Come

travelling to destinations
we constantly evolve our embattled souls…

soon destined to be mantled
as bachelors of promise masters of circumstance doctors of fate.

these titles are not earned by being sedate
but rather eye-awake face-to-face
to the blinding pain of the day and the loneliness of night

we immerse ourselves into the traditions of the past of the present
making our minds a gift
for the tower to open and mold
abstract arguments into lines of lucidity
deftly hiding the emotions within each word we write

this academic alchemy doesn’t defy mere understanding…
it produces through our sheer will and determination in the midst of all….

we are the truth tellers human healers didactic decoders
coming from a line of descendants who took different journeys in life

but their destinations our destinations are still the same.


full of promise.

full of uncertainty.

full of darkness.



Come.

we have a new world to illuminate.

black stars

moors of night,
illuminated by God's moonlight,
now dip themselves crimson red.



no substance left to fuel its insides,
we kill supernovas of the past.



i can see fading ribbons of blood in the sky:
of malcolm. of martin. of medgar.



we are a beam of bright masquerades
searching for the birth of the new star.

black american crayola spectrum: the first color

tradition (black canon love)

pass me not
while listening the love train of the ojays
climbing the stairway to heaven seeing something simply beautiful..
enough to give you that love T.K.O.
to somebad mamma jamma with a soul to embrace
   a smooth caramel vessel to tongue trace that honey love
while bumping and grinding through the rough side of the mountains of life..


give me the light and see the ms. jacksons fade to the blackness of obscurity
  i’m leaving reality for that midnight train of subconsciousness to that imagination
           that  runs away            twists away   
from down the main street poppin tags with their nikes    while they walk it out…

two-steps away from enlightenment
two steps closer to materialistic ignorance ….

mlk and malcolm for the pushaman….

but

i’m god son
the jesus jewel
who shines brighter than any roc
any bling that jacob can jewel..

i’m just doing my job to job
so before kingdom come
let me make my soul my community   want to holla
at all the injustice filling this american landfill….

it’s take to wake up everybody
and get knuck
and get our buck for others and not ourselves…

let’s stop smoking bushes
but rather burn them while getting fresh
and so clean clean up this player club
called the senate because
there is no sex in the champagne room….

let’s take that magellian fantastic voyage of vindication,
reclaiming resurrecting the onward christian soldiers
to fight on the battlefield for our selves and our worths.

cause i know a change gonna come.

knowledge: element #5 on the hip hop periodic table

a rapper’s delight is to make the real metaphysical…the metaphysical real…

reinventing the english word
into this psychedelic    street      funk…

sixteen bars of illuminating scriptures hanging from the tree of knowledge
rooted from the cement bricks of Bronxbuildings
with the bullet-ridden windows…

communities abandoned by governments
who wanted our colored vote to gentrify us …
but yet we rebuilt and recreated beauty from the rubble and shit they left us in…

we stand boldly and defiantly because we survived with a vengeance…
we are the 3rd wave of the renaissance…
the empirical derivative of funk soul r&b jazz  destined to destroy and rebuild our blackness once again…

we stand boldly like bad mothas ‘cause it is not about us and those flashin’ lights…
its about preserving our knowledge of self    our history     our love    our pain    our virtues  our sins…

afrika said that without knowledge   the center cannot hold...  
the record cannot be scratched…
the hieroglyphics cannot emerge from the city walls
the beboys cannot break it down (deconstructing them shits   AND ) 
the stylists cannot be free to express the allure of

boldness
creativity
sacrifice
family
love
sex
victory
failure…. the metanarrative of a beautiful grotesque that is black…

we have written this history so sincere without using a pen..
so lets begin… 
Begin...
BEGIN the work that  langston said..

fuck the autotune…

we can create a lifetime of work from        our experience                   our knowledge          our    road

of enlightment that has many paths and graves
but I have carried hip hop with me along the way…

it is not my bible per say just my small pocketbook given to me by the Gideons on the way,
so drive slow and maybe you’ll understand that the beauty of hip hop is in

the split

the dichotomy

the alias…

we hear KRS1   tupac   biggie    jay-z     nas    lil-wayne….
superficial alter ego bad men who are aboveground        but


what is their underground name?


what is their real name?

...........................................................

do you think
about me
now and then…
                     
do you think
about me
now and then…

cause i’m
going
global
right now..  

going
global
now.

retrospect: to my favorite music teacher... dr. joseph agee...

oh    oh     oh     lawd…       give us a song…
    so    our     voices     may     be       joyfully      heard

                                oh oh oh lawd                              give us a song…

as we see the glorioussplendor majesty that overshadows
      the tragedy on this pilgrim journey which is never a line but a spiral
                  of living                    dying                              resurrecting ….

