Bruised Art
“DON’T PUSH ME CAUSE IM CLOSE TO THE EDGE/
I’M TRYIN’ NOT TO LOSE MY HEAD/
IT’S LIKE A JUNGLE SOMETIMES IT MAKES ME WONDER/
HOW I KEEP FROM GOIN’ UNDER”.
The message by Melle Mel and the Furious Five (1982)
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‘These cats drink champagne and toast to death and pain, like slaves on a ship talking about who got the flyest chain…’
- Talib Kweli; “Africa Dream”, Reflection Eternal
Every corner of this earth yields natural resources that are possessed by the inhabitants of said region. New Hampshire (USA) has granite. Saudia Arabia has oil… and Sierra Leone has diamonds. These elements normally drive and sustain economic prosperity. Yet sometimes, due to greed, these resources can be over-harvested and exploited – diminishing their worth and limiting the people who were meant to thrive off of them.
The rap industry, spread over the largely urban and concrete jungles of America, is no different. The artistry of Hip Hop is a national treasure that’s being turned from a natural resource into an unnatural recourse. What once called attention to the conditions of some Black communities now contributes to its disintegration. Despite the impact though, its ability to turn a profit off of turmoil remains strong. So why not globalize this trend?
For every medley about drug dealing, violence, misogyny and materialism in America that certain brands of rap capitalize off of; there are atrocities committed in Sierra Leone and Darfur (Sudan) that are at least 10 times worse. That being the case, don’t these nations stand to benefit from stimulating their economies 10 times over if this rap formula’s applied? Granted, US rap sales are down but it should still be enough to boost the status of the guerrillas and war mongers, right? And as an added bonus, when these perpetrators get their side of the story in rap form, wouldn’t we sympathize with their plights more? All those who grew up in dilapidated environments who were forced into circumstances by external factors beyond their control who turned to war crimes, genocide, mutilating young children, mass raping women, etc. – would just come to be known as misunderstood heroes.
They’d be considered geniuses for lacing tracks with their intricate stories; further still, rebels in Sierra Leone could even cop back the diamonds the country exports to boost their economy! The ultimate byproduct might even take form once they became enabled enough to give back to the very communities which they helped ravage with the generated income of their rap sales: thus reestablishing a false sense of security amongst the people. It’s the circle of life, people! – and if it works for drug dealin’ rappers – what better place to implement it than the Mother Land?!! So Africa, you’ve got a problem? We’ve got a problem solver – and its name is revolver!
For all those that will surely either spit venom at or trivialize the point of this article, consider this: isn’t it odd how perverse and distorted a reversed image can look in a mirror when it’s held up to someone with short-sighted vision?
“Unnatural Recourses”
Gorilla units gettin’ rich off garish ring tones
Are like guerrillas in the mist of Sierra Leone.
Compare the theme songs – they’re like two trains
on the same disastrous track.
Like Sudanese militia in Darfur,
They groom and breed the same
malicious and dark force…
One that traps cats into slingin’ rocks
and robbin’ in mobs forged from the crash’s aftermath.
Chasin’ after math doesn’t make much sense
If the path smashes into a dank mud ditch.
How much cents does it take to justify genocide?
A dime per dollar – as a matter of fact, exactly.
That’s the buy out – that’s the walloping
dollop rappers see from wack CDs…
Ones where crack, weed, fashion and flashin’ greed
are the venom supplied for a wicked demise.
Yet when they cry ‘We’re victims of circumstance,’
‘We’re just playing the turn of hand
from our terms of chance’ –
We allow them to further advance
synthesized self-destruction.
And as worst ‘acts’ are glorified,
The worth of these raps soar and rise…
As we adore and immortalize such lives –
desensitized by this ‘wealth’ of substance.
If patterned after this Western rap style,
East African fascists could factor
in their festered rationale.
Instead of crack vials, they’d rap about
rapin’ and killin’ women and children in cold blood.
While masses massacred and maimed
for sport in the ‘Lion Mountains’
For the sake of traffickin’ the trade and
export of diamonds mounted
Could just rhyme lines about it –
chillin’ like villains in the coldest cut.
