The Hot Lines: Lover’s Day by TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe

Oh but the longing is terrible
once a heart’s under attack.
I want to love you all the way off.
I want to break your back.

The color of all that’s hysterical
travels along your bones.

Just be near you,
sucking your skin,
not gonna leave you
alone.

Yes dear, of course there are miracles.
A lover that loves, that’s one.
Room with a laughter,
ecstatic disaster
coming to rouse the fun.

We could build an engine
Out of all your raising stars
Tear apart the apart
that seem to think we are

Call of work the next day.
Call it Lover’s Day.
Call it Lover’s Day.

Gimme the keys to your hiding place.
I’m not gonna tear it apart.
I’m gonna keep you
weak in the knees.
Try to unlock your heart.

Your gonna turn me animal.
Your gonna turn me dumb.
Kiss in the night.
Bringin’ the light.
You’re like the raising sun.

I hunger for you like a cannibal.
I’m not gonna let you run.
I’m gonna take you.
I’m gonna shake you.
I’m gonna make you come.

Swear to god it will get so hot it will melt our faces off.
Only we can see, the you, the me in your mirror outside clock.

We’re naked in the light.
We’re jelly
Real tight.

Sooooo soft. Get off. Get off.

Balls so hard they smash the walls
And break the bed
And crash the floor. Don’t stop and laugh and scream and have the neighbors call the cops.
Two lonely eyes have seen the fire blaze.

Can’t forget.
Mark it down.
Call it Lover’s Day.

Yes dear, of course there are miracles
Under your sighs and moans
I’m gonna take you
I’m gonna take you
I’m gonna take you home.

I’m gonna take you home.

I’m gonna take you home.

I’m gonna take you home.

I’m gonna take you home.

4 Hicoo

[after a bath]

I let foriegn oil

Burn wet and cool on my chest

to feel clean again.

[night classes]

Lids drift down eyeballs

laced with leadened lashes dry,

tired and wilting.

[calming down]

The art of waiting:

Everytime you think your bored

Inhale deeply, once.

[giving in]

Like drugs the first drag:

The buzz papercut of cool

Newport on fresh flesh

Bag Serials: Nutcracker #2

It’s 5:15am. I’m behind the Oscars on Rodeo and off the clock. The store doesn’t open for 2 hours anyway. Plenty of time, especially considering that he will be gone until the next 3rd Tuesday of the next odd month of the year. Which would be. Hmm. January 16th. That’s, like, a whole other season!

We mostly stick to the sweaters. This winter they are re-releasing this gorgeous little wool turtleneck, eggplant purple with a thin white corded belt. All piled up, they give under us them like hands through warm fresh cookie dough. And there’s tons of this stuff back here: big puffy winter coats, furry hats, those tiny black gloves everyone is wearing. Oh, and these cute Santa throw pillows, which are SO convenient when we start, you know, getting more creative.

You know.

And it’s SO nice in the back of truck, not cold and harsh like you’d expect at all. He put a red light in there, just like out of a movie or something. And it’s nice and warm and just climbing though all those clothes, thousands of dollars worth, before anyone buys them. I have to admit; it kind of turns me on. I wonder sometimes-this is so embarrassing but-sometimes when I ring a customer up I sniff their purchase a little just to, you know, see if there is a trace of us still in there. Once, I swear, I caught a little white dab right on the collar of a dress-casual button-up the day after he left. Sooooo embarrassing.

I think I am going to use my discount to get some of those pants this year. The new ones. They were fun. Nice fabric, long as you watch out for the studded side. “Spoiled” maybe. Or, maybe “Slut.” I don’t know. Besides, I mean, I’m getting a pair for Kimberly anyway. And I deserve a Christmas gift for myself, for a change. A keepsake. I bet he would get a kick out of them come January.
________

‘bout 20 miles to Los Angeles. Don’t even need a road sign at this distance. Every city’s got a tell. Just have to ride enough; keep your eyes open. LA is one of the easier ones. That alien lookin’ haze in the sky just creeps right up on you. Not the biggest fan of LA, not by a long shot, but that sky is kinda pretty sometimes. Some good people in LA.

