Author Archives: RP

12.19.12
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SOULFUL II in Review

Last Saturday I got a chance to be the host of a phenomenal literary event entitled Soulful II: Telling Our Own Stories Our Own Way. It was an extremely powerful happening that was dedicated to raising money for Kim Glanville a youth advocate who on October 27 was shot three times in a tragic case of mistaken identity. She told her story in a manner that only she could tell it; with humor, passion, and depth.

It was clear that she had been feeding off of the energy left on the stage by the other performers. Sean King blessed the audience with a poem about love and an always-relevant story about police harassment. Rami Margron who is the curator of http://www.theshoutstorytelling.com   told a very engaging tale about an encounter with a deer, Sayre Quevedo shared a few stirring poems about what it’s like to be 20 in the year 2012, and Jezebel Delilah X straight up ripped it. And then there was the Russian literary sensation Zarina Zabrisky. I could use a thousand fancy adjectives to describe how amazing her performance was but thanks to youtube I can just let you see it for yourself.

Enjoy

12.11.12
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SOULFUL II: Telling OUR own Stories OUR own Way

If you are anywhere near the San Francisco Bay Area then you must attend this event.

 

A night dedicated to the healing power of storytelling

Ladies and Gentlemen:
Please join us for “SOULFUL II: Telling OUR own Stories OUR own Way” on Saturday December 15, 2012 at Café Rande Vu in Oakland (2430 Broadway) at 8:00pm. Soulful is completely dedicated to the healing power of storytelling and on 12/15/12 we will be raising money to cover the medical expenses of Kim Glanville who on October 27th was shot 5 times in a tragic case of mistaken identity. Kim will be telling “Her own story her o

wn way” on the 15th and in addition to that, we offer some of the hottest writers in Northern California. Check out the lineup.

Rami Margron
Rami Margron is an actor and dancer. She has worked with many Bay Area theater companies, performing plays of all types from Shakespeare to experimental. She is a company member of Crowded Fire Theater and Rara Tou Limen Haitian dance company. She also hosts a monthly storytelling event called The SHOUT.

Sean King
Sean King is a husband, a father, a writer, a published author, a spoken word artist, a computer geek, a community activist, a dreamer, and someone who loves life. He’s been fortunate to meet countless numbers of diverse people from all over the world and all walks of life, he’s performed on stages and in different venues across the country, and self published three books of poetry (Through My Eyes I, Through My Eyes II, and Hypnogysms) while simultaneously studying Computer Engineering. He is the mentor to numerous youth in the Northern California area and pledged Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., the greatest fraternity in the world.

Luisa Leija
Luisa Leija’s work arrives in the form of dances, prayers, and invocations of a universal spirit. Her words are smoke signals, calling us to recognize ourselves within the world we inhabit; a world that equally inhabits us. Drawing from the indigenous traditions of the Americas, native culture, and Mexican culture, Luisa unifies themes of community, family, history, and ceremony into a seamless journey through the mystery of human existence. A multi-genre writer, Luisa’s talents are as diverse and plentiful as her words. A search for transformation, for truth, for connection, is ever-present throughout Luisa’s work, an endeavor that is both timely and inspiring for our present world.

Sayre Quevedo
Sayre Quevedo lives in Oakland, California. He works as a reporter and producer for Youth Radio and has had worked featured on National Public Radio, Marketplace, National Geographic, Huffington Post and in the San Francisco Chronicle. He has been a featured poet at the Bitchez Brew and Lyrics and Dirges reading series’.

Vanessa Jezebel Delilah X
Feminist Afrocentric Black Queer Femme Lesbian Artist Writer Performer Curious Dreamer Fighter Champion Love-Warrior Activist Faerie Princess Mermaid Gangsta Revolutionary: Jezebel Delilah X, is a performance artist, writer, filmmaker, and teacher. She is co-host of East Bay Open Mic, Culture Fuck, a member of the story telling performance troupe, Griot Noir, and one of the founding members of Deviant Type Press. She uses a combination of performative memoir, theatrical poetry, and feminist storytelling to advance her politix of radical love, socioeconomic justice, anti-racism, and community empowerment.