That’d bring much needed international
acclaim locked at attention.
That’d keep the bling and inner capital
contained and stocked in the system.
Making albums about choppin’ off arms would rock
whoever’s listenin’ to the core.
The same way it works for rap,
it’s an option for them.
They’d have chains made packed
with slaughtered gems…
That’s how they’d atone and entertain
with such awful sins –
once they start glistenin’,
their war crimes would be ignored!
Brought up as brainwashed
products of their environment,
The young who copped guns
to survive could take pride in it
Once they start supplyin’ it as
punch lines and clever hooks.
They could turn a profit
On a gross domestic product
By marketing it with
grossly defected conduct…
It’s already been tested and thought up
in the subtitles of lesser rooks.
Then their atrocities would all be past tense.
None would recall the apostasies
of their hood-themed theatrics.
Once the cash eclipses them,
such Black acts are forgiven –
in that sense, we’re quite tame and resilient!
Just buy a few vaccines and cosmetics
for the raped and battered –
A dozen trampolines and prosthetics
for the maimed and shattered…
And they won’t be able
to escape the laughter –
at least that’s how it works
in the United States of stillness.
You can’t get a better blueprint!
It’s not to say gangsta rap made ‘em do it –
Their main influence is what grants them immunity.
It’s’ an ingrained solution –
let the oppressed identify the nuisance.
Once connected, they’ll turn blind eyes to it…
Just imply and indict movements
against the government as the culprit
that supplants the community.
OJ did it (in more ways than one) –
Yet and still, he became our native son.
Once we witnessed the plaintiff’s racist stunt –
we rallied against it.
WE became blind – just us, mind you.
All we needed was blind justice to bind to…
We got hype for Juice! – though we likely knew
the fallacy of his innocence.
That type of mind state’s evidence
Is blind faith negligence.
When race is combined with such precedence –
resistance is futile.
When flair and flare get in the way,
All’s fair in the American way…
As arrogance sways to the error
of our ways with vision that’s neutral.
But friction’s more dutiful – division must reign.
Our conviction’s more useful when
we go against the grain.
Pull in the reins – juxtapose these
immoral acts and oppose ‘em all!
If Darfur stats and Sierra Leone pacts
are deplorable to you,
Then exploiting ‘hardcore’ rap is an error prone
track that should be horrible, too…
It’s destroying our youth – just suppose we orally
backed such an emboldened cause?!!
Proper perspective shouldn’t be
a remote and hopeless clause.
What I offer’s an objective approach –
that’s why I wrote this blog.
What’s been broached is
the law of diminished returns.
The more values we misplace,
the larger the costs.
The louder the volume, the larger the loss
It’s a part of us all – ‘til we reap the seed
of repentance learned.
‘What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference…’
– Romans 3:9-22
© 2008 Reggie Legend
Steel Waters, Inc.
reggielegend@hotmail.com
The sizzling sound from the frying pan, mixed with gospel music became familiar the wider my eyes got. Though this two bedroom apartment was cold, the warm scent of pancakes and bacon eased my frigid Sunday mornings.
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The Godlist by T.S. Hand
“Hope ya ain’t goin’ far.”
I didn’t answer him, I just climbed up into his early-nineties Ford dually and set my rucksack between us. He made another stab at conversation. “Pretty girl like yaself…dangerous to hitchhike, even around here. They’s crazies all around this side of the Sierras.”
“I know,” I said, looking right into his eyes for the first time since he shoved the truck down the highway. Either my response caught him off guard or the way I gave him an all-too-knowing look, but he seemed to shudder a little. Maybe I had already given away too much. We made small talk, and I let little notes of laughter hang for awhile on his unfunny jokes. He commented on my intelligence, to add to his earlier “pretty” complement. They always did this, always tried to appear so kind.
I came onto him subtly, enough to let him know I was interested, but not enough to make him think I was for sale. He got the hint. After we passed a sign out of Lone Pine, California, cautioning “next services 77 miles” he called my attention to the nasa satellite array a couple miles east. Six upturned mushrooms big as freighters pushed their stalks up to the sky as the seti project’s search for Truth.
