Cobb

Jurassic Park

        I keep my eyes on writers with their ears on beats
Wondering finally if they ever leave the streets
Of if the street keeps rockin' deep down in their soul
Old man in the club not believing he's not old

Or when the kid says daddy who was Red Alert
Does papa not preach about days doin' dirt
Moving sideways or covering dub dance halls
Reminescing about the days of the yes yes yalls

Can it be like forever what it was for me
Thrilling to the black faces on MTV?
Or will it ever mutate and merge with the mainstream
And never revert to the days of the daydreams

When Turbo poplocked with a broom and a pail
Kool Moe Dee dropped wax before CDs were on sale
And Kwame with his hair like Pepe La Pew
Not everybody knows what we've been through

But that's alright we still keep in stride.
The next generation's minds are always fried.
The same game reigns in doorframes in the dark
But a classic's not a classic that's not older than Jurassic Park.

soft rap returns from the home for the sane persecuted class

Music spins, charged verbals majestically hop
unchallenging to pressed plastic specs
brilliance transformed through
unfathomable electronics attainable
only by credit - a gift of fiscal innocence
around xmas time when lenders get liberal
collecting potential debt service
from an internal third world.

Compacted clips of revolution, rebroadcast
sampled sounds of malcolm,
civil drug war villagers claim casualties.
Ghetto hype makes a media star of bored econ majors
with still enough accent to fool suburban police
bad joke, bro.

Enough to be called enuf
and nine days at County; mom cries
at shattered expectations to the rhythm of
other discs in a pile trying to reconcile this turn
to probable cause, scanning liner note shout outs
funky cartoons, tape foldouts in
an off-campus apartment rented month to month
on government guaranteed loans.
Right resenting mainstreamies
bang the wall calling for speedmetal Barabas;
death to jeep beats by elision's decree.
Minority grants are now repaid
by systemic injustice she reasons,
and turns down the bass.

Lynch-quick, fashion-swift
linearly unrecognizable to the nons,
but this pattern etched
wrinkles and scars of a different dignity
plain as backbeats, pursed lips and mean strolls
unstoppable by one family,
too obvious to unity-loathing county trustees
the idea is tossed to the dread heap.

Humming silences, swallowing bile
thinking positive science, dope dropped
once on the burgle barred bus
in transit to the streets from hell's other home
Soft Rap whistled dixie.

Quiet Storm Prayer Meeting

From the Literary Thug

QUIET STORM PRAYER MEETING: ODE TO LUTHER VANDROSS

The house in which we used to dance
Was sold last month
It’s ragged box frame stands out
In the face of new startup’s
And gentrified Victorian sprawl
Old and new Tacoman’s
Pass warily on the sidewalk
And a boy chases a girl on the streets
Aping a people that never existed
And a time he was too young to remember

Here, Luther. Can you believe it? Here.
On the streets where we stole away to hear you
On night where we wove through corners
Crossed old ladies yards
Sneaking past arid thicket brush
And risking the chance of being at the wrong place
At the wrong time, just to listen
And love you and love each other
At the house of the blue lava light

In The Night

In the night with daughters
I subject myself to the dangers of the street
I camp to feel the pain in my joints. To feel the hardness of the ground wreck my backbone just so.
Just so they can frolic with flashlights and hear the owls hooting by.

From inside the dusty tent
All the silences of the darkness are amplified
The skunks shuffling through the hedge
The squirrel poop dropping from the pine branches
The unexperienced night breeze, and the gnawing of termites mark the hours.

There are no weirdos. There are no knifings or hollering men with their brown paper bags.
There are no stray dogs or broken glasses in the street.
There is only the marginal discomfort of an adventure. But if I were to dream perchance there would be nightmares. Of Pookie in the alley on New Years Eve. Of the hard bathroom tiles and the negligent youth director. Of the dare beneath the sycamores and the face full of shit. Of the placid lie and Officer Bell. Of the griddled goldfish and the mothers pulling hair. Of the garage fire and the swinging skillet. Of the swaying booty butter and subsequent Itch.

