inches of skin
millimeters of hair
miles of agony
footsteps of pain
arcs of betrayal
years of sunshines
and of moons

now

taking those measures
measure for measure
bundle it up

pieces of
the oldest tact,
apartheid,
in the mix

today, all of that
spilling into this
oakland
and everywhere else miserly bullets
reign, and rip

he is the master of this ceremony, today

long live oscar grant

NY Times:  Spider-Man is the Among the Most Wanted

Apparently, its so normal that no one says anything about it. Its part of life. I hadn’t been to Galveston in a long time, and I never had a memory about these oil stains until the oil started gushing out of the deep wells of the Gulf courtesy of BP.

There is a billowing cloud careening just above the ocean floor, and it is the web’s most popular video. Like porn, people look at this constantly and consistently, and like porn, many raw emotions come through. Its the stuff of sadness, especially as birds and turtles are found dead floating in the orange muck.

The Gulf swallowed these animals. And humans have everything to do with it. I want to forget about it, but the images of birds drooping under the weight of the raw oil haunts me. Their eyes translucent peek through the layers of muck, and I do not know if they can see.

My watch died in Tijuana.  I was waiting in front of the gigantic orange dusted beams made of concrete, attached to the sign “US Customs and Border Patrol,” next to 6 or 8 lanes of cars, in the middle of a line of white tourists with baseball caps fringed with sweat stains, brown families with samsonite and happiness and something else I couldn’t figure out, and black security guards with sunglasses and 360-degree brimmed hats to keep the Mexican side of the border out of their eyes.

I flicked my wrist and brought my watch into view.  The face, blank.

I blinked twice before I looked at it again.  I bought it off Amazon.com thinking that it was a good deal.  The cheapest and the bestest, as my aunt from Meerut would say.  She was the only from India that could make my sister’s wedding; everyone else who wanted to come, couldn’t.  My uncle and aunt in India who spent hours and hours of telephone calls with my mom in Houston in the middle of the night, or early in the morning, imagining each detail of my sister’s wedding, writing down that piece of their imagination, and buy items according to their imagination-map, couldn’t make it to the wedding.

My watch was solar-powered.  I thought the Tijuana sun would make it stronger.

We were walking to the concrete orange monster structure from my friend’s house; it was a one-night deal since I live so close to the border.  Tijuana is easy from LA if you have a car, money, and a U.S. passport.

My friend told me that there have been marches in Tijuana in opposition to Arizona’s anti-immigrant law.  They were massive, I think.  My friend’s friend pointed at my friend’s shirt, laughed, and said “get out of here Arizona!”  It had “southwestern” design on it.  Throughout the night, he oscillated between hiding his shirt with his borrowed jacket or saying it was from New Mexico.  Each time, everyone around him giggled, including him.  I even got in on the joke once or twice, but was careful not to overdo it.

We searched for food at 3am on La Sexta, and found tortas of savory mayonnaise and the thinnest portobello mushroom slices, skinny avocado pieces, and onions and who knows what else.  I usually hate portobello mushrooms, but it was good that night.  The bread was flaky and soft, and not anything like any torta I’ve ever had.  My friend told me that the owner of the torta restaurant was deported.  He lived in Riverside, and he said he couldn’t live there no more.  He was on the run, my friend said.

I look at my partner and told her it was dead.  I looked around, she looked at me, and she smiled at me below her faux ray-bans. I pursed my lips, shuffled my feet forward, bumped someone’s samsonite, and waited.

i had a good visit from bad texas recently, and now i realize that i need to write some more.  went to the law school for a nice reunion with people i had not seen in some time and i come back here, trying to dig myself back up.

i made up that word because its easy but writing, really writing and really doing this thing is a task.  i respect my many friends who do their art and do it always.  i’ve always known writing is somewhere in my fingers, but bringing it back out is the tough part.

it hides, and i need to seek.

maybe it likes to be called by a different name, a different face, a new smell.  a piece of heart ripped and mashed into digestible bite-size pellets.  so it seems.

only time will tell.

i was tagged by Sebha.

i am tagging JP losanjalis tazzystar sockrebel mareekho

The six word memoir rules are:
write your own six word memoir.
post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.
link to the person that tagged you in your post.
tag five more blogs with links.
leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqI0FYN-r5c

I would have linked it but the record company doesn’t let me.

This is what happens when school is about to start.

But I’ve dug myself into a whole hole this time, procrastinating a bit and piecing through various legal theories in my head when they should have been on paper.

4 hours later…

There are a lot of things I would rather do right now than not sleep.  I am not done, but I will sleep because I’ve gotten past that verge, where completion cannot come unless you do what’s biologically necessary.

Oh, the grave ridiculousness of this late night rant.