                                 while drawin  our sword and shield
                                         while drawin our sword and shield
                                               while drawin our sword and shield

                    while drawing all men unto Him  by our willingness to fight and suffer and cry….

                                                   for all is well in our soul when we cry…
                                            because the tears will be wiped away in his time…

               grab gideon’s trumpet and blow down all of the enemies and edifices before us.....


play our trumpets and cymbals and harps and lyres
and smoothe their angry ways with stringed instruments…stringed in
                                                                                                         stru
                                                                                                              ments
                                                                                                                      and
                                                                                                          o      r      g    a    n     s…

4eyedatlas

2007. that was the year when my mind had to figure out which fork in the road to take...
i traveled down a lot of highways, alleys, and one-ways the wrong way.
but those sojourns made me into who i am and what i wrote then and now....

may i strive to carry the burden of my name honorably--to the very end.

I.

people say you should never hit a man with glasses
but i get hit every day…
by absolute   bacardi   mary  jane and tom and dick and harry..
these four eyes have has had been seeing that rule broken
time and time again…

what is there to gain in a world of blindness?

i am the four eyed atlas…

i possess twice the foresight to see the bullshit in front of me and
the secret hidden strength to conceal their burdens within the abyss of my black well of my soul
 of which it is never well… just well concealed and well adept to making the new masks that dunbar would be proud of…

i travel walk run in t-shirt and blue jeans to get close to the underbelly of my own who we disown as our next generation of thugs and misfits and drug dealers… and yet there is a shred of me in them and them in me—

they don’t see the second kingdom coming of double consciousness... the jay-z w.e.b….

the gift and curse of running beyond our melanin and leaving our niggas behind the other side of the country tracks, faced with the allure of prospering while letting them die rolling them dice in the midst of a harlem night of southern comfort while the society shoots them down like inglorious hogs living in run-down spots….

lettin’ them rot in coffins with that soft leather and hard oak wood…

they   be   going    so     hard,

keeping they eyes on the prize…

for once again, our revolution will be televised on bet and american idol once again…

but it call me right back…
but it call me right back…
but it call me right back…
but it call me right back…

oh yes…

because

i am that nigga

  who will takes his brother to the dice game and lose his money sleeping on concrete couch thinking about

  how fucked his life is over a bottle of taaka…

i am that nigga

   who will smoke that blunt with you to talk about why black is the most notable and most avoided color      

   in america..

   who will drink with you to help you understand why the colors of the flag are red, white, blue and black…
     like louis armstrong while these republican armstrongs and thomases and gonzaleses thrive as these new 
     political overseers in this American plantation….

4 this america pretends it’s the aristocrat..while others are hiding that grey goose to let loose like a blitzkrieg of Goldschlager, making us want to holla with these oil prices and thin military forces, these reason absolut should force us to establish a new mark with our maker…

II.

i am the backlash of the university and its hope

possessing the words of white mythology and black voodoo magic…

i am that hybridnigga
  who will help bear your burdens with you b/c i’m obligated to do so by our minority blood and exploitated  
  skin and eyes and ears and lips and feet and phallus…of which we suffer from globalized calluses…making

  our plantations into college parks…and our slave quarters into candy painted dulces and quarters….

i am that nigga
   who will bear your burdens b/c i’ve been punched in my eyes constantly…
       by others..           by my own…             by my  own self….

i see martin’s dream deferred everyday burning like a raisin in the sun
when our talented tenth become part of the white 1 percent…

when obama is dangled like a puppet in the midst of hillary clinton..

when i see my niggas blind in the caves in which they create from that young jocjeezy itch

bitches go getting that dopeboy magic david copperfield makes appear and disappear

like the stars of mlk and malcolm and medger in a starless oxford sky with a bottle of southern comfort

for my dislocated heart in the midst of this misnomer called black progress…

i take off my glasses and wipe my eyes.

i put them back on.

i have an odessey to see.

i have weight to bear.

i have eyes to open.

Rock the Spoken Word

My friend and fellow colleague Casarae Gibson is starting a segment on her blog called "Rock the Spoken Word." Each month, she highlights a relatively unknown spoken word artist and promotes their work to a wider audience. This month, I am honored to be her first poet for the month of June. I do look forward to reading about the future poets as the year goes on.

