Author Archives: Oscar Bermeo

‘Cause we have the experience

2003 is on its way out and I say good riddance! This last year was the worst year of my whole adult life. Hyperbole? Maybe, but then I haven’t been, shall we say, revealing in the entries of the blog. Not sure if I am going to change that but I will say this- “If you have a question about what happens outside of poetry- just ask.”

Thinking of how this last solar cycle is wrapping up leaves me wondering as to how the hell I capped off last year… and I honestly don’t know. It did involve Eric’s house and spending time with the fam but that’s about all I can muster at this point. The end of 2001 is pretty clear as I was in David Scott Levi’s apartment hanging with him, Franklin Leonard and Rachelle Street wondering what the future held for ‘a lil bit louder’ as Guy had just departed for Virginia and we weren’t sure what was going to happen to the reading series we were calling home on Mondays… Damn! Shit sure changes quick don’t it?

I think that might be the beginning of me actually caring about the future of Mondays and what my role would be in it. Well, at least that’s how I picture it since I find the beginnings to be much clearer than the endings. I can see points where people enter my life and their subsequent transformations but sometimes it’s hard to envision the last moments.

Well, here is a big ending that won’t leave me anytime soon and one of the highlights or rather lowlights (Time will tell) of the last year— the end of Vision Network. Even just looking at the name leaves me a little spooked. VN was the business that I had for ten plus years before my internal demons began to take over and I found myself just showing up for work and counting the minutes till closing time. NOT the right thing when it’s your OWN business.

The end came on a June Monday morning with me packing the last boxes of stuff into Tina’s car and quietly saying goodbye as the kids that populated the local high school just marched right by. A part of me was hoping/dreading that the close of a local landmark (we were in the same spot for over a decade) would make someone pause but they didn’t and I just went home unpacked the last of the stuff into my house and had Tina drop me off by my friend Ali’s place. The rest of the day was marked with some walking around the Bronx and then finished with a louderJAM at 13 with no one the wiser as to the fact that I had just said goodbye to the biggest accomplishment of my adult life.

Not that anyone had a reason to ask, for me it was just another Monday and it was easy to put on the face that I have learned long ago to put on. Hell, I even read a piece with Jai on back up. The poem dealt with everything except what was going on in my life. Another constant, writing about shit I don’t know about and passing it off as authentic.

I can picture the beginnings of Vision clear as day. The phone call from Eric while I am in the Collins’ kitchen. The proposition from Daric as we are in the Boston Road Mickey Dees. The first day and the next door neighbor reconnecting his beeper. The first sale to Tasha. Daric leaving me and Eric with the biz. All of it is like yesterday.

It seems like I have a lot of beginnings on my mind. The first time I walked into 13. The first night I hung out at the Blue Ox. The first synonymUS jam. Meeting DSL and Franklin in front of the Nuyo. Thinking in my car about my boy John getting dissed by a girl at the Copa. Tina almost leaving my life. Lynne forcing me to read a poem in Spanish. Seve asking for a favor. Guy mispronouncing my name because I wrote it phonetically. Fish reading. Lynne being up front as I read. Guy’s fateful after thought to the back-to-back debuts- “That was the first time you BOTH read? Hhhmmm…”

Seeing Guerrieri read for the first time. Omar hating on LA, post Nats. The word hibiscus. Buying my first chapbook (lost to a girl that I lent it to). Hanging in the back and being able to come and go without a trace. The first night at the Nuyo- my first “That’s poetry?!?” moment. A 20 below zero Bowery Poetry Club. Ed Garcia reafing “Mind of a Dreamer” The first slam. Bonafide giving me a low score. All this shit is WAY more vivid than the last night at 13.

I guess it’s cause the story between me and poetry is far from over. Then again, there are some things in my life that I have never let go of and of which I should have. I can still see Jeanette walking into Vision and me casually asking Carlos to the back.

“Who is THAT?” ‘My wife’s best friend and by the way— Don’t try it! I got everybody and their father asking me if she’s single.” This would lead to a chapter in my life that has never really closed because I sure as hell can’t picture the end. Even though there were a lot.

The Bronx, 1973. My father picking a piece of glass from my lil sister’s foot. (Added into a poem this year.) My first Christmas in the BX. Yeah, I still remember shit from when I was three. I remember going to Ecuador that year and seeing my grandmothers for the first time. Coming back to a shitty apartment with no bed. My baby sister waking me up from a dead sleep. My stepmother being introduced as ‘the baby’s nanny.’ Hearing that I had a new lil brother. And while I can remember the day my mom died and seeing her drive away in a VW rabbit, I can’t picture the first time I really saw her.

