#hakim be

Bad Nerd

I'm a poor excuse for a nerd.

A way too casual collector of comics,

a geyser of pointless trivia,

you name it.

Music, movies, sports,

history, politics & lit…

A Jeopardy kid

but no Ken Jennings status,

the only thing I ever had right,

was the glasses.

Took all the gifted and talented classes,

and barely passed'em

so what I'm sayin' is…

as far as being a nerd…

I give me a B...minus,

because I was "bad" at it.

A B.S. in Biology

and a Communications Masters…

but up until just under two years ago

I actually thought bachelors meant

Batchelor.

By High School,

I was the athlete that spent an uncomfortable amount of time with the actors.

Sang show tunes in the bathtub.

Actually took it as a compliment when they called the soccer team tap dancers…

Now, in 1989

Every good nerd knew

that Michael Jackson's "Leave me alone, leave me alone…" was our international anthem.

It was our "We don't wanna" fight song for bullies and parents.

And that's where I failed my fellow geek brothers and sisters…

Much too much a sucker for cafeteria conversations and pick-up basketball to practice lunch table isolationism…

whether voluntary or inflicted.

I guess what I'm trying to say is,

the only time that any of us are ever really any good at social distancing is at our 8th grade dance,

And just like then,

we didn't really wanna be.

What I'm saying is

I was simply not that bright

but wasn't quite awkward enough either.

Because when you come from a family as big as mine, you fall in love with crowds.

Where our first language is love,

and our love language is...loud.

And why am I telling you all this?

(Why would you care - possible end-frain?)

Like the time I set fire to bandages in the nurses' office bathroom or,

Or how we used to talk shit to Officer Brundridge when he was like "ya'll better get to class soon" or

How I was virtually a virgin when I graduated high school,

but by the end of my Freshman year my "average" was slightly better average, 

I'm a bad nerd.

But getting better, what I do remember is that scene from 2007's I Am Legend … that scene where cars were abandoned mid-intersection, streets empty, soccer goals intentionally left untended, 

Just like bars.

Nowadays, Downtown the day-to-day without the cars

Sounds just like mars

After Thanos snapped…

The past eight weeks of hearing everything in HD

Is sorta like the rapture without the rap…

Everybody home,

but nobody at the door.

But still never anticipated

the dispersion of “community”

to be met with such little aplomb.

It’s like a zombie apocalypse 

without the zombies.

Sho ain’t the flu,

but might as well be a Cold War.

And while I still have the floor

I wanna take a few seconds

to thank the essential professions

who helped me survive my high school

and you...

yours.

To the teachers who cared

so much, even when caught unprepared 

are willing to resurrect a whole school year

without walls…

...within a week.

All the Zoom graduation parties they’ll still attend,

even if the commencements don’t commence in the end, and all the unspent calories from the cake they deserve to get...

… but didn’t get to eat.

To all the counselors,

for all the home/school therapy.

To the front-line-cooks,

who, quiet as kept, have always been compulsory.

Pre-K through 12 and 13 through hospice,

Sending you home with 2nds and 3rds before it was profitable, popular and proper.

To the school nurse,

might as well have been an E.R. doctor.

25 years later, I feel like an ass for all the PPE I burned hell up that you hid in the closet.

To the Fireman who showed up that day,

before my Mom & Dad set my ass on fire.

To Officer Brundrige,

who traded insults with us so ruthless,

we shoulda went viral before the virus…

I guess that’s why he’ll always be the illest first responder.

To every single custodian,

who be in them bathroom with all the vomit,

and who would one day 

be the hospitals with all them bodies.

To the cashier at the bodega

round the way from the school

who til this day still accepts food stamps

… for candy.

And to all those bus drivers, 

the original ride share,

who taught us to trust the folk

who transport us back and forth 

...from our families.

By now,

I hope you understand why I’m telling you this,

or why you should care?

Because we need each other’s help now,

as much as I did back then.

Because as a nerd,

good or bad,

every day of high school

is life or death…

And since then,

I’ve never been so afraid

or grateful

until right now,

right here.

Still depending on the kindness

of strangers

by hakim bellamy

1.

