*Urban Media Outlet*

Its like it just occurred to me that there is no time to gaze

No self-pity, no negativity, no shitty shitty vibes

Fuck your insecurities, I haffi pree and move

Sittin in the same spot complaining everyday nah do nothing but prove

That, still, I am that I am, and if my movements are a threat to your above-the-ground death

Then keep that mess

Cuz im preein life, along with the pain and the strife

But I nah go fuck around and be my own murderous knife!!!!

Roaring River, Jamaica

This was written in high school (2004) where I learned that they will kick you when you’re down. “They” being the ones who will big yuh up in public and be close to you when tings a gwaan fi yuh but in secret places, they want to be you and would love to see something go wrong. Dont be fooled by them like I was!!! Here’s why I say so:

Fuck the friend thing, this shit neva work

Hypocrites an backstabbaz always out to hurt

One progress, the Other try stop it

Same One drop something, the Other secretly cop it

Its a phuckin myth, all this friend shit

Livin’ lies, believin’ in friendships

When shit dont last

Waitin for help??? Realize its your friends who blast

No life no more, czuse your friend’s greed required it

Jus ovastand- the gun- your friend’s the one who fired it

Never beLIEve in the false convos, better to KNOW your communication is real

Friends only touch, fam make you feel

Dem lives of lame lies and idiotic ignorance

Is from the start hard to take on, I always distrust dat raas

Nuff a dem dont discover dat dem friend out to get dem

Fools and naive souls with crazy weaknesses let them

When the destruction forward act like they was never wrong

But with jaded judgment your perception is dead wrong

Clean up yuh heart then you know who is true

I don’t keep friend and if you’re a friend then fuck you

© 2010 T_Thought Productions ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

My parent and all my grown family members I directed here must be cringing to see me speak so explicitly. Oh well….

Read the rest of this entry »

There is a war in me that must be battled
But my opponents are weak I would be deemed a tyrant
Read the rest of this entry »

2005

A woman will always know the differences between when she is A pum pum an when she is THE pum pum

When she’s THE pum pum its “Wha gwaan pums, what yuh need?”

When she’s A pum pum its “Wha gwaan pussy, wha yuh carry fi mi?”

When she’s the pum pum there’s this look in his eyes. This look, yea, my look, where I can see all he doesn’t have to say, wouldn’t say, but all he wants me to know

When she’s a pum pum, there’s this look in his eyes. No! Its actually a look in her eyes, searching out his eyes for the look. But then she feels blind, destitute, because she cannot see it. She bends her head, closes her eyes and forgets about that look.

When she’s the pum pum he moans, biting his lip as his power rises, he grips her breasts like the harnesses that they are. Harnessing his love, his life.

When she’s a pum pum he grunts like a hog and sometimes–>empty silence. He puts his hands behind his head, not caring for her breasts, oh no, that ended with HIS foreplay, while his seminal vesicle gets ready to burst and then it dies.

A girl will always know she is the pum pum when her man’s brothers smile and live like the sunshine with her and she’s able to gain from them, not parasitically, from this light and heat. They tell her “its your’s to take, we want oonu to have it all, this is the ites/heights of life”

She knows she is just a pum pum when the man’s friends smile because shi look good, because her ass phat, because gyal fi get fuck. She can gain nothing from them but shame and dishonor and even this is parasitically (yea, she sucks it from them). They tell her…they….they tell her nothing.

She knows, yes she feels it in her soul and hole that she is his pumpum when he talks, his mind talks to her’s and they equal minds making up.

She feels she is just a pum pum when he talks, he talks to his bredrin, the weedman, the girl down the road, the lady at the KFC drive-thru window but never really to her. A mind is a terrible thing to grow.

She knows, yes she lives that she is his pumpum when he wants to leave the lights on. He wants to visibly know and internalize every part of her body. She knows

She knows she is only a random pum pum when he has to do it in the shadow, roun the corner, in di bush. Is it that lil thing he’s scared to show her?

She lives that she is his pum pum when he strips her naked and takes his hands around the world of her body. Down the small of her back, tickling her belly-button, cupping her breasts in his hands, seeing if his hands will ever cover her whole ass, running his fingers through the natty lush gardens of her front.

She can never know this when she is just a pum pum. She only knows jagged hands cutting her body. She had to strip herself, even that joy he denied her and as his hands speed, uncaringly, over the lumps of her sensuality, her garden becomes ashy, burnt out, without nourishment.

She knows she is his because he lets her examine his body in great detail

She knows she is any ol pumpum because he refuses to let her see him unclothed unless he is to penetrate. And even so pants have zippers, skirts hold no restraints and panties, well they can

be pulled aside.

