and not one of your friends was in today’s obituary.



So maybe, just maybe you should celebrate this stuff. Maybe, just maybe, you can manage to smile a bit... and still be serious.




Maybe the world spins on Atlas’s brawny shoulder by design, and the ratio of good shit vs. bad shit evens out in time, until you experience the epiphany that:

THIS IS IT.



This is your life: breathing, humming, singing, bitching, laughing, crying, sighing, flourishing, unfurling all around you, and you are failing to *acknowledge* it.




God Bless Alice Walker! There was a very profound the line from her novel, The Color Purple:



"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."




Today, inside this field of my life, I’ve decided to NOTICE the Color Purple.


It really is kinda Beautiful, you know.





Snatch JOY!




One.


Lin

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

We Are Really 'TOO SHY TO SAY'???





“Too Shy To Say"

You make me smile
You make me sing
You make me feel good everything
You bring me up
When I've been down
This only happens when you're around

And I can't go on this way...
With it stronger every day...
But being too shy to say
That I really love you...

I wanna fly
Away with you
Until there's nothing more for us to do
I wanna be
More than a friend
Until the end of an endless end

And I can't go on this way...
With it stronger every day...
But being too shy to say
That I really love you...

And I can't go on this way...
Feelin' it stronger every day...
But being too shy to say
That I really love you
Ohh.. ooooooh-ohhhhh-who....
Oh, I... do...” ~ Stevie Wonder




Thank you, Sir Stevie!

I’ve always, ALWAYS appreciated The Gift and the artistry of Stevie Wonder… and I’ve always, ALWAYS adored that ballad. It is the sad song of the chronically shy and terminally tongue-tied soul. It is that quiet anthem of the frustrated inner poet. It fits perfectly with a theme I’ve been meaning to discuss. And this page seems as good a place as any to broach the subject:


Stevie sang that song ages ago. But the question remains today: Are WE Too Shy to SAY?

When we truly dig someone, like someone, even LOVE someone, why are some of us so damned tongue-tied about expressing it? Are we only poets at our fingertips? Are we spoken word artists performing live, for one-night-only, behind the mic of a cell phone?


How many of us are tried-and-true romantic waxers, angelically lush sweet-talkers? How many of us are mad spinners of magic, keen pitchers of woo, and yet… when face-to-face, belly-to-belly, we lose our juice... misplace our voodoo... drop-kick our lyrical muse?


Where do duh mojo go, yo?

Are we, in reality, these verbal stumblebums?


I ask this question because, I’ve noticed in myself, and in others, this strangely reticent factor enters into the realm all too often when we’re one-on-one.


In letters, on paper, on the phone, on my screen, I am King. I am all things: brilliant, verbose, sexy, clever and funny. I am the most wise, intelligent, sweet, deep, sensitive and kind mofo. In other words, I’m all harps and strings, and triangles tingling. I am the symphonic equivalent of Duh Bomb, yo.


So where does that bomb cat go... when he’s supposed to arrive and deliver that bomb show inside the beautiful, if less symphonic reality?


Is he shy? Is he dumb? Is he borderline retardo? Was he a Lyrical King, only by proxy, or did his doppelganger send in Cyrano?


I am fundamentally a word-man. Words are my friends. They sometimes represent me even better than my own physicality can. Words will spin around inside my chest, start a small riot in my viscera and then gracefully (or sometimes violently) pour from my fingertips.


This is the Art in me. This is the God Voice thrown from me. God is an Amazing Ventriloquist sometimes. Yet, it is still my voice.... my *authentic* voice, in lines, in dashes, in squiggles.


But... I don’t always speak the way I write. The Writer Me, well... he can be a tad more eloquent, more formal, more passionate, more didactic, more poetic, and more a dictator/conductor of my heart’s purest language.


Hmmm... but one can't go around speaking in the same way they write! That would be tres ridic, and mad corny, wouldn't it? It would not be very 2010 of me, to run around reciting these heartfelt soliloquies!


