Burden

What's a burden?
A Burden is being forced across the Atlantic to never see your family again. A burden is being lashed in the back for trying to stay true to your heritage. A burden is being raped repeatedly by the master and hoping he keeps your family together because of it. A burden is sharecropping in the fields from sunrise to sunset. A burden is lynchings being as common as Sunday dinner. A burden is "niggers only." A burden is being best friends with the poverty line. A burden is bullets flying at you out of the gun of a man in a white hood. A burden is raising eight kids on grits and eggs. A burden is leaving the Dominican Republic to give your family a shot at that elusive American Dream. A burden is learning how to speak English as a sophmore in high school. A burden is having racial slurs thrown at you and realizing you'll never get along with the cool kids cuz ur from another world. A burden is having a child out of wedlock when you can't even read English. A burden is being disowned by your parents because you have a black baby. A burden is praying to God the projects don't get the best of your kids' minds. A burden is the smell of weed coming in through your bathroom window.
The sacrifices of my lineage, non stop papers, knee surgery, being called another affirmative action statistic, Harvard University, Poughkeepsie High school, Oldest of 7, pressure to lead the family to the promised land, clothing on my back, dreams not to be deferred, optimism as a calling card ... nah man thats a blessing.

Put it in Perspective,
Rob

Nothing gold can stay,

This is why we write, this is why we write
This is why, this is why, this is why we write
We write for your response
But y'all are stayin' quiet
Clap back at us and we'll start a cyber riot
We do this for Ballamore, we do this so you'll click keys
We doin' this from France all the way over to Poughkeepsie
Better yet for Pat, nah better yet for Paris
We got them sweet 16's like the breezies at Marist
Matter of fact, speaking of red foxes
this is iller than all the STD's combined up at that college
That means this shit is toxic, knockin' yah out the box and
If you fucks with this then you better wear a condom
we don't drop haikus, we don't mess with sonnets
The blog needed an anthem and JD got me on it
So we're why we write, but y'all are why we post
so you'll drop some knowledge and keep us on our toes
we know that you're reading, y'all peep this a lot
We could get a million clicks sayin' nothing on the blog

This is why we'll fly, this is why we'll fly
This is why, this is why, this why we'll fly
We'll fly cuz we got wings
You won't if you don't think
that is why, that is why, that is why you'll sink

whatchya, whatchya, whatchya want?

I want to eat dinner with Mark Twain, MLK jr, Jerry Seinfeld, Eleanor Roosevelt, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and Barack Obama and then I want to eat dessert with the first 5 people I see on market street in PK and have just as good a time because there's nobody that much fresher than the next man

I want my professors to nervously ask me if I would mind if they wrote me a recommendation letter and then wonder if now i hate them

I want George Bush Sr. to write a book on parenting and call it "my bad"

I want maps to get all those damned liness off them, the world's been around for a billion years and only in the last few hundred has your world become theirs. Do people know your name everywhere you go? then your name isn't who you are. Do people know where you're from everywhere you go? then you're not really from there. it's the world's greatest lie it means nothing.

I want Fortune 500 CEO's to book weekend getaways to poughkeepsie and watch the sunset from the docks at waryas park with a slice of Emiliano's and a 40 from El Azteca

I want to ask that girl from Maui Fever, as she sits on the beach with her arms wrapped around her legs and her chin resting on her knees and her sun-streaked hair blows in the wind while she stares longingly through tears out into the ocean, if her thoughts are really as deep and profound as her pose suggests...because as MTV's camera slowly pulls back and the soundtrack from some emo band starts playing leaving this girl looking like the loneliest most troubled shakespearean character i hope art isn't lost.

Nah - I'm not a dealer, I'm a poet at large.

Our protagonist is in quite a sticky situation. His heels are backed up against a cliff, a sheer fall into the bottomless unknown. While he desperately seeks an escape a wall is steadily closing the distance between them. Mentally, he is distressed. Physically, he displays an air of calm over the present dilemma. His options are about as narrow as the gap between the barrier and the ledge.

The situation is not as dire as it seems. The wall is only five feet tall, in fact our would-be victim can see over it. The look in his eyes is one of a trapped animal pleading for help. The help is right there, only yards away, and they are offering him a rope. He even recognizes the faces of the saviors. They are his family, hollering “stay the course!” The escape rope is braided strands made up of consistency, conservatism, and persistence. Good qualities to be sure, but they betray the fact that there are also undertones of pessimism and fear of change.