She knows that she is his because she knows that he is hers

She never knows that she is his because he was never hers

She knows that she is his because she sees the honor and pride as he embraces each soul of his family and how he affords her family the same respect and blesses her with all she’s been searching for withing life.

She will never be his, you know why- cause now she knows that he lacks honor and pride.

© 2010 T_Thought Productions ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

(dont bloodcleet tief mi poem unless yuh want a legal hooplahoo. It is already documented and registered with T_Thought Productions LLC, so legal grounds deh de fi wi sue yuh over it, ole clutcher yuh)

Right ya now, to God wi a lif up di people of Haiti
Cause tings a get rough and di struggles a get weighty,
Pan di news wi si di pain an’ wi hear dem a cry
So join me as wi lift up Haiti to di most High.

Fada provide fi di people in di days and months to come
Remind them Fada dat there is peace and joy in di Son,
Fada have mercy because none of us deserve to live
But because yuh gracious out a yuh love yuh give.

So Fada, give to Haiti your peace and your blessings now
At a time like dis, to have a heart of stone, devil wi naaw go bow,
Provide fi wi Fada God so wi can pour out to di Haitians
Jesus remind di world that you died to save all nations,
Yuh love all people so nobody nuh get lef out
Wi stan up fi Haiti, wi love for dem, may they never doubt.

Amen.

© 2010 T_Thought Productions ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

And just as
Brother Suliman spoke of in
Her preference for a broken neck…
Over a broken heart
I too… am ready to exhale

I too am ready to breathe deeply, sleep soundly
I too am ready for that air…
Fresh and clean to arrive in between right on time and
Not a second too late

Ready to exhale…
To sit back even though I’m amongst the all
Who of which are too enthralled in LIFE to…
To relax although the rest that should accompany it is on hiatus

Making it useless to me and the every bodies who’re too enthralled…
So instead I lift my head and scream internally… fixate my eyes on the prize
Squinting because it’s so far out of reach
Beseech myself to beseech myself to…

Just keep going
And it flows… the urge to simply not
In earnest that voice in my head says to stop
My adversary… Myself…
But I block it out
I block it out
I stiff arm…
And go for the goal

Moments pass where I’m here
And not all at once
Just passing through and through
Imagining the things which were at one point

And that of what I desire to be
And that of what will never come to pass…
Snap out it
I… snap out of it and back to hell

I… snap out of it and back to the real
Back to life… back to reality… back to…
This and that and everything else
Relentless and restlessly tedious

Patience depleted and repeatedly tried
And over and over and over again I’m in this here and now
That I wish never was…
In many ways some over others and others more so than some

Both irrelevant and the converse
Yet still… stuck I am.
Stuck I am still…
Stuck in this here and now

With no promises for tomorrow or confirmations on yesterday
And forced into despair over the present
It’s presence… its lack of presents…
And its overabundance of presence

Pushed to be pigeon-holed into the mold
I AM NOT A CARBON COPY!
NOT A CARBON COPY!
NOT A COPY AT ALL!

I am me.
Simple and plain and wishing and
Hoping and dreaming and scheming and
Plotting and reaping…

Exactly what I sow
Woe is me…
Reaping… exactly… what… I… sow…
And still I over-enunciate myself in this present and

Pull that trigger…
One bullet, two bullets, three bullets…
FOUR… into my foot…
Shots to the heart like cycles of immunizations

Seemingly immune to the realization
That my heart is in my feet
That I’m walking on my feelings
Blinding myself…

Trudging forward
With each step new dirt becoming my mask
Hiding me away in my sole
The silent calls for someone to save my soul…

Going easily unheard…
And no one will come to save me
And no one will come to save me
And no one will come to save me…

From myself
For I am my own worst enemy
Living in lavish refusal to receive the cup
From the bottom end
Simply because I’d have to see it as half full

And shit’s just too real for that fantasy…
Fantastically…

© 2010 T_Thought Productions ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Thanks to fellow blogger EmpressDoms from over at The Wickedest Time for the encouragement in keeping up the ‘Poetic’ section.  While it is my intention to keep this as n entertainment and social commentary blog, the ‘poetic’ and ‘politickin’ sections are there for my random personal views to be expressed.

This is a piece I wrote in 2007 when I found my way to a creative muse. It speaks for itself:

Experiences can be taken as the lessons of life. So whatever it is that one does, one needs to gain a lesson from it.Writing used to be my outlet. I say used to be because I haven’t been writing as much as I once did or even should be now. Just livin’ and thinkin’ without much literature. Come to think of it, I haven’t been readin’ much other than school work.