But apparently, I’m not alone. Often, I feel lost on a small prosaic planet of poetic souls, turned verbal idiots. People who’ve shown me so much promise, so much warmth, so many degrees of idealism, lyricism and spirituality are often struck near-mute, or become these linguistic morons when suddenly face-to-face, eye-to-eye.

Sure, ply us with liquor, or some artificial stimulant and we can riff, kick, and spit it... like the best romantic poet. But it's here, in our most sober skin… that the romantic can often take a prolonged hiatus.


I wonder WHY that is, and what it is in the human animal that shies away from ebullient, effusive, romantic expression. I mean, obviously, we are capable of it, as we’ve displayed its soulful music, shown fits and verses and stanzas of it with our craft! Yet, when pressed to spring into action, it all dissolves into that shy-not-so-special-less-unique tongue of the ordinary!

Are WE too SHY to say?

Are YOU too shy to riddle me an answer?


And I can't go on this way...
Feelin' it stronger every day...
But being too shy to say
That I really love you
Ohh.. ooh...
I... do...”
~Stevie Wonder





One.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Is It Real Love or Fastfood Luv? Only The Gut Can Decide...





I feel the need to speak, to wax, to pontificate on the subject of Love. Love! Ah, yes... Love!

I mean, The Realness. The Real isht… The Authentic Stuff... not that weird, obsessive shit. And not that: please-baby-baby-please love-me-long-time, desperate variety. I mean that many splendored thing joint!

I‘m talkin' ‘bout Love as described in the classic jazz tune, “Moody’s Mood For Love”.


It goes a lil sump’m like dis::

“There I go, there I go, there I go, there I go
Pretty baby you are the soul that snaps my control
It's a funny thing but every time I'm near you
I never can behave
You give me a smile and I'm wrapped up in your magic
Music all around me, crazy music, music that keeps calling me so
Baby close to you, turns me into your slave
Come on
Come and do with me any little thing that you want to
Anything, baby just met me get next to you
Am I insane or do I really see heaven in your eyes
Bright as stars that shine up above you
In the clear blue sky
How I worry bout you
Just can't live my life without you
Baby come here, don't have no fear
Oh, is there wonder why
I'm really feeling in the mood for love…” (by~ James Moody and Eddie Jefferson)



Now ain’t THAT Love… or some a form of delusion?


It could be because this is the season of Spring, and maybe it’s contagious. Maybe, birds gotta fly, bees gotta buzz, fish gotta swim, yada yada boom-bang. All I know is, the subject of luv keeps whirling 'round my dome like some annoying housefly.


But I digress...


The subject is: Love, Luv, LOVE! Yes, the Big Amore. The Whooper. The Hoodoo. The Voodoo, some seem to do so well, and others, well... they just get done.

Lately, I've been surrounded by those who've claimed to be feelin’ duh luv. Please, note the spelling.

When it's Real and Present, when it’s Vibing and Verbin’, then out of all due respect, it gets the L.O.V.E spelling.

Here, the *luv* I’m addressing is suddenly the topic of much talk from friends of late who feel that they've either stepped, stumbled, tripped, slipped or landed in a big ole pile or at least the potential potent possibility of it.

Ah, Luv! Ain't it wonderful? Ain't it grand? Ain’t it what makes the world go 'round? Can ya even stand it?

One good friend tripped into a piece of it recently while on vacation. Let's call her, Anjette. Now Anjette is cool, cool, very cool people. Anjette is, and always has been a very independent Black woman (many light-years before Beyonce & DC told her to be one). Anjette is very, verrrr much a person in control her own dominion. Swears she doesn't need a man, doesn't crave sex, doesn’t worship at the Alter of Penis, doesn’t suffer from chronic lack-of-the-'zack attacks (or so she claims), and doesn't whine when it's on lay-away. Just so you understand, Anjette doesn't bitch when the boyfriend juice is not in stock, nor does she protest too much when it's not in (the) store.

To wax in the current venacular: Anjette don't roll like dat!

However, as recently as a week ago, she’s been speaking of having found this wondrous new LUV! Ah luv! It seems she has just suddenly stumbled into something or someone that has produced a feeling in her soul, so silly, so giddy, so wonderful and rare, so "Day-YUM!"

