dress in drag and do the hula, not

I saw one too many black men in movies

paid to dress and act in drag, so I wrote this piece:

The proclamation of emasculation

signed by the image maker's cartel

show your feminine side

since you don't have a slit in the front

show your back side

cause you are not fit for the war no more

cause you hang your drawers

below your back and

you crack your face to say

I'm still a man.

who's to say,

some like tough love

it's not the look of love in your eyes

they are looking at anyway

manhoodies neatly folded

thrown to the curve

visible men, everyday men, 

show their tail bones in the street 

because the men of renown 

are so easily shown in dresses

it's funny, it's cute,

it will be the highlight of your career

everybody will remember you in a dress

so and so is funny looking like a honey

he makes a lot of money

that must be the look of success

to wear a dress and be bitch'n

I wanted to kill you when you smeared

shoe polish on your face

and made my likeness to dance

as if I were a puppet

your hand up my spine

now you treat my women like as your interest

and groan to see me in her clothes

and doing her things

snapping gum and fingers

and fussing with my mangled appearance

I hate myself and now my women too

I put on a girl garb, a girl face and vent

and use my male stupidity

I'm a better bitch than that bitch.

you get rid of me and her in me

keep her cause she is not her any more

It's like an old joke

you pull our pants down

give us a wedggie

we all laugh

it's the image seen by all

It's the image seen by all

the successful, the strong, the powerful male actor

the ones who's image represents us in media

wearing dresses, pretending to be bitches

what you are telling us we are

what we are to you

what you want us to be..........

discredited! disrespected! on display!

but it's meant to be funny.

400 years plus and you are still trying to

enslave us by any means necessary

wearing a dress is dissing our manhood

it is not funny

cause I know the joke

the punch line is the image.

the image that is seen by all.

It's just entertainment, right? No! Images convey powerful messages. I've been apologised to by many whites who assumed I was like the images of black folks they saw and internalized in the media. I have to remind them the black actors who did those things were paid to do them and do not represent us who are not following the script.

What was meant by the revolution will not be televised is that the images of us shown on TV will not match us in reality, unless we ourselves buy into those images. You can not continue to deal with us via the fantasy images on TV comedy, movies or news. That's just the truth of it.

black to the future, future, future

In the ranks of the inspired, there is always a mob approach, that is playing to the crowd and the crowd likes to party. I guess it all depends what it is folks are following or as they say trends have trails. Pathways to the future sense spurt out from pop culture. From my observation deck there is this thing called Afro-futurism. Hip-hop is partly in that mode, Electronic music for sure. I think that all started with George Clinton/Parliment/Fumkadelics. You who are in it know all about that because the dance party plane is what is popularized and pushed. Me, I've been pushed into a deeper orbit, jazz.

You know there is stuff that is not heartbeat music. Starting with Sun Ra who was a predecessor of George Clinton, took his mothership in a different direction, deep space. Actually I latched onto Sun Ra late, my vibe was John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Eddie Harris and Wayne Shorter. For me they stretched the boundaries of melodic music into new forms of sound. In particular Eddie Harris like Sun Ra used electronics to open up new worlds. He later diverted off into funk which was for me a downer. Coltrane and Sanders seemed a spiritual path as myth and spiritual awareness were big in my life. Wayne Shorter was the illustrator, his musical pictures are compelling. Then Shorter horned Weather Report. I never, ever, been on a strange fascinating landscape like that in my life. I started to realize just how formative sound can be.

After these edgy guys I rediscovered Sun Ra. I think you have to get used to music being out of sync, colliding, expanding, etc. Thelonious Monk hit those minor cords and I would wince, he played spaces too. Sun Ra played some hokey stuff but then some other worldly stuff of prolific dimensions, variety and depth. The scary thing is you have to listen more than once. Each time you immerse, you come out different. Musical immersion changes your vibe, take my word. You become imprinted with sound sequences you want to hear, explore, embrace. The sounds change your vibe and that effects your thinking, ways of looking. The ideas associated with those sound sequences................is why most do not stray from popular music, ooh that's weird, strange, I don't want to be that unique, I want to be like everybody else.

OK I've just explained quantum sound science and what the heck did you think music was all about, lol!!! There is in fact junk for all your senses that can render you a numbskull, you have to pick out the good stuff, filter the rest. This is what science is all about. And you thought sci-fi is about fiction!? fiction!? fiction??   

Black History Month an open window

Black History Month is kind of like a public open window for what I try to do everyday. Black history is so vast that there is more that is forgotten than what is revealed. Now this wouldn't have been a problem but back when Europe was starting to write text books and the opinions of certain scholars dominated the new learning environment, it was expressed that nothing ever came out of Africa, Africa didn't contribute anything worthy of record in history and in fact have not progressed much beyond the primal. They were important, educated, and sought after people who said these things. It started a trend to discount and degrade Africa without further consideration. The result is sort of like the movie "The Avatar". A people considered savages, primitives, etc are sitting on a cash of resources and they don't understand the wealth they are sitting on. So we should exploit them, then remove them. People were enslaved and colonized, resources plundered, generations of their children mis-educated and disadvantaged.

Come to today many of us get bits and pieces of history. We start to put the pieces together to see what happen to us over the hundreds of years. Of course we are the latest rendition of them that struggled. Add in so-called race mixing and travel it is hard to call us a cohesive group dubbed the descendents of the enslaved. But for all we went through there is still disparity, directed injustice, mistreatment via law and attitude triggered by sight and embeded in the psyche of the descendents of ones who did us harm via the institution they created.

It is a big internal to do, a mental wrangling for all of us. This mess is managed by images in media because a picture is worth a thousand words. Not much needs to be said, just show a picture. Black folk scramble to see images of themselves in a positive light. In the US the only pics of Africa has been of poverty and malnourished children, not one of modern cities with banks and business centers and communities of well built homes. One day I will have to go and see for myself.

Now here is what I am involved with:

And it is at 737 Broadway Ave, Lorain, Ohio 44052. We are trying hard to appreciate who we are and what we've become. We don't want others to explain us, we tell our own stories, sing our own songs, show the works of our own hands. You get the gist of us, that is all anyone is entitled to. "If you don't know us by now, you will never really know us, oooh oooh oooh!" Ahh sing it baby! It is not just the past but the future too. Yeah we got black astronauts today but we've had Sun Ra since the 40's. We can get Sirius about..................come and see.