Zarina Zabrisky
Zarina Zabrisky moved to San Francisco from Moscow to escape the aftermath of a collapsing communist empire. Her work has appeared in Eleven Eleven Journal, Bluestem Magazine and other publications in the US, UK, Canada and Nepal. Her debut short story collection “Iron” explores the nature of oppression, revolt and survival.

Kim Glanville
Kim was born in the Bronx New York 1982; 2 years after her mother came from Kingston, Jamaica. She comes from a line of Strong women that are no nonsense, independent and hard working. Her passions and commitments to community transformation through social movement and accountability have been the driving force in her personal and professional development. Her healing mechanisms are purging with the power of the pen and dancing to Soulful House. She is currently a grad student at the USF School of Education Human Rights program. On October 27th she was murdered into excellence by surviving attempted murder without fear, and thus owned her freedom to live.

Hosted by Roger Porter

PS Suggested minimum donation of $4 to the Kim Glanville fund or suggested purchase of Iron by Zarina Zabrisky….no one will be turned away. See you on the 15th of December.

This event will be Simply Beautiful and oh so SOULFUL
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOxFl4dna3o)

12.05.12
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Notes on Jovan Belcher

 

 

It’s been less than a week since Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs killed his girlfriend and himself with a gun and it’s been a little over a year since someone broke into my home while I wasn’t here and left the place completely disheveled. They stole my laptop, a safe (which was completely empty), and my digital camera, among several other things. In the moments right after I discovered that my home had been burglarized, I couldn’t help but to wonder what if I was at home with my gun when those cowards broke in? Would I have enough rage in my heart to shoot them all dead?
Now of course all of this is deeply hypothetical because in actuality I don’t own a gun. Unlike both of my parents I am not from the rural south and therefore I never went hunting for diner. In urban California guns represent human death. Their prevalence played a major role in the murders of several of my childhood friends. In short, I really hate guns. I believe that guns make it too easy to kill. One must ask if Belcher did not have access to a gun would he have actually carried out those gruesome murders?

 

Obviously there were multiple factors that played into Belcher’s actions. He had to be under severe emotional distress, and from listening to other people’s accounts of him it sounds like he must have suffered from multiple personality disorder as well. But now he as well as his girlfriend is gone, and the weapon used to carry out the deed was a gun.

 

About once a year I seriously contemplate buying a gun. Having a growing daughter to protect and living in a rough neighborhood are just two of the reasons that make me want to purchase a firearm. Another one is that I’m a man and men play for keeps. Meaning if I get into a physical confrontation with a guy and I come out victorious then chances are he may run to get his gun. In which case, since I don’t have a gun, I would just have to run.

 

What always keeps me out of the gun store is the other side of the equation. If I bought a gun then about a month later I woke up in the middle of the night and caught a person trying to steal my car, would I actually have what it takes to take another human beings life? Could I actually justify putting a gaping hole in the flesh of another man because he attempted to take one of my possessions? I don’t know that I could.

 


I’ve seen contorted bullet riddled bodies lying just beyond yellow caution tape on the concrete. I’ve seen a half-empty misshapen head propped up in a casket a week after a man had gotten his brains blown out. I’ve heard fatal shots, I’ve listened to horrible screams, I’ve seen the shell casings, I’ve heard mothers cry, and I’ve seen a once victimized kid stand prouder than Superman on the street corner once he got his hands on his first gun. I never wanted that.

 

I always wanted to move as far away from that world as possible, but alas, I have yet to do so. Those heartless savages kicked in my back door and stole my daughter’s piggy bank and took my camera with all of those beautiful family images that I had never gotten developed. They left boot prints on the very bed where my daughter lay and of course my neighbors saw nothing. They heard nothing. They knew nothing and in that moment that I discovered how wantonly I had been violated, so help me Jesus I felt like I could do it. I wanted to kill them all. No matter how young, how old, or how pitiable their lives were. Needless to say those feelings dissipated. At the end of the day I was grateful that I wasn’t hurt, nor was anyone in my family. I decided then, like I always do, that a gun wasn’t worth it. I don’t want to even have the option to do what Jovan Belcher did just because I’m having a hard time. I want to live freely without having a justifiable homicide on my conscious. But I also want to be prepared.