It’s the usual load for this time of the year. Stacks of cheap clothes for rich people. Boxes of furry boots and tight pants. I’m not a man for fashion, ‘specially in this town. All shinny and loud like on those cheap strippers on rap videos. I just don’t get it.

Money is money though. And the ride from Seattle is nice enough. I miss the leaves back on the home though. Nothin like a midwest fall.

The Color of Water

Well, the blacks are obviously criminals
And those asians are oh, so polite,
The latins can pass once the accent been slashed
So damnit, let’s all just be white.

Cus world music ’s white music like jazz was
And white hip-hop’s not hip-hop, it’s rock
Good neighborhoods are were the melanin is far
And bad one ‘swhere peoples ain’t bright.

So let Irish be Irish no longer.
Jews don’t care about Torah or Law
Sicilians are tanned and the Nordic’s are bland
And Egyptians are proof and South Africans too
That at base we are one with no culture or tongue
Cus it all just evolved like the science involved
and each land was a rung and each thought at end comes
to perfection, a blankness, all white.

Be the color of water when anything solid seems to disturb the new tide.
It’s the color of ice when dot on a height says no snowflakes more unique then I.

It’s the steam on the mirror
Between you and a face
made of off-yellow indian arab ancestry
million earth light-years made dark matter mass,

and a cell full of dye,

and a thought made of glass

that’s a fragile and crystal as narcissist pond
and the water condensed when your cleansed and embalmed
in a fog made of light
son of Canaan, son of night
son of God who is white
cus he must be.

Make me white just like heaven and Reagan,
White like tofu fried chicken breast milk.

White like gun in your hand
and a brain make of silk
and a last gasp of light like the sun.

__________

The lastest in a series of poems about racial identity that have been banging around my head lately. With all the Reverand Wright stuff swirling around in the past couple weeks (is there anything that guy said that EVERY white liberal friend I know haven’t been saying since ’01?) I’ve found myself more then a little preoccupied with the idea of deconstructing race. For the record, I don’t black is very useful term either and while I have heard of the book of the same title of this poem, I have never read it. Nothing else to say but that…I’m slowing coming out of a fog this week.

In the Field: A More Perfect Union

This one was personal.

I use to think that I maybe one day I would try to run for office, that if not, noone would articulate things honestly. It’s a very arragont outlook, I know, but I think all of us feel sometimes that the whole world is crazy and no one ever will really speak to what seems like such obvious concerns. Thankfully I my world is filled with friends who very quickly show me that I am not alone.

Today, though who knows what the time will bring, I do not feel it NESSIARY to get power in order to here the concerns of my heart spoken honestly by a government I live in. It’s been building, but today, senator Obama convinced me that ultimately, real change can only come from hoping in each other and spreading the power all around. At this point, even just with this one statement, I feel I don’t have to worry about the truth being spoken in clear, unarguable terms. It’s all out there. Now it’s just a matter of doing whatever part I can, big or small, to help make this articulated, documented and worldwide distibuted dream become a reality.

Digger Please: Racist Gandhi and the Death of the Hero

welcome to the first addition of DiggerPlease, a place for me to rant on length about shit I read about in a glorified rumormill. But seriously, Digg is a fancinating place full of interesting stories and more interesting insights into the uncensored minds and heart of net-surfers world whiles. So, every once in a while when things strike, I may or may not write it up right here. Enjoy!

________

Post Overview:
A surprising tearjerker from a source many would almost be embarrassed to be caught looking at. This article was snatched from Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s site, self-help guru an d writer of the NYT best seller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In one of a series of interviews with the good doctor, Dr. Stephen is asked to classic “who is your hero,” question.

The response was immediate and obvious:

Mahatma Gandhi. Let me read you his personal mission statement:

“Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:
* I shall not fear anyone on Earth.
* I shall fear only God.
* I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
* I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.
* I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

The big draw, and source for most of the comments, came in the form of the meat of that mission statement along with  from Ghandi and his grandson on the principles Ghandi proported to try to live by:

He was so angry that he wanted eye for eye justice. He wanted to respond violently to the people that humiliated him. But he stopped himself, and said ‘that’s not right.’ It was not going to bring him justice. It might make him feel good for the moment, but it wasn’t going to get him any justice.

