Love Song VII: Eyes

Love Song VII: Eyes
Copyright 2008 – All Rights Reserved

how
youreyes
your
suneyes
stirred
my blood

that last time
that last moment

stirred something
hungry
parched
somethingdeep

youreyes
that last moment

how
they
seared
into
my brain
my
soul

branding
you
into
the
hidden corners
of me
now
open
like a flower
to
your light
to
your sun

youreyes
forever amber

taking me
branding
me
into the marrow
of
your
bones
aching now
with cold
at
my
leaving you

youreyes
that last moment

so full
with
the what
the when
overflowing
with
the
how
of
me
and you

youreyes sunbrown
myeyes earthbrown

taking
the measure
saying
the measure

shining
with rivers of goodbye
that last time

eyes
that last moment

telling.

2/23/08

Love Song VI: The 5 Senses

Love Song VI: The 5 Senses

Copyright 2008-All Rights Reserved

I know

the sound
of
you

know it
by
the whisper
of
rain

the patter
of
raindrops
lonely
gentle
on
my windowsill

I know

the sound
of
you

I know
the touch
of
you

know it
when
thought
of you
streaks
through me
like
summer lightning

blazes
in memory
like
a
wild fire

leaving
your touch
a cool burning
here

just
here
inside
me

I know
the touch
of
you

I know
the smell
of
you

know
your
fragrant
woman-smell

seductive
as
desert
sage

know it
by
the
aching
that
comes
with
the
sweet
earth scent
of
you

wafting on
afternoon breeze
stealing
languidly
into
my
daydreams

intoxicating
my
nightdreams

I know
the
smell
of
you

I know
the
piquant taste
of
you

biting
my lips
like
ginger spice

bursting
with
ruby red
sweetness
like
pomegranate
seeds
falling
slowly
on
my tongue

I know
the taste
of
you

lingering
exotic
disquieting

I know
your
taste

I know
the sight
of
you

see your
face

in
the
soft glow
of
Diana’s moon

exquisite
as
a pearl
shining
above
the ocean
of night

I know
the shape
of
you

by
the
constellation
of stars
you wear

brilliant as diamonds
draped
about
your
velvet neck

I know
the sight
of
you

I keep
the
memory
of you
my love
in
my
five senses

see
the flash
of
your
sky wings
at dawn

hear
you
in
a
waterfall’s
song

taste
you
in
pungent
honey-laced
spices

smell
the
essence
of
you
in
sweet grass
and
lavender

close
my eyes
and
touch
you

brush
your
skin
with
the
smoldering
fire
in
my
fingertips

the
memorance
of you
is
here
always
in
my five senses

always
just
here.


3/5/08

LA Observations Series- 3: This and That

All Rights Reserved - Copyright 2008

On the MTA Bus…

I hate smelling stale cigarette smoke in a person’s clothes…the odor of dried body sweat, or of piss. Of course if you use public transportation…the bus, or the like… then you’re likely to run smack dab into the vicinity of pungent scents that do not please your nose.

Generally speaking, I don’t mind the bus. It’s easy and inexpensive. I do hate it though when people on the bus use their cell phones to try to play it off like they have important business matters to attend to. Playing it off by talking loudly to impress. Talking obnoxiously loud to impress. Impress who? Us bus riders? Ever since “The X Files,” phoners, I think, have believed somehow that if they pull out a cell in public…on the bus, in the grocery line, at the doctor’s office, etc… then proceed to converse loudly and with great animation, then other folk will think they have BIG business afoot. Sooo phony. Sooo tiresome. I hate cell phoning in public.

Musings About the L.A. Weather…

I hate this cold weather we’re having. It’s abnormal. Strange. This is bone-chilling cold. Artic. Not warm and Pacific. It’s obvious that the chickens have come home to roost. We’ve screwed up and brought on Global Warming; now, nature is rebalancing itself. The seasons are off. Or, let’s say, they’ve repositioned themselves. When you get up or go to bed here in Los Angeles, it feels like San Francisco. Cold mornings and nights. Somewhat warm afternoons. But the cold… It reminds me of back east in its intensity. I’d gotten used to the warm for more than twenty-five years and I hate being cold now. But I’ll adapt.

Exercise in the Morning…

I did yoga for a half an hour this morning. I like yoga. It relaxes me in ways I don’t understand. All I know and need to know is that it keeps my body flexible, supple, strong.

