Her sandaled feet tapped nervously on the linoleum floor, casually pausing to toy with the stains that decorated the haphazardly assembled tiles. She smirked at the persistent circles and blotches that refused to surrender to her soles.

A tug-of-war erupts between the acute sadness in her eyes and the subdued smile from her lips as she stares at horribly mismatched walls of the lobby: urine yellow behind the receptionist, vomit green to her right, and an angry sky blue to her left. Leaning back, she rests her freshly shaved head on the blister beige wall behind her.

They won’t understand, she thinks. I can’t even imagine how their reality can’t seem more imagined to them my so-called imaginary reality. She chuckles at her own verbal recursive loops between reality and the imagined.

The door opened, and a middle-aged man stepped out, smiling, escorting an elderly couple out. They were sobbing. And that made her tap her feet more. And the vomit green and blister beige suddenly became more saturated.

Crisp sports blazer. Slacks. White shirt. No tie. His chest hair creeping up from under his shirt, peeking out between the buttons, as if seeking other follicular acquaintances out there.

She sat still.

He smiled and beckoned her in.

She did not budge.

“It’s ok. Come on in,” he bellowed, with a criminally fraudulent smile. “Your father can come in, too – if you’d like.”

She quietly followed him into his office. It looked stale and smelled like formaldehyde. Well, that’s not entirely true since she has never really recognized the scent of formaldehyde. But if she had known, then that is what it would be – formaldehyde, sitting comfortably in the counselor’s office, its formaldehyde-smelling feet tossed casually onto the formaldehyde-smelling table … kicking back and relaxing … formaldehyde-style.

I feel dead , she thinks.

“So what is the problem?” he asks, after she sits down on a folding metal chair.

“There is no problem,” she retorts.

She does not tap her feet on the floor anymore. Instead, she sits upright, stiff, her eyes casually wandering over every formaldehyde-smelling inch of the room.

“Hello? Are you still with me?”

She barely heard his voice from within the insulated walls of her reveries.

“Hm?”

“Your father here tells me that you do not eat or talk to people. Do you think that’d be cause for concern?”

“I eat enough.”

“And talking to people around you?”

“If there is a need to say something, I will.”

“So you don’t think family is important?”

She looks at his dusty books tucked away into the sprawling shelves: God and Family … The Disciplined Child …

“That is not what I said,” she objects softly.

“Strange – ” I whispered, trying to smuggle some cold air up into my nostrils, past the ruffle of her unruly, lemongrass scented mess of an afro.

“What is?” She remained snuggled into my scrawny frame, sharing the fleece blanket to shield us from the biting winter breeze on the patio. Frankly, it was as effective as dressing a bullet wound with a band-aid.

“Your dandruff,” I replied, still reeling from the remnants of tetrahydrocannabinol shimmying along in my brain cells. “It actually tastes good.” Apparently, the only segue I had out of awkward silences was my penchant for even more awkward absurdities.

(more…)

Waking up on a Sunday morning is always a sensory overload. Especially here: a damp basement where mold and dust marry each other, and erupt into an unsavory odor of their own microbial consummation. Debris ejaculate smells like mildew. The air becomes an expansive womb that carries little dust-mold fetuses, bellicose zygotes that take absurd amounts of delight from being my nasal disasters.Compound this with the fumes from oil paint still drying on haphazard canvasses, cigarette smoke, and the toxicity of my own breath, and you have the perfect recipe for respiratory apocalypse quarantined within these four walls.

It must be at least noon. The sun has managed to force its way through the army of dust that stands guard on the window pane. Morning sun cannot do that. Morning sun is lethargic, nursing its malaise at having to break the stratosphere. No, this was definitely noon sun. Or later, even.

I squint at the tiny window buried a few inches next to the door that gives out to the sidewalk. The frequent vroom of cars outside affirms that the world had not died in my sleep.

(more…)

2008 is definitely proving to be an unkind year to the arts. I had barely come to terms with the death of George Carlin, when Isaac Hayes and Bernie Mac both took their exits in one weekend. And yesterday, I found out that the author of one of the most mind-blowing books had hung himself. David Foster Wallace, R.I.P.

A year ago, I was roaming the shelves at a local bookstore, when I stumbled upon a heavyweight monstrosity: Infinite Jest. I had heard of neither the author or the book, but for something written in the mid-90s, it seemed obscenely enormous. Weighing it at 1000+ pages, I knew my A.D.D and impatience would never let me finish the book. I walked over to the register, and the gentleman working the counter chuckled, saying “Good choice. Ambitious, but good choice. The footnotes are just as entertaining as the book.”

I chuckled back, pretending to know what he meant, paid for the book and walked out. I couldn’t fit the damn thing in my bag, so I had to carry this ogre of a book around for the rest of the afternoon.

(more…)

Shower me with blessings. No second-guessing.
‘Cause God, herself, is sitting on the edge of my
bed, slowly undressing. A night symbolic as the
resurrection. I’m about to slide up in the kingdom
of God with no protection.

And I can guarantee a second coming. ‘Cause I
already hear the drummer boy barumpumpum
pumming. A host of angels look at me through
your eyes. My first communion with my hands
on your thighs. You’re catching the spirit, the Holy
Ghost and the fire. Yo, this is wild.

I’m every Jay-Z album played in reverse. I’m
risen from blunt ash and stashed in a purse.
I’m smuggled over borders, contraband, ‘though
I rock. I paper. I scissor. Nah, NGH, no Glock.

- Saul Williams
The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop