NEW YORK... WHEN IT SPITS...

Some misshapen thing w/a mean tattoo
Some chic, urban island of random cool
Some street corner cat steady screaming: “REVOLUTION!”
Some mythic steely smile, w/ its front teeth missing...

Some blues-chick blonde diggin’ on black sounds...
Some den of poor poets all tryna be profound...
Some Jeep's street banger w/ a hip-hop fury.
Some downbeat varicose bluecity alley.

Some screaming people howling how their lives are so shitty.
Some shafts of pink neon painting everybody... pretty.

Some east village hipster decked in all black drag...
Some tripped-out tranny, keeps vogueing all fab
Some ditzy debutante on the cover of a mag...
Some pissed-off black man who can’t hail a cab.

Some carefree limousine flying down Fifth Ave...
Some subway atrocity, but what else is new?
Some Wall Street slick thief finally paying his dues...
Some poor soul in winter, cries, devoid of any shoes.

Some glossy picture postcard you had as a kid...
Some whore's fishnets, revealing everything she did.
Some terrible sickness that's left unchecked...
Some two-bit priest w/ a Messiah Complex.

Some bleeding fist swingin in some ig’nit beatdown
Some new minority w/ his face on the ground...
Some canyon full of sirens, w/ not a single cop around
Some scream that gets drowned by the constant citysound...

Some black poet cat that keeps taking steady notes
‘Bout a tribe of soulless eyes… devoid of any hope.
We joke, we smoke, we sip on our Snapple
While choking on the core of what’s called:
“The Big Apple.”



One.




copyright © 2010 by L.M. Ross

Bon Voyage, Mon Vonetta...

One of my very first and most lasting cinematic crushes has sadly made her transition. Actress Vonetta McGee, who appeared in such films as "Melinda," “Blacula,” “Hammer”,“Shaft in Africa,” and the Clint Eastwood thriller "The Eiger Sanction" died last Friday, on July 9th, in Berkeley, Calif.

She was 65 years old.


She was blessed with a remarkable presence, and it's hard to say what it was about her that initiated my boyhood crush. I just liked her, and she drew me into her silent spell, much like a rose draws you in with its singular fragrance. Even in an industry so thick with a populace of pretty people, she possessed one of those stunning faces and shimmering talents that stood out, and like some haunting hypnotist, she made you remember her. She was not only compelling and very beautiful, in a quiet, non-showy way, but she had loads of subtext written inside those glorious eyes of hers.


In “Blacula” (1972), Ms. McGee portrayed the love interest of Mamuwalde (William Marshall), an African prince who, after an ill-fated trip to Transylvania centuries earlier, re-emerges in modern Los Angeles as a member of the thirsty undead.

Reviewing the film in The New York Times, Roger Greenspun called Ms. McGee “just possibly the most beautiful woman currently acting in movies.”





Personally, I liked that this critic didn't place her inside that marginal professional ghetto of some all-too-common yet limited racial context, like 'the most beautiful black woman', but instead, he rightly acknowledged her universal appeal.


In “Hammer” (1972), Ms. McGee appeared opposite Fred Williamson in the tale of a young black prizefighter. In “Shaft in Africa” (1973), the third installment in the private-eye series starring Richard Roundtree, she played an emir’s daughter.

Ms. McGee’s other films include “The Kremlin Letter” (1970); “Detroit 9000” (1973); “Thomasine & Bushrod” (1974); and “The Eiger Sanction” (1975), directed by and starring Clint Eastwood.

Lawrence Vonetta McGee, named for her father, was born in San Francisco on Jan. 14, 1945. While studying pre-law at San Francisco State College, she became involved in community theater. She left college before graduating to pursue an acting career.


Ms. McGee’s first film work was in Italy, where her credits include the 1968 films “Faustina,” in which she played the title role, and “Il Grande Silenzio” (“The Great Silence”). After seeing her Italian work, Sidney Poitier arranged for her to be cast in her first American film, “The Lost Man” (1969), in which he starred.


In later years she always maintained her beauty and quiet elegance. She would have recurring roles on several television shows, among them “Hell Town,” “Bustin’ Loose,” “L.A. Law” and “Cagney & Lacey,” on which she portrayed the wife of Detective Mark Petrie, played by Carl Lumbly. Ms. McGee and Mr. Lumbly were married in 1986.


Besides Mr. Lumbly, Ms. McGee is survived by their son, Brandon Lumbly; her mother, Alma McGee; three brothers, Donald, Richard and Ronald; and a sister, also named Alma McGee.