I use a video tape or DVD to do yoga. Haven’t tried a class yet. Most of my videos are in the Sara Ivanhoe’s “Twenty Minute Yoga” series. Twenty minutes is just long enough to relax me and do some body toning. Which yoga is also good for.

I like doing yoga first thing in the morning. I like to get my blood flowing, my brain cells awakened, and my body celebrating another day of life.

As Martha Stewart says, “It’s a good thing.”

Today Is Sunday…

I’m in my Weekend College classroom. I’m teaching a Sociology class called “We Real Cool: Fantasies & Realities of Black Masculinity.” We’re using bell hooks’ book, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. I’ve got a great class of students. They’re interesting and fun and perceptive. It’s been great spending my weekend (all day Saturday and Sunday) with them.

When I went to lunch, I noticed the warmth of the day. This one is a perfect L.A. day…the kind that causes people move to Southern California. Haven’t had much of it being warm and beautiful outside lately, so I’m luxuriating in today. I can see outside from my second floor classroom. This is what I see: Red Spanish tile roofs atop white-washed buildings, the bare arms of trees, light blue sky. I can even hear church bells ringing. Just to give things the heavenly touch, you know.

I hope it’s warm tomorrow. And the day after. I think we’ll have warm weather most of the week. I suppose I shouldn’t obsess about the weather. Can’t help it though. L.A. spoils you. You get used to seeing craggy mountains standing majestically in the distance. You get used to seeing the sun beaming down on mansions clinging to sides of the Hollywood Hills, to the cliffs of Malibu. You get used to admiring the symmetry of tall palm trees lined up, edging side walks. You get used to listening for the singing of Cottonwood trees, their leaves moving in concert when a light breeze comes along. Yeah. It’s easy to get seduced by L.A.

On warm and beautiful days.

(end)

Adventures of a Maverick Author 4: Teaching Mee Street

Copyright 2007 - All Rights Reserved

One of the advantages for a writer who is also a college professor is using your own book as text for a class. I’ve done that in my Sociology class and English classes several times since my book, The Mee Street Chronicles came out in February of 2007. It’s always an advantage and an adventure to find out what your reader-students have to say about your work. An adventure—a journey both scary and exhilarating. An advantage—a chance to learn things as a writer about my readers. What I’ve learned, thus far, on this journey with my book, is that I can never assume or predict anything about people. People are full of surprises. They are curious. They’ll ask all kinds of questions once they feel comfortable enough with me to do it. They tell me things about myself that I never realized consciously before. They love my stories. They respond to them with warmth, empathy, and good humor. With respect and with love.

The subtitle for my memoir is Straight Up Stories of a Black Woman’s Life. I think that it’s apt because the stories are straightforward, pull no punches, and truthfully tell it like it is—or was. The stories are “straight up”—no chaser. No mixer to dilute them. No cherries or fruity add-ons to soften the taste; no umbrellas or gimmicky decorations to pretty them up. You get what you get. Or, rather, you get what I lived.

I wrote these stories for those who are lost, who think they aren’t good enough, who are stymied by shame about who they are, who are struggling just to keep their heads up every day. I wrote my book for you—because I was lost. Because I was riddled with toxic shame about who I am. Because I never, ever thought I was good enough. Because I kept drowning in alcohol, in shame, in those voice-tapes that play on and on in my head. I wrote my book to tell you not to give up, to show you that lost or not you can find your path—that you can find your way. Apparently, my Freshmen English students got the message. And liked it enough to wax eloquent about my book. -end-

Erika Alatriste said:
“The Mee Street Chronicles is a great book. There are three parts to the book and they are all great in their own way. This book leaves you wanting more details, more stories, and more memories. My favorite story is “Fever.” It is full of passion, emotion, and is very descriptive. I really enjoyed it because everyone is aware of how men and women are in a relationship and how they first connect, but no one ever talks about same sex relationships. The narrator is very descriptive when it comes to the love of her life. The way the narrator described her love would make anyone fall in love. It is so romantic and leaves the reader wanting more. I would recommend anyone to read this book because it is one of those books that once you start reading you don’t want it to end.”

