Thursday Januray 19, 2006 - 1:14AM

today i awoke at 6:40AM, taught two classes at brandeis high school, travelled downtown to satellite high school, met with my co-teacher to go over lesson plans, had lunch, went back uptown to teach a one-on-one student, nodded on myself, went home to nap for an hour and then went out again to rehearse for vision into art stuff. but check it... conversation overheard at a bar called paris Blues on 121 and Lennox in Harlem

"yo what the number say today?"

"the legal number or the illegal number?"

"the illegal one fool?!"

"8-7-0, but don't throw yr paper away, that's just what i heard on the street..."

Hilarious and beautiful. what else you need. to besides i'm too wired to go to sleep right away. tomorrow i'll send y'all the new poem and relate the interesting debate i've had with Christa Bell from Seattle regarding boack men's rage. it's a good one. i still think i'm right but i think that philosophically and spiritually it is a discussion well worth having; even after you get past the argument where she thinks i shouldn't have hit that dude last monday and i think that it was the only thing left to do and that i was protecting myself...

god i'm hungry. i'm going to make a sandwich...

r

Thursday January 12, 2006 - 12:03PM

the hell with insomnia. got me the good drugs - slept for 10 hours!!

so i got the job. now i'm scared. i have to work every freakin day!! i have to get up, dress thoughtfully and go to someone's job and teach folks every day! to answer questions; no i'm not cutting my hair. i'm not taking jobs anymore that are going to tell me how i should groom (that's just me - i understand that not everyone has that option) and i will not be making it to North Carolina. and i'm a peace-loving, gentle human being, so i will not be pimp-slapping anyone anywhere. what is wrong with y'all?! we're trying to become better freakin' people here?! i'm trying to achieve freakin' buddhahood here people!

however, i am almost done with the first draft of a long-ass poem about that incident and the incident yesterday where an old white woman grabbed her purse and got up and changed seats on the train when i sat down next to her.

time to hit the gym now though. gots to get my calorie burn on to the sultry sounds of Snoop Dogg's 1994 Doggystyle - so laters

'...he is I and I am him / Slim with the tilted brim / what's my muthafuckin' name?!..."

Wednesday January 11th, 2006 - 4:12AM
So it's insomnia time and Blind Date re-runs just ain't gettin' it done. Had a job interview today that went pretty well. i might just have messed around and got me a job - four days a week, three hours a day teaching curatorial studies through spoken word at Satellite Academy High School, a magnet school on the Lower East Side of NYC. I'll know on Thursday and i'm scared shitless because i haven't had to wake up and go to a specific job everyday since... 1999. i have to come up with curricula and a list of guest writers and go to staff meetings and shit if i get this job - STAFF MEETINGS!!!!

More pressing though is that i have to write three odes to different colors for Vision Into Art by Friday. i have to write an ode to the color blue, one to red and one to black and white (like we don't already know where that one's going). so i'm going to get jiggy with some Neruda to prepare myself and i'm going to a lot of anaphora to get that done i believe. only way i can think to get a decent poem done in the winter. it's my slow time and i can't write anything i should let anyone see when it's cold outside - by the way the world's most boring date is going on on blind date on tv right now; i'm going to get to sleep after all. this dude is 36 years old and looks and acts like he's 54. he's scaring me. this dude is younger than i am! fuhcrisssakes run around and yodel or something you two!! the 1800-dentist commercials are more exciting!

okay i'm back and i'm going to find something else to do till 5:30 or so... maybe i should bedazzle something!...

Tuesday january 10, 2006 - 9:53AM

yeah yeah yeah. i haven't had anything to say since last year, but there's been way too much to think about. peter's death stumped all of us. we're still finding out in every moment all those things that peter gave us. this past sunday we did a memorial celebration for him and i'm glad that some of us who showed up were folks who didn't know him at all or that well, because so much that the louderARTS project is in spirit is born of peter's making us toss pine cones into the ocean and giving away his valuables to folks who are barely acquaintances, to his dancing in the middle of the street/bar/club/van/taxi/central park - music notwithstanding.

so we remembered him and ate and drank etc and it was a good time. last night we had our first show of the year, which was the slam to determine who would represent us at the Individual World Poetry Slam in Charlotte. Rives won. I came in second (lost on time penalties - cuz that's just how i roll! what muthafuckas!! what!), but by far the excitement of the evening was the drunk people who came in later on and wouldn't be quiet and then tried to curse us out for asking them to be quiet while folks read poems. dude - all 5 foot 6 ins and 140 lbs of him chooses to grab my hand when i tell him to keep it down. when i tell him not to touch me, he gets his coat comes back and (only a white male in america thinks he can get away with this...) grabs my arm and says "don't ever fucking touch me again!". so of course i slap him as hard as i possibly can across his face and all hell breaks loose - well not all hell, really just a few demons and harpies - but of course the poetry stops, he's falling backward (who gets knocked out with a slap?) and his boys for a moment THINK they're going to stand up and talk shit. i'm of course hoping to get to hit somebody else at this point, so i ask his friend (who is trying to puff up his chest) if he would like to also be knocked out (he did not). so his drunk girlfriend is screaming. they're shouting about pressing charges. bar 13's bouncer, Fish and others usher them out the door and so begins the louderARTS project 2006. it should move along splendidly from here. congratulations to rives on the win. i have a bunch of opinions on folks and "whiteness" that i've gleaned over the holidays; not white people mind you, but "whiteness", so i promise there'll be more posts more often in the next few weeks...

i'm reading mark doty's 'sweet machine" again. it's so so good, so utterly brilliant it bears looking at again and again...