Tears followed. Lives were changed. People threw up a little in there mouths.

Notable, the doctor’s fairly astute commentary on Gandhi’s life and it’s broader connection to concepts of true leadership where more or less ignored.

Kneejeck response:
It’s Ghandi! One of the few sacred cow of WORLD culture left. There is MLK (who appearantly had hoes on the side and is really stinky- fuck umm), JFK (more mobbed up then Corloni and even MORE hoes – check on that one) and there is Ghandi.

So of course, first hits came from those pesky optimisms extolling virtures of Ghandi and his words. Some…as usually were more elequent then others:

selme (23+ diggs): I just read an article on espn.com about the Stanford recruit that was just gunned down in LA…to read this Ghandi article right afterwards was illuminating. My first reaction to the LA story was of vengeance, kill the bastard that did this. But that is the animal response and just perpetuates the cycle, with no true justice…I wonder if our country could ever really accept Ghandi’s message on a societal scale. It would be great, but I doubt it.

selme (23+ diggs): “I just read an article on espn.com about the Stanford recruit that was just gunned down in LA…to read this Ghandi article right afterwards was illuminating. My first reaction to the LA story was of vengeance, kill the bastard that did this. But that is the animal response and just perpetuates the cycle, with no true justice…I wonder if our country could ever really accept Ghandi’s message on a societal scale. It would be great, but I doubt it.”

BuzzDiggity (+41 diggs) Ghandi for president!

Dino74 (+5 diggs) I feel lame for looking at this on a Covey site, but it’s powerful. Gonna go take a steel wool bath now.

THEN….things took a dark, forebodding turn!!!!!!!

First there was this:

suzywang (-16):Google Gandi and you might find the true Gandi, he owned a newspaper in Africa that was aimed against black`s ,calling them 2nd class and not god worthy animals.He also was a pedophile sleeping with his own grand daughters. Sorry but NO

poetheunclothed(-4):I’m not inspired by racists, sorry. Gandhi wrote books about how he hated black people. He did some good things but definitely not one of the greatest humans ever.

And then this one:

Brassbud (-1) The only reason Gandhi’s strategy worked is because he was against the British. If Gandhi was living under the rule of a real terror, He, his family, and anyone within about a 100 yard radius would have been dead within 5 minutes of anyone knowing who this guy even was.

Not that I don’t have huge respect for Gandhi, but people seem to think his methods could work against some other cultures. People like Osama could watch half the world population die and call it a good day, and that just wasn’t true of the British.

And followed by a swift right from this guy:

morpheus69(-1)Gandhi was a religious extremist who forced the partitioning of India which resulted in the endless Hindu-Muslim violence that we have seen over the past 60 years.
India was well on its way to independence before Gandhi…the British had already decided to cut their losses and were looking for a graceful exit and handover of power to a coalition of Hindu and Muslim led by Nehru. Ghandi saw an opportunity to exploit this situation to his own advantage. He stirred up populist Hindu anger against Muslims and is largely responsible for the religious violence we have seen in India and Pakistan since. India would have been far better off had noone ever heard of a man named Gandhi.

And suddenly, appearantly, the truth of the article was found. It had nothing to do with leadership, being brave in the face overwhelming odds or standing for what you believed in. No, this was just one more tool the Ghandi propaganda machine was using to get you to think having hunger strikes against the government was a good thing. That and that black people are stupid. Which is a horrible racist thing to say of course. Unless, you know, it’s true. Are there ghetto black people in africa?