The only map you will ever need to this campus, is in the palm of your right hand. Lay it across your chest and you can feel your way to the heart of campus. Raise it as often as possible and opportunity will find you. Extend it frequently, with an accompanying smile, and you will never be lonely or lost again. And if you read it, you just might find fortune in your future.

2.

Knowing the difference between a giraffe, a Lobo and a rock concert just might save your life at the Pit. Sometimes, tailgating is sleight of hand. Signs of love, not to be confused with a gang. This is a "pact."

3.

Don't feed the ducks at the duck pond, and when you do...make sure to wipe your feet before coming back into the dorms.

4.

Go to all office hours when offered. The real world is built on relationships, not GPA nor class rank. Besides, your professor knows someone who might like to hire you and just doesn't know it yet. Because recommendation letters are infinitely more interesting when your professor knows more about you than "resume attached." Because it is highly probable that many of you will one day teach...and how would you feel being jilted at the office?

5.

At least once a week, introduce yourself to someone it looks like you have absolutely nothing in common with. Statistics suggests you'll never have more proximity to and density of diverse identities and ideas. It's nothing like home, and that's a good thing.

6.

Whenever a classmate invites you home for the holidays or a vacation say "yes." These offers are practically non-existent outside the collegiate environment. You are likely to gain 5 lbs. in the process, but like the Freshman 10 you'll lose it in no time thanks to your High Stress Diet...but the memories, the memories will last a lifetime. Even if the friendship don't. 

7.

There is an entire universe beyond the confines of the University. An open book mesa practically begging you to come journal your journey by the foot. A whole curriculum of culture that don't cost a thing except curiosity. A place that will shape you if you let it. A City you can fall in love with, that will actually love you back.

8.

Play in the rain, but not the arroyo. Everybody does it. New Mexicans can go from pressed up against the window, to pressing open the door in 60 seconds flat. Where we go from wondering if that pitter-pat on the roof is? … to canceling the rest of class in even less...because any evidence of this milagro will evaporate within a half an hour...and besides, that's where the rainbows are.

9.

If you stay long enough, you are never ever going to want to leave here...and it is still clinically unclear whether that is a blessing or a curse, madness or magic...but whatever it is...it is a fact. That is to mean, this is not a diss...but a disclaimer. 

10.

On a cloudless day, if you stare at the sky long enough...you can see heaven in the mirror. Don't forget to look up at night too. And make sure to visit the Bosque and the Crest...at least once, before you leave.

Audio

"Salvation” By Langston Hughes I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen. But not really saved. It happened like this. There was a big revival at my Auntie Reed's church. Every night for weeks there had been much preaching, singing, praying, and shouting, and some very hardened sinners had been brought to Christ, and the membership of the church had grown by leaps and bounds. Then just before the revival ended, they held a special meeting for children, "to bring the young lambs to the fold." My aunt spoke of it for days ahead. That night I was escorted to the front row and placed on the mourners' bench with all the other young sinners, who had not yet been brought to Jesus. My aunt told me that when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! And God was with you from then on! She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul. I believed her. I had heard a great many old people say the same thing and it seemed to me they ought to know. So I sat there calmly in the hot, crowded church, waiting for Jesus to come to me. The preacher preached a wonderful rhythmical sermon, all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell, and then he sang a song about the ninety and nine safe in the fold, but one little lamb was left out in the cold. Then he said: "Won't you come? Won't you come to Jesus? Young lambs, won't you come?" And he held out his arms to all us young sinners there on the mourners' bench. And the little girls cried. And some of them jumped up and went to Jesus right away. But most of us just sat there. A great many old people came and knelt around us and prayed, old women with jet-black faces and braided hair, old men with work-gnarled hands. And the church sang a song about the lower lights are burning, some poor sinners to be saved. And the whole building rocked with prayer and song. Still I kept waiting to see Jesus. Finally all the young people had gone to the altar and were saved, but one boy and me. He was a rounder's son named Westley. Westley and I were surrounded by sisters and deacons praying. It was very hot in the church, and getting late now. Finally Westley said to me in a whisper: "God damn! I'm tired o' sitting here. Let's get up and be saved." So he got up and was saved. Then I was left all alone on the mourners' bench. My aunt came and knelt at my knees and cried, while prayers and song swirled all around me in the little church. The whole congregation prayed for me alone, in a mighty wail of moans and voices. And I kept waiting serenely for Jesus, waiting, waiting - but he didn't come. I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me. Nothing! I wanted something to happen to me, but nothing happened. I heard the songs and the minister saying: "Why don't you come? My dear child, why don't you come to Jesus? Jesus is waiting for you. He wants you. Why don't you come? Sister Reed, what is this child's name?" "Langston," my aunt sobbed. "Langston, why don't you come? Why don't you come and be saved? Oh, Lamb of God! Why don't you come?" Now it was really getting late. I began to be ashamed of myself, holding everything up so long. I began to wonder what God thought about Westley, who certainly hadn't seen Jesus either, but who was now sitting proudly on the platform, swinging his knickerbockered legs and grinning down at me, surrounded by deacons and old women on their knees praying. God had not struck Westley dead for taking his name in vain or for lying in the temple. So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I'd better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved. So I got up. Suddenly the whole room broke into a sea of shouting, as they saw me rise. Waves of rejoicing swept the place. Women leaped in the air. My aunt threw her arms around me. The minister took me by the hand and led me to the platform. When things quieted down, in a hushed silence, punctuated by a few ecstatic "Amens," all the new young lambs were blessed in the name of God. Then joyous singing filled the room. That night, for the first time in my life but one for I was a big boy twelve years old - I cried. I cried, in bed alone, and couldn't stop. I buried my head under the quilts, but my aunt heard me. She woke up and told my uncle I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into my life, and because I had seen Jesus. But I was really crying because I couldn't bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadn't seen Jesus, and that now I didn't believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn't come to help me.