I mean, is it REALLY like dat!? It's making up poems, impromptu, it's opening doors, holding hands, it's making no demands, other than that mythic two-worded curse of: "Trust me."

Hmmmm…. But of course, since life never hands us a sweet, untarnished piece of gold… there are issues… like: Is this new Luv, being true, or only auditioning for the part of Love’s Leading Man To Get Into The Panties, as we all sometimes do?

The answers to those heady questions have yet to materialize… and so I must stay tuned.

Not trying to appear the pessimistic sort, because I KNOW Luv, Attraction, Lust, Lust-luv, and LOVE do indeed exist. And there is no time schedule, no appropriate waiting period for one to declare it as such. Love just happens, much like that old phrase, “shit happens.’

I wish you well, Anjette. Really, I do. Like all of us, you are more than deserving of the Real Deal. The Super-Sizer. The burger, fries, the extra-thick shake AND the damn apple pie! And somebody throw some extra cheese on that burger, please!

Hey, I'm not being cynical (well, not too much). I'm a big fan of Mickey Dee's.

Holla atcha boi, when this new Luv becomes LOVE-- & in the meantime, I'll be in that booth in the back, munching on fries and lighting a candle for your monkey.


Luv-potion # 2:

This one comes all the way from the "Sunshine State" of Florida, in the form of a friend (we'll call him Luis). Luis also claims he wasn't looking for the L-word. Yet, he too had this trick thing called luv, shock his monkey-azz-- just smack him in between the ojos, as if to say: "it's me, fool! ya better recognize!"

He's recognizing something all right. He's recognizing how the heart is singing new Salsa tunes, and how his corazón beats faster than Tito Puente’s timbales ever did. He’s noticing how his head and his dique are lost in deep thought of this particular heart-throb. Ah, yes! Those magic throbbers. They come in all shapes & sizes. They can sneak up on ya, and sometimes even surprise ya. I'm happy for his monkey, also.


Albeit Love or Luv, it's so wonderful when it's all brand-new, fresh, & dewy-soft. When it makes you wanna lose yourself in the moment, & and get lost in the ridic, and downright Simon and Garfunkel-like-silly wid it. Ya know:

"Just skipping down the cobblestones, looking for fun & feelin grrroovveeeeeeee!"


Hey Luis! Yo, papi! Please, slow ya roll! Shout me a holla when all that damn skipping's (&/or sexing) is through. I'll still be in your corner... even when gravity takes over; and even if you should find yourself, lying face-down and all broke-up along those damned cobblestones.


But maybe you’ll be a Lucky One… and LOVE will kiss you firmly in a cool place where the sensation lasts forever.

Here's to believing in those rare, if oh-so-coveted four-leaf clovers...

Meanwhile, I’ll still be in that booth at Mickey Dee’s, watching all those fast-food flings roll by.

Yo! Is my burger & shake ready?


One.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

A Lesson In "Manhood..."






Once, I thought that Manhood was like a musky cologne… or a dangerous R & B song that came on strong, like Otis Redding did. In my young and ignorant thoughts, Manhood could flip the script and be like a switchblade, flicking long and sharp and deadly from the pocket.


I once thought it MANifested in a jock-strap, a fly new Cadillac, in a designer suit; that it possessed a mad smoooove rap, and a sufficient amount of neighborhood juice.


See, Manhood had these strong hands, huge-ass biceps, hairy knuckles, a broad chest, and it always drove fast and recklessly.


It was measured in wallet size, clocked by the way I used my fists; determined by the width of my shoulder span… and proven by the frequency of my one-night stands…


But strangely, none of these things ever made me a man. Instead, they left me longing, left me empty, kept me reaching for some Deeper Meaning.


I once thought Manhood was in a sliver of meat hard, thick, menacing, and full of promiscuous tricks. It was in the ability to make others feel inferior. It was this magnificent presence inside my posture and it didn’t have shit to do with my interior.


I once thought that Manhood consisted of:


A snarl, a frown, a furrowed brow, a cuss word on my tongue to show I was down. A bottle of Hennie, cheap wine or a 40… my hand on my crotch, my third-eye on watch, a quick fuse, a simian bop, a well-timed middle-finger to prove I was nobody’s punk!


