i am a hundred and forty pounds of ink, look at me

i was at this slam poetry thing last year in ol' baltimore, and a man in his thirties came up to spit, he started yelling about being a writer. his poem was driven by anger, his pauses were breathes between punches. he was a bitter angry intelligent driven depressed man. being in my youthful unindependent state with no financial responsibilities and no outside expectations to hole me in, i was free to label this man a failure. he was writing about how he lost. his metaphors and alliteration and sometimes beautiful language were all about the great game of the pen, and how he was in the process of losing this great game. the thing is, he wasn't saying he lost. he was saying that to be "a writer", you had to lose again and again, and only then are you really a writer (or an artist for that matter). only after failed manuscripts and marriages and infrequent orgasims, only when you were pitted against the wall with just your typewriter, then evidently you had what this man had, which was happiness. The type of happiness that people use to justify why they keep doing what they do, why they write, why they try to get the last word. My question in my head then, and now, is why did he have to tell me this? Why did he have to go to a coffee shop in John Hopkins and yell at me about how hard art is? He seemed very sure that the path of his life was the inevitable path of art itself- so why on earth did he have to spoil it for me, and take away my dream that art and expression and all those things don't bring you down to yelling stanzas, rather doing something beautiful? their was competition in his voice i could hear it. i knew if i responded to one of his rhetorical questions, he woudl shut me down with his bank statement and old copy of walden. he would call me a disgrace to writers everywhere, his bullet would be words that i wasn't allowed to use: writer, rent, real life, tragedy. he would call my shit dreamy and weightless and then storm out with an angry flurry of similies. he would be the other team, the better brand of gun, the expected nothing we live for.
in the car that night on the way home, we listened to music. everything was ok.

We're not The Ministry of Truth

But yes, 4 posts have been deleted. If you're desperate to read them, read the comments on this post, that's where they are now. I took them down because while they may have been good for a laugh, they were taking this blog in a direction away from what we as the creators intended it for. I'm not trying to sound pompous, or falsely modest, but we just wanted an outlet to express ourselves. If it was going to be in verse, play, fiction, non-fiction, however these words were thrown on a page...well Vast said it best "Nomads off the dome, thoughts have no home, the page is ours to roam."

All this really started because of Bmoresharps latest post, which is a double edged sword I guess, because it's also the most activity we've seen since we lifted off. I'm glad y'all are commenting; we're writing this to express ourselves, but we'd love it if it inspired everybody else. We want that inspiration to be positive, however, so if you disagree with what's being written, don't post a knee jerk insult that's horribly misguided. If you even have to do that, how about adding your initials at the end, because we'd all much rather there be a healthy discourse rather than anonymous insults.

So we got our Spring cleaning out of the way, to channel my dude JD and Hieroglyphics - Let it be bright from here `til infinity.

click your heels three times

it's 4:45 in the morning and i'm caught in this weird reality manifesting from a combination of coffee that's probably too strong for a two beer queer like me, reading grim comparative politics theories on global poverty, and looking at the same empty lobby for the past 5 hours (work-study in my dorm's lobby). i snuck out to take a couple quick drags of a cigarette from some friends that for some reason haven't had the desire to find a bed and get in it...but god damn the wind was blowing hard.

i came back in and Nas' "Blunt Ashes" came on my itunes, a song where he intro's with "i'm gonna get blazed and tell ya'll some stories"...whatever was on his mind was dope enough for me to listen to a few times over.

my mind state right now is high enough on its own, and like i said the wind was blowing hard...hard enough to carry with it a few stories i'll give to you, shit that i think about on a cold lonely night;

i stopped judging people by conventional standards when i found out the truth about the midget that lives across the street from me. she smokes weed and distributes it to 18-25 year olds. A grown ass married woman with two kids and she doesn't even have her shit together, waste of life...so wasted that when i would fundraise for school trips that all the other adults on the block knew were bullshit - she somehow knew that a trip to Hershey Park meant meant the world to me and she'd drop me a twenty and smile and say "johnny you can forget the wrapping paper or candy bars, i don't want 'em." So wasted that when she came to the ice cream shop i was scooping at she knew damn well her eight year old son didn't want anything to do with a kiddie cone and she would order him a mother fucking large and let him get as many gummy bears and reese's pieces as his fat ass pleased. So wasted that she ran a YMCA camp where all the down-trodden, abused, lonely, kids from broken homes shared cabins with priviliged kids from the suburbs and in those woods became a family tighter and more alive than any Cleaver's or Brady's. She was just so damn wasted that even though she was like 3 feet tall no amount of double takes, elevated gas pedals, or scared little kids kept her from sitting out late nights on her porch with a charming smile and eyes that saw through all the bullshit.

at the concert i went to last week Nas said, "if you're from the streets i love you." He may not know it but he loves Tim. Bravest ten year old i'll ever know - he forever holds a spot in my heart, and if there is a God that for some reason has to send messages through the pain of others, my message came from Tim. When I was six I woke up from heart surgery in a hospital room filled with family, next door neighbors, my kindergarten assistant teacher, and a few other random people I was lucky enough to be coccooned by throughout my childhood. Never mind, I'm not even going to try and make it dramatic because it is what it is - I had a million people around me showing me all the love I needed and the kid I shared a room with was a ten year old that is paralyzed to this day from a stray bullet that caught him in the spine. But "shared a room" isn't the right phrase because there was no competition, he was going it alone, no legs to walk on physically or figuratively. His eyes held a lonely and scared look at the prospect of going through his life in a wheelchair with nobody to push that i wish upon no one. FUCK.

