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a creative writer’s

Sunday, May 19, 2013
@11:21 am

Soul Singing

The woman dancing to soul in the parlor
can reach back into the far pits of memory
and conjure moments I could never know

Slow is her movement, like curtains falling
from a summer breeze as she sings sixties soul
and brags to me about the polyester seams
in the pants she wore when she had hips like me

She tells me If I had to do it over again
I would have been a soul singer
Singing saved my soul

Slow is her song, like curtains falling
from a summer breeze as she climbs the octaves,
staying there for a while and dancing as she comes down
holding onto a golden note

@9:35 am

It’s the third week of May and this time of year I often wake up feeling gospeldelic, like I can do all things through the spirit, and to keep it alive I plug my lansing speakers into my laptop and blast Shirley Caeasar and The Soul Stirrers - old church gospel tunes that lead me to a quiet place where I sit and read my bible and try to put to heart prayers like The Confession of Faith, a string of Old and New Testement verses woven together by Bishop Thompson of Jubilee Christian Church which sits at the top of Blue Hill Avenue, like a beacon.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Blue Hill Avenue

It begins with Spanglish-speaking merchants
encased in bulletproof stalls
where the faint scent of dried cod
follows you to the flat fix next door,
into the auto body, a hair shop,
and up the steps of a church
for first generation Cape Verdean Americans,
their offspring, parents, and an unwavering grandmother
who wears a black dress and walks home
on Fridays evenings with a shopping bag
full of grocery and memories on her head.

At its first hump, families disappear.

There are fewer stores here, lots of energy boxes
with epitaphs: “Tiffany Moore Died Here”
or “Gone but not forgotten - Sean Goffigan,”
a rusty slide, a seatless swing set,
a playground missing children.

There are no church steeples in this section
that feeds on a neon CITGO sign too weak
to stretch across the Boston skyline
and light the back rooms of the Back Bay
but catches every crack diva as she emerges
from its shadows to entice the gas customers.

A few blocks up, a ghost of the Jewish past sits
with pointy stars of David nestled inside its bulbous
steeples that simmer on summer Sundays
when congregants stew inside and pray
and give to the building fund in damp envelopes
that will go to the omnipotent one
who will someday replace the stars with crosses.

Past the temple is Grove Hall’s Mecca,
a strip mall with a drive-thru Dunkin Donuts,
a Stop & Shop, CVS, Bank of America,
and a Rainbows that sells the sequined one-off shirt
you need for a date and the fishnets to wear to the carnival
that parades through a sliver of the avenue,
the very next section of our beloved Blue Hill,
where “GORRILLAS!” underscore the welcome sign
to Franklin Park Zoo.

Across the street, Check Cashers speak English
as good as the number of dollars and cents
they count when they hand you back your cashed check
or the double win you scratched out of a Golden Rush ticket.

Adjacent to them, a Greek-owned sandwich shop
that feeds you late night munchers heart-attack meals;
steak and cheese bombs as long as your forearm,
Friday’s Special - 50 wing dings, a mega load o fries,
a Greek salad, and a Super Gulp of whatever fountain drink you’d like.

Next, another ghost of the Jewish past, a church
in the former Franklin Park Theater
where Yiddish entertainers performed vaudeville acts
when nobody living can remember.
Then a building that resembles an African footstool
that might allow you to see over the hump of the hill;
and down below, a gospel choir trapped in everlasting song
is painted onto the side of a one-hour cleaners;
a liquor store, a Haile Selassie boutique; next door,
a turkey-shaped lady with flour dusted hands stands
behind the window, guarding beef patties and cocoa bread
that sit warming in an oven only she has the key to open.

Friday, May 17, 2013
I texted my dad today: “No luck yet, Dad. Life sucks.”
His response: “Life is good. PEOPLE suck, baby.”

Thursday, May 16, 2013
One of my oldest friends deleted me from her Facebook page about a month ago and I just found out about it as I was trying to tag her in a photo. We were friends before Facebook and it’s a shame when friendships fail because of it. I’m still your friend, S.S.S., and you’ll get that hand-written letter sooner than later.
Peace.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013
ADDENDUM (5.16.2013): I just discovered that it’s not actually “ratchet” that people intend to say, but “wretched.” Now that’s interesting. I’ll write about it another time, but until then, I’m gonna let this post live for a while.

