the Change I Wish to See

every moment is a once in a lifetime
not because tomorrow's not promised
but because even if it was
right now is exactly what tomorrow could never be:
this very moment.

but instead of living life like we own it
we've lived life like we've been loaned it -
like we're seat-fillers at the Oscars
only to shine after commercial breaks,
or anxious temporary cardholders
awaiting an expiration date -
we trudged through the motions
as if soon it would all be over
and we'd see the other side.

we've lived in the tiniest corners of our minds
unable to share close encounters of the human kind
figuring any extra terrestrial
must be an extra-terrestrial
and that no body on Earth
could be as heavenly as the celestials...
but we're all stars in the dopest show in the universe,
so why do we act like understudies?

we're all headliners
and though the only act we know
is in these costumes,
the only stage we're on is this one
and though we can't guarantee an encore performance next week
when the only future we can grab belongs to yesterday,
why do we hold on for dear life
like living's worth not wanting more?

and when we do get a glimpse of tomorrow,
why do we assume it's beyond our control?
like on the right hand of God sits Jesus
and on the left sits a deistic puppet master
whose strings hide from sight
as imitation silver linings in clouds,
strings that guide us
to waltz through years like ballrooms,
light on our feet
mid-dance, anxious of our judge's scores;
we get caught up
assuming destinies
awaiting hand-me-down fates...

but when we assume that we're only,
that we're second, that we're barely
we assert selfish superstition upon malleable experience;
like when the politics of hope are broken into fantasy
and the pieces show their cracks
jagged and unseemly;
or when the power of our faith,
one a god could never have,
is traded in for short-term gains
and our souls sugar-crash.

yet with our power to assume
comes power to engage -
to move from cleaning off the table
to eating off the plates,
from being victims of the law
to deciding how it's made,
from meaning "dark," "feared" and "unknown"
to shining on the brightest stage.

we won't be kings like kings once were
we won't be queens, or even dukes;
we won't get rich off reparations
it's 2008, we don't need mules;
our homes will still be measured in feet
not in acres, not draped in jewels;
we won't strike back with vengeful hearts
'cause we know what it's like to lose.

what we will be is the promise
that our parents made to us:
finally embraced
with more than arms-length transactional hugs.

Here we go again;
it's not the first time
the "news" left us
with wounds to mend.

It's really as simple as Pulitzer wrote in 1904:
"Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself."

Today is, apparently, that time. We are, apparently, those people. And Joe Scarborough is, it seems, one of those mercenaries.

On Friday, Scarborough, broadcast on the newly-designated mecca of misogyny, joined by Craig Crawford, made sexist inferences about the nature of former Senator Fred Thompson's marriage. The two asked and then mutually "confirmed" that Jeri Thompson "works the pole."

I've watched the clip several times now. I've read MSNBC's knee-jerk reaction: put it in context. I tried to do so. I shouldn't have; but I did. I failed of course, because at best the remark was crass and I don't consider the pursuit of crudity an achievement of any real aspiration.

The basic gist: two shrivelled phalli walk onto a cable news set. The first one spots a woman he deems out of his reach. So he's bitter; naturally, he feels shafted. The second one is much less advanced in his shrivelling, but if there's one thing a diminishing phallus hates, it's standing alone. So the second one pokes his head in, feigning an interest. Wrinkled and past their primes, they begin flopping around, lashing out at the man this unattainable woman does care about: how could he "get" her? She's so attractive, they long for the days when they weren't mere wrinkles in time; when they were each something with some longevity, some sense of purpose, and had the tools with which to achieve it. Those days are gone. But these two don't cut and... excuse me, that word is in bad taste here. These two don't tuck and run. Instead, they prematurely spit assertions. They don't really know what they're talking about; they're inexperienced. So what happens next comes fast: "You think she works the pole?"

The breakdown:

Aside from the clearly offensive nature of the remark, more pressing for at least Scarborough (since I know neither Crawford's attraction nor relationship status) is that he has to explain to his wife his drooling envy.

But both men suffer from exactly what so many shrivelling phalli do: a lack of fore... sight. They have a complete inability to get the big picture and drown in their moment. They also can't see behind them since their dumb asses get in the way; hence, they have no hindsight. So neither could remember what the word "Imus" means this summer nor anticipate what fallout would follow.

I don't think, from the clip I've seen (my opinion may change if I see more), that they were calling Jeri Thompson a stripper per se. I don't. I realize that the use of the word "works" allows other conclusions. I don't think such conclusions are wrong, but I think these two were actually referring to the exercise technique, albeit offensively. But by no means should that be read as an excuse. What they still did is objectify Jeri Thompson. They still reduced her to an exclusively sexual being. I don't know why she, at 39, chooses to be with Thompson, at 64. But perhaps she was so sophisticated -- be it emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, some combination... -- that her maturity could only be matched by someone who had lived enough to develop similarly. The truth is, it doesn't really matter why she chose him. She chose him. And Scarborough and Crawford blatantly dishonored her choice by implying that her partner's decision to be with her was less than credible.