Commentary:
I remmber similar conversations coming up when Micheal Eric Dyson released his biography of MLK. In it, Dr. Dyson included some apparently well founded details on several affairs he had on the side. Some critized him for tansishing the one example of aferican american leadership EVERYONE seems to think highly of. Other (including me) praised him for showing MLK to be, not a massiah, but a man who did the best he could dispite making the same mistakes everyone does. But a quite few others, some of which I had conversations with, took the veiw that these affairs basically showed Martin to be a fraud, worth of more scorn then praise. JFK, Clinton and Ben Franklin (though strangely in that case, the fact that Ben loved him some french hoes seems to just make people like him more.

Looking at the info, just as in these other cases, it seems that the rumors are indeed true. [more on Ghandi rasicm and other arguments] It is also true that he [good things about Ghandi] and that ultimately the lagecy of these actions inspired millions of people world wide. Both true. My question is, why does it have to be one way or another. Why do people have to be either saints or self-interested assholes? Why oh why do some so vimentaly hate people who even TRY to make this world a better place.

I have hypothsis. I think that cynics are ultimately just smart cowards. They prefer to see the world go to shit, hoard their own little piece of wealth and then die into a black hole of nothingness then even imagine that the problems they bitch about could be things worth fighting against. They perfect the easy way, to be selfish, lonely inteletuals in a world where everyone is looking out for number one. It’s a very american point of view and, admitatly, an easy one to accept considering the state our world has ended up in. It is esp. convent if you are living a relatively comfortable life in general and thus have no self-interest anything being improved beyond your own wallet (or conversely if you have nothing and no-one has ever really believed in you)

Whatever the case, the only danger to your little objectivist paradise is anyone else who tries to make change in the world and ESP. those that seem to be doing. People like this break both of the major tennets of modern cynics:
1)    that everyone is ultimately just looking out for themselves
2)    that the world is doomed and it is futile for anyone to try to save it
And of course, there is nothing proud people hate more then someone that seem to prove there worldview wrong. So what do you do? Bash heros, left in right. He’s not so good. There not so tough. Sure, they SEEM good, but ultimately it’s just a fasade. Don’t look here, for nothing exist that conflicts with this tiny little world I have created for myself. [waves he’s hands misteriously]

One of my best friends is among the most racism people I know. Most white people I know have said shit that has been really fucked up a times, often personal directed towards me. Shit, Rocky has some overtones that don’t jive with me, but you know what? Rocky is still a good ass movie with a lot of heart. And those white friends of mind are still cool people the vast majority of the time. And that rasict best friend of mine is like a brother to me (and is, incidentally, now dating a sister) Racism sucks and continues leads to some incredible fucked up justifactions for things , but it doesn’t mean racist people are evil, stupid, or don’t have some good things to offer in life. It just means that they are ignorant. (Some are willfully ignorant, but that is another story) We need heros in life, they give us something to look up too. And we need those heros to be imperfect humans, as that shows us that being a hero is not beyond the relam of normal people. If you want to be a cynical bastard, fine, but don’t fight those that try the best they can in life. Just get the fuck out of the way.

Bag Serials: Nutcracker #1

“Oh, just hurrying to Rodeo to replace these two size too small pants. Hee,” through a fixed jaw and arced raised eyebrows while grabbing a fresh Dunkin Donuts coffee.

“But you have a very merry Christmas.”

A sheet of studded rhinestones pressed out “Princess” through the back of the plastic bag in her left hand and the server says,

”Aww you’re so sweet, And you too!”
________

Cigarette cut jet black Oscars, the bling back collection. Sporting all the latest 90s throwback, post-feminist affirmations like, “Slut”, “Spoiled” and “Jappy!” But I must only get Princess. Princess or nothing. Women. On top of that, get this, $50. That’s after a discount from that friend of her’s. What’s-her-face. But apparently they’re all the rage and it’s not like I don’t have the money to spend. Besides, blowjobs that good are hard to come by. No gag reflex or anything. Merry Christmas to me. And a happy happy New Year.

Bag Serials: the Ineviable Treason of Thomas Arnold Haggard #4

A fifth gin and tonic in hand and his head full of fish, at 3 a.m. Thomas Haggard mused for the fifth time on how similar that intense Aryan-looking drummer was to nameless name he exchanged pleasantries with just before boarding that fateful train to Amsterdam and Nadia said, “Oh, him again. You never did tell me his name.”

