Dreams Canceled

The black path. The curtains dulling from sunlight fading them to a mundane gray. The shoes stained with grime and mud and even dust from the constant pounding of a 220 pound man's size 13 feet smashing them against the pavement. The toe of the shoes opening to say "Hello" from the weakened soles. Shoestrings were once a royal blue hue that paralleled that same color of a fresh Dodger cap; now torn and ripped by the cement's wolfish bites. The cup with old Kool-Aid residue from nights past still sits there; no longer clean. 22 years older; nearly 23. Alcohol and inertia mixed in one combo beating his body with mountain-heavy weights of laziness. A blood test in 30 minutes; no, it's gotta be canceled. Yes...it must be canceled.

Being from a neighborhood as mine which is now predominantly Latino with the roots of a gentrified working class small town into its future plans of becoming a venture capitalist's dream. A city which is only 2/3 of a mile in square footage (if I'm not mistaken) being colonized from a hotbed of history for many blacks, Latinos, and Polynesians alike into a manufactured city. Destroying the majority of the small businesses in our community to build one hell of a four-star hotel that I am sure has driven up the property taxes in my area tremendously. Every time I have returned home from college in Maryland to comeback and find out another one of the few small business owners in my town have been bought out to be replaced with a conglomerate owned chain store. There was once a auto parts store called Tadlock's in my town. I come back home last summer from college to find that it has now been turned into an Autozone. I walked into the store to see if anything has been changed; nothing different about the store other than better lightning and some Autozone promotional items everywhere.

And it just gets worse. I now see that the city has plans to build a marina where there are also many other small businesses that will be no longer every soon. This marina will have any restuarants, shops, and such that I'm sure will include Starbuck's, Panera Bread, and other various chain restaurants. Wow, I can only imagine what this will do for the already ridiculously inflated prices of real estate in East Palo Alto, California. All of the places that were once parts of the culture in East Palo Alto and even my side of the neighborhood, Belle Haven of Menlo Park, have been destroyed to build Starbuck's, Ikea, Home Depot, Four Seasons, etc. If at all the peninsula of the San Francisco Bay Area (San Mateo County) wasn't corporate enough, the few neighborhoods such as mine that had immense roots of culture and tradition have been turned into a cash cow for venture capitalists. Building plush and lavish manufactured homes and condos to drive up the cost of blue collar citizens' property taxes is putting a strangle hold around our citizens' necks. Many people can not afford to live in East Palo Alto any longer, and have moved to areas of the Central Valley such as Stockton and Modesto where the cost of living is much cheaper. In twenty years, when I bring my kids back to my neighborhood to show them the place that molded me into the upstanding young Black man that I am; they won't believe that this small 2/3 of a square mile was a working class city. Many of the places I used to play and eat at in this town will no longer be here, and they will laugh at me thinking that I have lied about the neighborhood I so loved to say I grew up in. As much as East Palo Alto has been given a bad dose of news headlines slated with murder and drug problems, let's not forget about programs such as College Track, EPA Can Do, and OICW that are shining examples of positivity in East Palo Alto. The gentrification must stop!

Rather Phrenic or Blatantly Dotterel

Waking up to the broad-on light of the Sun outside my home blaring through my curtains to awake me like my mother did in adolescent years past. Waking up to the dead-on blast of sound from my cell phone and hearing a client ask for a particular product I have at 8:45 AM. I am not used to awakening so early, but I thank God for being able to arise in general. The room around me seems to have that candid melancholia; the room with no pictures or posters posted to the walls gives it a blatant stare of boredom. Extending my arm to reach for the cell phone and feeling that sluggishness of beer and alcohol binging last night throughout my whole body puts me in the mind state of not wanting to get up, but to lie in bed all day. To lie in this ocean of blankets, sheets and pillows from Sun up to Sundown nirvanic. Reality sets in.

I destroyed the all Seeing Eye

In its devilish disguise,

You walk around and praise it subliminally to its meteoric rise,

But in my eyes,

You niggas still don’t realize,

What pain is subject and it shall pass,

The falling of a dawning of America’s past,

The ceiling that was glass

Inferiorities of Plato and Socrates,

They were men fuckin each other,

Not just so called scholars,

Stealing the African's mathematics and placing Greek above it,

If you found out Socrates was black, I don't think you would love it,

That would be the jagged glass and scrap metal I don’t think you could stomach,

Finding out that Julius Caesar was more than a tyrant,

A man that loved his wife and also fucked men,

The same ways that all high degree masons could all be homosexual

The men cloaked in dark vales fuckin each other in festivals,

The tyrannical sabbatical irrational classic,

The times I ran through my life wanting to be American,

I must have been a target

A fuckin sheep to believe that America is really my nation,

The same place that killed off the Native Americans,

And still supports segregation,

That’s why your black or Latino son or daughter gets dirty looks at their majority of a school that’s all Caucasian,

Or when you go to that five star restaurant and they claim they lost your reservation,

It’s because you’re colored which means you have dominant genes, and your genes aren’t recessive

The pain a white man feels when he finds out that nigga got his daughter pregnant,

Or when his teenage son plays nothing but hip hop,

They realize in their minds that this black movement must stop,

So they call their local news station to put your ass on display,

Saying you steal from their home and rape their wife and daughter almost everyday,

It’s the white man’s greed,

That has killed our knowledge of our dominant seed

By 2050, the whole world will be brown, the white man’s population will not lead.

