Congratulations! It’s a book!! Ghetto Koans: A Personal Archive is now available from Black Lawrence Press. The bulk of poems in Ghetto Koans: A Personal Archive represent attempts to finding myself as a poet, by training my eye to focus on and validate things I found beautiful or curious or odd or all of the … Continue reading “Ghetto Koans: A Personal Archive – Book Reveal”

Pre-orders are now available for Ghetto Koans: A Personal Archive, my third poetry collection due this June from Black Lawrence Press. These poems are memories, meditations and monologues. Stories of witness gathered during my time living in West Oakland around 2007 — before and after. Oddities and encounters formed into poems while; standing at bus … Continue reading “Pre-Order Ghetto Koans: A Personal Archive”

(For a matter of months I’ve drafted an entry intended for this blog and every approach to the keyboard was met with a cleansing sigh of defeat. Maybe I’ve lost it, I thought. But in those same months, I’ve also wondered about spending the month of November writing. its funny to consider: After NaNoWriMo nearly … Continue reading “A MONTH OF MAGICAL THINKING: ENTERING ROOMS”

The first cassette recorder I ever bought was the first adult machine I’d ever owned and it felt so thrilling it made me nervous. I immediately did two things with my recorder: At once, I began collecting theme songs to tv shows and sit-coms I watched (Not that anyone cared ) and second, I snuck … Continue reading “VOICES”

I consider poetry ‘work’—reading it, representing it, writing it. Whereas my actual 9-5 means little of nothing to me. A solid exchange of my time for my rent. Thank you! I don’t always enjoy showing up for work. Some days productive, others a slog, others: eh. So I endured the day in office, even the … Continue reading “Reading In Public”

The holidays are not one of my favorite things– not that there’s been much worth reporting. Time seemed to slow to a crawl from Thanksgiving through Christmas, through today. But since the new year, my mood eased. Happy New Year One positive was sitting for an interview with Haley Radke and her lovely AdopteesOn Podcast. Truthfully, … Continue reading “The Box”

Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to revisit the 1984 film, Amadeus. I’d been anxious to rewatch it for a while and was relieved when it became available for streaming. The award-winning story (both on Broadway and in Hollywood) was about Mozart as experienced by his resentful contemporary composer-rival, Salieri. There is a sequence … Continue reading “Re: Writing (Or Which Notes Do You Think I Should Cut?)”

Sunday morning, I went to the DeYoung Museum to visit the Kehinde Wiley exhibit. I had to agree with my Lyft driver and said: “Its not a decision a lot of people would make. Going to a museum first thing on a Sunday.” She agreed, but we were both wrong. The gallery of Kehinde’s work, … Continue reading “Art Exploration or Archeologies with Kehinde Wiley and Amalisa Mesa-Bains”

Thanks to my book, the Academy of American Poets gifted me a solid week writing retreat at the historic and gorgeous Betsy Hotel on Miami Beach, Florida. I haven’t had any kind of vacation or relief from my weekly patterns since the pandemic and more than anything looked forward to getting out of my life … Continue reading “The Week In Retreat”

Poet and friend Maw Shein Win asked me to compose a process note for her students regarding writing poems for my book, MARTIAN: The Saint of Loneliness. That essay published this morning. Despite a few false starts, I thought it came out nicely. Read it here. And since I’m doing a quick check in today, … Continue reading “New Process Note and a Toast To Black History”

Halloween (1978), Dir. John Carpenter I have been watching reaction videos of young movie fans. Watching something I know almost verbatim over the shoulder of a millennial is awkward and wonderful and weird all the same. Its also a surprise that many of the films I grew up on 30, 40 years ago still work, … Continue reading “Halloween Top Ten”

Am thrilled to announce my second book, MARTIAN The Saint of Loneliness is on sale now. If my first book acts as an introduction into who I am, this book represents what I do as a poet. The book has won the 2021 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. One of the … Continue reading “MARTIAN Sightings”

Its now been just over three years since I’ve entered a movie theater. I never would have predicted such a thing. Never in my life would I have predicted or assumed theaters could go out of business or be replaced by screens carried in one’s pocket. Never in my life would I have considered there … Continue reading “Movie Theater Memories”

Those Poems You Liked Are Coming Back Into Style I’ve waited HELLA LONG to announce the birth of my new forthcoming collection, MARTIAN: The Saint of Loneliness which drops September 27. And here is the cover reveal, provided by artist Wangechi Mutu! Pre-orders for the book are going on right now. It has won the … Continue reading “PRE-ORDER MARTIAN: THE SAINT OF LONELINESS”

Saturday morning—and by morning I mean two am– My apartment shuddered from what sounded like the roar of a fleet of helicopters landing. My bed idled and vibrated. A full line of cars trafficked up the street, loud guttural ululations from Mustang after Mustang, some with volcanic radios, some from passenger voices rapping in chorus. … Continue reading “Night Parade”

I’m bored. I wrote a poem the other day! but dislike posting brand new poems since I’m supposed to submit them to journals and stuff… If I can ever get it together and follow through. So instead, here is a older poem that I have long loved, but will never read again publicly or publish … Continue reading “The Blonde & The Bad Luck Monkey (A Poem As Time Machine)”

“The painter, Cezanne, would leave blank spaces on his canvas when he couldn’t account for the brush strokes, or the color”— “How much of your life can you account for? My life is a collage of unaccounted for brush strokes; I am all random”.” ― John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation Is there really ever … Continue reading “Something For Nothing”

Despite not writing here since November, I’ve been writing. I began arriving to work extra early exclusively to sit at my desk in a deeply quiet office and journal. The first person to usually arrive is our main attorney, who will be 80 this year and lives across the street. I write until I hear … Continue reading “[THIS PAGE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK]”

One morning while commuting to work, I met one woman as we exited the bus, and on the escalator down she began chatting with me. Where do you work? She asked. What do you do? She asked. She was older, shorter than I, and made me think of my old high school English teacher. A … Continue reading “Return to Abnormal or The Slow Boiling Frog or My Precious”

I rarely celebrate my birthday, so instead I get quiet. On the actual date in 2019, my dearest friend took me to see Eric Clapton with neither of us thinking that might be the last live concert for either of us. Over the years, I’ve made it a Zen exercise to not mention it. I’m … Continue reading “A Lost Sound”