Of the betrayal. Of the omerta. Of the dodge.
Of the broken walk, the ringworm and the bus ride to jail.
Of the shiv and the sherm. Of the roaches in batter.
Of the patrols and the checkpoints. Of the drawling reproach and the sitter's backhand.
Of the unwashed baby and hand-me-down clothes.
Of the uncle that uncle that everyone knows.

Of the quiet, the endless quiet, the silent long ignorant years and the secrets never told. Of the fear. The monstrous unendurable fear until the Juneteenth of May in the Jungle of Nool, when a voice from above not caring nor cruel, said throw down your bowl and give up your gruel. It was only my echo, the sound of a fool.

I have journeyed far from the hole and dream it anew.
I see myself in lightweight togs unarmored for throwdown. Like grubs under petrified wood, my brothers all younglike and full of it mirror my sadness, anonymous to all but those who can't do, and can't teach and still preach as if God really changes things.
And I've seen his hope crumble wearing the cleanest white t-shirt a dollar can buy
And hedging his bets just like those who don't try. Ahead is the wall. A stumble. A fall.
And he comes up all scratch-faced, bruised lips swelling bigger.
You know what they call him. Just like they called Bigger.

The erudition of despair a well-worn symphony drumming a 4/4 time in the temple of doom.
You're black and you're black.
You're black and you're black.
You're black and you're black.
You're black and you're black.
And pride and tears and love and sorrow. Joy and agony, misery and emptiness. Tick away with each beat of my heart, our heart, the old black heart. Without childbirth or violence who would know we bled red? So black is the beat, so dark is the heat, so deep are the tears that through four hundred years we memorize ancestors fears.
And await calamity.
Anticipate treachery.
Condone lechery. Better spend those dollars now boy. There ain't no future in your frontin'.

Camping with daughters, without locks, without dread.
Outside of a devil's domain. Outside of a nightmare of pain.
Outside on the lawn. From easy dusk to pleasant dawn.
If I should die before I wake let it be in the blankest of sleep.
Let me not dream that I am that I was lest I curse the name of God
For abandoning me to the ghetto, my prison, my birthplace, my all.
Let me remember the love of my middle age in the land of the free
past that middle passage that brought me to be
Mocked in my skin and yet finally me.

The Eye in I

And, since I tend to see the world with the eyes of a poet, I'm always alert to the subtext of experience. I say "I" because I don't know any other way to name the observing presence that seems to always be riding on the saddle of my self-awareness. It really doesn't have a lot to do with me as a person and there are plenty of times I could do without it quite nicely, thank you. But I heed it when it has something of value to point out..
-- Gerard Van Der Leun

My dreams have been pleasant of late and yet I know it cannot last.
I'm worried about my children's future because I know of mankind's past.

Back To Front

back to front.

the evil of whiteness is a conspiracy to deny the black self. i am immune. i do not take it seriously. its seductions are useless upon me like the rubbing of female cats against my leg. i kick them.

in my subconscious lay no white demons, no bottomless pits with gaping white holes, no disfigured or impaled black infants to arouse some vengeful beast in me. i am unpoisoned by the white disease and do not live in fear of its shadow. in that my liberation is complete. i cannot make it otherwise even in sympathy with those who battle righteously.

as for the kings of empty empires, i am not worshipping at their graves. i only know those appetites in me which are unsated. i only take moments from time to time to observe that which i would have to further my own ambition. it is not that desire which takes me to rome, nor is America so dominant. i might be just as happy in england or on the underside of the planet where english is spoken, or half awake in paris missing details for the years my french would remain partial.

in conservative dreams there are no fidelities but to the best ways already trod of men through the ages. there is no shining beacon that beckons. there is only the tried and the true and the hard won wisdom of age. fortunate are those who can get it handed to them, if only they can heed words as well as experience lived. i inherit but the struggle of those who claimed me from the petty tyrannies of this bull cop or that rock throwing mob.

Requiem Unfinished

If I could turn time's hands to days before the quaking of the ground
And rewind screaming engines, fires, clouds of concrete and that massive sound
We could not be wiser, nor could we imagine sleeping that our fate
Might rest between this fiqh or that Islamic dream of mighty Caliphate

Could we have known a thousand soldiers born to die a martyr's death
Would cross the globe advancing every opportunity to plot our death?
We made no time to mind what Sunnis thinks a Shi'ite might be all about
And for this lapse a nation's grasp of deadly enemies remains in doubt.