What’s a ratchet?

Before I google the word I’m going to try my best to understand its meaning because the sheer utterance of it caused a very nasty fight on the MBTA today. One woman called another “a ratchet” and that prompted the other woman to go for blows. You never want to be on public transportation when a fight breaks out. Trust me. I’ve never experienced a natural disaster, but I think this comes close to having been sucked into the eye of a tornado. Shiver me timbers. It was such a brutal brawl, sparked by the word ratchet - astonishing!

Ratchet...

I remember a friend uttering this word a few years ago while telling me about his experience at Landmark Education, an institution that helps business professionals with personal development by giving them tools to remove the various and sundry obstacles out of their way. My friend, after explaining how he enjoyed taking the course, asked me what my ratchet was.

“Huh?” I said. “I’ll have to get back to you on that one. What’s yours?” I asked.

His ratchet is his innate ability to talk himself out of difficult situations. He said that a key part of the course was understanding what one’s ratchet was and the ability to use it effectively. I assumed then that a ratchet was a talent or strength that one can use to move themselves forward.

Dictionary.com says it’s “a device consisting of a bar or wheel with a set of angled teeth in which a pawl or cog, or tooth engages, allowing motion in one direction.” My definition wasn’t that far off. I’ve used this tool to fix my bike. It’s a socket wrench, basically.

But that’s not what the woman on Route 23 meant today when she called the other a ratchet. I wonder how Urbandictionary.com defines the term...

Welp, here it is:

Ratchet: “A diva, mostly from urban cities and ghettos, that has reason to believe she is every mans eye candy. Unfortunately, she's wrong.”
That must have been the tune playing in that woman’s head when she belted out, “You BLEEPING RATCHET!”

This definition is commonly used today. Rapper LL Cool Jay dropped a single last year called “Ratchet.” It’s a crappy, distasteful, and misogynistic song that never charted on Billboard (and thank God for that). Why is he rapping about “hitting it and dropping it” anyway? Isn’t he married with children?

Hold on, there’s more...

Filmmaker Issa Rae, whose series I like a lot, has an episode called “Ratchetpiece Theater,” where she succinctly defines the term and presents a shining example of “ratchet music.”

Yeah, that’s the meaning that the woman was getting at today on the bus. But what I’d like to know is how this word went from being a useful, handy tool to an utterly despicable, sexist, elitist slur? And I guess I’m not the first to ask this question. TheRoot.com beat me to it last year when they posted “Who You Calling a Ratchet?”, an article that only scratches at the surfaces of the deeply harmful social implications of this very insulting word. I would go further and say that the article actually helps to perpetuate this instance of its usage. And you might even be thinking that I’m doing the same thing by giving it attention right here in this space...and...and...so what...it’s my words, my blog, and my business. Plus, I need to make sense of what just happened today.

It’s no wonder the argument escalated into a fist fight. Not that I condone violence, but that is a fighting word -- and sorry about that eye, Sis. It will heal. Just don’t be so quick to fight with words. Next time use your brain. It’s a much more effective ratchet. Trust me.

Peace.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

I was in a restaurant last night when the news about the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings broke and everybody clapped when they heard this, including me. Then I went to another spot, Ashmont Grill, which is always lively, but not last night. President Barack Obama was speaking via the flat screen TVs in there and the crowd was silent and focused on his words and when he was done, another crowd of people applauded, and so did I. On another note (but similar), I went to see "42" last week and at the end of the movie, I, along with many others in the theater, applauded, but my friend, a Tennessean, chuckled to himself and said, "Only in Boston do people clap at the end of a movie." Really? For the longest time I've been depressed about living in Boston and besmirching its good name and warning others to stay away (yes, I've been hating on my city), but the spontaneous cheer and the good spirits I've witnessed over the past week has given credence to its nickname "The Hub (of the Universe)" at least for this moment in time. Such good esteem in the face of a gruesome reality is an antidote for depression that can't be bought over the counter or manufactured anywhere other than in the hearts of people. So as I go back to my life and to normal, I will try to remember this spiritedness and I will try not to be so hard on the people and the T and the police and all who work to make good old Beantown a worthwhile city to live in.