 

For there is always a time when a man must defend himself. People don’t fistfight anymore, everyone is toting steel and if I am to protect my house and my family I fear that one day I may have to adjust to the times. That day, however, is not today. Today I am thinking of another way out. Today I am still thinking about Jovan Belcher and his 22-year-old girlfriend. Today I am thinking about life.

 

-YB

11.26.12
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Growing as a Parent

Sometimes thoughts explode in my head like firecrackers packed with blinding light and other times they wash over me very slowly. This one took about three years to finally reach the shores of my conscious mind but in order for you to fully understand its significance then you must know a little bit about me.  I’ve been a parent nearly my whole adult life, and for most of those years I have been single. Therefore I have been on several dates with a car seat in the back, and I’ve invited a few women over the house on Saturday nights after my daughter has gone to sleep. Over the years I’ve hung out with women and gave them a lot of my time but almost none of them have ever met my little girl. I’ve kept the two entities separate for multiple reasons. The most important by far being that I never feel like the woman that I am dating is worthy enough to meet my daughter. I don’t look at her and see the lady that I want my daughter to be. And this is what brings me to my point.

The concept that I have just recently grasped is this: If the women who I date are not worthy of meeting my daughter then I should not be dating them.

11.18.12
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My Broke Ass Poem

 

 

I am educated and yet I am very broke and that is a problem.

It affects my confidence in the worst way. Like it’s hard to ask a woman out on a date when you can’t pay her way.

Well at least for me it is.

When I was living that bohemian lifestyle as a graduate student studying creative writing I never thought it would result in some chick named Sallie Mae taking almost half of my check every month. Damn it’s ugly.

 

My Internet bill has gone up, Christmas is coming up, and the first of the month won’t come soon enough. Not that it matters much anyway because by the time the 2nd comes I’ll be broke again. It’s hideous.

 

In undergrad it used to be cute to be broke but now the shit just won’t go away. I look at my brothas on the corner hustling everyday and I think it’s a shame that they have to destroy another person in order to feed themselves but damn, at least they ain’t in debt.

 

In hindsight college loans were such a bad idea. Why the hell would I pursue something that I can’t afford? What a day, what a day?

 

My god.

-YB

11.12.12
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Telling OUR own Stories OUR own Way

I’m tired of being a ventriloquist dummy in the movies. We do have our own voices you know? We do have beating hearts and amorphous souls. We exist in every dimension. We exist at great distances and we exist in focus. We do not want to rape your virtuous young maidens (Birth of a Nation, 1915). We are not your ride or die servants (Gone With the Wind, 1939). We are not your wise yet shockingly docile sidekicks (Casablanca, 1942). We are not here to prostitute the innocence of your daughters (The Mack, 1973) and kill your hardworking, blue-collar, tough, rugged, but loveable fathers (Colors, 1988). Nor do we want you to make us feel good (Monster’s Ball, 2002).

We are not circus lions who only roar when cracked by the lash but are otherwise harmless creatures (Ali, 2001) and our stories don’t necessarily end happily when we finally achieve your capitalistic wet dreams (Ray, 2004 The Pursuit of Happyness, 2006).

Our stories are told in beauty shops, on front porches, and in barbershops. They’re told at bus stops, in county lines, and in the county jail. They’re told in study groups, at Baptist churches, and in hot kitchens. And our stories are told the best when you aren’t there; therefore, you really don’t know us. What you do know is essentially nothing more than a shadow. Yes this shadow is dark like us but it is not nearly as soulful. It is not nearly as dynamic. It is not complicated nor is it multifaceted. It’s not multidimensional or unique. It isn’t bodaciously shy or passionately indifferent.  See the thing is that when you tell our stories you are guessing and we know that. We also know that when you tell our stories you’re telling them to an audience of your own peers and that we really don’t matter. We know what’s real.