Marilyn Mata said:
“In my opinion, it is unusual for an author to write about her sexual orientation because society always pushes a heterosexual agenda. The author of The Mee Street Chronicles is truly an admirable woman who writes with honesty and bravery about her struggle with her sexual orientation, alcoholism, racism, social pressure and her working experiences in the field of AIDS. Mee Street has been the best book I have read in a long time. One of the things this book describes is how sexual identity discrimination was practiced a few decades ago in this society. In the story, “Predators,” a woman named Anita Bryant announced on national television that people who are homosexuals are recruiting children to become gay or lesbian. People are always searching for reasons to discriminate against homosexuality. Today, we also hear hateful comments against homosexuality. One of my classmates made an ignorant comment saying gay people should be forbidden to get married because homosexuality causes AIDS and that access to health care will decrease while insurance rates will increase. This, of course, is incorrect. AIDS is not a “homosexual disease.” Anyone can get it. This book opens people’s eyes about sexual orientation. It helps you realize that coming out of the closet is not easy, and how heterosexuals leave a mark on homosexuals.”

Grace Cha said:
“The unique quality of this book is that the events feel so tangible. After reading the story, one can almost say he or she experienced what the author had in the past. The book isn’t filled with superficial comments or ideas in order to put an image in front of the audience; it only gives you the honest truth about an individual. Before I opened up the book and began to read, I wondered what I could possibly learn from this book. Having read it, I believe that this book has taught me many things. This book is written by an incredible author who took that bold step and told her life story. I never knew anyone who is lesbian or gay and although I was never really against it, I also never knew the difficulties they faced or the hardships they have in life or all the hatred and pain caused merely because they are seen to be different. This book changed my life. It changed my views about everything in life. For example, I ask myself this question now when I catch myself judging others: Who are we to judge what the norm is and what goes against the norm? Because of reading about this individual’s life, I have become more aware of the issues that are in the world around me and I am less scared to come out and express my feelings. I can stand in a room full of people who disagree with my opinions and I won’t feel little or intimidated. Now, I’m not scared to be different or worried that I’m different from others.”


The Mee Street Chronicles: Straight Up Stories of a Black Woman's Life is available from http://www.amazon.com/ or from the publisher http://www.kerlak.com/

From the Evansville Notebooks: In the Boot Heel of Indiana

Copyright 2007-All Rights Reserved

Indiana, in the heart of the Midwest, is shaped like a boot. Bloomington, which is home to Indiana University, is up the road a piece from Evansville, which is at the southwestern quarter of the state: In its boot heel. Remembering Evansville is remembering summer. Summer and banana-cream sunrises. Summer gathering her oven-fired skirts around her as the heat begins to bake you even before morning barely begins. In my memory, Evansville will always be Willie Taylor’s barbeque, Bill’s homemade Chow Chow, Allen’s Lounge, The Paradise, Lincoln and Kentucky Avenues, the University of Evansville (first named Evansville College), Posey County melons, biting into a home-grown tomato, eating fresh-caught blue gills, stopping to watch barges and motor boats plow across the bosom of the Ohio River. Evansville will always be summer. Summer and cornfields roasting under August flame. Summer and vermillion sunsets. I landed in Evansville, which sits on a bend of the meandering Ohio River, after undergrad and grad school at Indiana University. Back then, in 1967, it was a retiring, mid-sized city where ten percent of the 200,000 population was Black. I remember there being one building that might have passed muster as a skyscraper—the Old National Bank, approximately twenty stories high. And there were three newspapers (I wrote a feature column for The Evansville Courier), one four-year college, an Indiana State University extension campus, one modest-sized museum, two exterior shopping centers, one small airport, one bus station, and no passenger train depot. You could drive in a couple of hours on two-lane highways to Louisville, Kentucky, to Cincinnati, Ohio, or to St. Louis, Missouri. If you wanted to go to Indianapolis, which is in the middle of the state, it would take a bit more drive time. The thing I remember right off about Evansville is that the streets there had German names that I couldn’t pronounce. (The spelling and pronunciation were quite foreign to me, being from the South and all where the names are quite vanilla-plain.) The original settlers that turned Evansville into more than just a river landing for trade goods were, I found out later, German, Irish, Jewish, and British immigrants. And that included, according to the history books, people on the run from war or famine or the law, people kicked out of Europe for being who they were, and poor folk trudging west to find a home.


When I first visited Evansville, in the mid sixties, I’d been invited for the weekend by a fellow student who’d lived there all of her life. As we drove into town that afternoon, I almost ran over Ron Glass (the actor) who leaped out into Lincoln Avenue (which was the main drag in the Black part of town) as if he had bumpers on his behind. He flagged us down and bounded over to the driver’s side of my car. He asked whose car we were riding in. Ron, a student himself at Evansville College, stared at me while I was being introduced, nodded his recognition of me, then proceeded to chatter away. At the time, I thought he was fiercely handsome, brash and a little overbearing. (When it comes to being brash and overbearing, I’d have to say it takes one to know one.) God only knows what he thought of me though we soon got to be friends. Of course that was before he graduated and left Evansville for the actor's life in New York and, eventually, in Los Angeles where he landed a starring role in the television series, “Barney Miller.”