And Mr. Haggard, being the honorable man that he is, mumbled something inaudible to which Nadia said, “What was that?” and leaned within an inch of his ear.

To which Thomas again said, “mumm fumUMtomm,” resulting once again in a soft questioning reply from Nadia, her lips now skimming the remarkable coarse hairs of his left ear, her broach blossoming to him from her tall, full, utterly unremarkable chest.

To which Tom,

(being a man never so rude as to ignore a pointed question)

took out a piece of paper and wrote the name and number and address of some contact in the small Russia town of Ertsventiva who may or may not have used an alias anyway. And he said some vague things about the time and place and reason why that contact needed to set up a internet filtering system on the Iranian consulate’s house and how pleasant, remembering back, those sad islamic zealots were dressed and how polite they were and unusually hospitable.

And that night, despite being a man who resist over-indulgences when not for sake and at the behest of his lord and savor Jesus Christ, Mr. Haggard, here in Amsterdam for the first time ever, was man who made love to a beautiful woman. He was a man who saw Finnish people play nigger music and mused almost arrogantly on the secret, juicy things he had seen and that laughed loudly with a mouth full of Spanish ice cream to a Russian train attendant that surely would have made a great government information technology expert give the chance, that shared his vision for use of such expertise to make for a more free and demcratic world, that stared mercifully into his eyes through every boring exploit, every degradation at the hands of (no less patriotic) world leaders, every tedious classified assignment with nothing more then patient, gentle kindness.

And staring out his hostel window into the crisp autumn air that evening, Thomas Haggard for once felt his name not so appropriate, perhaps his life not so wasted, as a small round bullet zipped silently through his toupee just as Nadia returned from the lue. For the first time in years and for the last time in his life, Thomas Arnold Haggard felt free.

The Hot Lines: Butterfly by Carlos Andres Gomez

Real estate developers are the natural disasters
what defense contractors are to terrorist attacks.
Both like it quiet and well planned.

Maybe find a soft coffin bed for an only son to rest in.
A used trailer for a family of five to struggle to stay alive in.
An entire religion or region for the public to invest their hate in.

Draped in thick rhetoric that tastes like ash and jet fuel on this tongue when I try to speak.

How does a villager in southern Thailand
prove his family has been living on a plot of land for five centuries
when he’s never needed a deed to come home?

When his great grandmother taught him how to weave bamboo
but he has no photographs to prove it.

When Club Med vacations are waiting to be planned
All those post-tsunami package deals on go-puct.com.
Swollen blood on the new foundations of new hotels.

Renovated

multi-level housing. Multi-million dollar brownstones in Brooklyn. Brokers
racking their brains for the next hip catch phrase,

We won’t call it Bedstey anymore.
Let’s call it…“Stivenson Highs”
or “Bedford Village”
or that place where you can take a Biggie Smalls hood-tour.

Not the lower ninth ward
but Andrew Jackson’s Lower Ninth Ward Estates.

Kick the tenants out and build condos.
Put in a police complex across the street like Cabrini-Green, Chicago.

Near the seventeen street canal in lower Mississippi, homeless mass stream down the bayou. The insurance companies don’t even bother with their typical flimsy alibis
now.

Just refusing the answer any phone calls.
Official statement:
Try to find a trailer for now.

We’ll get to you when we get to your paperwork.

They don’t have effective disaster protocol.
But they’ve got intricate stalling procedures and able accountants.
Practice erasing families like pencil markings.

Turn their stories into bond-fires like heaps of burnt books in Berlin.

An illiterate grandmother
in a wheelchair on top of her roof: dead

Left out in the sun
To be rescued by someone.
Her pained expression almost confused for a smile.

Slavery should have prepared them for this, I guess.

Should have known better then to ask for help when all they were brought here for was to be help.

Because land is worth more then we are.
Natural resources and beachfront property worth more then well-earned wrinkles and baby teeth so ocean liners are beached in Madagascar, excess oil and domestic sewage dumped under the last perfect sand and mangrove swamp.