It was then—with my attention turned east—when he cut the engine and began his acting debut: “Oh, shit, shit! Goddamn this piece of shit—”
“What? What is it?” I knew the stunt.
“Goddamn truck run outta gas, all a way out here.” He really was making this too easy. His biggest mistake was pulling off on the frontage road, where he said we wouldn’t be hit by any drunk drivers. I eased the cap off the spray canister in my pocket.
He hopped out of the cab once we rolled to a stop. He said he’d call Triple A to get this whole mess fixed. Good play, I thought, most girls have probably fallen for that. I saw his fingers mash nine digits into the cell phone’s key pad, knowing that Triple A is a ten-digit 800 number. He carried on a great fake conversation, really an Oscar-worthy performance.
Jumping back in the cab, he flipped on the radio and scanned for awhile. The only station in range, propitiously, was an evangelical station. I asked him if he believed in God. He said, very openly and matter-of-fact, “Sure, I think God’s in them mountains over there and in that little fishing stream we passed awhile back. Maybe God’s in these little moments that test your mettle, too.”
“That’s all just marvelous, but what about the balance between good and evil and reckoning and all that? Don’t you believe in that?”
“Well, uh, sure honey. But when ya get to be my age, ya start to see that it ain’t all black and white like they taught ya in sundee school. They’s good wolves and bad wolves in all of us. The one you feed everyday, that’s the one gon’ win.”
I pretended to mull this over, like his words had made some profound effect on me. He decided the time was ripe to put his hand on my thigh. We both looked at it flopped there, helpless. I’m sure we had completely different thoughts on what would happen next.
He leaned in for a kiss, eyes closed. I maced his tear ducts and open mouth. While he flailed around, going on about, “What the fuck! Jesus!” I fingered open my cargo shorts pocket. A more cultured man would know that cargo shorts are suspicious on a girl who looks as good as I do. I took out the medicine bottle of ether and soaked my handkerchief in it as he groped along the door for the latch. I strong-dosed him, enough to keep him from moving so much but not enough to knock him out.
Opening my own latch, I climbed down and around to his side door to let him out. His weight helped the door flop open and he collapsed in the cloddy sand. After a few deep, controlled breaths to decide the Gameplan, I worked on his face with my boots and at some point he lost consciousness because he stopped blocking.
Skulls are like piñatas: once you split them they practically dissolve. Pink bits and red and tooth squeezed out of the entrances to his caved-in face. After his pulse stopped, my rucksack of tools took its normal position on top of the sternum. I put on my gloves and fitted the surgical saw attachment to the cordless drill. I carved out his upper and lower mandibles and removed the soft palate; teeth are a bitch to get rid of, and on this trip I didn’t have access to an incinerator, though there were some smelting kilns up in Bishop if I was feeling mischievous and daring.
Only one car passed in the half-hour and there was a high sandbank concealing me from the highway. I unzipped the vacuum-sealed pouch and removed the six-foot bag and from the other rucksack pocket I pulled out the Tupperware of Centenella larvae, which would dispose of 200 lbs of evidence in a few days. Before I zipped the whole mess up to throw him in the hole—oh yeah, I dug a hole after I removed his dental records—I plucked up his sausage fingers and dabbed one in the pools forming near his neck. I opened my notebook to the bookmarked page that said “ Terrence Bedford” at the top. Somewhere near the bullet points of “occupation” and “offenses” I smudged his gooey fingerprint, blowing lightly on it until the stain turned maroon.
Ten minutes later I climbed up to the highway. North to the right and South to the left. I opened to the back of my notebook, to “The Godlist.” Of the nineteen entries, eight had strikethroughs already. After crossing through “Terrence Bedford, rapist, Big Pine, CA,” my pen rested on “Othelia Downs, child molester, Needles, CA.” I scampered to the southbound side of the highway and was about to thumb a ride when Mr. Bedford’s cell phone rang in my cargo pocket. After contemplating the 800 number appearing on the caller-ID screen, I answered.