Reducing Jeri Thompson was not an anomaly. This morning on ESPN2, Mike Golic "joked" to Mike Greenberg that he "might as well be a woman" for not being able to bench 185 lbs. He quickly noted that he meant the inability to lift, not the remark, was the real insult to women. Huh, what? Exactly. I have no idea how he thought that put the dirt back in the hole he was digging. I'd be insane to suggest any woman reading this right now can't think of ten times she's already been "indirectly" insulted today. These insults are not indirect; they're assaults; they're micro-aggressions. Beauvoir was right: women are not born, they become. In so far as gender, as distinct from sex, is about otherization, these assaults and their underlying normative assumptions operate to subordinate females (as well as males since implying males display attributes we've assigned to females is understood as demeaning). If we don't stop them now, then when?

Again, our civic duty includes not just exercising our right to speak, but managing said exercise. Here, these two have to be held responsible for, at the very least, not realizing that suggesting a woman "works the pole" was going to be inflammatory, certainly if done so without clear, contextual qualification. I grant that structuring such a proviso would be a formidable challenge, if not impossible. Nonetheless, I'm tired of excusing the obliviousness of the ignorant. We should be informing the ignorant, not ignoring them. "Ignorant" and "ignoring" have the same root word. Take that theory a step further: how could we possibly fix the problem with more of the same?

And to come full circle, I don't know why Jeri Thompson was even dragged into this. In what newsworthy context is she relevant, let alone her exercise routine and how said routine may or may not affect her sex life? She is the spouse of a man who is bumbling through the initial steps of a campaign. I get it. But what does her attractiveness have to do with his ability to run/serve or her ability to lead his support from his side if he does so?

There's only one real "attractiveness" element of this story: you can find some of the ugliest things under the nails of pointed fingers.

I use to think that if this country was just us
that we could build an overdue conception of justice,
but just us could never really combat injustice
'cause when power's in just us, it's just nuts.



For instance, Gary Sheffield sounds like a bigot:

"...You're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no English going to be coming out. … [It's about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do -- being able to control them.

"Where I'm from, you can't control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that's a person that you're going to talk to with respect, you're going to talk to like a man."

Can I pull something reasonable out of that? Sure. I could tell you that what he really meant to say, is that profit-hungry MLB owners and officials capitalize on the struggles of Latino youth; that they dehumanize them, seeing Latinos as potentially cheaper labor to further a product rather than young men hungry for a chance. I could tell you that baseball's athlete-sourcing has taken a huge hit stateside due to the skyrocketing popularity of football and basketball. I might tell you it's been obvious for years that baseball has little interest in scouting young black men domestically. I could tell you that young black American men are more often misled by marketing featuring Carmelo Anthony, Michael Vick and Clinton Portis than they are influenced by ads featuring Ryan Howard and -- and actually it's hard to think of a commercial featuring a black American baseball player. I could tell you that these facts are all part of a larger, ongoing social wave towards more instantaneous gratification and away from the national "pastime."

I could, but I'm not going to do Sheffield's work for him. Gary Sheffield is a grown damn man. At what point do we stop being apologists and calling these people inarticulate? Our civic duty includes not just exercising our right to speak, but managing said exercise. Why isn't Sheffield expected to be able to deliver his message, if it indeed has been publicly misconstrued, accurately? Is it because he's an athlete? Is it because he's black? If he means something different than what he says, why are the listeners burdened with decoding? He said two things very clearly: Latino men are relatively easy to control and black American men are relatively rambunctious. Neither is flattering. More importantly, neither is even true.

The larger point here is that there is more than enough intrinsically devisive about our social fabric. The last thing we need is to turn black-brown relations on themselves by excusing a man who tries to hide behind the conditioning of his skin color to be as racist as those he claims to actually be critiquing.

The message, if so intended, that MLB's power structure is an illustration of a deeply-seeded socio-eco-political dilemma that operates to divide us, is critically engaging. It is a message that is too important to get lost between the lines. It has to be said, but it has to be said well.

Gary Sheffield sounds like a bigot. The fact that he's black makes it worse, not better.

i'm confused
because now is both always and never:
always trying to go places i've never been,
always struggling to do what i've never been able,
always waiting for a realization that never comes.

sometimes i wonder
if life is at a standstill
or if i'm running at rest
in stationary motion:
always moving
never going anywhere.

but at least time passes.
or does it?
you'd think one so obsessed
with time could find it,
especially when all of time feels
like the same time.

i wish i could tell time;
tell it i hate it,
tell it i breathe it,
tell it i made it,
tell it i need it.
but all of my clocks are faceless.

they say "time
waits
for no one"
but just once
could it (could it)
pause
for me
i'm not here
here to beg
for always
just a moment
just a moment's
all i need

i promise
no, no
i guarantee
that i'll take real good advantage
of any time i receive
i won't blink, regret
desire more
'cause a moment's
all that time can afford

they say "time
waits
for no one"
but just once
could it (could it)
pause for me
i'm not here (to beg)
here to beg (here to beg)
for always
a moment
a moment's
all i need

inside
i'm just a battlefield
my chest conceals the trenches
i just wish that i could heal
they say home
is where the heart lives
but here it feels so useless
how much more can i give?

