apologies in advance to ray, rog and rojas…
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You Don’t Even Know Any Metrosexuals!You’re a man’s man who could intimidate John Wayne. You’ve got the charm to impress women, more than any pretty boy. Women flock to a stud like you, even if you refust to take them dancing. You have a mojo all your own, without having to primp or moisturize.
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in new orleans people are buried above ground since the marsh land saturates pretty easily and one simple storm is enough to seriously upset the folks who visit the dearly departed. i dont know if this is the same reason we have open air mausoleums in ecuador or if its just cuz its more economical.
as a boy, my grandma on my moms side lived pretty close to the main cemetery which is this central hillside that i always saw the cranes and construction crew ripping into. when i returned to the homeland a constant question was- ‘when are you going to visit your mother?’ and by this everyone meant when are you going to stop by her grave. being 20, american and not knowin’ no bettah, i would say- “i’m not” and leave it at that.
‘oh, but you HAVE to see her’ well, i dont have to do sheet, was my mindset and the more i was pushed to visit the remains of my mom the more stubborn i got. it finally took my aunt who cut through everyone else’s righteous shit about what is and what is not a proper way to honor your memeories and finally asked me if i was ready to make the trip. i told her stright up- i don’t know and i don’t want to find out when i get there that i’m not. i left out the part about it being one of the places on the planet that i had a full breakdown at and that for some odd reason i wasnt sure if i wanted to revisit it. the funny thing about grieving is that it’s always more about the other people than the main person. a wake is for the living and the dead really have no say in it. you can only let folks know while you are still here what it is that you want and then from there- hope your aunts dont fuck it up and that your uncles dont dumb it down.
oh yeah- one of the other reasons i didnt want to go- ‘you have to see how nice they fixed it up’
instead of gravestones, in ecua you can get these real ornate plaques, marble, clear plastic, flowers, pictures, an electric light to mimic the eternal flame, la virgen– like much things latino- it can seriously border on the gauche. my last physical memory of my mom is seeing them puch in her coffin and then some serrano (our version of a hillbilly) placing the concrete sqaure with her details over and then the dark grey cement being layered on the sides. he tried to do a neat job but it’s a task that needs to be done quick so there was splatters of cement all around and it still looked a little like that when i last saw it at 13. then, i had no choice in the matter- ‘you are going to see your mother’ and i’m like- “that aint my mother, thats a whole in the side of a mall and thats that” of course, i only said this to myself in order to avoid the smack.
now here i am, marching like some tourist going to see the eifel tower or the place where the twin towers used to be and all those who dont know better stand and pretend that they are still there. the new plaque was nice. simple marble and gold lettering with all the details in place but i cant tell you waht it says. i dont know if it mentions me and my sister or any of that stuff they like to put. the day was at least bright and my mom is on the last level of a three level mausoleum which means the sun up there is real nice. the cranes where still working when i got there. i bought some flowers and left em there even though i (and everybody else) knows that they will be stolen later and resold at the front.
i left em on a friday to be stolen on a saturday- is how i put it once
there is no time frame for dealing with things like this, today is as good a day as any to look back and tomorrow i will still feel the same way, i’m afraid. i havent spoken to my moms in a while and maybe today is a good day for that.