All the people in my life that my ‘other’ friends rarely hear about. Tom smashing a soda can on his forehead. Mike’s fringe deerskin boots. Keith with a sunburn. Jota Love in an arm sling. Jose’s Saturn. Angel in an ankle cast. Padilla playing pool.

Walking Linda home from Vision. Bumping into Wanda on the dance floor. Letting Alisande ‘marinate for a minute’ at Vision. Being in a sweet sixteen with Tina.

Paging Fish for my sister. Playing pool with Fish. Telling Fish I wanted to start a new reading series. The first Acentos show. Crying the next day when I read the guest book folks left behind. (The first big cry I had for this year but not the last) Meeting Nina and having her introduce me to her friend in the leather jacket and hat. You’ll know him when you see him, she said and she was right. Rich was easy to spot. Rich introducing me to his sister. A woman who would make me walk WAY too much from the word go, in order to show me more kindness than I deserve. Right, Maria?

The cop bust at Vision. Confessing to my family that I wasn’t perfect.

Hanging with Bassey, Lynne, and Rog in Brooklyn as Fish tells the ‘mother-in-law’ story. Seve coming up to me after I read ‘Capicu.’ Alexa IM’ing me the next day. Meeting Caroline. The UPHA repping hard and bumping into Chance- literally. Booking CR Avery for synonymUS, 13, and a gig with Urban Word (thanks, Marty) Guy guest hosting. Doing well in a slam. Mara’s birthday. Turning away Siegel from a sac goat spot. GK bidding on a Salsa lesson- never delivered. Getting Jayme to judge a Slam. Getting Jayme to read at Acentos. Getting Jessica to read. Hearing Juan yell at Acentos. Ray performing ‘Gypsy Hands’ Hanging with the crew later for some eats as Ray collects e-mails for what would become synonymUS. Talking with Ray on the pier.

Betsy hanging out with Monica. Taking her to the gym at 7 in the morning. Noel covering his eyes. Noel’s first black eye. Jackie’s long nails. Jackie saying ‘moto-otah’ My sister at the movie theatre pregnant with Jackie. My sister calling me to help her move out.

Eric in the staircase when my Mom died. I had known him for a long time before that but it wasn’t until that day that I knew I had a best friend. We parted during high school but met again in a different staircase and became inseparable. Started a business, had more fights, laughs, and revelations than any two people could. He was taller than me when we were young but I caught up- not much- but I caught up. He stayed my big brother anyways and was always the person who picked me up. In return, I almost ruined his wedding this year. The sad part is that he is still more worried about what’s going to happen to me than I am. Aint that some shit. I can single handidly fuck up a person’s most important day and still stay in good graces. A part of me wishes he would stop worrying about me but that part is the stupid part.

I can picture a lot of shit and it includes the last time I saw him. It wasn’t the greatest moment. Nothing bad happened. But it wasn’t the way I would like to go out. Ya know? So I have a lot of shit to clean up in 2004 and nothing is more important than that.

I leave this last entry with a tear in my eye and it may be the last one for the year. A year that saw me cry way too much and laugh way too little.

In the final analysis, I leave this year with almost all my old friendships intact plus many more that I never imagined. 2003 was bad, but in the measure of friendship it was a good year and that’s how I’ll end this.

To new friends! Meet my old ones! And I hope everyone has a good story to share…

“Jet City Woman, to make the clouds go away”

The banner ads have been acting much better as of late and without the mention of “that dude who was in a documentary and made a film about himself but called it something else.” (Side Note- I actually enjoyed said individual’s performances and interviews in the documentary and didn’t mind the movie that much except for the cheesy courtyard fight scene and the pseudo attempt to tie it all into the performance poetry movement at the end.) For some strange reason there is a consistent mention of this city’s iron horse and my new way to get around town. Hint- it rhymes with TWA.