To fall away from this past is far beyond the reaches of reality
Looking beyond the world sporadically
I saw the subjects of kings and tyrants die in tragedy
More like blasphemy
Because the tyrants considered themselves gods
More like deities
The kind that use your minds for experimentation
The troubles and mis fortunates of a nation
Seeing the white ooze fall back from my eyes
Not my penis, not masturbation
I ask her for one chance to see if we'll have some relation
But all I got in the conversation
Was the jargon of miscues from a woman misbehaving
Perplexing it is to see you wanting me beyond my physical attraction
You bask in your arrogance and never seen the real reaction
The reaction I felt to the cold shoulder you left for me to cry on
The jagged darts and katanas you left for me to walk on
The bombs and missiles you left for me to say goodbye on
Or the noose and chopping block you left for me to die on.

...I'm 22, I'll finish college in Yemen if I want to.

There's nothing worse than being doubted by family that you won't be able to finish something like college by transferring closer to home to finish. I have been in college since the Fall of 2003 and I have already had to take a semester off which was the hardest thing for me to ever do academically. For them to sit there and criticize me for wanting to finish my last year to two years of college here at home at Menlo College and tell me stupid shit like to finish somewhere like L.A. is ridiculous! I am 22 years old and if I want to finish my last few semesters of college in Alaska I will do so! My mother is the only one paying my tuition and it's just ironic how my dad's side of the family (who is paying nothing for me academically) feels like they can tell me where and when I can finish school. It would be one thing if my father and grandmother were actually paying for some sort of fee or even my books, but for them to sit there and critique me and try to wish for my downfall by coming home to finish college is absurd. But, like any other family member, they will be at my graduation proclaiming that they knew I could finish regardless of the college's address.

Like I told my grandmother last night, I will finish college here and I could careless if they want me to finish at a piece of shit college in Maryland to which they know nothing about. I am 22 years old; I am not 13! Maybe one day they will realize that before it's too late.

This is very different for me; I am usually never met at 7:26 A.M. I cannot remember the last time I woke up this early for anything. But, I am truly blessed to be up this morning on another great day. Driving back from Oakland this morning down 580 looking or even gazing at the clouds above us was a sight that showed me how beautiful the world is and how thankful we all should be to be alive. We rape and ravish the Earth stripping it of its natural resources and destroying its atmosphere to not realizing that one day that the Earth will not be habitable. It's to the point now where I was reading that living on a new planet might be the alternative because man has fucked up this planet so much that it won't be habitable pretty soon. The accounts that I read of things that may seem unbelievable or even not viable such as this subject of a huge human movement to space should be taken more literally. The unimaginable or even impossible is very much possible.

Pilot Speed

"Barely Listening" by Pilot Speed

I saw this music video on a local college TV station and I was a little blown away how the singer from this band, Pilot Speed sounds exactly like the front man from the Muse. This band from Ontario is definitely something to look out for.

Sinus InFect-Shun!

Having a sore throat from last Sunday to a fever that night to going to the doctor's office on Wednesday night and thinking I had strep throat to now...sitting here typing away at this keyboard with week-old phlegm still enlarging my tonsils and wrapping around them causing razor blade swallows. I hate being sick. Luckily, it is only a sinus infection, but even this is extremely discomforting to have phlegm stuck at the roof of my mouth. Not being able to go out and do what it is that I like to do on the random nights throughout the week and week's end.

I guess I can take it as a sign that I need to slow down; I need to pull myself away from the random "Hey, it's Wednesday night, let's go drink!" nights that I have become so accustom to. There's nothing wrong with going out, but when you are going out as much as I am within an average week, it is understandable how my body has picked up this sinus infection so easily. I go out on average about 4-5 times on any given week during the summer seeing as I work and intern, and there's no early morning wake-ups to get to the plantation like most people do. Therefore, I can go out practically any night that I want to.

But, it's time that I grow up, and slow down. Maybe fetch a DVD or two from Amoeba Records, pop some popcorn, and grab that gorgeous young woman (whomever she may be) a little closer to enjoy the film with. Yes...that does sound like a plan rather than being out amongst the drunks and whores in alcohol, urine, and vomit-laden bars, pubs, and clubs on any given night. Yes...it sounds like a great plan!

Another BS 'smash hit!'

Every year there's more and more commercial hip hop artists that come out with more and more plastic songs. These are the artists you can find on your local FM radio station and on MTV and BET in heavy rotation. Artists like the Shop Boyz and their 'smash hit' (I beg to differ) "Party Like a Rock star." If we as blacks in the U.S. didn't need more shit to be embarrassed about from ignorant Zip Coons like these tap dancing and minstrel flamboyant black males on TV. The more and more ignorant and degrading a song you come out with, the more promo you will get. But behind all the smoke and mirrors, the Shop Boyz like (D4L, Franchise Boyz, MIMS, etc.)are doing all this tap dancing, shucking and jiving on TV screens throughout the world, but are not making truly enough money for the degradation they put themselves for. I cannot blame the record label heads at Columbia and Universal for slaving these morons on TV and FM radio until their overly gaudy lyrics and Nintendo-like production are forgotten by the teeny-bopper generation who have forgotten what to "Walk It Out," "2 Step," "or "Chicken Noodle Soup" is.

MUSIC VIDEO CODES By Offuhuge.com