Eventually, I ended up living in Evansville. The how and why of that is a tale for a winter’s eve around the fire. Suffice to say, for the moment, that the circumstances were messy. Full of high drama…which, for me, during those days, most likely meant I was running from something. I was. In fact, I was running from several things. All at the same time. And Evansville looked like a convenient hideout.

(I’ll let you in on just a few tidbits to keep you interested and tempt you to read more in Mee Street II when that book comes out in the future.)

By the time I got around to living in Evansville, I was out of graduate school, carrying a torch for a woman named Stacey, trying to find my balance, bewildered and lost because Mama had died and Daddy had remarried. (His new wife and I never saw eye to eye though that didn’t keep me from going home from time to time.)

I mention all this to say that by the time I stumbled out of graduate school, I was broken-hearted, grieving, rudderless, and entirely without focus or direction. My mother was no longer around to point me in a direction she thought I ought to go. Which meant that I was without the navigator I’d always depended on. The love of my life…the woman whom I had desperately wished to skip down the road of life with was now traveling a path that I could not follow. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I had gotten the requisite degrees. Now, something was supposed to happen. Something like living my life. Something like living happily ever after.

Something like getting a job. But what kind? Where? And how? While I was in my last semester of graduate school, somebody said something about a job referral bank on campus. I checked it out. There was a teaching position in Ohio at Wilberforce College and I had experience with teaching in college. I was teaching, while getting my Master's, as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the English Department at I.U.

So. Okay, I said to myself. I’ll apply. But I needed a resume. A soror helped me piece one together. We didn’t exactly know what we were doing and we didn’t know anybody to ask about these things but we muddled through. WE put it together and I mailed it off. Then, I waited. And waited. And waited. And started to panic. School was ending in sixty days and I didn’t have any place to go. Didn’t have a job.

My brain had gone into meltdown mode and I couldn’t figure out what to do. All I could think was that everyone I had loved had gone away from me. I didn’t know how to handle the emotions…the grief. They were raging inside me. Mama was dead. Stacey had kicked me to the curb. Daddy had married a woman who was…well, let’s just say he deserved better. (But I don't think he knew that.)

So I couldn’t go home. Wouldn’t.

Then, I visited Evansville. And while visiting that first time, I saw Evansville College. It was a nice little campus. Postage stamp small compared to the leviathan, Indiana University. It was suggested that I apply there for a teaching position. I did. They had absolutely no faculty or staff of color. And the pressure was on, by the late sixties, to hire a Black face. They hired mine. I became the first Black, full-time (but not tenure track) instructor there. They gave me a year to year contract. No security in the contract but I didn’t understand the ins and outs of all that anyway. I grabbed the offer.

And so began my deep, long sleep in a cave called Evansville, Indiana. A sleep that was full shadows and specters pale as death. A sleep always haunted by nightmares. A sleep that went on for fourteen-years.

(end)

Retrospective Series 2: Anthem

Copyright 1980- All Rights Reserved

Note: This piece was originally written and published in September 1980.

There is an ancient Greek myth about a monster called Medusa—who had snakes instead of hair growing from her head and whose face was so horrible, so terrifying, so repulsive that anyone who dared look upon it was instantly turned to stone.

That legend captures the way I used to feel about death. I’d always backed away in terror and dread from the Reaper. Thinking it an abomination. Thinking it a jeering, pitiless specter that mocked the very essence of life. I thought of death that way until the time that fast, black train boarded someone dearest to me in all the world.

When that happened, the ground under my feet shook and slid away…the bottom fell out. And I knew I had to confront the enigma of death, look it full in the face—because my life depended on it.

It has been said that death and life are twins born of yet unfathomed mysteries in the womb of time. Death and life, two sides of the same coin, bound together like beginnings and endings, a continuum whose parts cannot be separated.