Of Hezbollah and Ikwan
Of Yemenis and Taliban
Zawahiri, Zarkawi, Ahmadinejad
Haditha, Mosul, Fallujah, Samarra & Baghdad
Sunni, Shi'ite, Alawite,  Fatah & Hamas
Madhi Army, Baathists & Egyptian Madrassas
Tora Bora, Peshawar, Al Jazeera, Al Anbar
Dhimmitude & Burkas and I've gone only half as far
And half as deep as I must go before I sleep...

And in my homeland marching all about the common ground I see
A million doubting fingers pointing left and right as if there couldn't be
An enemy more intimate or willing to run through the beating heart
Of liberty's sweet promise just to jealously defend their party's part

Within this house divided may we tell
Recalling lives upon that day destroyed
The tragedy of why the towers fell
The blind sheik's eye, the gaping moral void

Remember how we vowed that we'd obey
The call of duty rising in us all
To honor them defending all the way
Our very finest freedoms from the fall

So to that end we brandished every sword
And used but few available to us
Charging ahead on Colin Powell's word
To hell with those who won't get on the bus

Our Eagle's fury venged with wrath but blurred by righteous mourning tears
So many dead fell hapless to our shock and awe and mounted muslim fears
That we might satiate a hunger to devour nations fueled by christian hate
And so joined in the foolish fatwa muslim madmen lining every state

They came to fight like lemmings wailing to Iraq after Afghanistan
From Syria and Iran hailing, brainwashed brigand boys their first jihad
Joined up to displaced Baathists and al Sadr how they ran
To meet their doom under the hand of Odierno run roughshod

Yet to this tale of desparation we add blue-thumbed voting hope anew
For in the truth of liberation there is mighty public work to do
Such work begat a Constitution. Iyad Allawi stood before the house
With sovereignty delivered now Maliki's bosom wears new freedoms blouse

Blind blind my brothers I must protect their ignorant souls from their perverse goals
Deaf deaf my sisters mumbling yadda into their decaf, immune from the draft
Dumb dumb my cousins sitting on their arms claiming enlightened pacifism
Weak weak my neighbors shriek a cowards yellow streak backbiting when I speak
All my relatives live in relativism
And nobody asks why until they die

I cannot finish
I cannot stop
There is no art in the frustrated hand
I can only press forward a new tack
Until perhaps they understand
There is no turning back

The Whore

I've often wondered as I sit alone in hotel rooms
What brings me to this tired place of wanting
Of Denny's sandwich bags and tiny teeny rubber wombs
Of crumbled cake and dreams of peppered planting

A book of begging bodies paper thin and gently mocking
Arouse a notion to expense an evening dollar dance
Around a sink a rancid stain a randy reload rocking
Announce an ache I never asked inside my dampened pants

Writing about e-Writing

irony's pressing
cyberlife to the printed page flattens
what's hyper here even in text
to flipping sheaves, like autumn leaves
preserved beyond their nature
and what's a pseud without repute
and who persists beyond reboot
and who engages, who is mute
and irl who gives a hoot? 

e-male cadaver primly plied
nytrb crit-eyed is dried of wonder
and torn amiss provides no lightning strikes 

ahh to be lower-case and whispered pop to pop
to drag and drop a tasty phrase
to while away the working days on aol
to post and wrap
to subtly trap a newbie netter courting praise
about the courtyard coteries
somewhere dot com
yeah that's the bomb

Claudia Clubs

I used to have dreams of being a novelist. Here is an excerpt from my book about ambition and tragedy in black Los Angeles: Jordan Crossing

(from the archives, 1990)