It is good to find fellow poets. Hopefully, we can use this vehicle to create networks and collaborations. Keep doing what your doing, Cas :)  Below is in the interview. Also, I have provided a link to her blog.


Rock the Spoken Word
June Feature: Terrance Youngblood

June's Feature of the Month is Terrance Youngblood, a poet and Ph.D. student in English at Purdue University. I had the pleasure of working with this inspiring poet in a group called Haraka Writers, a poetry ensemble at Purdue University's Black Cultural Center. Youngblood is a very passionate and driven poet who speaks the truth, but never demands attention. Through his humble demeanor and forceful words, Youngblood executes vividly a sound story and delivery. Check out this June feature and support Youngblood's work.


City and State you represent?

I hail from the great state of Mississippi where I claim the cities of Forest and Clinton.


How long have you been doing spoken word?

I have been writing poetry since I was in tenth grade. I didn't have many friends, so poetry was a means of expressing my feelings and coping with life. I started spoken word/performance poetry when I was a sophomore in college.


Why did you choose the spoken word art form?

To me, spoken word is an empowering privilege.It is a way to express artistic truth and gospel for the masses to hear, to learn, to grow. The beauty about spoken word is that it is a two-way street: the poet has to grow as well in order for the spoken words to have more merit.


What is the best/most executed spoken word piece(s) you have performed?

The piece that I have most performed is entitled "4eyed atlas." I based this poem
on my self-formations as an black intellectual and black poet.

Name some of the artists that have influenced your spoken word style and why?

Though I have quite a few influences, perhaps, the most important would be C. Leigh McInnis, an English professor from Jackson State University. We meet at a summer program during my sophomore year in college; I was his teacher's assistant. During that summer, I was enlightened by his views of poetry and philosophy. Drs. Jerry W. Ward and Candice Jackson are others who encouraged me to go beyond the trendy and create a focused, complex picture.

In terms of my delivery, I have to go back to my sophomore year as a Mellon Fellow; my roommate, Ernest Gibson III (aka Scripture, in poetry sets) and I skipped the first dinner at Emory and went to a poetry set in Atlanta. Watching him spit made me realize that as a poet, I must always be both bold and vulnerable.


Describe the topic(s) that you write/perform about and the inspiration behind these topic(s).

I write on a range of topics: from politics and love--to death and identity. I don't have a particular inspiration behind certain topics. I write what life lets me see, no matter how transparent or obscure. I believe that the splendor of life is not in the big events--but in the little things that are overlooked, neglected, and forgotten. Search for those things and make them beautiful. That's where you find your best poems.


Is there a website, blog, email where we can find you?
I do have a blog. Feel free to follow my thoughts and poetry at http://www.4eyedatlas.blogspot.com/



All photos used in this feature are courtesy of Terrance Youngblood

If you are interested in being featured for Rock the Spoken Word, email rockthespokenword@gmail.com

sun

i toil under you

like others before me.

overseer,

why do you

burn me so?

pursuit

you know, i walk by and hear those girls talk
men are dogs and all men want one thing..
well i say that women
are emotionally   dumb            and                  detached
from           what they want      and              what they need..

sayin' one thing and doing another...
              (and another one)...
                       (and another one)...


they say we are endowed with these certain unalienable rights:
life liberty the pursuit of happiness
but
who said that love on this list?

nobody.

you know why?

b/c love is a rigged board game that i always play..
where the good guys finish last
never reach "go"                         never collect $200,
stifled by failed chances       and
disappointing advances that end with the words: "good night george"


stuck in the damn community chest,
listening to her talk about how her boyfriend broke her heart
with tears in her eyes,

my mind is boggled by the fact that i am here again...
and
i can do nothing but take another
buster douglas on the chin

this game is fucked up.

i have the wingman badges of courage to prove it.

i got the USDA-husband tags branded on my ass to prove it..

i wish good morning to my evident chest pains
lying on the bed,   soothing them with my own tears 80 proof   from the dregs


it is proof ever clearly to see that in love
there is no such thing as an escape plan from pain....

