The Government’s Plan to Take Away your Ability to Watch Free Reruns of Jersey Shore, The Real Housewives of Whatever, and YES, YES… Love and Hip-Hop

If that’s what it took to get you here, so be it. The government is trying to censor the internet in a way that has First Amendment violation implications, economic disaster written all over it (companies like Google, Yahoo, and Youtube would be taxed so deeply that they would crumble), and the stench of dictatorship all up and through. YES. It goes deep. Click the link and read. If you want to survive, you must be INFORMED. Peace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

Martin Luther Queen

Just call me Martin Luther Queen

Cause relentlessly I’m following my dreams

Put the theme of my being in a rhyme scheme

They stay schemin’, don’t want me to bubble

Awakened from the matrix, guess my power’s too much trouble

Taking my consciousness higher

Tryna break up w/ illusions, yes maya

Who’s gonna guide her if she’s out of my path

Guess the dream’s to awaken at last

Then it’s free roam

Tried to box me, I’m a product of poetic form

I can rhyme, I can sing, I can spit, can’t I dream?

No.

Call me Martin Luther Queen

I’ve risen from my slumber, building evolutionary steam

This train is leaving

Only the station’s stationary

I am related to freedom and that relation’s scary

In a world where captivity’s embraced

Where mirages are for sale and our history’s erased

And any semblance of sanity is simply replaced

Cause the truth would put their victory at stake

Now who you wit?

Yeah, just call me Martin Luther Queen

Cause I’m fighting for my team who has forgotten their place

Problem’s not just at the bottom it’s the plight of the human race

And I’m racing towards reality, awaiting just one light

But I ain’t never been afraid of the night…

Why Can’t We Be Friends? (part 3): The Poem

The real friendships lay in the cut, as quiet as it’s kept

The faux friendships at the fore front trying to get the bouncer to look at two pairs of bouncing titties

Poppin lips and gums and bouncing hips and hurting toes in 97 inch heels and tight dresses

Afraid to say the hard things, but brave enough to say the heartless things

Afraid to take criticism wrapped in love, but brave enough to take her beau and wrap him in your whim and your sheets

I see them

They spout the most profound three lettered phrases like, “Bitches be fake…”

While wearing their acrylic nails, extensions, and patent pleather heels

My dear, where is your mirror?

The real friendships lay in the cut, as quiet as it’s kept

The faux four traipsing down the canals of cruel laughter when one’s heart is broken

Or one’s heel breaks just before they enter the lair of deceit

Where they’ll pass themselves off as “having it together”

Having just spent their check on clothes not befitting the weather

And take body shots until their body drops on top of bodies unremembered in the light of dawn

Bare booty and chess forgot the queen and became a pawn

And call their faux homie to brag about exploits where  they were the one exploited

That was Saturday, this is Sunday, they’ve transformed into the annointed

They’re leaping for joy in aisles of divinity, tears replacing sweat

Searching for pieces of where their Godliness was last left

And real friendship is elusive, as quiet as it’s kept

I can’t befriend a foe or a faux who knows not self

So I stay stuck in the back of a Butler book

A fledgling trying to sew my talents into a parable

It sounds terrible, but the real friendships lay in the cut

I open wounds to commune with them, hoping they won’t get salty with me

I walk beside my friends, and in our weird, well read way

We are content

They tell me my dress is cute and it doesn’t feel like competition

We wear flats and dance with each other and are happy when one is flirted with

That means there is hope for the no make-up, brown skin, coarse haired clique who isn’t a clique

And then it clicks

And we stop keeping the secret to ourselves…

 

Why Can’t We Be Friends? (part 2): Actually We Can… Can’t We?

My high school best friend and sister in solidarity, Malena (pronounced Ma-lane-ya), has been through a lot with me to come out on the other side of friendship and move into sisterhood. We were the awkward kids in high school, who knew what was going on politically in the world, weren’t afraid to speak out about it, and who used art and poetry as a vehicle to express ourselves. We weren’t outcasts, but we definitely weren’t “in-crowd” material. We found each other in our junior year, instantly clicked, found out we were both Taureans born 3 days apart in the SAME HOSPITAL, and the rest was history. For the rest of high school and a year after, we were closer than close… we had conversations without speaking audibly… it was a beautiful and transcendent friendship that a lot of young people don’t find. We were fiercely loyal to each other and would protect each other against anyone or anything that sought to bring harm. To make a long story short, eventually, we DID allow other people to come between us, and our friendship would wane without fully dissipating for five long, painful years. This year, we both turned 25, and as I said in my “Grown and Unknown” post… I felt transformed after this birthday. Malena and I began to talk more, and she asked me how I felt about 25… we hung out again after a few years, and even though our friendship isn’t the same or as solid as it once was, we are on our way back there. Why? Because we both still have that fierce loyalty, we know what it means to live without sisterhood, we know how society tries to pit women (especially black women) against each other, and we realize that we never really stopped being friends… we just had these huge blinders in front of our eyes, in the form of other human beings.