Thursday night after work. The sun is still out and the urge comes over Claudia to hit the town. It's been so long since she has been out. Looking over the papers on her desk she, cleans off the table with a brush. Producer was gone; she turned up the radio. Too many long nights preparing for weak stories. Here’s a story that's never told, the shit I go through to get a good time. I just cannot wait until tomorrow night, besides there are clubs happening tonight. She reecalled the days of 24K and Glitter on Sunset. Well tonight I'm gong to enjoy myself, she though. She leaned back in her chair and admired her office, the degree on the wall UCLA. Man that was hard, but I made it. Journalism. She felt sorry for all the English students she left in that major. What were they doing now? Slaving away on obscure black writers that the black community doesn't know and the academic community doesn't respect. What sense does it make? It’s obvious that these writers are great and knew exactly what they were talking about. Their points of view, essays and philosophies are complete. Enough to carry a whole society. It carried us and gave us the strength to compete at the 'predominantly white institution". She couldn't think of any of her real, down to earth college girlfriends who wasn't either deep into the real black writers. The rest were deep into denial. But those were the underclassman days. After that trip to Mexico, everything changed.

Hmm. Her flashback surpised her, now as she took a second look around her office. What are you doing now, Mrs Williams-Precht? Hyphenated to a French director? Are you really getting those stories? She started for her pad, snatching a uniball from the art deco canister. The effects of black mexicans on the contemporary african american woman. Ahh. another time. Really. She placed the purple pad into her satchel, snapped and stood. Five foot eight and one half, she thought to herself, walking straight and proud.

The cleaning people had already come into the building. Mexicans, she could tell. Not just latinos of every stripe but Mexicans and Mexican Americans. This was their shop. Their domain, quiet as it's kept. They are getting over in la vida sin corazon, vacuuming sucking up American dirt and turning it into food for their children. Food but not stories. For all of the million latinos in Los Angeles County there were no stories we ever heard, Claudia thought. Every once in a while, in her Volvo, she would hit the scan button on the radio instead of the one that tuned directly to her favorite soft hits. She would hit a Spanish language station, and then a Vietnamese voice would blare as the frequency numbers spun off every 5 seconds. It was an immigrant thing, Claudia couldn't understand. She watched the woman pushing her personal garbage can on through the maze of cubicles. She was young and tired and did not hum any spirituals. She sorted the white trash from the colored trash - the white to be recycled, the colored to be dumped. The woman was about five foot tall. Short. Always the short people working this shit. That is my great grandmother, Claudia thought. That woman is my great garandmother; America has not changed one bit.

Untitled

..and though hunted, never lacking praise
for wending sidelong shuffle gaze
or bitter blasts in justice' gaping lack
in substituted manhood being black

despair is common in these neighbors' eyes
i know the sidewalk cracks and hearing lies
avoid the speech and wish on borrowed time
a windy isle or subtle smile sublime

FMA: Balkin's Version

Jack Balkin, legal scholar proposes amending the FMA to read properly. I agree with him. If it should be done, it should be done right. Damn lawyers! What they can do with a single sentence - they obfuscate purposefully.

If the FMA had been designed to do what its proponents claim it will do, it should have been drafted as follows:

Section 1. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

Section 2. Nothing in the first section of this Article shall be construed to prevent either Congress or the legislatures of the several states from providing any other benefits, rights, or privileges, or combinations thereof, to unmarried couples or groups.

Thus, Congress and state legislatures may provide all of the incidents of marital status except marital status itself. As you can see, such an amendment is not particularly difficult to draft. The fact that there is a gap between what the text says and what the Alliance for Marriage says the text will do suggests to me that they are not being entirely forthcoming about the reasons for the Amendment.

The Sun is God

Sasha speaks of the Sun.

Here is my theory. If you believe, as Raymond Kurzweil does that spirit is independent of hardware, then intelligence is something that can be manifest in any computing substrate. So take the million monkeys typing theory to its logical conclusion. What patterns are created by the trillion trillion nuclear reactions going on inside the sun for billions of years? Everything!

Stars communicate with each other. They are the most intelligent life in the universe. Since travel beyond the speed of light is impossible, stars have everything they need within themselves. They have billions of years to do what they do, and so they do. But the most important thing to know is that they are incredibly fast computers.

Somebody simply has to show that they exhibit emergent behavior via the cellular automata exhibited by the rules of nuclear fusion of helium. Then it's over.