What has me really laughing hard today is the search words that bring people to my neck of the cyber world. Thanks to Sitemeter I know that in addition to the regular keywords (geminipoet, oscar, bronx, ya get tha picture), these (not so common) phrases have gotten folks to hit up the old web journal-

chuito + bayamon

– ah, chuito will never die! he is the salsa singer that was the great hector lavoe’s hero and also gets a mention in a willie perdomo poem that was in my mind for weeks. willie tells me that he mentioned him to highlight the eccentricities of a woman that lives in one of his poems.

religious poems – just think

– what! sounds like something more for rich’s blog! hopefully they did go down that way because i keep the spiritual in the same place i keep the personal- to myself! but i’ll make an exception and let you know that for good or bad- it’s all about circles.

poems + diana marie + love

– ha! somewhere in the vast internet there is someone that needs a poem for DM and methinks they were trying to cheat and, uhmm, borrow, yeah!, borrow some prose.

learn to uprock

– no, this blog won’t teach you to uprock but it will let you know how to mambo…

regie gibson + whiskey

– talk about hitting the way back machine! from a night that feels like a decade ago, hanging with regie at “Mike’s” the bar/restaurant right by “Morgies Cafe.” thinking about it now, the irony is delicious because the series that rog had going at morgies was the main inspiration for starting Acentos. the idea was floating around my head for months but didn’t crystallize until leslie shipman invited me to feature at the blue ox and that was all she wrote. oh, when did i meet leslie- the night that regie gibson featured in the bX for her and we went out for whiskey later- circles, baby, circles!

“gemini” heather OR stripper OR pennsylvania

– this may be closer to the sprit of the blog. my suggestion to the individual looking for this dancer is this- keep going to as many strip clubs as you can and one day you will either find someone with this name or someone that looks a lot like her, either way. to quote the poet- “the names don’t matter”

ghetto boricua poems

– check it, sun! (assumes the b-boy stance) m’blog keeps it mad gully! top 5, no less! not bad for someone who rarely writes of the hood and isn’t even of la isla!

In my mad, mad attempt to keep the blog as impersonal as possible I may make this a common occurrence and see what happens. Or I may not and get to the underbelly of my hopes and fears. Who knows? Find out later- Same blog time! Same blog channel!

“Every other day of the week is fine”

For all of y’all it’s Monday but for me it’s Tuesday, I arrive at work today to discover the roofing project has taken a real bad turn and we have three floors with water damage. Nice! All that and I have to get the kids ready for a performance this Saturday.

It’s going to work out for the best (Oh! The cry of the optimist!) as I love being here and the work that we are doing is very necessary for the community. Mind-Builders gives kids violin lessons for $12 a lesson! And this is from a 20 year veteran who has performed all over the world. Man, you can;t beat that with a bat.

The other great thing about teaching is that it keeps me in a good creative mood and has me writing about stuff I never would have imagined. When we started the year we wanted to come up with a list of expectations from the teachers and from themselves. The phrase we came up with- “We all want to get paid but how do we want to get paid back?” The question keeps popping up in class and this is what resulted.

(Any and all thoughts are welcome in the comment section)

“Decorate the house with lights at night”

The first big snow fall of the year is here and I hearken back to the last big snow fall, March of this year. The weather experts promised mad inches and all we got was a light fluff. Important to note because it killed the crowd for what was an awesome night at 13 where a bunch of us had a chance to be recorded for, what was then a rumored project, of Norman Lear’s. With the lights on and the tape running most of the poets went with newer less “audience friendly” work and we had a blast for the 30 or so that showed up.

The last really big snow fall in January saw me troop it out in the Honda (r.i.p.) and spend part of the day chilling and part of it putting together the final touches to the blog design you see now. I remember how perfect this city can be at times like this with everybody indoors, the streets blanketed alabaster, and the shine of lamppost reflecting off the perfect snow. In two days, it will become slush city and then the city will have a more familiar facade- dark and unpure. Maybe it’s the tell-me-what-to-do-and-I’ll-probably-do-the-opposite-mentality, when it’s nice and people are out picnicing, I prefer to chill on my own and hit the AC of a Barnes and Noble (not buying shit, just using what I like to refer to as my own lil library).

Tonight, with every advisory on TV saying “Don’t do it!” Ima head over to the Spaceship Casita and chill away. Perhaps a snowball fight will emerge or maybe we can throw bags of waters on unsuspecting passerbys… who knows?

This was originally supposed to be a gathering of the gentleman of louderARTS but is slowly expanding to a nicer more exoteric circle which may eventually allow for some voices that I don’t always agree with but what’s new? Methinks that the attendance will be low so it will probably not go into the unofficial log of minutes as an actual quorum but I like to think of it like church and God, if me and God are talking, seriously talking, then I am in Church and you gotta give me a minute before I get back to you.

This just in from Rich (via the Weather Channel)…

ANY TRAVEL IS STRONGLY DISCOURAGED. IF YOU LEAVE THE SAFETY OF BEING INDOORS, YOU ARE PUTTING YOUR LIFE AT RISK.

Forecaster, please! It’s like as if this shit doesn’t happen in the rest of the world, all the time. Siegel has probably seen more snow in April up in Buffalo!