..........................................

and then i see her...
i’ve never seen her before… this girl...

this chocolate innocence dipped into a precocious sensuality
that defies all bell curves

another extraordinary moment candy-wrapped in an ordinary question:
should i talk to her?

her--who makes me betray all of my convictions…


when i look into the portals of her eyes,
I visualize my paradise regained with
an optimism -- a joy -- an urge
which a wordsmith can’t articulate

but can ar- titillate
through an embrace              a kiss

i want to pursue her

i want to pour our souls into an insatiable goblet
          to drink                      to dance
east coast            to                      west coast
         
i want us to circle our minds like covalents bonding
to another dimension outside of this reality
to a place where i believe i can actually win this game again

but

i wonder if this is real--or a denial of insanity?

what can do i differently this time?

should play my spades overtly--
or should i follow her lead softly like a distant silhouette,

whispering, nibbling at the crumbs of beauty she leaves in my wake....

do i go back and play the part again?


i                                         want                                            her

but

is this another failed voyage that ends with hello?

english

i’m tired of   do   done    did     doing.
      
when am i going 2 have?

no have had    or       was were.
i need some    be    being    and never been
b/c dead men are past tense...

maybe i need an auxiliary for their actions whether active or passive.

i must might have or have not the heart or soul
2 stay in the past participle.

sometimes it’s easy 2 think in the future tense
when you're dying as a subjective complement in american society.

the ultimate contradictory metonymy of your life.

drinking mr. alger by the bottle doesn't come cheap.

it takes your soul like an absolute conjuncting to a period,
concluding the end of your illustrious sentence.

the grammar of your life.

thinking....

i know..it's been a while...i've been doing some self-inventory lately...realize that the atlas has some weight that needs to be released..for his own sake. i got admitted into the MA at purdue to defend my MA thesis...i'm happy and i'm scared...i want to do this one right. and it seems that i've been changing since that acceptance letter came in. friends are departing to do their careers and i've finally figured out what i'm destined to do: i'm supposed to be a professor and an artist and i'm willing to embrace it now. after all this time, i want to embrace the tower that i long hated..it sounds so southern--dealing with irreparable contradictions...but fuck, i am southern :)... i'm glad that i can renew myself again...left a poem for you at the end..yall take care and no, i won't be a stranger any longer..

thinking

what a privilege and a blessing it is. to think. go beyond the cave and see the light outside. plato can keep his sunglasses. i want to squint. i want to feel the warmth of the sun beating against me like kunta. fiddling my mind on the hot tin roof with lou gossett, running alongside clotel. i see that my mind is complex and whimsical—like an intellectual jezebel…but this alchemy is what composes me into me. because I’m thinking. i’m pondering the reasonable and the irresponsible…the insane and the conservative. there is constant spinning in this zone, in all directions: squares tri angluating into circles and which circle i fall into? it depends on dante as my guide… or was it jesus or muhammad? … but like i said ..i’m thinking…starting to think again.. the cosmopolitan intellectual is waking up from his dry spell… his hangover of antisocial shots to the head vodka cranberry with a splash of hemingway lime …damn it takes sublime like a cuba libre… and libre is such a good thing to be…. just need to stay alive a lil longer…. got to smell the roses –even the dead ones…

Prometheus

Last week, the Lafayette Civic Theater opened its three-week presentation of the Lorraine Hansberry classic "A Raisin in the Sun." I've thoroughly enjoyed my experience with the theater. Hopefully, I will experiment and branch more with this medium. I play the role of George Murchison, the son of a rich black family. He desires to have Beneatha but only in a more traditional feminine role.

Each character carries a distinct ideological belief. It is the clashing of these ideologies, these beliefs which makes this play dynamic and timeless--because they still are relevant in African-American and American life.

I was thinking about my brief interactions with Walter Lee Younger. In Scene II, I take out his sister to a dance, leave the house, and insult him by calling him "Prometheus." Why Prometheus, I thought?

So I decided to write a poem to Walter, not out of spite, but of sympathy.


to walter

good night prometheus...
you carry the fire of my black brothers and sisters
but cannot sustain it within....

so many dreams to behold
within your grasp
yet they are always taken away...

chained the city has you.
cornered.
the city has your eyes trapped in the grey sky

the rain    the snow     
taunts you, tapping your shoulders
for your raisin to sleep...

good night prometheus....

Oldies

 

I know that its been a lil while...but i just got a full-time job. (thanks God.) I love the people that I work with. I love the driving and interacting with people. I have a lot in my head to expound on but so lil time as of now..but I was in the mood to post some of my oldies during my oxford days--so here it goes.....

my southern (un)comfort

walkin' along lush trees lynch GREEN-- while listening to al Green..
wonderin' how time slips away in the New Orleans nights while
Andrew Jackson battles against Katrina and government racism by FEMA
and every New Deal that deals us out like playin' cards at the Bush Binion,
winnin' like Gold and Moneymaker--cashin in like King Cotton:

Ride on King Cotton---No man can not hinder thee..
Ride on King Cotton ride on no man can not hinder thee...
No man can not hinder thee....
No man can not hinder thee...
No man..