Assimilation, Multiculturalism & False White Neutrality

Much is being made in certain circles about the matter of SB 60, which is a provision which allows 'illegal aliens' to be legally licensed as drivers in California. The bill which was signed into law by ex-governor Grey Davis was supported by both the mayor and chief of police of Los Angeles. It restores a privilege that was denied several years ago. Arnold Schwartzenegger has promised to repeal it and activist groups are passing around a petition.

This is just the kind of situation that brings up a dozen questions but the one that has got me thinking is that of citizenship. What is it, who can tell, and what difference does it make?

My first talking point is Assimilation, Multiculturalism & False White Neutrality

A Shift in Writing Direction

Over the next several weeks and months, I am going to go through my litmus questions one by one and refine them out with the 'talking points'. Having done so with the Abortion post, as well as with the Vouchers post, I think this is a very good way to handle the complexity of these topics.

This is significantly different than the kind of back and forth the blogosphere gives. It is at once expository and less than opinionated. Rather it is a mapping of discourse capturing the major arguments that hold sway in my own decision making process. In this I'm going to attempt to be a one-man forum along the lines of XRepublic guidelines.

In doing so, I will also break the convention of blogtime. I won't be putting little 'update' notes in the blog, I will simply edit the pieces as new ideas come. There's not going to be any, who knew what when, as these attempt to be comprehensive. I'll set them up into this new category 'Eruditorium' so that they will more easily accessible.

My aim is to practically test my powers of abstraction as well as the XR concept of talking points. It will also give me some focus on bigger subjects; I'm getting a little tired of blogging twists on things like Plame incrementally over time.

This should be good.

Vouchers

Yglesias is covering vouchers.

I wrote some ideas on the subject in 1998:

busing was always a second rate idea, but it acknowledged two facts
which were cast in stone at the time, and one that remains today.

#1. you cannot get white taxpayers to directly subsidize non-whites in
what appears to be a zero-sum racial game.

#2. separate but equal is a bad idea.

the second idea has been losing currency, but the first is just about
as rigid today as it ever was. the clearest indication of that to me
is white support of vouchers, as contrasted to the summary dismissal
of geographic restrictions on public school enrollment. vouchers will
always privilege those who are smarter with money, and those who can
organize. in other words, them whose got, gets. vouchers = liquidity
which means it will accellerate the desires of everyone involved. i am
convinced that the desire to abandon rather than renovate ghetto
schools will not change with the advent of vouchers, and that the
liquidity vouchers provide will accellerate their destruction.

the second clearest indication of that is the willingness of suburban
schools to accept bussed children concurrent with their refusal to
allow circulation of highly qualified teachers. magnet schools are
proof positive that putting the best materials and best teachers in
the worst ghettoes results in drastically improved students.

So these are my essential talking points on vouchers. Overall Opinion, Thumbs Down

Religious Right Overproduction
At the bottom of some of the original thinking on vouchers was the absolutist point on tax abatement. Citizens hiding behind the mask of 'taxpayer' decided selfishly to defund the public school system which was racially separate, unequal, mediocre in suburbs and pathetic in racial ghettos.

Soccer Momism
Overfocus on test scores tend to falsely objectify the value of schools. What is defective in poor schools is not simply measured in grades. A school which is not a community center fails as well. The difference an active PTA makes is critical. Vouchers do not create soccer moms. Single parents will not suddenly be able to dedicate more time to making the school a better institution.

Supply Side Failure
Development of new schools is very expensive. Capital improvements are required for older schools. Capital is required for the purchase of land for new schools. Vouchers don't address these issues. If overcrowding is a problem in any school district or any argument is made about class size or dumbing down better schools that will not be diminished until new high quality schools appear.

Liquidity vs Equality
Smart families will do better with money directed at them. Vouchers will simply create a new kind of flight. The problem is not mobility. Improvement in schools should not be directed to individual families but to reform of the system.

Management Not Money
Most school districts are administratively incapable of executing quickly. This is a function of management, not of privatization. School districts should be reformed, not revolutionized. Firing incompetents does not create leadership, and overpaying high profile 'education executives' will not improve the education of children.

Open Bussing
You can provide school choice without adding vouchers. Boundaryless public school districts work on the same principle. Tracking students by geography into particular schools can be unfair. Vouchers don't help children who don't have private schools nearby. Transportation is a big issue.