Though she was associated in public memory with the genre, Ms. McGee deplored the term “blaxploitation.” It wasn’t the “black” that troubled her — that was a source of pride. It was the “exploitation.”

“She was constantly a person who preferred roles where women got to make choices,” Ms. Nayo said on Friday. “Where women got to be strong.”





* * * *

Rest in Peace, Lovely Sister. I shall always remember you with a certain youthful smile inside my heart.


One Love.

Lin

Between Fractured Verse and Poetry

The following was written, after someone asked me the pointed question: "So, who are you, really?"




Between Fractured Verse and Poetry


I co-exist with bits
And pieces of me,
I am the stuff of
Fractured verse
And poetry.
Open door and barbed-wired fence,
Comic relief,
And dramedy.
Half-Asian eyes and Negroid lips
Half-conscious Hip-Hop,
Part Jazz purist. I
Breathe in rhythms
And gasp through lungs
That pace and race thru
Conflicted emotions.

All heart
And bone
And bullshit parts
Chronic bum, and work of
Art… I am
Full of soft blues
And vivid reds, and
Could use a little more
Green…

I am full of visions and
Still-born dreams,
Pristine memories,
Joy and Pain…
Thick with quiet
Words and screaming
Silence
Muted expression
And hovering
Violence...

Full of stars losing
Their vital shine
Like black holes
Dead… or slowly

Dying.


But I co-exist with
Bits of me
And sure-footedness pimps
My uncertainty.
Half-broken man,
Part ravenous child,
Fed on cannibis,
Muse and an innate
Dose of wildness.
Part reticent kid,
And verbose man… I am
Contradiction’s poster child.


Behind this gaze
Behind the maze
Inside this flesh
A primal haze
Of fear and bravery
Freedom and slavery
I am all of these...

And you can't save me...


From these
No trespass signs and
Barbed-wired
Fences protecting me
And what’s mine. I am

This selfish work,
Of complex parts.
A Cosmic dancer
A work of
Black Art
So just
Scratch the
Surface…and you’ll find

A piece of me and
My partial heart…

Lodged somewhere
Between tears...snot
And fits of laughter
Between
Coltrane bleats...
And emotions fractured
Upon my tongue
In stuttered verse and
Still-born riffs of
Poetry.




One.


copyright © 2010 by L.M. Ross

Never To Be Forgotten...

Michael Joe Jackson 1958-2009




"If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place... Take A Look At Yourself And Make A Change!"


One Love.

For My Father...

He knew how to wear a hat.

Trust... that’s not always an easy trick, when you’re a Black man, trying *not* to look like a pimp, a mack, a dandy, a fop or a player.


My father possessed that infinitely smooth gift of slipping on a chapeau and becoming this cool and mysterious character. Though barely 5’8, he always stood larger in his fedora. It seemed as if his posture changed and he became this whole other Larger Being , at least, in my eyes.

I was discussing this phenomenon with my mother, yesterday, as we were approaching yet another Father’s Day, without his presence. Because of this, she seemed determined to remember to be sad. And while I could only validate that emotion for her, an extended appointment with sadness was not placed upon my schedule. Instead, I spoke of a certain bronze-colored Oldsmobile Delta 88; how my father would take the family for long rides on Sunday afternoons, and how, from the backseat, in his fedora, he resembled some quietly Elegant Black King to my eyes.

When he died there inside the emergency room, a nurse brought his possessions into the waiting room. Perhaps she thought it would be too much for my mother, so she called me into a quiet corner, and she handed me his gold retirement watch, and his wedding band.

I tried like hell not to cry, especially there in that setting. Although my brother publicly lost it, I'd somehow retained my composure. It was a strange day. It was even stranger, holding those articles in my hand, as if the were supposed to represent this man I called, “Da.”

A day or so after this, at a more quiet time, I presented those articles to my mother, and hugged her tightly and for the longest time. I still hadn’t cried, but I wanted to.

After the funeral and after all the guests, and the food, and the stories, and the emotions, after the hubbub and the shows of sympathy, when everything sat quietly in its own haunted space, my mother asked if wanted anything of my father’s.

I thought for a minute about the car, which never was my style, and the clothes, ditto, and were way too small, and finally, I said,

“You know that black fedora? The one he wore back in the day, when he’d take us on those Sunday drives? I think I’d like to have that hat.”

Maybe it seemed like a strange request. But then, I was always her ‘strange poet son,’ and so she just shrugged and gave it me.

