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.

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.

The Hot Lines: Let America Be America Again (By Langston Hughes)

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home–
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay–
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!

________

A very modern sentement from the classic American poet Langston Hughes, who’s birthday just past this past Friday., February 1st.

The struggle for what it means to be an American and the combined struggle of American people is becoming a common conversation point lately. In some ways it is depressing that so many years after Mr. Hughes wrote “I, too Sing of America”the question of the personhood and worth of African-American and immegent lives is still called into question. Still we are left with the assumption, on all sides of the debate, that American = white, civilized = white or that intergation into society = becoming white (never minding the illogical jump of Jews, Irishmen, former serfs and even Arabs at times into the club of whiteness)

With hope, by honoring and discussing the issues Mr. Hughes and others who pushed the ideals of the American experiment to it’s logical, justice-for-all conclusions, we will in time have the courage to work towards letting America truly be America once again.

The Hot Lines: Sermon on the Mount of the Inevitable Progression of Saul to Saul (by Saul Stacey Williams)

Dear Daddy,

Can you see it now?

All the energies swirling from the center, the rings of light, the swarming darkness, the shadows and their sources.

Did you note the seven centers, the transfer of energy, the vibration of sound, your love of the litany.

Did you see how she did that, how I let it seep out, possession.
And jealousy.
And fears.
And doubt.
And fears. Dear Daddy, I do not fear God.

I do not think of him as angry or vindictive or exacting punishment on the prayerful
and prayerless all the same. Do you see now how a mere thought can leave a trail
both light and dark? How awareness must be coupled with action before it overshadows all sentiment and defiles a temple of being?

Do you see now, Daddy, how we are all mystics
(not just Howard Thurman)
working towards the gradual fulfillment of our greatest testament and how many tables and laptops and Cadillacs and pews and pulpits would be overturned in THIS day.

And yet how judgment overshadows the bliss of heightened understanding.

I too see, Daddy, the meaning and need behind the habits you instilled in me.

The prayers before eating and sleeping, the act of giving thanks
and breaking bread ‘n
paying tiads and offering offerings. And through you I’ve learn to think of my profession as professing. God professing through me and I’ve learned to silence the secular so that I to know that I have a calling and Christ Daddy;
it was so important to you that I accepted Christ
as savior and you tried to convert me from the Christ
that you raise me to be.

And you didn’t realized that I never questioned that incarnation of love but questioned
Constantine and King James and the stain glass windows that stained my imagination with images of a God that would not dare live inside of me or Harlem or Brownsville and I questioned where the teachings that the body was a temple were and
that Christ lived within. And that the blood of the lamb was your blood and
mommy’s blood and
my blood and if a doctor told you that your personal diet was tainting the blood the lamb:

would you feed it pig’s feet
and laugh?

I believe in Christ, Daddy.

I read and reread those red letters incased in black binding until I saw it transform
into the red blood incased in your veins and
my veins and
mommy’s. Now there’s a holy trinity.

And the father
is now ghost.

Yes, Daddy. I see you now. Do you see it? Isn’t it beautiful? There is one body. There is one blood and I thank you, Daddy, you taught me that I was a prince and I believed it, ‘for it was you that also taught me to believe.

And I’m going to remember the pride I felt when I stood and walked beside you.
And I’m going to remember your laughter and your fists punching the air to the beat.
And I’m going to remember the one time I saw you cry; it was at your mother’s funeral and how it hurt to sense how alone you felt and how it seemed for a moment that man upstairs became the woman in the coffin.

And I’m going to remember how you lived a daily example of faith and how you never knew were the money would come from, but you how always knew that it would come.

I’m going to remember how you loved to see me imitating you and all the ministers and how that made you laugh and how you,
and they,
inspired me but no church of secular division was big enough to house these dreams,

yes,

dreams Daddy. A subject we never spoke of. Do you see now how they too have there place in reality
and manifestation,
and how water might even help ya remember them. Do you see how it’s all connected?

“Cast your bread,” you would say.

“Cast your bread on the waters and in many days it shall return.” You preached karma, Daddy, and stood dumbfounded at first sight of your Buddhist granddaughter.

I know you see now Daddy, how it’s all connected and heaven is enlightenment and prayer is the constant act of taking action against the mechanical complacency of our nature and sin is not baring witness to the lotus-like unfolding of the highest testament,
love and change.

You died in autumn Daddy

just as the forbidden fruit was falling from the trees. A leaf
that refused to change colors and hold on until winter. I wish you were here.

I wish you had found the will to change your diet and see your every meal as a communion. I wish you had found the will to overcome your grief and allow yourself to be reborn. I wish this were your sermon and not my poem,

and then you would snatch the invisible spirits from the air
and then you would open the doors of the church
and then you would sing in that operatic baritone that made it so easy for everyone to say amen
and I don’t know if I’ll ever listen to Horris Silver again
and I don’t know if I’ll ever stand in this pulpit again
and it may be the last time we all get together
and it may be the last time we all sing together
and it may be the last time. I don’t know
and I know I don’t know
and I may never know, but I would have loved for you to have been here

to teach me.

and I may just call on his name but I would have loved to have call on yours.

which is mine
and ours. There’s power in a name, Daddy.

Saul: a Hebrew name meaning “asked for.”

I never got to tell you how I learned that the apostle Paul never truly changed his name but traveled to far off lands where the letter s did not begin words.