Yeah... Manhood was some strong shit! I wanted to wear it like a musky cologne… and whip it out, like a switchblade, that was sharp, useful and deadly in my pocket.


It was in the style of my swerve, not in the honor of my word.


However, I’ve come to believe to truly BE a Man is to survive Adversity… to rise from my knees and thrive in my humanity. It’s to calm down and to step up… it’s to holler in a righteous tone, without raising the sound of my voice. It’s to own up to my mistakes… and to handle my responsibilities. It’s to take full ownership of my actions and reactions.


Manhood… it’s something you earn. It's not something you’re given… but something that you must learn to possess. To be a Man is a rough gig, yes... but it’s real, and it’s honest. It’s full of pain and fears unafraid to be acknowledged.


It’s the song and the poem composed of myself. It’s my own unique and singular sonnet... And I try Like Hell to sing it daily; because no other Soul can compose its lyrics…


But me!



copyright © 2010 by L.M. Ross



One.

Monday, May 10, 2010

La Lovely! La Lyrical! La Lena!



Yesterday, on Mother’s Day, the world lost a genuine legend. Lena Horne, who possessed a uniquely silk and bourbon voice, accented by her rich copper-skinned goddess-like beauty has passed. Perhaps, best known for her rendition of the 1940s torch song “Stormy Weather,” Miss Lena, 92, died in her native, NYC, at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center.

She was born Lena Mary Calhoun Horne on June 30, 1917, in Brooklyn, N.Y.

She began performing at the tender age of sixteen, as a chorus girl at the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem. This was way back in 1933, and Miss Lena's career would continue for an astounding six-decades, which included films, radio, television, recording, nightclubs, concert halls and Broadway.

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Her talent and other-worldly beauty were undeniable. At her core, she was a singer, and she never wanted to become an actress, but then Hollywood came knocking. At the insistence of her friend, Count Basie, this was to be her destiny. He told her that she was blessed to have been The Chosen One, and so she had to represent black people in ways other than pickaninnies and maids. A reluctant Lena agreed. She went to Hollywood, signed with MGM Studios, and made a handful of movies, many of which edited out her performances, before being shown in the Jim Crow south.


She made a few classic Hollywood musicals, including Cabin in the Sky, and Stormy Weather, both released in 1943.

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With her fair skin, strong bone structure and dazzling smile, she was a breakthrough on the silver screen — "Hollywood’s first black beauty, sex symbol, singing star," as Vogue magazine put it decades later.

"I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept," Horne once said. "I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked."


A World War II pinup girl, the glamorous Miss Lena in 1944 became the first black to appear on the cover of a movie magazine, Motion Picture.


"Anybody who was not madly in love with Lena Horne should report to his undertaker immediately and turn himself in," actor and friend Ossie Davis said on "Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice," a 1996 installment of PBS’ "American Masters" biography series.

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"In the history of American popular entertainment, no woman had ever looked like Lena Horne. Nor had any other black woman had looks considered as ’safe’ and non-threatening," Donald Bogle wrote in his book "Brown Sugar: Over One Hundred Years of America’s Black Superstars."

Although, at the time, she was considered the highest paid black woman in America, Hollywood never did right by Miss Lena. They wanted her, and yet didn’t know what to do with her. Lena refused to pass as anything other than what she was, and glamourous black woman of a particular light complexion could only go so far on film.

The one role she’d actually coveted, that of Julie, the tragic mulatto in the musical Showboat went instead to her beauteous white friend, Ava Gardner. Miss Gardner herself protested this casting and would had perferred Lena to play and sing the part, but the suits felt differently. Miss Gardner appeared, and had her singing dubbed. This was a tremedous slap in Lena’s face, and would forever leave a bad taste in her mouth.

Luckily, she still had her voice, and what a wondrous and glorious voice it was! With its smooth, carressing tonality and slightly seductive drawl, she would fit well into that pantheon of great female jazz singers including, Ethel Waters, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae."


