Bealz, Prince Of The SouthSide

  CHAPPELLE PUT ON A SHOW Some of Dave Chappelle's comedy makes me cringe. It can sometimes be very difficult to hear, to sit through objectively. I've admittedly had to watch some of his controversially critiqued Netflix comedy specials more than once in order to parse through the nuance; the purpose; the intent. When his most vociferous critics and detractors first took issue with the big corporation's 'so-called' negligence, in light of his recent release, 'The Closer', it left me with much to think about, but probably not what his detractors expected. The fact is, as a black man living in the heart of America's racial animus, someone who has some historic awareness relating to the confluence of the Civil Rights Movement and its intentional and successful co-opting by the LGBQT+ Movement(which, in my opinion, wasn't to be negatively criticized, but serves as proof positive that the tactics employed by the likes of Dr. M. L. King Jr could, too, ...

It usually starts out as a feeling, an elusive, emotional sense of anxiety, the urge to get out and away, to break free from some small town or some mid-sized town or even the stifling confines of a couple big city blocks, where the faces blur into familiarity and the expectations for something new and different are bleak. Songs for the Cleveland Avenue Warriors , a poem presented in 10 parts(from the recently released collection, Songs For The Cleveland Avenue Warriors: poems from the past, present and future , available from creativeonionpress.com ), embodies this sense of impending pressure.  It builds. It grows. It finally settles in, like a slowly descending storm front, and smothers; this adolescent urge to get up and go, to move around, to 'walk about'. It hits hardest for the dreamers, those who know that there is so much more to know, who connect the dots that lead out from their doorstep and stretches on out and soon becomes entwined with global politics, beholden ...

My parents kept me on the porch. It was a right of passage. Baby brother had to wait his turn. Learn the ropes first, fall down, you know, scrape a knee. My time, though, was coming. Whether I was ready or not. And, truth is, I wasn’t ready.  I got pushed off anyway.  Time was up. So, what was I gonna do? The good years were gone. Big brother had the benefit of a two parent home and the in-house guidance of our Father.  I got shattered dinner plates, shrill screams and accusations to christen my puberty. Time to suck that shit up, I guess. Time to get out and about and find out that ain’t no crying in the middle of the park when the kids gather round like a murder of crows creeping in for the kill.  Either get pecked to death or molt the pin feathers which keep you from flying above the sharp stabs and jabs that hit hard when you just want to make a friend. I wasn’t ready, though. I didn’t want to leave the comfort and familiarity, the shelter and safety that came fr...

  STOP PLAYING WITH MY EMOTIONS Remember when you gave me those zips to flip? It took so long to get you back because I smoked that shit. I ain't no baller. I never thought that I could get on by selling zones and rocks and playing shot caller. Dealing was just never my thing. I was too close to the fallout; the affected who smoked to hide their distress and fear and a profound sense of despair. Besides, I only agreed to sell weed because I was supposed to, right? That's what it took to complete the look, the sanctioned uniform of the hardcore, and I just wanted to hang, caught between the streets and the dream of larger possibilities. But weed ain't free. So, yeah, I really shouldn't have agreed to sell your weed when I knew the truth, I'd probably get rid of a gram or two, but I was gonna smoke that shit, too--

  HENRIETTA LACKS So this is how you died, in whispers that you did not hear? Left to an unheralded legacy, a lingering immortality that connects an advancement to an atrocity, modern day breakthroughs pushed through by cutting edge scientists, directly aligned with the Tuskegee Experiments? My darling, a lab rat who loved to dance with her kids and laugh as if her life held meaning beyond the meaningless value placed upon such a simple thing as consent in lieu of entitlement. So young. So bold. Burdened down with the weight of everything that's wrong with a coldly clinical eye toward reciprocity, explaining away the refusal to correct a mistake because of the hit the stockholders may take, capitalism clashes with morality, leaving behind the dusted remnants of sharecroppers and a young mother who loved to flash red nails and strut in the midst of an existential crisis. No easy thing, to find recognition as a human being, in a societ...