I’ve placed it on the top shelf in my closet. I hardly ever wear it. Over the years, I’ve thought of it as a kind of trophy to the modesty of his life, his quiet elegance; his one slice of mysterious cool, his subtle sense of royalty.


And so, on Father’s Day, in lieu of tears, and instead of episodes in sadness, I slipped on that black fedora, and tried like hell to mirror my father’s style-- not pimp, not mack, not player, not fop, not dandy.

You know, just a Black man, in a black chapeau, with a smooth gift for becoming a cool and mysterious character.

That’s it. That’s all.


Happy Father’s Day to YOU, Da.


One Love.


Lin

The Usual Bullshit a Go-Go...

An addendum to the previous entry: the cat I caught stealing from the till last week was officially given his walking papers on Friday night... when someone else caught him dipping and ATTEMPTING to get away with the same activity.

Karma is indeed a bitch.

Another interesting factoid, which I only discovered upon his firing: the lying, theif/bartender/cat just happened to be the nephew (in-law )of the bar's owner. Hmmmm... so, maybe he felt it was cool to take and rob from the boss, since it was all in the spirit of keeping it in the family.

Odd that!



In keeping with the nightlife theme, the following piece deals with my life as a bartender... the things I see, the emotions I feel, the impressions I come away with.

It is a repost, I call:

The Usual Bullshit a Go-Go



Sometimes and some nights you pick up the gist of these conversations your ears are virtually held hostage to hearing. You don’t want to hear them. You’d much rather, not know, because people are far more noble and more attractive when they retain a little piece of their mystery.


But you’re hurled into this cacophonous arena. You’re caught inside this land of ventriloquists, throwing their voices from the slick lips of the jagged, and the twisted. You’re caught… like some reluctant spectator, as the smooth and vicious volleys of nightlife play out.


Everybody wants to be a star, at least after midnight... Everyone wants to shine brighter, to be hotter, and more brilliant than the rest.

If you work in a bar, you begin to intuit this, know it instinctually, detect it in the mirrors. You can smell the smoke and bravado of it. You get to know it intimately. You hear the riffs of its blatant braggadocio, its egotistical emoting, its convoluted conversations seasoned with slick words, slick proposals and slicker motives that will make you go, “like Whoa!”


You know the routine, and you've seen it all before. You know the stagger, the swagger, the vogue of faux emotions, the scam, the scandal, the hustle, the quick buck, and you even become familiar with the woo and ways of the opportunistic fuck…

And it all makes you lose just a little faith in humanity, especially the drunk and the distraught, the lonely and the desperate, and the despeartely lonely kind.

This all paints a wildly psychedelic/imagistic landscape inside the mind how people so easily become victims to the night's carnal crimes, and forge foundations of potentially core relationships on a tradition of paper houses that sit and waver upon acres of bullshit.


However, once, just once, I’d like a night of nostalgia, of respect, of charm, of something on the fringes of finesse. Just once, I’d like some lively intelligentsia which rubs my cranium with a mouthful of lovely. Just once, I’d enjoy the give and take, the ebb and flow of a buoyant conversation that doesn’t hurt so much, or nulls my senses, make me feel so nauseous, used or abused, or to become just another sad citizen of the usual Bullshit, a Go-Go.


In short, some people can astound me with their sadness… this way they attempt, yet fail to mask it with manicures or too much make-up, with gym memberships, or impeccably groomed wildness, or with cologne or perfume to drive away the stink of it. I’ve seen and watched them pickle their sadness into fits of supercilious arrogance. Seen them erect their genital sadness; get it to wink, to smile, to do risqué somersaults and parlor tricks in the neon-lit darkness.


I could be far more specific. I could name names and events and even describe, in great detail, the outcome of these retarded little incidents. But why, when doing so would only blast a light upon it and add more sheen to this sadness; this barren piece of celebrity?


I’ve come to see the Saddest Truth of all is this: people, even barflies, even drunks, even users, even thieves, even adulterers, even bitches, even bastards, even bullies, and even hacks like me… all want a little piece of acclaim.

It gets lonely out there in that fog of horror to head back home all alone, untouched, unkissed, unfucked, unfelt, unloved.

I guess.





One.

And The Oscar For The Most Convincing LIAR Goes To...

Maybe it’s a Blessing, but I think it’s a curse, that some people can exist just fine, living in a chronic state of what I call: integritas-rigor mortis.