Real big riff! Weather Forecasters. These muthafuckas are about as useful as locker room relationship advise. Everybody is a fuckin’ expert until there advice falls flat, then it turns into the Iran-Contra hearings.

“I don’t recall saying that.”

“I believe I was referring to a hypothetical situation.”

When it snows, as they predicted, it turns into a giant alert which always starts with “As first reported by…” You aint reporting shit!

You are either

a) figuring out that if it started in DC and the wind is coming North, its gonna hit here

b) going with the statiscal odds of meteorological indicators

and it’s a straight crap shoot cuz if the wind changes, then we are in the clear and if the magic of nature turns all the odds against you then we get this “A surprise storm…”

or even better, “We really got lucky…”

(Morton Downey, Jr mode- off)

Looking forward to a great night because there is always a good story that comes out of circumstances like this and that’s really what I live for… a good story.

7even Questions

The Poet- Toro is a poet and an educator. You may not be that familiar with his work because he prefers to teach and create rather than hang at a lot of Open Mics. Too bad for both sides because the scene could use some of the fresh energy he brings to both his poetry and any room he’s hanging out in.

o.b.: As an educator, what is the most valuable thing you have learned from your students?

Toro: Patience. And that I’m really not that cool. And more patience. NOW GET ON WITH THE NEXT DAMN QUESTION!

o.b.: You teach Slam poetry (in a sense) yet you make it a point not to be classified as a “Slam Poet,” how does that dichotomy work for you?

Toro: “Slam” is just a marketing slogan used to sell a product. Like all marketing slogans, its sole purpose is to place an idea/object into a box that is simplified and easy to consume. As an artist, I am always uneasy when someone wants to place my work into such a box. These categories limit the artist as well as the audience. When I was younger and people were telling me that I was a “slam” poet, I found myself trying to write “Slam” pieces, which stunted my growth for some time.

My teaching “Slam” poetry is purely an irony of situation. When I began working as a teaching artist, my company, Dreamyard, had been given a large sum of money to teach “slam” poetry and hold interschool

slams in the Bronx. My feeling is that if some suits in an office are willing to give some of their blood money for me to work with the children and their minds are trained to be engaged by campaign slogans, such as “Slam”, it doesn’t matter to me. I’ll call it Clown poetry if they want me to, so long as the money is going to the education of these young people. In this way there is no dichotomy at all.

o.b.: Have you had an opportunity to meet any of your poetic influences? How was the experience?

Toro: The first time I ever read my poetry to a large audience was in the home of Reverendo Pedro

Pietri. When I was 14, my cousin Carmen gave me a copy of PUERTO RICAN OBITUARY, and it was the book that inspired me to become a poet. I didn’t know then that my cousin was friends with Pedro. We went there for New Year’s when I was 16, and after all these astounding writers like Ntozake Shange and Papoleto Melendez perform, Pedro and my cousin invited me up to read one of my poems. It was terrifying, and at the same time it was in many ways the birth of my life as an artist. I have since had the pleasure of reading with Pedro and spending a little time here and there. He has always been supportive even though after ten years he still always forgets my name (TO him, my name is just “Carmen’s cousin”). He brings light everywhere he goes. He is a true people’s poet.

o.b.: What part of the world is most poetic and why?

Toro: The only part of the world that has not been colonized, the independent nation without a name or borders, only known affectionately as “the imagiNATION.” You can find its refugees inside little crevices all over the world. The evil empire wants to know where they are hiding but we won’t ever tell, never!

o.b.: “I don’t remember who said it but one time, I heard this poem that blew my mind. It spoke of…”

Toro: being polite. Only I remember who said it. Hafiz wrote:

Everyone is god speaking.

Why not be polite and listen to him?

o.b.: When did you drop your first poem and how much have you changed since then?

Toro: I dropped my first poem all over the kitchen floor when I was two. My mother was trying to spoon-feed it to me, but I just didn’t like the peaches. I still don’t like peaches. As in the words of one of the great Bodhisattvas, “I changed by not changing at all.” I drop a lot of things. Last week I dropped a glass of red wine all over myself at a very Bourgeois and stuffy poetry reading. The glass smashed on the table just as the poet was using the word “tentacle” (A very played out poetry word). All the self-important MFA students snorted at me, wondering who let me in, while I laughed with my outfit permanently stained. The whole experience was very poetic and enlightening.

o.b.: Which was your preferred choice for two-tone jeans- Sergio Valente’s or AJ’s?

Toro: Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” is a Cinematic Masterpiece!

To quote the poet Nicanor Parra, “I hereby retract everything I just said!”