What is it that made the muse missin’ in my mind, moreover, what made my muse minimize in my heightZ, and leave me without that light, that might, that potency and power and in the scheme of all things i think i found it in that yellow flower………….Yesterday was a day that was well spent and important to my life. Who knew that the land that I have been walking through was a slave plantation, only looking much different because of its new buildings and modernization. I spent the day with, Janessa who had been at the college before me. We drove to one of the nearby towns but we really wanted to chill at school. I had heard of ‘The Elephant Tree’, but didnt know what the raas it was, so she said she would show it to me. As we walked the grounds she told me why it was called the ‘Elephant Tree’. Halfway into the story she gasped and said

“Z look, i’ve never seen it with Blood Red Leaves!!!”, I followed her around the corner and immediately i knew why it is called the ‘Elephant Tree’. Whether because of the season, or the reason that I was there, this tree was bloody red, all I did was stare.A tree in a yard not closely surrounded by other trees, standing obviously different from the others. The Leaves had the colour of rich blood- exposed to the open air, broken from skin. The closer I walked to it the more I realized that the ground I was standing on knew the blood and last footsteps of many of the Afrikans brought to the U.S and the high high branches that I was about to be beneath were used to lynch a great deal of my family whose lives were never their own. The Branches, they looked like the trunks of an elephant but this elephant seemed to have a thousand trunks spewing the blood of those seperated at this spot and century years of sorrow.

A Priest pours Libation the for Ancestors or more commanly ‘pours a lil liquor for the dead homies’ (Yes, it does have meaning and is not jus some hip hop fad)

The overwhelming feelings that moved within and around me, this language does not have the capacity to explain.The only thing I felt like knowing was what was my true-true name. I wondered of those fated to this spot and did they complain, when they were damned to die, did they feel their lives were in vain. What are their true-true names, these people we only know as slaves, who are their people who are all over in chains, what happened to those who were left in Africa to mourn. These are the same ones today we look at with scorn, only because we feel we are better born; HOW? when from our life-line we were torn. To fetch, feed, farm, fuck and forlon????

To bleed and die- the tree with the red leaves.

My body became filled with a tide that brought me so close to my roots my feet touched Mother’s Shore.

And it was all in that yellow flower that I found my clutch. The yellow flower, placed in praise, by an anonymous praiser who showed me that I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE!!! Someone shares my vision of vitality from the strength of our ancestors. In honouring the honourable. Respecting the Respectable. Moving towards a trod that enables the prosperity and life more abundant that is ours.

I luv my life, and I know that it has to be livicated to so much more than just me. For in that bloody red elephant tree, i saw my body and I saw that I am key, and in the yellow flower I see what I want to be………..

Thanx J, my environmentalist/naturalist/herbalist sister

© 2010 T_Thought Productions ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

J and I representing The Crack Den, yeah…I said Crack (you’ll hear more about that soon)

I wrote this poem in 2004 during the time that then President of Haiti Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted and possibly kidnapped from. It is a short social commentary on some of the issues that were in the news in the Caribbean, America and the Middle East.

BUSHWHACKED

Bush Should Get Smacked
Cuz Bush is Whack
Terrorizing Iraq
Black Amercans Lack
Aristide* Kidnapped
The Truth Pushed Back
While American Ghetto’s Thrive on Crack
‘They’ Run it But We Cant See The Facts
High Security Prisons Filled To The Max
Majority Inmates Black
Then ‘They’ Wonder Why Black Attack
Bush Play the World Not Like G.I Joe But Like G.I Patterson**
Another one Slack, Son
Kill The Nation With Fat Guns
People Have Nowhere To Run
Nah Stop Sey Di Fire Eva Bun
Fire Blaze Di Bush Hotta Than The Sun
Forest Fire We Dealin Wid When We Done
Cuz Bush is Whack
Bush FI Get Smacked
Bush IS Slack
Bush Goin Get Bushwacked

*Jean Bertrand-Aristide was the former head of government in Haiti.
He was ousted in Feb. 2004.
He left the country with his family and it has been alleged that he was forced by
the American gov. who then put a ‘puppet minister’ to run the gov.

** Percival James Patterson was then Prime Minister of Jamaica

This poem was posted on my brother’s wall when we were much younger. I always thought of it more as a prayer and a sort of handbook of how to find that center within yourself to carry on against all the things that happen that you cant do nothing but try to fix.  It’s about balancing your mindstate and I guess your iritz too. Iritz (pronounced Eye-Ritz) is how yuh hear Rastaman and Woman speak about the spiritual consciousness of a person.

Anyhow take it with you and I hope everyone and their fam and friends has a great 2010 and beyond!!!