A beginning for me was in 1967 when I came to Evansville, Indiana. At 23, I hardly knew anything of Black pain, Black survival, the Black streets. I understood nothing, then, of the Black, smiling faces masking festering wounds. Understood nothing of standing in unemployment lines stretching around the block; of dodging the rent man ‘cause you got laid off last week and the rent’s due today; of kissing up to Miss Ann at the Welfare Office for food stamps; of the ritual of last hired and first fired. Understood nothing of smashed hopes struggling to live anyway in back alley crap games; of the eternal dream of hitting the numbers for two thousand; of sudden violence waiting at the next corner; of Blue Monday at the joints—laughing to keep from crying, or fighting cause you’re too damn mean to cry; of searching for someone on Saturday night to please, God, give you hard loving and make the night sweet as blackberry wine. Understood nothing of what did I do to be so Black and Blue?

I had yet to taste, in those days, the bittersweet juices of living the Black life—and surviving. For I had not yet found myself trapped. I had yet to hear the underbelly of the blues whispering to me about the bitchiness of a lady called life and the odds of getting over with her. I had yet to come eyeball to eyeball with the truth: You live for today ‘cause tomorrow ain’t promised.

I understood none of these things when I came to Evansville. Nor had I found the precious legacy of Black folk which had been hidden away behind Hollywood mirrors, at the bottom of politicians’ trunks filled with smoky illusions, in the dusty, spider-webbed basements where historians had, fearfully, buried it. The paradox and genius—the essence, the spirit and legacy of ordinary, everyday Black folk had not been my teacher. And at 23, I did not understand it. Not then.

While he lived, Ronald Lee Johnson was, in a very real way, my mentor. Was a man who taught me, by his example, about the Black life. And now his death, though it seems a useless and wasteful one, is teaching me even more. Now, as I try to tally up the things, the events, the people who have influenced my life most deeply, changed it most profoundly—now, in all honesty, I have to admit that what has caused me pain and what has nurtured me must be given equal weight. Both are intertwined. Both are father and mother to the person that I am. For you cannot grow without pain and joy, without setbacks and encouragements, without endings—which are, in themselves, beginnings.

In the thirteen years I’ve lived in Evansville, I’ve seen the complexity, the toughness, the brilliance of the Black spirit. I’ve witnessed the courage, the laughter, and the tears—the resiliency that makes Black folks who they are. I understand, now, that the blues and the spirituals are not divorced from each other, but are one and the same: songs celebrating life. And I have finally seen that nothing is constant. Everything is risk. And perhaps our only hope in this life is sharing and giving love.

Sudden death is no stranger to Black folk, and my anthem is not the first written for a man who was gentle of spirit and who died before he could grow old. From the beginning, Black people learn to live on the cutting edge—with death lurking just beyond the shadows, with promise and despair hovering just above the head and heart. Our lives smolder with the possibilities of hope and despair. Our lives—like a splendid, but tattered cloth—are weaved of light and dark. Of dreams, needs, and disappointments. Of blemishes and of perfections. Our lives are shot through with gold and dross, with midnight tears and noonday laughter, with the copper taste of blood-pounding rage, and the sweet, night-smell of jasmine. Our lives are a testament to the circle of life, affirming its balance, its unity—recognizing no separation in the contradictions of life, recognizing that there are no beginnings without endings, no loving without hurting, no up without down, no life without death.

And so, now, I write a testament, an anthem to my friend who was a Black man. My friend who was of the light and dark. My friend who was a human being—indefinable, unpredictable, ambiguous, paradoxical—a man of tremendous complexity, just as we are. And like us, he was something of a mystery: bewildering, frightening, magical. A delightful tease. A salty pirate. An old-fashioned romantic. A man who tilted at windmills. A human being who saw his own shortcomings and who doubted himself.

Yet, perhaps one can fathom the mystery of a man through those who loved him through those who walked the lifelong miles beside him. Through those to whom he told his dreams. Through those to whom he gave the gift of himself.

For, in the end, it is not a man’s weaknesses, his transgressions, or his faltering steps that he is judged by. A man is judged by those whose lives he touched… and who grew because of it.
(end)

Love Song V: Conjurer

Conjurer

Copyright 2007- All Rights Reserved

speak
my name
and
let
wind
rise

restless

whipping
slipping
through tops
of trees

summoned

invoked
by
you

say
my name

whisper it
to
the
wind

send it
into
ripples
of
air
to
ride
across
the
sky
like sails
full blown
carrying
precious cargo

conjure
wind

conjure
gods
of air

implore them
entreat them
beseech them
bring
me
to you

stir
bird wings

stir
shadowed mist

stir
old bones

and
bid me
come
to
you
bid me

rise
like smoke
to
crisscross
treetops
peaks
cloud banks

rise
on
filaments
of
your
breath

rise
on
whirl winds
trade winds

rise

fly…

and
come.

9/27/07