***My maternal grandmother’s last name was Hughes, no relation. My younger brother, Rasheed, and Langston are both graduates of Lincoln University. “Salvation” is Chapter 3 in Langston’s autobiography The Big Sea***

...and here’s the poem.

Chapter Three*

Langston,

I remember witnessing your Salvation.

Drawn and cornered

belly up

cross a big Blackish

brackish 

sea

of peeps,

long before we knew 

how to swim.

You were just a buoy.

How did you get a whole church

to listen to you?

To say your name?

Even though you didn't

believe.

Or couldn't?

Uninterested

in a God who could save you

from yourself.

More interested

in a god who could save

the world.

How did you get a whole country,

a whole world

to believe

in your almost 13 year-old self.

When you couldn’t hear him,

but they could 

hear you?

That metronome of pain

called “blues.”

That sad turned happy.

That happy

in the sad…

and you

called us Jazz.

The Gospel of Langston.

Wondering why God didn’t save

you from that church.

Rapture you

and that whole entire pew.

Deaf to him

but not Auntie Reed…

imploring you to "come home, baby"

to a paradise you couldn’t breathe

nor see.

But planking anyhow

towards a preacher who could barely read

the scripture in your bones.

But you stiil didn’t give up the ghost…

Found God in the things you wrote

even though you couldn’t hear you.

Don’t believe you God?

Just take a look at the way 

that the white men feared you

and eventually canonized the Black off you

and your "Blacker the Berry" Bible papers.

But you’ve always been Harlem.

Cotton Club never cotton pickin’,

nor cotton mouthed.

The pride of Joplin and

Lawrence, Kansas

but blew the spot

like a landmine in the South.

…

Chose to write about the shrapnel instead,

which makes you the unofficial Negro National Anthem

of letters.

Now, I can finally say

I understand how hard it is 

for the resurrected

to believe in resurrections…

And why you can’t hear God

when you are 

his penmanship.

Full (RE)Verse at the Outpost performance by John Maestas & Hakim Be. An originally written and live-scored sonic poem that is both narrative and music, linear and non ... just two guys with a story to tell, set to the soundtrack of our lives ... a dream sequence from the 100% Unbelievably Believable Tale of one Juan Tigre. Shout out to Bubble Bath Records, Mike Swick on documentation duty and, of course, the Outpost Performance Space for making this and inclusion in New Mexico Jazz Festival 13 real! #Gratitude 

Albuquerque's poet laureate Hakim Bellamy's response to Ferguson, MO. Please listen!

for more poems:

http://hakimbe.bandcamp.com