scattashots

After Bernadette Mayer:

I guess it’s too late to live on a farm I’ve grown too accustomed to grocery store foraging cell phone roosters and Bodega barnyard bangin’

I guess it’s too late To callous my hands To breathe dirt And breathe life into earth Yet the harvest is only months away

Jerrica Escoto @ NPS 2010

G Yamazawa - "The Fonk"

"Going Back to Cali" 

An ode to a childhood friend:

I still remember the songs she sang as we held hands, walking together. Sometimes skipping, jumping verses, hopscotching lyrics. She swapped repertoire every so often.

With a knack for spinning memories into melodies, She animated albums.

No one knew better how to make the best of a scratch or a burn. She saw the music in them.

Her face was a window through which trained eyes might have spied her inspiration.  If only they took the time.

It wasnt hectic or dramatic, Like in the movies, Like I thought it would be Just inevitable Where was the weeping, The brooding, The last minute redemption? No director to yell cut Just unscripted actors and no second takes

Doctors saw it from a buffet line away Hearty meals to celebrate hearty life My heart didn’t agree But my brain told me I couldn’t possibly die of a coronary So eat like the recipient of coronation! After all you exercise, right? You look like you’re in shape! But my body A house of cards built on jokers. An Aztec temple filled with fools’ gold treasure And cholesterol conquistadors for priests. A ponzi scheme run by sodium salesmen Pitching tastebud fantasies in exchange for blood pressure payments

To Michael Jackson:

Late king, Pioneer of melody for the masses Tell me, were you frightened?  The man in the mirror must have startled you At least at first.

It is not often that one’s likeness Is so visibly stripped away, Fading before your very eyes. The pigment in your skin Victim to vitiligo.

My brown hue will likely never fade, Not from lack of sun Nor symptom of syndrome. I’d like to think that regardless, Neither would My allegiance to ancestry Or conscience in culture. After all, roots take hold beneath So no matter the lawn’s present color, One knows grass is green

"…baby it don’t mattter If you’re black or white"

I can’t help but wonder If this was a statement, Or a plea. An apology? A way out? Your masterpieces Transformed the music industry. But did you yourself Undergo metamorphosis as well?

They looked up to you, Grew up alongside you, Black boys of America Donned your crown of an afro And strode your moonwalk gait… Disease stripped you of shade But what of the curls in your hair? The round of your nose? The fullness of your lips? A mysterious yet timely disappearance: The height of your influence, Your plateau of ambiguity. A mountain top From which you exiled yourself. A diffident hermit crab Dissatisfied enough to shed its shell While cebrating beauty In every pattern and shape. Why not your own?

You were more to the world Than the generic commodity of an artist That you painted as your facade. In truth,  Each composition, actually a splatter of experience. Each choreography, actually a brush stroke in history, Whose brilliance is now just a curator’s caption.

Gaze at her skin Flecks of freckles Strewn across her landscape Infinite granules of sand A reminder of miracle in multitude