Not even JFK, RFK, KFC, FBI, CSI, BBC, NBC, MTV, BET--
blind belligerent bastards of capitalism--but I---

I see you--- conflicted son-of-a bitch...
confused and fatherless postbellum,
miscegenated with the bloods of lost poets and singers and killers and
bastardized heroes tainted by the stars and bars and claws
of raven-black jim crow furthermore...

I see you my child... walkin' along the country fields and city lights in
starless midnights of an ominous peace and a serene dead debauchery that
time and southern comfort can't comfort:
WOUNDS that years months and seconds can't stitch--
TEARS...rivers can't meander to the delta of forgetfulness...
BODIES confederates can't raise--unionites can't burn--and americans can't ignore with their i-pods...
SOULS that tradition can't appease or destroy with its money or alphabet....

on this lonely southern night, i walk on the roads of a forgotten conscious and see the new plots for our immortal grove of amnesia: our Beloved Dead--our new covered masses: they may as well be the phantoms that they've feared their whole lives. let us honor our Beloved Living Southern Gentlemen and Women....
for my South--
our South--
this new South--
will Never Rise at all..

living history dies in monuments....

...........................

angry black man

wallkin' in the rain...
this nappy afrogeriperm with twists phantoms the sidewalks..
slicing out your minds and not your wrists 'cuz that's the easy way out to the back and not to the front of the widening road of destructing uncle jemina and aunt ben in the fields of corporate american metropolis....

boss, i's be fuckin' this bullshit status quo
my ful bright eyes can see the world clearer
than any ozark smokin' that bark or maybe those that only inhaled--
cheated themselves of separating from the mainstream of compassionate conservative warhawks who dip themselves in the gourd of
foreign blood and gold water--who claim themselves as the mighty Right..

and
I use my Right to cleanse myself
daily from such propagandic build-up...
collecting my daily deaths under my
friendly fiery strokes of consciousness--
my consciousness --letting
me know that I am one of protoclay models of complicated
motherfuckers who drink from the Mississippi like a dog--
carrying my trumpet wielding a blue in bitches brew that is
hopefully more than any white Bulldog, Rebel, and Trojan can chew...

liquorettes (light and dark types of thought that keep the world drinking, mellowing, and bubbling)

my first original bottle of liquorettes: i originally wrote these haikus at the 'loo years ago...
but don't worry, i plan on restocking my supply. drink up.


closing eyes on pure
light brings daggers closely...
quickly as the night

quickness of one's past,
oblivion of one's day
lies in a mere shot

the everclearness
of life is to swallow the
clear and feel the burn.

slow rivers that
flow from inner lakes to the
delta of your eyes.

sober hearts and drunk
minds tend to make the walk-me-
down to mere failure.

insanity has
its sanity through
mere variety.

by what means is it
necessary to call war
against your own self?

the glory of a
victory lies in the
failure it grew from.

how many of us
would sell out america
for thirty pieces?

freewriting hope

I

hope can be a dangerous thing
those who do not have...

i hope that in 2010 we can
at least respect one another:

YOU LIE...

with all due respect
your political kind has LIED to us
since emancipation reconstruction deconstruction: 19th and 21st century.
......
II

don't give the others a free pass,
the great society has passed us by...

the days of camelot are over..


chivalry is dead and
we have TOWERS sprouting to prove it.


towers sprouting.....
towers (are) sprouting....
( ashes ashes )

towers failing...
towers (are) failing....

( ashes ashes )

towers falling....
towers (are) falling....

( ashes ashes )
..........
III

they say
that we are the generation of hope...

how much hope do we have left?

hey america,
are we hoping hopelessness?

can the hopeless hope?

Snow Writing

what a beautiful gray rose it is.
nostalgia.

be the fading figure in the definite.
no. i can't.

my passion to fight
keeps me alive,
living one day longer

one day longer
to take one more red brick,
for the double tinted windows
of master narratives

and see the sun one more time.

i have burdens to bear in the present--
my present for the future
to behold to appreciate not scold.

my path will soon be an old labyrinth
for others to postulate

my time will be the new nostalgia
for others to commemorate

so lets make it good while i can.

embrace the thoughts solitaire.

then share.

snow writing with no dwarves...