Three things I am wearing right now
1 – stop.watch
2 – faded jeans
3 – fake silver ring
Three things on my desk
1 – employee handbook that i have to revise for tomorrow
2 – metro.card origami
3 – ‘song of the simple truth: obra poetica completa de julio de burgos’
Three things I want to do before I die
1 – have a book
2 – clear my debts
3 – have a kid
Three ways to describe my personality
1 – guarded
2 – opinionated
3 – helter.skelter
Three bad things about my personality
1 – quick to judge
2 – quick to hurt
3 – quick to yell
Three good things about my personality
1 – hella.funny
2 – good listener
3 – empathic
Parts of my heritage
1 – guayaquil
2 – the bronx
3 – poetry
Three places I want to go to
1 – Madrid
2 – Havana
3 – Tokyo
Three nicknames I had/have
1 – o.b.have/o.b.funny/o.b. …
2 – Coco
3 – OMX
Three screen names I had/have
1 – GeminiPoet
2 – gemini5k
3 – GeminiPoet718
Three people I miss
1 – mom
2 – angel
3 – alisande
Three web sites that people may not know about
1 – http://www.411mania.com/
2 – http://www.academicchess.com/learn/legendsofchess/Fischerquotes.shtml
3 – http://www.xpresshtml.net/
Three visual artists I like
1- p craig russel
2 – frank quitley
3 – frank miller
Three books I like
1 – aloud
2 – candide
3 – the mouse that roared
Three women that belong on Mount Rushmore
1 – harriet tubman
2 – susan b anthony
3 – sally ride
Three corporations that should be destroyed
1 – the IRS
2 – philip moris
3 – the NY MTA
Three people (living or dead) to invite to my dream dinner party
1 – lorca
2 – celia cruz
3 – alysa milano
Three lines about me (haiku)
waiting for the page
to turn as experience
meets hope on the shelf
shooting from the lip-
1. sunday will be chris benoit day! act like you know. i always imagined i would look like benoit if i ever took the ‘juice’ route and went for straight bulk. i flirted with the idea a few times and did enough research to figure out that someone with a bad liver (o.b.) would last about five years before orals got to me and the idea of any kind of needles does not appeal to me. add the fact that so many ‘roids are watered down bootleg versions of the real shit. the real close shot came when i found a connect with somebody that worked at a vet’s and discovered they had access to straight up testosterone. but test is real fuckin strong and i woulda had to balance out with some other shit and then the scary but also fun part of steroid chemist came into play. anyhow, everybody show the proper respect and reflect on what YOU did on benoit day and pray that the WWE stays the sane route and goes with the obvious and proper choice of letting ‘the wolverine’ come out on top of HHH & the heartbreak kid (at 42?) this sunday at backlash.
2. more sports- the rivalry of all rivalries begins again this weekend.
the yankees and the red sox meet up in bah-ston
last year, the sox kicked a lot of pinstripe ass in the regular season and established some good momentum come playoff time but then one bad coaching decision sank all dat sheet. pedro went one pitch too many and aaron boone became the bucky dent of the new century.
aaron later becomes the most famous cripple in bronx lore as his inability to penetrate on the dribble brings a-rod back home- to NYC.
the bought team argument is kinda dead since the sox have done just as much as the yanks have when it comes to upping the ante on player prices and they were REAL eager to throw the bank at bernie williams a few years ago. it’s a four game series which i s kinda whack- i love three game series. somebody wins the battle somebody loses. lets see what happens next!
3. my knee is shot- again! a simple walk of the stairs (which there are a lot at my job) sent an all too familiar twinge in my patella and the swelling is golf ball size at the moment. way better than the grapefruit or softball version that i have endured in the past few years thanks to my gout. back in the day, i would try to tough it out and have! many nights of straight aspirin, icy-hot and cold compresses have let me endure more than my share of body aches. when i first found out i had the gout- i was in D.Nile and kept toughing out till a few weeks before my 30th it was official as it had spread to both knees and even sitting was a task. when you have no respite sitting, standing, leaning- the you be fucked! this time around- at the first real twinge, i got me some anti-inflammatories and the knee is already feelin better.
4. look, nene- it’s the sun!
5. and finally- from guy’s guestbook-
MCS: Point taken--I'm still hesitant to say that only people with certifiably larger venues should be allowed to field a team at nationals.
i hope matt gets to see this before his feature this saturday at the bowery poetry club ;-)
and also that this is more directed to PSi than to matt himself-
this revolves around the attempt to make the certification of PSi sanctioned venues tougher rather than coming up with a point system or what we have now- the 3×5 (which i think started a great idea- instead of 4 people teams send 3 people teams and now has turned into the normal PSi “let’s add a group piece” and “can we make it so everyone can play!?”)
hhmmm- 5. a) my biggest hope with taylor’s rise as president of PSi is that he can cut through the bullshit and get them to commit to the fact that Nationals is a competition set in a festival like atmosphere OR that PSi will say Nats is a festival that happens to have a competition in it.
one or the fucking other, please!
saying we are hear to compete but also to sing kumbaya is a cop-out, nothing more/nothing less.