It would be easy to grab the rope and everything it represents. It would be easy to hop over the wall and back into his comfort zone. The underdog could use a hero right about now, time is running out. The hesitation is confusing even to him. Why leave what you know? He has been taught to endure dissatisfying conditions. For his whole life he has waited for things to get better rather than going and making them better himself.

He feels an inner strength emboldening him. Suddenly that unknown doesn’t seem so daunting. If he departs from solid ground he won’t know how this will turn out. If he accepts the rope then the story is written. What he has long taken as a security blanket starts to look a lot like a cape. The wind rushing over his body lets him know that he is moving forward at last.

I wish I could tell you what was at the bottom of my leap but I’m still falling. I’m still a little scared that the end may not be was I was looking for, but at least I’m going to create it.

You're afraid of a nuclear bomb, I'm afraid for a nuclear family.

The postcard from Vegas was stuck to the fridge with the “Best Dad in the Whole World” magnet his son had gotten him for his birthday. He wasn’t feeling lucky. In fact, he was feeling very poor. He had just blown his raise in the casinos and wasn’t feeling much like lectures or workshops today. He barely had enough for postage. His children looked at the postcard every day wondering if there really was a city where people got to play games all day.

The picture of the Bloor-Yorkville Hotel is held on to the door by the “Wish You Were Here” magnet. The hotel had cost a pretty penny, but it had made the last family vacation. The children had loved the outdoor pool, and the parents loved the soft beds. The mother loved it so much, in fact, that she booked a weekend there with her lover. The children can’t wait to go back.

The youngest son’s Christmas wish list is pinned to the freezer with the “I’m Spoiled” magnet he got from his grandmother. The list is three pages long and he prides himself on his small handwriting. He didn’t include a price column. The parents think it’s because he can’t count that high.

The oldest son is featured in a newspaper clipping tacked to the fridge with a plastic clip that has a magnet on the back. The clip holds all the copies. The article is because he was in a car accident. The family’s friends have sent their prayers and acknowledgements. The parents replace the emptiness in their liquor cabinet.

The refrigerator door is running out of open space. All the pieces of a broken family conveniently cover a letter from the doctor’s office. It’s a pregnancy test. The mother hasn’t shown anybody else yet. On the back, girl’s names are scrawled and crossed out. Her lover wonders whether he needs a lawyer.

thank heaven 7-11 just dropped gas to 2.07

got Time showing me faith with Ak 47's, youth stuck in chains that 'wobble to the floor' on Hot 97, Che and his revolution died in 67, summer of sam had NYC on fire in 77, wish i was the lucky number 7, but i just popped out in 87, woke up for a second with the crash of those boeing 737's, and 67 months later im back on the couch watching 7 strangers in 07 getting drunk living like this is 777...

but im only 20 with a fake ID so for now it's actually 666. we gotta up the ante.

jd

you may say i needed time alone to rest my dome

yo then what!

life's a bitch and then you live, stand up give, something like before our time, allude to the 50's america in its prime, now it's dead liek the trucker hat and i couldn't muster that maybe we are jsut stuck don't give a fuckless fuck about what used to happen cause i sharpened up my edges, and i read you under the table, so maybe all this french i hear is just a mask for something not as charged, not as heightened as this beautiful enligh language, cause nas wasn't speaking portugese, and allen ginsberg sure didn't write howl in spanish. so i will put all my chips into my anglo pot, and boil it, and foil a plan to bless everybody with something they can buy and unwrap and put in their system or their tele or their hand, and hear it or see it or be it and expand, but not in the terribly cliche was that generation i Pod digs as "expand, expand your mind, man", not that fake ass bullshit that just wants you to expand your mind to be closer to being fully committed to everything everbody else is doing, i'm talking about the expansion of where you came from and where you are going, the I in capital letters, the I that deconstructs itself from mtV because the viewer is always wrong, the viewer can't afford the freshness, but the viewer with a tEte stands up, breathes, looks at the pictures and the sounds and the clothes and decides fuck it all, ima take my dollar, my dream, and my mother's credit card and change the fucking world, one viewer at a time.

CULTURE SHOCK + IMPRESSIONABLE YOUTH + TRUTH - AMERICA = (something you can spit to)

je me souviens

i woke up and realised i was in a new world, i went outside to men selling fruits and sat with tired eyes at the metro stop. i thought i knew how to speak this language, however those thoughts have been immediatly curbed by tempo, vocabulary, grammar, dynamics, pronunciation, verb tense, idiomatic expressions, and a lack of american rap music (rather innundated with nelly songs from eigth grade while trying to enjoy a four euro glass of orange juice). the good things about being in paris is that my kicks are top of the pops. i'll see to the rest of it.