They LIE! They possess not an ounce of personal integrity. They can emote an untruth as easily as most people breathe. Better yet, they can live, quite well, with their dishonesty without any signs of guilt or remorse.

I'm sure you probably know some of these people. They are everywhere. They are endowed with the ability to look at you dead in the eye, LIE, better than any prize-winning Oscar-toting thespian, and make you BELIEVE them. I, in my time, have sat inside the theatre of the absurd and watched the performances of some mad gifted and brilliant liars.

Trust… my name’s not Paul McCartney… but Maybe I’m Amazed.


Last night, a co-worker lifted some cash from the till.

No. This is not some Hitchcockian mystery; but more like a Woody Allen dramaedy. See, I already KNOW for a fact who the culprit was. The thing is, they’ve successfully finessed and polished their Act of Sincerity to a tee. They appear to be so damn honest and so very trust-worthy. The thing is, you want desperately to believe in them. And because they've become such convincing players upon the stage, most people DO believe them.

Trust me. Had I not SEEN, first-hand, this person so slyly slip the cash inside his pocket, I would’ve thought this act impossible of them. It all happened so quickly, that I almost thought I’d imagined the shit.


Yes. I realize for many of us, times are indeed hard. Trust, I’ve spent the greater part of the last year trying my best to hustle some extra ducats. I’ve been a-knocking on the doors of tardy and negligent editors asking for the status of those lax checks. I've been offering up my services, submitting, resubmitting, following-up and sweatin’ those dreaded deadlines. When reaching that critical point were the change is strange, I will go into tunnel-vision mode: slaving, scraping, saving and short-changing creativity in an effort to fatten my wallet.



But being hungry or being needy, hasn’t descended to the point of me actually stealing from people... people who trust and believe in me. It hasn’t led me into committing some bold, bodacious, or blatant integrity-free act.

I hope it never will.


So, after witnessing the incident, I took this person aside, and said ‘I saw what you just did, man.’


But guess what? He denied it. He looked me straight in the mug, and shot me with this quizzical what-the-fuck-you-talkin-about gaze. He said something about “making change.” He displayed these prize-worthy Denzelian-like skills and dismissed and denied what my eyes had so clearly seen.


Hey! Morgan Freeman, Don Cheadle, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, you cats better look out, yo!


Yes. He was good, too. So damn good, I almost believed him. I almost questioned my own eyesight. But I knew what I saw, and now he KNEW that I saw him. But since he obviously played to win, he wasn’t about to admit a damn thing.


We’re not real friends, only coworkers. He’s been there maybe four months. I know he has a new kid and wifey separation issues. I offered to split my tips with him, if he would only replace the cash I’d witnessed him stealing.


He looked at me like I was some crazy person.


As I gazed in his eyes, I realized that no matter how hard or earnestly you might try, you can’t make a person rise up, do the right thing, or be Real with you. It hurt, insulted my intelligence, and pissed me off to see this denial, up-close, and then to watch this feigned little act of resentful anger.


I didn’t want to make a scene, or cast either of us in a suspicious light, so... I let to go, knowing that while the conversation had dissolved, the real issue and the consequences of it would not simply vanish.


I know the code of duh street: you don’t rat, ya don’t squeal, ya don’t snitch, ya don’t reveal. But this AIN'T the streets. This is MY livelihood! This ain't a game! This is real-life!

Truthfully, if it came down to losing MY livelihood, or protecting some less than upright individual, well, that choice has already been made.

So, when the cash is counted, when totals are tallied, when receipts are checked, rechecked and checked again, when the discrepancy is noticed and employees are questioned… someone will have to rise up and take responsibility. Someone had better possess the gonads to step up and be a man. Or at least, a RIGHTEOUS human being!

And when it's all said and done, and the ish really does hit the fan, I can only HOPE he has *that righteous role* stashed somewhere deep inside his acting trick bag.


One.

My Personal Perversity: Please Don't Fall Down... Go BOOM... Around Me!

Steady.... lady! Easy, Gaga!



I try, I mean, I seriously TRY to be a good person. But sometimes, I just plain suck at it. There are certain quirks in me that I wish didn’t exist. For example, perversity. Sure, we all possess a bit of it. It’s obviously not something to be proud of, and certainly not our best trait. But it exists, and it can, will and does manifest in different ways.

Me? I’ve a few of them. But something I tend to do in a disturbing way is to laugh at things I’ve no business laughing at. And I kinda feel guilty when I laugh at stuff I'm NOT supposed to be chortling at.