Miss Lena modestly disagreed:

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"Oh, please," she said. "I’m really not Miss Pretentious. I’m just a survivor. Just being myself."

During her early New York roots, she made her Broadway debut in 1934 with a small role in "Dance With Your Gods," an all-black drama that ran only nine performances.
Later, she became a featured singer in the all-black Noble Sissle Society Orchestra but quit two years later to marry Louis Jones, a Pittsburgh friend of her father’s who was some nine years her senior.

At 19, she settled into domestic life in Pittsburgh and gave birth to her two children, Gail and Teddy. But she and her husband separated in 1940 and were divorced in 1944.

She gave up show business when she married Jones, however money problems during the marriage prompted her to accept the co-starring role in "The Duke Is Tops," a low-budget, 1938 black movie musical shot in 10 days.

Moving back to New York after her marriage dissolved, she was hired as a vocalist with the Barnet Orchestra, becoming one of the first black performers to sing with a major white band, with whom she had a hit record, "Good for Nothing Joe."

After leaving the Barnet band in 1941, Miss Lena began an extended engagement at Cafe Society Downtown, where she first met and became friends with singer-actor and political activist Paul Robeson.

While under contract to MGM in the ’40s, Horne met Lennie Hayton, a white staff composer and arranger at the studio who became her second husband. Fearing public reaction, they did not announce their marriage until three years later. She admitted later that she’d initially became involved with Hayton because she thought he could be useful to her career.

"He could get me into places no black manager could," she told The New York Times [NYT] in 1981. "It was wrong of me, but as a black woman, I knew what I had against me." But, she said, "because he was a nice man and because he was in my corner, I began to love him."


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Miss Lena had publicly stated that her One True Love and Soulmate was Lush Life composer and one-time Ellington songwriting partner, Billy Strayhorn. They loved each other deeply. They were such great friends; they even completed each other's sentences. She’d stated how she desperately wanted to marry him. The only roadblock to her bliss was that Strayhorn was an openly gay man. She was devastated by his early death.


Sadly, it appeared that throughout her long life and enduring career, true love and a happy marriage would forever escape her grasp.

Primarily due to her friendship with the bold and outspoken Paul Robeson coupled with her involvement with the Council for African Affairs and the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee to the Arts, Science and Professions, both of which were named as Communist fronts, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to appear on radio and television in the early ’50s. But the cabaret business remained untouched by the blacklist, and she focused on her critically acclaimed nightclub/cabaret act.

Her Lena Horne at the Waldorf Astoria became RCA Victor’s biggest-selling album by a female vocalist in 1957.

Horne, who was able to resume appearing on television in 1956, also starred in the hit Broadway musical "Jamaica," which ran from 1957 to ’59 and earned her a Tony Award nomination.

Unable to stay in many of the hotels she performed in because she was black, Miss Lena developed what she later described as "a toughness, a way of isolating" herself from the audience as a performer.

Throughout her early career, Horne experienced the injustices suffered by African Americans at the time.

While touring with the USO during World War II, she was expected to entertain the white soldiers before the blacks. When she discovered that the whites seated in the front rows were German prisoners of war, she became furious. Marching off the platform, she turned her back on the POWs and sang to the black soldiers in the back of the hall.

Her long-suppressed anger over the treatment of blacks in white society erupted in 1960 when she overheard a drunken white man at the Luau restaurant in Beverly Hills refer to her as "just another nigger."

Jumping up, she threw an ashtray, a table lamp and several glasses at him, cutting the man’s forehead.

When reports of her outburst appeared in newspapers around the country, Horne was surprised at the positive response, mostly from African Americans.

"Phone calls and telegrams came in from all over," she told the Christian Science Monitor in 1984. "It was the first time it struck me that black people related to each other in bigger ways than I realized."

In the early ’60s, Horne became more active in the civil-rights movement, participating in a meeting with prominent blacks in 1963 with then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the wake of violence in Birmingham, Ala., and singing at civil rights rallies.

In the early ’70s, Horne faced three personal blows within an 18-month period: In 1970, the same year her father died, her son died of kidney disease; and her husband died of a heart attack in 1971.

