Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Rest in Peace and Power Chris Brown


I’m still in shock, and probably 5 simultaneous stages of grief right now (heavy hearted? Bursting hearted?)…..but I have to try to say something, by way of tribute, at the risk of missing something essential, and this end up being more about me than Chris Brown….I guess I only knew a sliver of his life, but I wish to celebrate…..I don’t like to use the term “star student” coz it implies favoritism, but if anybody was, Chris Brown was.

2014: I was teaching my first creative writing class in 5 or 6 years, and still very much mourning Amiri Baraka who had recently died, and since I taught at a school where whites are a minority, and it was a multi-genre class, I thought The Amiri Baraka Reader would be a perfect model text for work in various genres. The first night of class, I arrived 30 minutes early, and there was already a student sitting there reading the Baraka reader. “Wow,” I said, “I see you bought the text already. I didn’t know the bookstore had it yet.” He looked at me puzzled, “The Baraka reader? Oh, I’m just reading it on my own.” That’s how we met (he loved to tell others that story….)

And, in his classroom performance the entire semester, he seemed to, intuitively (if not necessarily ‘naturally’) have the word “teacher” written all over him. He had strong, clear righteous political analysis, but often kept them in reserve, and let others talk even if he disagreed. He chose his battles and earned an authority, I believe, with everybody in the classroom with when he would weigh in with insightful, empathetic analysis of others creating writing. He helped make the class run more smoothly as mediator. Often I felt he was more like a co-teacher, or taught me more than I taught him—for instance, about James Baldwin, Afro-centric theory, etc. Yet, he seemed surprised when I asked him, “have you ever thought about teaching?” I think we were both trying to reinvent ourselves when we met (I’m told he was a personal trainer in a past life/)…

He became a tutor in the writing center, and, in the 3 years he was at Laney, he took full advantage of the (alas, too few) extra-curricular resume-building opportunities Laney can offer while at the same time working as activist to put the community back in community college—serving in student government, the steering committee for the Laney College teach ins, on the frontlines of the anti-gentrification struggle, and helping to spearhead the Umoja-UBAKA program, all the while keeping his grades up so he could transfer with some financial aid to U.C.—Davis and continuing to work on his creative prose, drama, and poetry. The wide net he cast reminded me of myself in undergrad….(and sorry if this sounds more like a teacher’s “recommendation letter”)…

I invited him on my radio show to read his creative writing and also talk politics, current events, systemic racism, etc. On air, it became almost immediately apparent to both of us that we had a verbal chemistry, and he became co-host of my show and immediately made it better. We brought in other students, and began plotting ideas for future shows. We were just getting started. Unfortunately, do to scheduling issues, the show was not renewed….

Chris Brown had so many talents, he debated with himself on possible majors and seemed relieved when I told him you don’t have to major in English as an undergrad to be able to get into an MFA Creative Writing program should he choose that route. He made me feel like I was helping him, even if I’m not so sure I was….We stayed in touch after he left Laney (his FB posts were often very informative and insightful; he was the first to show me the BBQ Betty video before it went viral, for instance….). He kept me posted on his adjustments to Davis as a more impersonal environment in which he’d find himself in that position of being the only black in classes, and the burden of having to represent, etc….and the hyprocrisy of the self-proclaimed radical (Marxist or anarchist) professors who marginalize racism, etc…..The future? He said he’s like to go back to Oakland and give back…..he also said he’d like to check out Africa (Liberia?)….and of course keep writing. He was only starting to publish, but he was patient and disciplined and had long term projects….even as he posted some poems in FB. He was one of the kindest people I’ve met in recent years, and, though I don’t have many non-FB or non-professional friends these days, I hope it’s not presumptuous to say he was one of my closest friends, and I still can’t believe he’s gone. Rest in power as peace!

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

April Drafts #10


4. For Shane Frink

Ever feel struck in an after picture called disability?
If I make light of my own personal trauma, would you accuse me of making fun of yours?

If I weren’t too busy comparing myself to those who compare,
I’d consider buying a performance enhancer disguised as an anti-depressant

If I make light of my own personal trauma, would you accuse me of making fun of yours?
Like that Up & In Truth App that can make some appreciate being down & out

I’d consider buying a performance enhancer disguised as an anti-depressant
Coz it doesn’t matter if I’m havingfun if I can befun

Like that Up & In Truth App that can make some appreciate being down & out
& I can dig the way repeat’s fingers push the buttons you can call mine

Coz it doesn’t matter if I’m having fun if I can befun
As if my happiness is absolutely dependent on yours, and I fail

& I can dig the way repeat’s fingers push the buttons you can call mine
& gladly acknowledge your suffering’s worse than mine from jump

As if my happiness is absolutely dependent on yours, and I fail
But 50 year olds may feel more futurity than they felt at 20

And I’d gladly acknowledge your suffering’s worse than mine from jump.
Ever feel stuck in after picture called disability?

But 50 year olds may feel more futurity than they felt at 20
If I weren’t too busy comparing myself to those who compare


Thursday, January 4, 2018

#CaliforniaLegalCannabis

 (too long for a tweet; too topical for a poem)

It’s 2017, & the billboards claim “Victory”
& evoke 1960s “radical chic”…
Men & women, black & white
smiling, flashing the peace sign
that was originally the victory sign
(closer to the camera, the V
is bigger than the face)
as if the culmination of a 50-year struggle.

It’s 2017 on the streets where 50 years ago,
they proudly chanted “all power to the people!”
the new billboard honors that history
by claiming “Flower to the people!”
Who needs power if you got flower?
Who needs need if you got weed?
Yet it’s hard for me to celebrate
gentrified neoliberal flower power
even if I run the risk of sounding
like Jeff Sessions, “I used to like
The klan before I found out they smoked pot”
(enter the cultural critic)

When Kanye West sampled Gil Scott Heron’s “Comment #1” (1969) in “Who Will Survive in America” (2010), he edits out lines like “The irony of it all, of course, is when a pale face SDS motherfucker dares look hurt when I tell him to go find his own revolution….. He is fighting for legalized smoke, a lower voting age, less lip from his generation gap and fucking in the street. Where is my parallel to that? All I want is a good home and a wife and children and some food to feed them every night.”

I guess Kanye didn’t think those lines
were relevant 50 years later….(or he’s bought?
I don’t think it’s proper for a white to call
a black man a “Tom”). And a Latina writes
“unfortunately, in California, people are more
 interested in legalizing drugs than people.”

& if the non-violent thing you’re in jail for is no longer a crime,
shouldn’t you be freed immediately and, as reparations,
be allowed to resume where you left off?
or are you now just “the competition”

someone had to jail so they could corner the market…
along with the Monsanto Gen-Mod Big Pot Agri-business
coming to a pothead near you


#Harborside #JeffSessions #Warondrugs