Max Ehrmann

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.

Mi do understand seh Maas Eddie woulda ha fi a put goat mout pon Bredda Bruce. After Maas Eddie have im in training fi so long, Bruce get tired a wait fi captain di team. Im can’t linger-linger fi Eddie mek im century. So im dis walk off di field. Im mash up di game an a force Maas Eddie fi get run out. Look how di whole JLP side a collapse. Dem naa score no runs.

An Maas Eddie all a call Bruce “tief”. Im seh im “tief” di JLP plan. Dem put i dong careless an Bruce walk off wid i. It sound bad ee? If me was Maas Eddie me wouldna did mek tings get so bad. Mi woulda did call Bruce one side long time an gi im a lickle prips. Hear wa mi woulda did seh:

“Brucie, bwoy, a no yu mi a talk bout when mi gi out seh nobody no deh ya fi tek over, yu know. A dem other one mi a talk bout. But mi no waan dem jealous yu. So mi can’t mek dem know. Just hold yu corner yaa, boss.”

But Seaga couldn’t bring himself to have that conversation of equals with Golding. So the New Democratic Movement was formed and then turned back into the Old Jamaica Labour Party. New wine in old bottles. Or maybe it’s really old wine in old bottles. And the whole nation is now suffering from Edward Seaga’s error of judgment. “Is high time fi tek goat mout offa Bruce.” After all, it’s Christmas.

Carolyn Cooper is professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Send feedback to: karokupa@gmail.com

Pain no longer destroys me. I am better because of my struggles. I am stronger because of the tears that have fallen from my eyes. I am a new me, a better me and I give all the credit to Experience because she taught me so much.

Thank You!

Faith met me on a bridge, when I was ready to jump, and told that if I gave up now then I’d always be giving up. So I walked away, back into the darkness which was my life. There I met a Beauty named Change she warned me that all things “worth it” are worth fighting for, and so I changed my attitude when approaching life.

I met a girl who had been through a lot, her struggles scarred her but she always wore a smile. I wondered how is it possible. She must be so strong to go through the heart breaks, disappointments and the betrayals that she faced in her life.

When I asked her how, she said “I made the decision a long time ago to stray from the easy paths that will come. Always take the hard road because it will always teach you more and never take things but to work for them. Only then will life mean more to you and so you’ll protect yourself from the dangers of the world.” Before she walked away she said “I’m never too far from you I’m always here when you need me and remember to smile because it’s easy to cry.”

She has never broken her promise to me she’s been there since I found her.

And She is Me!!

© 2009  T_Thought Productions ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Deaf ears and blind eyes confess to me the length of your sleepless nights

Why do the shrieks of your conscience haunt you if you are only swearing by impaired hearing and sight

Reveal the mutated chromosomes that caused open ear lobes to grow closed minded backs that turn

Give no explanation for the shallowness of your ignorance that both refuses the vision to educate, and is not compelled to learn

Will I ever get to understand why every time your rain falls it must pour

I suspect the clue lies in the dark colour of the coating that bears covering to your core

How many redemption songs do you sing before it’s time to wake

You too bear the burden of the signs of the times when you watch lives crumble and hearts break

Are we demanding too much from your feeble character- accountability is a trait of the brave

Your sour dishonour forces Christians to disregard lessons of their brothers and their keepers and preach it’s only Jesus who can save

You turn us into tiny islands when you know we’ll face ravaging seas alone

Sealed lips have no words to throw, piecring silence spits out sticks and stones

Dear Mr. Dead to humanity, remain unmoved by constant flat beeping in blocked ears and blinded eyes wide shut at night

But let your feet be weary of blackened hearts, listen for dark thoughts urging karma to merge with the demons you fight

© 2009  T_Thought Productions ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

performed by Danny Glover

When your hero falls from grace, all fairy tales are uncovered

Myth exposed and pain magnified, the greatest pain uncovered

You taught me to be strong, but I’m confused to see you so weak.

You say never to give up, and it hurts to see you welcome defeat.

When your hero falls so do the stars, and so does the pereception of tomorrow

Without my hero, theres only me alone, to deal with my sorrow

Your heart ceases to work, and your soul is not happy at all

What are you expected to do, when your only hero falls

[Afeni Shakur - over singing]

As long as some suffer, the river flows forever

As long as there is pain, the river flows forever

As strong as a smile can be, the river will flow forever

And as long as you are with me, we’ll ride the river together..

..And as long as you are with me, we’ll ride the river together

[singing - over chanting]

We’ll ride.. the river together, as long as.. you are with me

The river.. will flow forever, as long as.. you are with me

The river.. will flow forever, as long as.. you are with me