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Them

They’re wondering what happened to us, the youth leaders we left behind, the deacons and prophets who watched us sing solos with the children’s choir or mumble through recitations in Easter pageants. They do not feel that they’ve failed us. They think that we have failed them.

But we remember the day T.J. dropped dope in the men’s bathroom when he was fourteen and fatherless. We remember Eugene and Damont being gunned down before their twentieth birthdays. We remember the Park Heights cats with stony eyes and priors who rushed the stairs leading up to Youth Church, looking to jump Raheem. We remember the succession of girls whose bellies began to swell and recall how naively they loved, despite prophetic words and without prophylactics (because advocating teen birth control meant advocating sin). We still hear your voices hardening as you discussed them, as though all their adolescent missteps reduced them to footnotes in a series of cautionary tales.

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Posted on by slb

“The Anomalous T.I.P.” at PostBourgie.

Hey fam-

My piece on Clifford “T.I.” Harris just went up over at Postbourgie.com.

Here’s an excerpt:

One month after his arrest, Ridley Scott’s American Gangster opened, with T.I. in a somewhat overhyped role that amounted to little more than a glorified cameo. (Your boy had 20 lines, tops.) Even with his limited screen time, T.I. seemed to possess that same hungry, young, brother-whose-life-is-one-wrong-turn-from-completely-derailing quality that Hollywood loves in its twenty-something Black actors (see: the entire black oeuvre of the 1990s). With the right management, business-savvy, and agent, dude probably could’ve reopened the glass divide between the mass of rappers-turned-actors who never had a chance of taking off in a non-niche market (read: DMX, 50 Cent, Nas, et al.) and the dudes who filmgoers under the age of 21 only know as actors, so consistent and prolific are their roles (read: Will Smith, Ice Cube).

Too bad about those multiple felonies. Now T.I. is just another cautionary tale, right?

Not so fast. If history is any indication, the last place you want to count T.I. down and out is in jail.

Read the rest here.

s.

Posted on by slb · 1 Comment

Gilded

Days before our annual New Year’s Eve Service, Pastor Robinson absently asked me to pen a poem and plan on reciting it some time after praise and worship and before his sermon. Because I had very little sense of self-preservation, I agreed.

I did not tell him that commissioned art requires ample notice.

I did not tell him that the rapid-fire performance pieces I recited didn’t spring from my head fully formed.

I did not tell him what I believed then—that I couldn’t write poems for church services without spending time praying and hand-wringing and lamenting, without asking God if the often scathing criticism I snuck in by rattling it off too quickly for listeners to immediately process was actually okay to repeat aloud.

I did not tell him that that settled, Yes, I do believe I’m free to write and recite this; No, I don’t need to further edit myself sensation—the one I was so sure then was the presence of God confirming the words He’d given me—simply could not be rushed.

I simply nodded and agreed, then spent the next four or so days panicking and envisioning myself in a room filled with hundreds of sequin-clad onlookers with absolutely nothing to say.

Somehow, I managed to get a poem written. I printed it out and spent the remaining day and a half before deadline desperately trying to commit the piece to memory. I was always terrified to stand in front of the church to share poems. Though all writing is nakedness, poetry is nakedness on a JumboTron; and I always found it comforting to have a page to hide behind. I’d approach the microphone, unable to hear any thought other than, Just get it over with. Just get it over with.

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