Early Riser

The morning starts in my uneasy mind

Long before I want to get out of bed:

Things to do & problems to solve, I find

(Beginning the march ‘bout my pillowed head)

Ego Battles Fear Sonnet

All my of fears: camouflaged resentments
Stand at the fortified walls of my id
Waiting for the attacks & inducements 
That from within my superego slid

That moment before battle, nervously 
Awaiting the damage that’s expected
Remembering the peace previously 
That my own heart & soul had infected 

So I reinforce my ego & pride
Make tall stone walls wattled with rough concrete 
Behind these fortifications I stride
Fighting to remain the same: incomplete 

It will only be by surrendering 
That I’ll allow my soul to truly sing

Second Amendment Sonnet

A firearm in hand boosts the weak psyche

•Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun• explains psychology

A pistol needn’t compromise with me

2nd Amendment’s a tautology

White Supremacy’s 2nd Amendment

Guns to bully & slaughter Brown People

First Indians then Negroes targeted

Racism’s the American steeple

I’d always suspected this about guns

They’re part of the American ego

They were somewhat less necessary once

Back when White Supremacy was legal

Guns’re inextricably linked to death

Taking over when compromise has left

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8070-4449-0

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-think-about-guns-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100460830

https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=53508079&autoplay=1&refid=asi_twtr

Black Comic Book Festival (2014)

I went to the Black Comic Book Festival at the Schomburg Center yesterday. That was pretty fun and interesting. I think I’d like to get the experimental self-published book by the author Keith Miller (Sigmund’s Friend) suggested. He recommended Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond but I want to read Koontown Killing Kaper, which the author described as a parodic look into hip-hop-risy ala Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada. If this is the new stripe of self-publication I think I want to note and celebrate it.

The comic that most interested me in theory was (H)afrocentric. I Saw Juliana “Jewels” Smith in the “Black Women in Comics” Panel at the Black Comic Festival at the Schomburg Center.  I had a really good time going there and I see in what Ms. Smith has done as something akin to what I want to do, which is create a student led, written and illustrated
 of a composition course. I read her book and I found it inspired and simultaneously hard to follow. I think that the problem is that her scripts were not complete. Perhaps Jewels could write a better script so that more of the inside insight (& jokes) were clearer. Of course the last thing I want to do is hit her with a critique, before I’ve established a good relationships.

(h)Afrocentric (in issue 3) raises all of the issues I have been thinking about vis-a-vis gentrification, race and education in the East Bay. It is a fine wish fulfilment book, not unlike the Mickey Rooney Judy Garland confections of old. (The protagonist Ally [allie?], an inveterate do-gooder wants to put on a show to save her neighbor from a rapacious clean-streets policy that will steal property for perceived blight.) It reminds me of a less developed IncogNegro. It is a progressive wish fulfilment centered on my old East Bay home (Before student housing in Albany I lived on 45th St between MLK and West St in Oakland).

I really like her cast of characters (well drawn by the artist Ronnie Nelson who brings them to (2D) life). The characters are like a smart group of friends I had while I was working on my Ph.D in the East Bay, with a quip a minute and a collective ADHD because of our lack of a leader like Ally.

The panels are full of witty asides like the Rosetta Stone Language system that the homeowner facing foreclosure is selling to keep the wolf from the door in an AmWay-like capitalist self help scheme that includes “Geraldo Rivera” and a cruel joke about his thin-masculinity. Ronald Reagan College was a perfect slice at Prop-13 California. I wish these were better developed in the script with more explanation about how they fit in with the meta-narrative that hints at “Winter in America.”

I look forward to more and more of this interesting title.