“Oh, hello,” offered a warm-voiced woman, “someone from this number requested the emergency fill-up service. We’ve dispatched a tow truck.”
“Oh, thank you, but that won’t be necessary.”
“Is there still a problem?”
“There was, but I think we fixed it.”
“And they hide their faces/And they hide their eyes/cause the cities dying/And they don’t know why”
Randy Newman - Baltimore (1977)
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This is my response to all yer bitchin’
I’ve heard alot of things about Barack Obama since he started his run for the White House. Most of it from black people and I’d just like to say…shut the hell up.
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Teaching creative writing has been a journey that has broadened my scope of purpose.
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Depending on the particular urban eye, entertainment in 2007 was either a hard hit or a sure miss. To me, it was nothing short of a definite strike out. Celebrities became ordinary and the ordinary became celebrities. Few showed up to Hip Hop’s funeral and the “n word” peaced out with about 5 in attendance. My guess is that there must’ve been an ill Soulja Boy concert or something. Whatever the case may be, the biz had a serious 07 meltdown that doesn’t need to spill into the New Year. With that said, here are the top 8 things we could do without in the big 08. I’m sure someone will miss them, but they gots to go!
8. – Video Girl Memoires - Whose name is there left to moan? Why enhance the image of black women as sex objects, when you can deflect it with intelligence. Are smarts really that un-trendy?
7. – Rain – How ironic is it that when everyone and their momma was rapping about making it rain, Hip Hop was suffering its worst drought yet. Were we really that ignorant to avoid a little bit of conscious sunshine last year?
6. – Arrests – Weezy, TI, Mike Vick, Foxy, Pac Man Jones and too many etceteras rocked the trendiest set of bracelets in 2007, despite the required bail amount. Mug shots are not a good look, let’s try and keep it legal in the 08.
5. – Celebrity “Reality” Shows – This is just about everyone’s favorite guilty pleasure. But you know what happens when you eat too much junk food? You get fat! Nuff’ said.
4. – Booty Implants – Just when the girl next door thought it was her chance to shine…BOOM, chick got knocked out by her big booty rival. There’s nothing wrong with a naturally voluptuous derriere, but damn! Who wants to be there to clean up the mess when your silicone home-girl sits down and pops!?
3. – Crotch Shots – She knows who she is…and we don’t want any more.
2. – Unoriginal BET Shows – Enough is enough! I’m starting to think that ignorance and stupidity sell more than sex, which should be ludicrous thinking. Black people have worked so hard to get away from our “silly negro” image. So why is BET reinforcing it?
1. – “Crank Dat” Remixes – Batman, Soulja Girl, Lion King, Spiderman, Grandpa…no wonder there was a decline in high school test scores. The kids are trading in books for hooks and supermaning their asses off. They don’t give a damn if you ground them cause that means more time on youtube. I propose a year of time out…in the library.
I thought I had passed out on one of the white, plastic lawn chairs outback by the kegs, but I woke up at 9:40 face down on the beige, leather love seat in Chris’s basement. I opened my eyes a slit and focused on the sound of what I ascertained to be the crunching of aluminum cans. I seemed to be dressed only in my boxer shorts and all the exposed skin on my body felt glued to the leather cushions. Maybe I dozed off again for a minute, but I had an extremely lucid dream, almost a sensation, that I was a fly stuck to one of those curly, dangling traps that often hang from the ceilings of low-end bodegas. I came to and immediately felt extremely optimistic. With such a vivid dream, although it could have been interpreted as a negative one, I felt awfully clear headed and inspired to have a great day.
This positive feeling was short lived as I peeled my face up off of the couch and quickly felt as if my head were in a vice. Then came the sourness in my esophagus. I quickly plopped my face back down and exhaled into the cushion, creating the similar sound and effect that occurs when you place your lips on somebody’s stomach and blow, fart noises and giggaling generally follow. And that reminded me, where is Betsy? Why hadn’t we woken up in each other’s arms? I again lifted my head up and regarded the room in full. I saw that Chris was collecting empty beer cans off of the ping-pong table and for the first time, as if my senses were a bit out of sync, I heard the murmuring beats and ghetto drawled lyrics of a new and overplayed hip hop song crackling from a shitty boom box.