Like what? Well like: grown-ass people falling down and busting their azzes can make me erupt and cry with mad wild laughter.


I know! I know! I ain’t right, yo. I ain’t right! I am NOT right!!!



Here’s a prime example. Picture it: a while back, I'm walking down the city street with a close friend. It’s all good and animated, as we’re talking and riffing back and forth, and our conversation's fairly serious.

But suddenly, this very sharply-dressed sista came darting outta this fancy clothing store right in front of us, all aloof, and very, very quickly, and then BAM! BOOM! She just hit the sidewalk, HARD!


My bwoi said: "Day-YUM! It look like somebody just THREW her azz out the store!"

That statement tickled me to my core. And then, I just lost it, yo. For real. My adult manhood took an extended holiday. Suddenly my inner Junior High School Kid emerged, and that lil fool in me busted out in this mad LOUD GUFFAW! And I do mean... GUFFAWED, like a BIG DAWG!


But ATTEMPTING be a gentleman, and not wanting to HOWL out loud in this woman’s face, I, at least had the good sense and common decency to actually duck into the nearest foyer... just to get my chuckle on.

See? Nice guy, right? Nah! NOT! Why? Because this only made the sound even worse, and now my chuckle had insanely LOUD reverb and it was emptying out into the streets!

So, this poor, exceedingly well-dressed, well-coiffed woman is still laying there on the sidewalk, maybe hurt-up, and all she hears is this LOUD, cackling, disembodied LAUGHTER!

I know! I know! I need my ass kicked! Clearly, I am NOT right!



Meanwhile, my friend, the comic, the fool who'd made the damn joke that prompted my outburst, has now shifted into being the Adult One. This versatile bastard is jumping into Prince Valiant mode, helping her up, dusting her off, acting all concerned and whatnot. But me? I'm a victim of this unhinged fit of laughter. I'm the madman in the next storefront, CRYING, doubled over in hysterics, and I can’t seem to stop! That wild scene, it just kept replaying in my brain, as if on a loop: her regal, finely designer-clad-azz, stepping all lively, and then, BAM! BOOM!


A part of me was laughing at how it DID, indeed, did LOOK like someone had “just THREW her azz out the store!”


I’m so, so ashamed of myself! Seriously. I realize it was WRONG. There must be a 12 Step Program for supposedly GROWN and emotionally mature people like me! I mean, WHY couldn’t I had just MANNED-UP, and helped this woman, like my friend did? I’ve carried elderly women across NY puddles before. True story. I've rescued a stranger who was having a seizure right in front of me! I've a history of stepping up, and doing the RIGHT thing, dammit! Shouldn’t that COUNT for something!?

And why is it that some folks are endowed with the witty gift to say the funniest shit, and keep a straight face, while I look like a total idiot, busy ROTFLMMFAO?


I told myself, the woman had only bruised her well-pampered and manicured ego. My friend would later concur, she wasn’t seriously hurt. Kool. Kool. This made me feel a little better. I told myself this scene would have been far LESS hysterical, if she wasn't so damn ROYAL with her shit. Her attitude was so imperial, so regal, that surely The Last Thing this fancy woman expected to do was to BUST her azz on the city sidewalk!


It’s not like I’m immune. Just this last winter while taking out the trash, that first step onto the very slippery ice-laden stair, and WHAM! Picture it: Me, on my back, fingers scraped on concrete, trash bag ripped, garbage everywhere. But I was able to visualize just how ridiculous I musta looked, and I laid there, pissed, and yet laughing at myself. It’s just mad FUNNY when adults fall down… go BOOM! And personally, I’ve discovered, the better dressed someone is, the MORE HILARIOUS it is when they BUST that azz!

Is it me… and my sophomoric Three Stooges mentality? Am I alone in this fit of mindless perversity?


Sometimes, I think laughing at our fight with gravity comes to us naturally. Or else, why would small children laugh at such things at an early age? As someone else reminded me, you can entertain kids for a long time just pretending to hurt yourself.



But somewhere down the line, we're taught that's not right. Someone could be hurt. So, even when you WANT to, you force yourself NOT to laugh... well, it ain't natural.

“It's all fun and games till someone loses an eye.” Right?

So, I’m not proud. I’m actually a little ashamed myself. But at least I’ve shared, and I’m seeking the cure.

That's an episode of me, being "perverse." How does YOUR adult shame manifest?


After all... we’re only as sick as our perversities, right? Right? RIGHT?




One.

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

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.