Horne later said she "stayed in the house grieving" until Alan King "bullied" her out of her depression, and she returned to singing and recording.

She also toured with Tony Bennett, and performed with him in 37 performances on Broadway of "Tony & Lena Sing" in 1974.

In a brief, and noted return to the screen, she played Glinda, the Good Witch in "The Wiz," the 1978 movie musical directed by Sidney Lumet, her then-son-in-law. The film may have starred Diana Ross, but Miss Lena stole it.

If You Believe,” an inspirational song of self-empowerment was, for me, personally, her standout vocal performace.

Then, in 1981, she made a triumphant return to Broadway in the hit "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music." This was her epic moment. This introduced new audiences to her unique persona, and reminded older fans of just what made her so special.

Suddenly, Miss Lena had become the IT Girl again! It mattered not that she was 63 at the time. The production went on to win critical acclaim, the Drama Desk Award and a special Tony Award for her autobiographical show which ran on Broadway for more than a year and led to a Grammy Award-winning soundtrack album and a cross-country tour of the show before going to London.

As Horne said in the documentary "Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice": "My life has been about surviving. Along the way I also became an artist. It’s been an interesting journey. One in which music became first my refuge and then my salvation."

Horne was a Kennedy Center Honors recipient in 1984, and she received a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1998.

Thank God Miss Lena was given some flowers, some honors, and long overdue recognition while she was still here and breathing air!

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Note to Alicia Keys: too bad the suits couldn’t manage to get it all together and film Miss Lena’s life story before she’d passed. Still, if anyone could play her, realistically, Miss Keys gets my vote.


I was a fan, and admirer of Miss Lena Horne. She lived a long time. Her beautiful eyes saw much ugliness, and yet in the end, she’d triumphed over much of it. For this reason, I can not feel sad at her passing. Instead, I choose to celebrate the fact that she existed!

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Rest in Peace, Miss Lena… you truly did make a difference!



One Love.

Lin

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

"Gone" (A Jazz Poem For One of The Dearly Departed)





Inside that concrete canyon of

Deep and steely

Regrets

Where the mean streets sucked

You in, like

Aimless junkies inhaling

Crystal meth…

And the garish avenues

Spat you out

Like the night’s

Haughty sophisticates

Exhaling smoke

From French

Cigarettes… I search for


Signs of your

Cool-ass

Ghost.

Where the hustlers are

Still brawling

The busters are balling

And queens lean into

Neon-coated

Tete a tetes… and the whores

Grow bored between

Johns and quickies

And marathon sessions of

Oral sex… where

The atmosphere is

Terminally blue, I find myself

Searching for you.



Sometimes I forget

Being lost

In a dream

Where I’m

Naked, screaming

Screeching your name

Like a wildman aflame

Thru uncaring streets

As if you were still

Alive, still seeking

Your piece of fame as

A skidrow celebrity. On Broadway


No one really

'Treats you fine.'

It’s just a contrived

Little R & B

Rhyme... a convenient line

From a long ago

Drifters song. I sing


Your name

And throw my voice from

The top my

Lungs in a shameless fit of

Disorderly conduct

Terrified to confess and

Afraid to admit

You are gone… really


Gone, man. Gone

Like those

Beatniks, wasted chicks

And misfits from the 60s. Gone

Like Bird and Jupiter Ray

And those spacey tribes of

Bricked-up eyes

In the dimly-lit

Cafes of the village.

Gone…


Like the comfortably numb

Hippies and the skag-

Shooting junkies nodding

Their lives away in

Needle Park. Gone

Like those angelic–sounding

Jazzmen sparking reefer and

Hitting pristine notes. Gone

Like the cool ones...

The transitory

Doomed ones

Doping in the dark of

52nd street.


Gone… in the night’s frightful

Debris of objects, mirages,

People and things

That matter to

No one else

But me.



I refuse to let the

Demons win or pillage this

Richness of your memory

When, you remain like

Some old soul song

Only old souls sing

When high on something

Even those dealers in Harlem

No longer sling.