Heaving myself out of the sunken cushions, I saw Betsy lying at the foot of the love seat in a hulking mass of blankets and beanbag chairs. She was awake, her eyes on me, intent, almost fierce, not a hint of sleep in them. Hours ago, I suddenly remembered, those eyes were rolled back, eyelids fluttering with pleasure, but at that moment their perverse intensity made that memory completely unappealing. I stood up, resigned to avoid eye contact with Betsy and acknowledged Chris with a grunt. He returned the grunt as if to say, “Fucking hangover, I feel you man.”
I helped clean for a bit, giddily chucked empty cans into the garbage can across the room. Chris eventually yelled at me for missing 70% of my shots and “just making my job harder.” I laughed and went to the backyard and saw Stan who had been up all night and was now trying to ease off of the cocaine with a haphazardly rolled joint. I watched as the red ember ate away at the yellowing rolling paper leaving a trail of ash behind which hung precariously for a moment, then dropped onto his Pantera t-shirt. We spoke of our summer jobs, he being already late for his morning shift at a deli and I recently fired from a part time bartending job at a yatch club in south eastern Queens.
Chris’ backyard was a beach. He lived on the north shore of Long Island, about an hour from the city. He had a wood deck extending from the house for about 15 feet, and then there was nothing but sand and the water.
I stripped off my boxers and ran the 30 yards of rocky beach, kicking the high tide mark of sun-baked seaweed as I passed. I dove into the water, my stomach scraping against the shallow sea floor of the sound. I swam underwater for a few yards before surfacing and faced inland. Betsy was smoking a cigarette with her arms crossed, watching me, cat eye sunglasses now hiding her eyes. Certainly her major flaw, those telling eyes. Smug body language and a wry pout do little when a person’s eyes are so expressive. She was weak I decided, and although we were both satisfied last night, I came out on top this morning. This time I will be emotionally disconnected, she the victim of sleepless nights and the butterflies of want in her stomach. I waved cheerfully and licked the salt off my lips. I swam out, breaststroke style, a little further and squinted up to the sun. I urinated in the water because that is one of my favorite things to do, and swam towards the shore, away from my own warm piss.
After a long swim, the first few steps on dry land are always a bit awkward. Enjoy this moment of physical ignorance, this loss of equilibrium. Think of nothing else, except maybe the hot sand collecting on your wet feet as you relearn this basic, human motor skill. By the time I reached the patio I am a new man, at full confident stride. The icy water of the Atlantic cooled my blood, deflating the veins in my temples, which often throb when I am hungover. Is there a better way to start ones day?
I pulled on my jeans which were all covered in green skid marks, residue of a drunken rumble on the grass at the front of the house. Slapping all four pockets, I felt my wallet and my cell phone, but my car keys were missing.
I stepped over the slumbering bodies on the plush, white, wall to wall carpeting of Chris’ living room, I found my keys on the coffee table, lying in a puddle of Southern Comfort, flanked by chewed up limes. The street was lined with expensive cars, most of them completely filthy, the careless upkeep of thankless rich kids who don’t know how to appreciate a nice thing when they are simply given it and not forced to work for it. I thought of the working class Koreans teenagers who hang out in front of the Dunkin Donuts on Queens boulevard, forever polishing their tricked out, late model Hondas, planning ahead and saving money for the next after market spoiler or used racing wheels. And although their cars may look gaudy with all types stickers and fiber glass wings and spoilers, the young Koreans feel a certain pride when they start up their engines and that racing exhaust grumbles. The irony of this thought did not escape me as I started up my classic Jaguar XJ8, although it is a twenty-year-old car, I cannot deny that it is still an ostentatious vehicle in its own right. I ran a red light as I pulled onto 25A.