either you came to win or you came to hug a tree- if its the first then welcome to the slam and may the best poet(s) win… if ya came to do the second, then enjoy all the open mics and workshops. pretty simple. in the acentos crew, there are quite a few heads that do NOT enjoy the slam. in no way shape or form, which i think is great especially since they focus on the other things this community offers and tolerate the fact that some of us DO enjoy the slam. there is always that- try it, you might like it sentimentality (usually from me) and then there is the ‘no, i don’t think so’ response. Cool.
but this bullshit about slamming and then talking about how horrible the slam is is just plain d.u.m
if you dont like to slam- dont do it
if you think slam is elitist- dont do it
if you think slam rewards crappy poetry- dont do it
but if you think that your slamming may change any of this- then go for it and good luck
and when you or your team or whoever you are rooting for doesnt win dont blame the system cuz i know damn well that you would be singing a different tune if your “version” of poetry got the extra .4 they needed to come out on top
and this is where PSi fails, instead of taking a tough stance and supporting their winner and their process of getting there- they stop somewhere in the middle (around semis) and praise the teams that got there and damn the teams that advance if they dont like em. the yankees win a lot of years and people say baseball sucks and then the marlins will and all of a sudden baseball is great again. nope, its still the same thing just your team won and the MLB or the NHL or whoever stands behind their winners and doesnt try and fuck up how they got there every other chance they get there with an ass backward attempt to dumb down the audience.
back where we were…
the simple thought behind trying to get at least 12 certified PSi members out of a slam that should have at least 50 people showing up was just to avoid what i have heard a lot of rumors about-
slams where the same six people slam in front of the same 20 people and the same 4 people go to Nats each year. if you establish a slam to get the gospel of the TEN out to the masses, cool. if you establish a slam just to see you and your three buddies go to Nats every year, then stay in cottonville or san welle pepe or ozinton or staten island. it doesnt matter how big or small your city is- the fact is that all tournaments have some kinda qualifications to get in and as the tourney gets bigger you tighten the reins to insure a level of competition that doesnt cheat the competitors (the poets) or the fans (the audience) or the game (poetry) and that doesnt mean you shut people out of the game. you have an NIT or a double A ball or a winter league or a CBA and let those competitors work it out there before they can step it up and when they do, it will give them a legit chance to knock out the vets rather than have the random cinderella story or (the usual) the vets romping on the rookies and staying on top.
6. o.b.havin.lunch.outside- see ya!
In the film “Searching for Bobby Fisher,†a wunderkind stumbles onto the speed chess games of Washington Square Park and promptly gets his ass whooped. As his father drags him out of the park, chess hustler Lawrence Fishburne notes-
“You son plays moves in concert. He sets up for the attack! He doesn’t play individual moves!!â€
Meaning that the child is not just reacting to the board and what his next move is; he is thinking many moves ahead and setting himself up for a victory from the get go.
This was the same kinda feeling I had when Luis Caratagena finished his set at Acentos last night. This is not a poet who is just working to his next poem or his next slam or even to his next feature- this person is preparing a larger body of work from jump street. It kinda cheapens it to refer to it as a one man show as Luis already has so many collaborative elements ingrained into his work that many one person shows throw in at the last second to add an MTV type feel to their production.
“Oh, hell no! Do you really expect people to sit here for an hour and a half just listening to somebody talk? Get me some pyro and a tiger!â€
At the first louder than words, Luis asked me about the Acentos crowd and what to expect and what the mind set of the venue was. I was happy to tell him that he can give em all he’s got and to not worry about it- “They’re ready. I don’t know if they were ready six months ago and I know they wasn’t ready when we started lat year but they’re ready.†Anytime you put a Luis or an Edwin Torres or Alexis O’Hara up there you run the chance of the crowd saying “What the fuck?†and turning it off. I am glad to be a part of a community that is ready to listen to the whole poem or the whole set before making a judgement. Something I am starting to get better at over time.
Moving past the ‘what you say vs what you mean’ question, I keep coming back to the images that people choose and the tense that they find themselves in. Are they in a central place? Are they in the past? If so, are they backtracking or chronicling? How do they picture the future? Is there even a future? What’s the next move?
Jai and Ray brought me back a gorgeous chess board from India that is still pretty low on mileage- Anybody out there up for a game?