Meilani (not to be confused with Malena) was my first friend in the world of slam poetry. I loved her instantly because she had dry humor, danced off beat to make me laugh, and wasn’t afraid to go out or eat out alone. I knew we’d be friends for life, when she slowed down to walk with me during the national slam in San Francisco in 2005 because my ankles were killing me from walking so far… the rest of my team had left me, and so far, this had been a disastrous week. She listened when I said that my team treated me like an outcast, while others told me “well that’s not my experience.” She openly checked dudes who gawked at her for too long or tried to get too familiar too quickly. Meilani was a beast in compact form, and we were on the same team. Again, we fiercely protected and defended each other from anything harmful. In this friendship, we also checked each other when one was going astray. Astray from what? Our beliefs, morals, and things we promised ourselves we’d adhere to as basic human beings aware of the dismal human condition. In 2006, Meilani went away to college. This was a hard  change for me, but we wrote letters and talked on the phone a lot. In [insert a year because I don't remember the exact one], Meilani got a boyfriend. Now, THIS changed things. As a Taurus (Malena can back me up here), I’m very possessive of my friends. We didn’t talk as much, I didn’t understand a lot of what she was experiencing and could only respond from a philosophical/psychological perspective, which I’m sure annoyed us both. While this friendship has had its ups and downs, it has survived on two things: honesty and resilience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I met Jazz through another person in the poetry world. She was 16 and, in my opinion, wild. Jazz had been through a lot in her young life, and wanted to express it through art. We all welcomed her into our circle of friends, and she grew to be one of the fiercest poets. She would often remind us not to leave her out, to invite her to everything, sometimes even growing upset if she felt that she was being brushed off or not included enough. Jazz gave birth to precious little Nassor before her teens were over, and this only strengthened my resolve to love and protect her as a young mother in the community. I adopted Nassor’s father as my little brother as well. Jazz has grown in many areas, but the wildness has never waned. After a while, this began to exhaust my patience. I began to feel that our friendship was more one-dimensional than reciprocal, a pattern that I’ve begun to swiftly address for my own sake. I backed off. I had my own problems. Problems that most people didn’t care to ask about, since I was viewed as someone who “had it together.” Yikes. That’s a hard standard to maintain. What held our friendship together in the past? At first, the person who introduced us, who is no longer a part of my life or existence. Then, the knowledge that true sisterhood (especially in the black community) is rare and should be cherished. Or maybe it was Jazz’s desire to be loved and my desire to show love. I don’t know. I am still in “back off” mode until I figure it out. The thing that I’ve realized is that not every friendship has to last forever, and not every friendship has no breaks EVER. Malena and I made it, after a long hiatus. Who knows?

I wasn’t fond of Corina at first. She knows that. I was in my dry, teenage mode, and the first thing I thought after the first couple of times of being around Coco was “Wtf is she always smiling about?” Lol, yes people, I actually had this thought. We became friends eventually, anyway, through our connection with poetry and music and probably through Meilani being our mutual friend. Also, I’d find that Corina (also known as Coco, if you didn’t catch that earlier), didn’t really care if you didn’t like her once she liked you. That’s pretty much her whole shtick… if she decides she’s going to conquer something… she does.  Coco introduced me to vegetarianism and vegan-ism on some whoooole other. One of my sisters is a vegetarian, but Coco was a Whole Foods-shopping, organic, non-caged, non-gluten, no sugar beast. I was a vegetarian for a whole year on her example… a big step after I’d already stopped eating fast food on my own. Eventually, after performing together at a fundraising event, we said “Let’s be a group.” We merged our names and CocoNique was born. This was probably the beginning of the end. While we thrived artistically, our friendship suffered, for lack of ability to separate the two: friendship and business. People loved that we addressed issues of beauty, body image, and psychological captivity through hip hop and song, but those same issues existed in our friendship. We didn’t know how to address them honestly. Unlike Meilani and I, we didn’t call each other out when the other was wrong. We let a lot slide, and eventually, we awkwardly parted ways. It’s been a couple of years, Corina has moved away, but we still keep in touch. Our conversations are heavy with nostalgia, and hopeful for the future. There exists a knowledge among myself and all of these women of how rare, but needed sisterhood is. So while a bond may be bruised beyond recognition, it is never really broken.

I’m using these experiences to continue exploring the concept of friendships with women. I hope these women don’t mind me using our experiences for that purpose. If y’all do, call me! Lol.