You are gone, now

Like afros and dashikis

And beautiful visions

Fleeting from the corner

Of my mind’s eye.



Gone… in a blink

In a final sigh...

In this stink-hole

Lost soul ghetto. Gone from

This unfabulous uptown

Plantation zoo of

Habits that wink

And nod and fidget

At you… Habits

That ache and throb,

Shake and rob…

Wild, and lie

And vomit

In macabre

Projectile

Streams of nothing

Nada, utter

Nothingness...

But the bang/crash

Echo of




Regret.







One.





copyright © 2010 by L.M. Ross

Monday, May 3, 2010

If You Can’t Be With The One You Love, Honey…FONE BONE The One You’re With…









Tell me this has NEVER happened to you, and I'll have to call you a lie-yah...



Picture it: It’s a rainy night in your ville. You’re home alone, and maybe just a little lonely. You’re reclining in your favorite chair, or perhaps on the sofa or futon, contemplating your navel or somesuch ish.

The phone rings. You answer it. Instantly, you recognize the voice. It sounds a bit like you… a little lonely, a little weary, a little mean, a little sex-starved-woozy, too. You can telegraph the message of their breaths. Lately, you've become this keen student of breaths.

The two of you speak for a few, indulging in the usual ‘Whachu doin? Nothing. Well what you UP to? Nothin...’ B.S.

It’s waaaaaay past midnight… on a Sunday/early Monday morning. What could they possibly be UP to at this hour?

Gradually comes the revelation (aha!) They are feeling lonely for some company, and thought of you. They tell you how much they wish YOU were there with them, showering them with kisess, doing those all erotic, freaky things you do. But distance precludes you even considering the prospects of a Booty Call.

But the breathing… yes… the Breathing continues.

You know by instinct, just what they are doing on the other end. 'You so nasty!' You can TELL. It’s in their silence. It’s in the shortness of their breath. It’s in the slight mooooooaning, progressively grrrrroaning sounds they make in the back of their throat.

Ah yes. Phone sex. I’m sure many of us have performed this intimate, if long-distance private act.

Phone Sex. Ummm... yes, I have, on occasion indulged. I’ve been told that I can be pretty damn good at it.

But you don’t want to become SO GOOD at it that you get calls in the middle of the freaking night from someone asking you to soothe the horny beast that dwells within their Hanes, their Vicky’s Secrets, their Calvins, their Fruit of the…whatevers.

Still, if you know this person well enough… if they intrigue you, if you’ve been intimate with them before, you have that keen advantage of knowing just what they like, how they like it, where to touch stroke, probe, lick, suck, kiss. You know the secret of just what to say, what to do to those most deepest most intimate of or areas to please them.

The sounds they make are like your tour guide to their private bliss. The sound they make become like arias sang from the nudity of their souls.


Ah yes. Oh, yeaaaah. Phone sex. It can be as hot or vague or as mad vivid as the act of getting laid.

So you whisper into the receiver the things you want to do… and you tell them to close their eyes, to imagine you are there:

“Get Naked!” you demand.

“I am,” they say.

“No, you’re not! Get all the way naked for me, baby…” you whisper.

You tell them that their hand is no longer their hand, but YOURS touching them, stroking them, teasing them, pleasing them.

You become the aggressor, the mad lover/vagabond traveling along the terrain of their private contours.

You are the conductor of their electricity… and the forecaster of their body heat.

You are the private dancer between their sheets, between their legs, trashing inside that invisble heat.

If they want it romantic… you become the slow and probing body poet. You recite, you wax in poetic odes to a nipple.

If they want it raw and nasty, you become the cock-strong pornstar. You have the power. They’ve given it to you. And you use it to your slyest advantage.

The climax is in their breath. The yearning, turning, churning desire to erupt comes in the sigh, in the whisper, in the quiet groan… in the oh so scatological HOLLA!

Yes! Shit! Yes! Oh! You motherf... Ahhhh... Arrrrrrggggghhhhh!

*Click.*


Ah yes. People, well we all can be so trashy in those late night hours. And phone sex... well, sometimes it’s the next best thing to being there.



One.