We can tell the difference between your voice and Big Mama’s. We know that our stories come from Arkansas and Tennessee. The Delta here and The Delta back there. Our stories were carried up the river by Pharaohs before they were carried down the river by slaves. Our stories are told with fingers in faces, knuckles slapping against hands, shoulders rolling, and tongues clicking. Our griots spit game to judges and parole officers and for the most part they never make it to Hollywood because they’ve been trapped in the hood.

Granted, sometimes when you tell our stories you get it right but you are still guessing (I suppose that some ventriloquist are better than others). And let me just say that when you do your film on Nina Simone The High Priestess of Soul, I hope that you get it right for your sake. For the time is rapidly approaching when we will be speaking for ourselves and we will leave you to your own guessing games. Yeah, imagine that? Close your eyes and try to guess how our voices sound when you are not around. Imagine a day when we control our own bodies, our own minds, our own shadows, and our own reflection, and all you can do is sit in the back of the room and listen to us speak. I can only smile at the thought of such a revolutionary exchange.

-YB

10.20.12
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Write or Run

 

 

 

It’s come down to this. My need to perfect my craft has been overcome by my urge to run away from time. My fear for the future has moved me into the past and my detachment from reality has created an unrealistic sense of nostalgia.

 

I work hard during the day and I often times bring my work home with me. I have a child who lives with me on most weekends. I have a 2nd job that isn’t quite as demanding as the first but it still requires my time. I also have to dedicate at least five hours a week to my personal crusade against obesity. For my metabolism has gone down quite considerably as my age has pushed past 30 and the last thing I want is to become a fat ass. So I run.

 

As you can see there are many things that pull me away from my writing but, alas, none of these things should be enough. In my youth I had ambitions of being the literary voice of my generation and for many years I actively tried to make that happen; but as of lately I have been immersed in a prolonged state of reflection. My production has slowed down. There are so many thoughts in my head that need to be released; I need to know what I’m feeling.

 

It has been a while since I’ve been on the literary scene. I haven’t performed at a reading since July but I think I found a new venue. I went to a place last week and the people read work that came from all angles. There were poems, essays, and declarations and there was an abundance of culture. Last week I checked it out and perhaps next week I’ll perform. Then maybe once I have an audience (that I can actually see) I will write more.

-YB

10.15.12
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The Imprisonment of Temptation

The sun still shines brightly, even though it’s the middle of October, and I can see the serpents on the road before me. I can feel all of the temptations pulling at me but none will succeed. Temptation comes in the form of all of those people who try to get me to settle for less than I’m worth.  All of those individuals who try to get me to stray off track. Whether they know it or not they will forever be avoided.

 

The sun over Lake Merritt

 

But alas the whole world can be seen as an evil temptation as well as everything inside of it. Every human being has an agenda. Every beautiful woman has a seductive voice and every one of your friends wants to use you for something.  As I have grown older I have learned that temptation exists only in the soul of the individual; not in the outside world.

 

We are all weak. We all have urges and we all transgress. No one wants to be confined by rules that constrict the very essence of humanity. So we cheat on our spouses, we take pills that promise us a foretaste of heaven, and we take things we feel we deserve, instead of working hard to attain them. It is only after we are sober or after we get caught that we feel ashamed and I have discovered that it’s always easier to gaze through an open window than it is to stare into the mirror.

 

 

No woman has ever put a knife against my throat and forced me to cheat on my girlfriend. No friend has ever threatened to kill me if I didn’t have a drink with him. I exercise my own free will and I do the best I can but alas; I am weak. I confess to being selfish and I further confess to being judgmental afterwards. While under the influence of my many misconceptions about how a man should behave I found that it has always been easier for me to act than to verbalize my emotions. Instead of telling her that what she said hurt me I went out and became intimate with someone else. Instead of asking that man politely to respect me I jumped on him and tried to prove myself violently.

 

We are all in jail. We all need to see others in bondage in order for us to feel free but we often forget that we are what we project.

 

 

If I hold the key to the lock, which holds another man in captivity, and I must check on him every hour to see whether or not he has escaped am I not in a state of imprisonment myself? Am I not a slave to the actions of the man who I am attempting to enslave? If I try to put my mistress down by calling her a whore but I have risked the love and respect of my wife and children in order to spend time with her then wouldn’t that make me less than a whore?