And these words do not begin to express the love I feel and the excitement I feel in knowing you have once again traveled to a land beyond lands
where words themselves do not begin
but rest in the endpoint of their meaning.

Yes you have been struck from a horse once again to be blinded by a light that blinds the sense yet illuminates the path of eternity.
And I know you see it now Daddy.
The distant shapes have become visible.
Hems only hinted at such glory.

And now, my only prayer has been for you to teach me from there what you could not from here. Guide me away from this anger and disappointment into the mirth of your laughter. Show me how love and wisdom are never buried for they rest in the zest of the wind. Guide me to the fireside. Smolder my discomfort with the glowing warmth of the violent flame,

All of these things Daddy,
I ask in your name,

and if it is your will
I ask in the name of the father
which is the name of your son.

_______
I am also the son of a preacher, just as is Saul Stacey Williams, the author of this elergy. And with that, I can attest to the power that comes from a youth constantly preoccupied with questions of faith, sin, humanity and the divine. I can not speak for the life of Saul Williams, but hearing this poem (which you can also hear for yourself at this link) really struck at that clash and rise and peace that comes so often in the lives of those that left the faith of their birth. Like Saul, I believe in Christ now more then ever, though with an imagined, hoped for and seen fulfillment that is beyond the dreams of my youth.

I was also inspired to transcript and post this poem in honor of Martin Luther King, also the son of a man of God, who did so famous believe in the power of dreams. May all of us regain and strength this ability in a world where meaning is said to be useless, love is said to not exist, and God is nothing if not a white man on a cloud staring us down in judgment, jealousy and hate.

The Hot Lines: Baby Poem by Ainsley Burrows

Ok, so this one is call I want to have a baby:

I want to have a baby
but not a normal baby.

I want to have a designer baby.
I want to have….I want to have a prada baby.

A baby by coco channel.
Eyes by versace, hair by pantene pro v swatch teeth windows xp intel pentium chip exceleron processor, not a smart baby…
no…
I want a baby with breast implants.
A botox baby with 22 inch rims and leather interior.

Gatorade blood, nike swoosh, red bull logo baby I can donate to charity. Not a baby that cares…
no.
I need a baby that’s a trend.

I need a baby that comes with a cash back guarantee.

I need a baby with a website,

with a cd burner,

a vintage, post-modern digital voice recognition quartz movement heart baby with a retirement plan. I need a baby with 12 different ringtones.

I need a  baby with call-waiting
and text messaging…

A glossing over-priced over-hyped made in Indonesia with slave labor baby I need a baby that will give me the light and pass the drowwwww….

I need a baby that blazing hip-hop and r-n-b. I need a baby that hangs out with…

Jay-z.

I need a baby with a black album.

I need a baby with a white album.
I need a baby with a grey album. I need a baby, that’s not even a baby. I need a baby I believe is a baby because the baby went platinum.

I need a Che Guevara baby. I need a baby that believes in revolution.
No.
I need a baby that believes in nothing.
I need a vegetarian, tofu-eating baby.
I need a fat-free, low-carb, high-fiber baby. I need a baby with nuclear potential.

I need something. I need anything…

I need something,
Something
to keep me distracted.

Something to keep me from feeling other peoples pain.

Something that can keep me thinking this is the best humanity can do.

I need a baby so I won’t have to deal with reality.

________

Ainsley Burrows is a fantastic poet out of New York by way of Jamacia…or is that Jamacia by way of New York? I’ve never quite got that expression…

Anyway, Ainsley is a master of playing with is audience’s assumptions, switching from obvious laugh lines to slightly uncomfortable images (no….I want a baby with breast implants) in perfect sequence. He will have you laughing with guilt. You can check out the live recording this was transcribed along with tons of voices from the spoken word world on the Indiefeed podcast.

The Hot Lines: Uncle Benz by Narubi Selah

southern boy up north steals about three fifths respect didn’t even buy himself
3 piece pin striped leather belt hat tipped
90 degrees

cuff links tailor made
initials laid
BS

Mr. Big Shot or Mr. Bullsh*t
but still most won’t deny

the flip side still verbatim
loose denim Venom style gold decadence
a pinky ring of course
sipping whites only lemonade under the flimsy shade on the porch

The Source spilling residues of slave made guillotines
cooperating to remain co-exist
Jolted nonetheless
while fatty girls head first dead last
swing up right from right bright
Timbaland trees

the proof is in your royalties
mailed into your ghetto
spent on amaretto
tiny sized handguns white bullet proof
strollers
black bullet proof
soldiers
mad farms milled for steel sucked of natural resource but

that is it of course

and Coltraine is overlooked

and rap concerts are overbooked

and 40 ounces are now found in the same aisle as the grits

checked out by dropouts that now check out hits
and beats your broken heart eating gumbo on the porch

salon made dreadheads
picture perfect in a Benz
a picture perfect Uncle Bens
Willy Lynch blueprint laid across the dash
a bamboozled airbag
anticipating
the driver’s crash
__________

Still holds my personal record for best opening line of spoken words I ever heard. I heard abstract banger from Narubi Selah back in the summer of 2005 on def poets and, both in form and in presentation, it set a new bar for me of what could be accomplished in the art of proformance poetry. As Narubi makes her way through the piece she shifts characters, often in mid-sentence, between a bougie “articulate” to a layback hustler to rapper channeling Lauyren Hill’s flow. Can’t find the vid anywhere, but check HBO rerun, girl be taking folks to school on this one. The perfect way to start The Hot Lines…