yea that wind's blowing. Sometimes it's just a cool breeze that beckons me to daydream under the clouds. But tonight it' s cold and it's carrying stories that i'm feeling under my skin - a little shudder, cringe, squint my eyes, i feel it...i dont know where it's coming from but it's definitely somewhere very very real, the soul of this world methinks.

friday the 13th

i looked out to the view, and i tried really hard to appreciate it. i tried to thank god or whoever that i was here, here in my life, constant in this life that borders on a dream sometimes. i felt incapable of real thankfulness because i just kept looking, i didn´t get down on my kness and pray, i don´t do that i can´t but i really ought to, because this youth is a blessing, but in between guessing what´s next and assessing the responsibility of gratefulness, i had it all, with just my eyes and a quiet soundtrack parallelled by the sky. growing up might just be getting more specific, i hope that means something.

The clarity of uncertainty

I'm looking for that guy. Some say he'll be free but will he really be? Another two years of selling his soul for the sake of academia. After that, some more school listening to others tell him how to live or better yet a cubicle in Times Square where 6 figures can replace happiness? The prime of his life spent making sure others see him in a positive light gotta make sure that 401K is nice and tight. But what about the kid who wanted to go pro? Wanted to write into the night about the days of Ali, MJ, and some more of his goals. What about the guy that saw that snotty nosed kid in the hood cursin up a storm, low self-esteem without a dream and thought I gotta pay it forward.
What about the guy who was gonna get the girl colgate smile gleaming listening to Umi Says and thinking it doesn't get any better than this. What about the kid who thought eating a pbj watching sportscenter was where it was at.. or better yet in and out crossovers 11-0 games at all sport chilling wit my very own sundance kid? Are the best times over?
He's outta here this summer... going to see the foreign sun. Hopefully the coronas will give him an epiphany to solve this mystery so he doesnt succumb to the misery of that dude he sees everyday outside CVS with a cup jingling spare change in hand... only his misery is worse for he had it all yet he didn't know his path... was it predestined, was he truly alone? He wishes it was as easy as killer joe on the saxophone. He keeps telling himself madre España is where he'll get it right... he walks on the ground where Presidents, nobel laureates and so many more found there place. Will he ever get that taste, that small measure of peace we all seek? Will he be on his dead bed thinking ya did good kid? Will it all have been a waste... will he want to do it all again.

God I hope I find myself... the unknown is beautiful and so are you.
Here's to the search and all it brings.

Why Hemingway killed himself...

FOR RENT ONLY---A-Z: $.99 each, $2.50 for a sentence,$5.99 for a paragraph. All creative pieces and full stories are put on layaway and paid for in weekly installments.

Were in college and all up in arms about, Dear God! when we graduate, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO? To be honest, we all need to be a lot more fucking worried about WHO WE ARE GOING TO BE.

Frank will forever just be a crank or a lever on a machine of which he is only a part. As a matter of fact, he's not even Frank, he's #345 at the bank.

I want to be a cop or a fireman- that's gonna be hard if I'm not John Heavey first. Plato says you need your arete in order to perfect your techne, and here I am knowing that only so I can put it in a paper- I'm not even a student.

Life is a dirt path 250,000 miles long- if you take that there shiny train, you'll get to the end in no time, and then enjoy the nice throne set atop the pile of quicksand. Walk with your two feet, step step step- watch out for the puddles and rocks- and you'll be dead by the time you get to the end, but would have seen and expierenced every inch of the road. The walkingman will put his cold face into the dirt at the same time trainrider #1 breathes his last breath above the quicksand. Whichdeath would you choose? How are you working your way through those miles right now?


I'm not sure it's that serious,
JH

My Pen is....

Opening up like a sunrise over the horizon, situations appear before my eyes and excite me. As if in translation from sight to mind, by mind interprets reality in a moment and when complete, gets my mind thinking where my pen is….

At these times, my pen swells in my pocket and I’m driven to take it out and allow it to spill ink all over the page. In between my finger and my thumb, my pen is tall and snug as a gun. I stare down the scene with voyeuristic eyes and squeeze my pen, waiting for the moment of enlightenment, inspiration, and stimulation.

A shift in reality and beauty disrobes herself, showing all to me- I wet the tip of my pen and, giving three quick clicks, am ready to write. Keeping my eyes on the object of my pen’s desire and concentration, I write rapidly up and down the page- up and down. I write so voraciously that my wrist begins to cramp and I notice that calluses are growing on my hands. But these minor setbacks are as in vain as the sand to the endless tide- my writing continues.

Driven like a Cadillac by an intoxicated businessman I weave over and across the avenues of the page and accelerate to higher levels of excitement. I can’t control myself, so I close my eyes, allowing my hand to freely write what my mind surely sees. By God, I’m done! I have ink on my hands and am breathing a bit heavily, finding difficulty to even open my eyes, but my pen is relaxed, waiting flaccid on my thigh for its next tour of duty.