My eyes had been hurting for about a month. It wasn’t so much a surface pain, but one that shot through the back of my head and clung as a dull pang, giving me the sensation that my eyeballs were swelling. My mother made an appointment with an eye doctor 40 minutes east of our home in Jamaica Estates, because they were the only one on the island that accepted our insurance plan and would see me on such short notice. So I stayed out in Nassau County at Chris’ and got shit faced with all my buddies from high school. All rich Long Island kids whom I attended the UN School in Manhattan with.
The optometrists’ office was in some large office building, a ten-story glass edifice reflecting the late morning sun in Garden City. I parked and walked passed business types on their cigarette breaks as I entered the building through revolving, glass doors. I gave the receptionist my name and filled out the necessary paper work. Sitting in the waiting room, not reading a month old Time, I broke into a cold sweat. I think the booze was leaving my body. I rushed outside and sat on the curb with my face in my sweaty palms. Two bottle blondes were smoking Newports and talking about their plans for the evening. Last thing I heard before lasping into another day dreams was something about happy hour and dollar wings at some bar called Rascals.
You are standing online with dozens of other men in the narrow hallway of some walk up tenement. The loose floorboards creak and the building seems to sway as one man leaves the room at the end of the hall and we all take the same step at the same time, shifting one closer to the door, which closes behind as another man enters. You are sizing up all the other men online. They vary in age, race and attire. Some in business suits, some in chef’s uniform, two guys stand together in full football equipment and others in paint splattered tight, black jeans and thermal shirts, the uniform of bohemian artists. You are feeling exceedingly jealous. You hate these men. You rush to the front of the line as they all start yelling: “Wait your turn like everybody else!” and “Whadaya think you’re special?”
I heard my name said two or three times before I reacted. The receptionist, in her kitty cat sweat shirt and tapered, green sweat pants was calling me into the doctor’s office. I sprung up, wiped the sweat off my forehead and dried my hands off on the back of my jeans.
The optometrist was wearing a dumpy looking, polyester dress. It had some gold trimming and bronze buttons down the front. I think it was supposed to look like a sailor’s uniform, just transformed to be business casual. The blue dress was down to her knees, exposing thick calves in beige stockings. Her shoes were cheap leather with deep creases at the fronts where her toes bent when she walked. I tried to imagine what the skin of her legs looked like under the opaque pantyhose.
She stood up from her desk and I quickly glanced away at the shit colored stains on the drop ceiling. She came up close and shined a light into my eye. She smelled like the popery candles my mom always has burning in our bathroom. She wore little makeup aside from a smear of light red lipstick. She had no wrinkles and I realized that she was not as old as I had first thought. She pulled away and clicked off the light. She started asking me if was experiencing any eye discomfort. I said I was and that I thought I just needed a new supply of contact lenses.
She sat back at her desk in a ratty, leather chair, bursting at the seams with light yellow foam padding. With her back to me she started writing something on my chart. Her diploma from Long Island University hung above her in a black, plastic frame with spotty glass. She had a little ceramic elf dressed like an optometrist next to a coffee mug that said, “Eye love you,” which she used to hold a few chewed up, blue, Bic pens. A stagnant cup of rusty looking coffee in a chewed up Styrofoam cup sat on the corner of her desk, with a ring of liquid collecting at the bottom. Large, gold, hoop earrings showed through her light, almost platinum, shoulder length hair. The hair color made her seem even younger from the back, like looking across the bar at a 22 year old with her back to you.
She walked in front of the eye checking contraption or whatever you call it, and straddling my legs. I slid my hand up the coarse fabric of her pantyhose as I worked my fingers up her thigh and onto her ass. She gasped and froze. I was already too far gone. I wasn’t going to stop unless she started to scream. After I moved down to her crotch she relaxed and began to breathe heavily. It was pretty awkward, I kept trying to get my hand on her breast, but her bra was way too tight. It only lasted about 6 minutes. She pulled me out and went over to her desk. She began to cry and her voice cracked as she said I needed a stronger prescription and that she could have new lenses in by next Monday.
So, it’s the most wonderful time of the year, when I can air my grievances with a pretext. Unlike normally when I just air them because they’re there. I gotta lot of problems with you people and now you’re gonna hear about it!