 

I scrutinize every syllable/ letter/ sentence that I write while I compose this, however, I live my real life in a perpetual state of looking back. In the moment I am naĂŻve, easily moved, and always weak. I look back on my past and try to make sense of senseless mistakes. I look forward only to close my eyes and shudder at the enormity of my own fear. I stumble backwards into the comfort of my own insecurities. I look back nostalgically upon a time in my life when I never once thought of looking back.

-YB

10.10.12
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Faith in the Ghetto (An East Oakland Photostory)

So I recently hit the avenues and backstreets of Oakland, CA to take some pictures for The Oakland influence: Three Women from Oakland, CA share their thoughts wisdom and hope for the future (a creative project that I’ve been working on for the better part of 2012. Hopefully it’s coming soon) and as I searched tirelessly for beautiful black women to photograph I realized how faith-based my Deep East Oakland community is. As a matter of fact even the door to my home has a cross with the words “He Is Risen” inscribed on it. Which I never noticed until my Jewish friend pointed it out a few years ago. At any rate while I put the finishing touches on The Oakland Influence I thought I’d share a few depictions of faith in the ghetto.

The landlord of this apartment complex is apparently very outwardly Christian.

This apartment complex is part of the infamous Macarthur strip, however, one may think it was in the Holy Land based on this very outward display of Christian faith.

A little religious humor.

I found this clever poster on a home in the backstreets of East Oakland. I really wish that I had come across it in junior high school though. It would have made me feel good to know that even though the young ladies never looked twice at my nerdy self, Jesus still loved me.

Angelique represents!

Here we have a young woman who was literally raised in the church. So I decided to take a picture of her in front of her 2nd home.

Though shalt not kill.

I really liked how this mural flips the biblical passage Though Shalt Not Kill. Obviously it’s very important and unfortunately the message is extremely relevant in East Oakland.

 

When people discuss the identity of East Oakland they often speak of sideshows, drugs, police brutality, and crime but if they really knew the area they would be more inclined to incorporate faith into the conversation. The flatlands of Oakland is a very spiritual place that I was only able to show a small piece of in this blog; but maybe one Sunday morning you can come see it for yourself. There  are more places of worship than there are liquor stores, hair salons, and barber shops in this area that has been given the dubious title “Baby Iraq.” Even though my community is neglected economically we never neglect our Lord and Savior.

Amen

PS Be on the lookout for The Oakland Influence featuring journalist Niema Jordan, founder of Outdoor Afro Rue Mapp, and Emergency Medical Physician Evelyn Porter.

Peace and thanks for reading.

09.27.12
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So Surreal

It’s not that I miss her specifically; I only miss what she represented. It’s unhealthy to live your life from night to night not knowing where your next intimate moment will come from. I found myself at a museum a little while ago taking in some surrealism. I stared at the photographs as if they were living breathing beings from another planet and I looked at the paintings in the same way. I was moved by the art, like I have been so many times in the past, but this time I realized that the reason I looked at each painting for so long was because I didn’t want to go home—to no one.

 

One would think that I would be over the situation by now but it still bothers me. The way it ended bothers me and I sometimes become irritated by the things that she took with her. Not the material goods but the intangible things like my trust for women, my confidence, and my pride.

 

Women come and go but none of them stay for long enough. On a subconscious level I think I like that. There are so many things that I don’t have to face when my love life is constantly on the move. There are so many questions that I don’t have to answer and so many more questions that I don’t have to ask of myself. The single life can be very liberating but the single life can also cause a certain emotional retardation.

 

I worry that maybe I’ve forgotten how to treat a lady, or how to be accountable. I fear that my heart may have become obdurate from such a prolonged period of inactivity. At times I feel like I choose to be with women who only take up time and space but who aren’t essentially real. And then I fall for those who are incapable of receiving the love that I give which begs me to ponder the question: If you give a gift to someone and they do not accept it then did you truly give it to them?

 

My heart tells me no if it can still speak to me at all. My body continues to yearn for destruction and my soul craves for a sense of security that it has never had. My love life is so surreal.

 

-YB