so much for standing
i'm throwing in the towel
my knees have given out

they say hip hop's in crisis...
truth is, that hip hop, was always on the brink of lifeless,
'cause that's what life is...:
a small boat on a rocky sea
no paddles, just a hope to be free

but you can't just live it, gotta skin it
wear it on your arm like ink's embedded in it
showcase your faith as a model for those fakes
who've grown to see street rock as only 'bout their own fate

street rock's a group mentality
say whatever you say
but use your talents to challenge we:
if your ride's fly, don't just tell me that it drives,
tell me it's a chariot that blazes the sky

be creative, words are artillery
get caught in the crossfire, learn, go watch a spelling bee
your life's a page, make the future wanna quote it
be a poet, let history know you wrote it

The heading says enough. A rant may follow later, but for now the heading's self-sufficient. Truth is, I shouldn't have to make the statement, which is why its simplicity is so compelling. All I'll say for now is that it seems fair to say that what I deny is much more like what I'm afraid I'm running from.

What Olbermann did last night should be history. I say that without exaggeration, but-for-qualifications, or hesitation (as I realize I sound like Jesse Jackson). Anyway... For all of those who insist the revolution won't be televised, this should be the point at which you begin to question where you went wrong in retrospect 10 years from now. It should be a moment that I can tell generations to come I witnessed live. Why live? Because the day after Cheney's first visit in office to the what was then Ronald Reagan Hospital, Bush held a conference in which he said the executive branch interpreted the law. Don't remember? Probably because it didn't make news and hasn't been covered since. But it is kind of odd that that "slip" is exactly what White House policy hinges on: signing statements.

we're stuck in a fate so deep we can hardly breathe
strangled by the schemes of the powers that be
and as the youth make strides to write the same scenes
with haste, we're enslaved by propaganda machines;
in a place where truth is only what you believe
nothing's as it is and everything's as it seems
we try to shut our eyes, blindly follow the lead
of men who rend us free on the end of a leash.

It was fulfilling to hear someone illustrate it as it should be. It's why aijuswanawrite. You need both links: the video, and the transcript. Share them both.

So we seem to, actually I guess it's better for me to say, many of us have suffered from what seems like a list of disasters lately, both natural and man-made. Both of these are pictures I found of tsunami survivors.

And this one, from a while ago, of playtime in Bosnia, always got to me.
So, with kids in Israel and Lebanon in mind, below is something I wrote a while ago thinking about children in schools around the Towers on 9/11:


I wanna scream.
Not for me, but for my son;
not that I got one, but just in case he comes.

See, I'm one of those over-cautious, extra-conscious kinda guys:
I hate being surprised
and I hate not having answers for inquiring eyes.
So for a while I've been trying to decide
just how I'd reply the first time my son asks why
his world is on fire.

At first, I thought I'd just regurgitate the lines
that from the beginning of time
parents have spit at kids mixed with point blank evasiveness, like:
"We didn't start the fire"
or, "It's so far off shore, it'll never reach New York."
But kids have hearts like polygraphs,
so he'd just discard the mask and continue to ask.

But how do you tell a child the truth when you're still in denial?
I still can't believe we've ruined their dreams
before they even had a chance to sleep.

When I was a kid, things were different.
Up to 4th grade, I thought a racist was some kind of track star.
'Cause when you're 8,
your only races should be 50-yard dashes
or quick escapes after cabbage-patch snatches.
And none of them use colors of faces
as a legitimate basis.
'Cause in color races, you only race against yourself.

Now nothing's the same.

When the towers fell,
there was a school on a nearby street.
When the smoke began to clear,
I watched children choking on the ashes of their parents.
Children lived those buildings crumbling
like steel urban crackers;
their faces shocked, afraid
of an evil they didn't recognize.

I wish the bleeding stopped that day.
But it didn't.
So one day I'll have to tell my son
that there are kids his age who'd have food
if only they could eat through the chains.
That there are kids, only 8,
who can't go out and play
'cause the army cut off their hands in a diamond trade.

I'll tell him everything he should never have to know.
But I won't tell him our present will be his future,
with all the mistakes of the past.
I won't tell him that to bar up the windows
the monkey bars were stripped,
or "don't play in the basement:
it's a shelter in case we're hit."

I won't do it.
Won't abandon our children to save myself,
or push their freedom back
to the dark corner on the shelf.
Won't tell them I hate life so much
that I'd kill their chance to live it,
or even touch it,
just once.

Kids today fall victim to our lack of appreciation,
'cause they're nothing short of miracles
but we treat them like mere products of our creation.
We do them no favors
when we say they're the future but push them off for later.
We owe them more than static reincarnations of our acts.
I only wish more of us could realize that.