The shaman said the devil put it there.

83 people abruptly buried after a street kid in Rio brought a shiny piece of metal he found in a hospital dumpster back to his village. Low income housing built on land recently cleared of toxic waste. Watts deemed safe for California immigrants.

An infant
staring at her mother’s abnormal growth before bedtime in Chernobyl
wondering what happened
to her arms.

___________

I first met Carlos in the fall of 2001. We were both University of Penn undergrads at the time and were involved in a campus tutoring program. I remmber in that first meeting a feeling of instant familarity, but ultimately I can’t really trust it. Truth is, Carlos is a inspriation to just about everyone the moment you meet. He is one of those people who’s presence fills the room. Without him, this blog would never had existed.

I heard this piece just yesterday on Carlos’ myspace site and was instantly moved. I had a conversation with a young jewish medical student who relocated to New Orleans who, though not really knowing where to stand, was clearly disturbed by the landgrabs and blantent disregard for human dignity that has and continues to occur on areas devistated by Katrina. People’s homes being demololished without their approval, the increible hurtles citzens are put through just to get back on their feet again, the totally lack of any empathy to their position, the anger at even suggesting that they should be helped. This young well-off jewish medical student told me these things, was clearly touched somehow and yet, through it all, made every effort to justify and overlook and block out what was happening all the while. And she was a good person.

The compacity of people to harden their heart so much for reasons they cannot even articulate really startles me. I think Butterfly captures this fustration and it’s bare, ugly source quite well. Preach bra. Preach.

Bag Serials: the Ineviable Treason of Thomas Arnold Haggard #3

Fortunately though, Thomas Haggard is not in Washington D.C. right now. He is, as mentioned earlier, in Amsterdam; in Amsterdam for the first time, in fact, and is now scoping large of spoonfuls of Dolce De Leche ice cream into his small, mouse-like snout of a mouth between long, rambling retellings of the proud events that brought to him to a Café’ de Hogedaz, with a folder full of classified documents, talking into an obscenely large broach that seems to be making feedback-type sounds now and then, that is the largest thing on the equally large chest of Nadia, the Russian stewardess, who is hanging on his every word, in middle of Amsterdam.

Thomas Haggard has never eaten Dulce de Leche ice cream before.

This was choice was Nadia’s suggestion, an advisement to compete with the rich red wine gravy she had given him extra portions of just hours before. For all his refusal to be captured too tightly in the pull of any strange advancing woman on this, his first government sanctioned trip abroad, he had to admit that Nadia was an interesting spesimen. Mr. Haggard never much gone for Eastern Europeans types, what with their questionable, flimy accents and the baggage of socialist propaganda still fresh in their sad, oppressed little minds. But Nadia was different. There was a softness to her english that belied the strains of the strict, soviet bluntness of her birth tougue. Her eyes were a startiling grey and were fixed directly into his as he rolled off tale after boring tale of supposed cia missteps, allegitly illegal torture proceding and decripts of the cute things Regain, Haggard cute little persan pussy, did in his tiny studio back home in D.C. It was almost as if she was interested in what he had to say.

Not that this Nadia was a passive.

Her encyclopedic knowledge of Internet security protocol astounded him and they found much in common, despite her lowly employment as a night train attendant just two day’s new to the staff. Stopping at his first jazz club visit after his first tight pull of what Nadia insisted was a just a freshly rolled cigarette, they traded algorithms for replicating the jazz solo with the innocence and wonder of teenagers. And in between sets, she told Thomas of her trips to India and Indonesia and Africa of all places and Haggard gapped that she somehow remaid alive through it all, actually seemed to enjoy these excursions among people so….so foreign.

Tom had no such stories to share. Well, there was that one very drunken night when he mistakenly stumbled into that night club in the far edges of D.C. And though the music was strangely releasing in a way he couldn’t quite discribe and he vaguely remembers being lost in the middle of the dancefloor amid a fog of forbodding dark bodies with his eyes closed and his limps flailing almost uncontrolable, it didn’t really make an impression on him. Mostly he’s just glad he got out alive.