Moroccan Mint Tea and Miles on a Blue Tuesday

I am sitting in a small study room that I have reserved in the library...

It is equipped with a top-of the line computer, a flat-screen television, and a projector.

I watch a video, called "Tough Guise" in which Dr. Katz discusses how societal gender-roles portrayed in the media has influenced men to become woman beaters, killers, rapist, etc. The truth of this is deep and dark. The images and words burn the wells of my eyes...yet I am determined to be a man and not cry. The irony of all this is too difficult for my mind at the moment.

I go downstairs buy a cup of Moroccan Mint Green Tea...I add two splenda, and milk...stir...sip....stir....sip. I rub my eyes. Check my hands for escaped tears...I place a plastic lid on my paper cup and go back to the study room.

A moment like this calls for another tortured genius to engage in this dialog with me...who shall it be...Miles, Byrd, Hendrix, Chet, Billie, Nina.....Oh yeah that's easy...Miles....the man who could beat blue notes in to submission until they became symphonies of profoundly perfected beauty....but beneath it just another boy, like all of us men, who beat women black and blue for his a-MUSE-ment.

His horn fills the room...His horror fills my head...the tea warms my mouth....but does nothing for my drafty soul....

I look around and I smile...what if my everyday was like this...me in some corner office delving deep into the mind of this world....simultaneously doing battle with my own...all in the name of Love, Good, Peace, Liberation...Uhuru....The path of the intellectual warrior....I smile...realizing centuries ago Muhammad saw an image of me at this moment and it was that image that inspired him to write the words...."The ink of one scholar is more holy than the blood of a thousand martyrs." I smile...realizing...I am "here" in the sanctuary of my mind....and it is a sacred, blessed place....

I take another sip...and my thoughts change....soon my everyday will be like this....just keep moving....its all within reach....

Miles hits a Csharp with such clarity...that I am sure Gabriel has dropped his horn and hung his head in shame....because no angel....is capable of bringing together the beauty and the beast within.....in order that the world may sound good....

Yeah...this is where I belong...this is who I am...I am "here" now....and I will be "here" tomorrow....closer to my dream everyday, yet living my dream in every moment.....

I take another sip.....

The ice on the surface of my soul begins to break......

My eyes finally let go of the gender-role they have been programed to play.....

My face begins to feel the cool drops of my own heavenly rain......

The only thing missing is scented Virgina Tobacco, and my pipe.....

And a wooden rocking chair....

so that I may watch my beautiful life unfold like a flower before me....

in perfect peace...

Soul and The City

Here in the mind
Between shade and shifting shadows wanders the soul....
singing sad songs shuffling slow.
Stomped hard and cold
By the big boogie blue rhythms of dark neon city nights and smokey mid-night skies.
That still seem to steal the glitters and shimmers of a full moon's brilliant silver light....
It always brings lightning and jazz to his heart
It always brings rain and blues to her eyes.
It's enough to make oceans of flowing dreams run to the sea from whence they came to hide.
It's enough to make God cry.
But rain is no substitute for the holy water, that could return stolen lives.

a new kind of meditation ...

just going to write for ten minutes....no rules, no editing, no backspace allowed....meditation style....maybe i can get to sleep.....

Ready, Set, Go....

been here for to long these bones have become fragile even broken, let me die this way, no yet living still believing in the mystery of what life is. Close your eyes speak beautiful lies. Let me know if there is something real upon your tongue. Who has actually lived after hearing the songs you have sung. Songs that leave the hollowness yet empty inside. Sing me a another plantation lullaby to lull my crying soul to sleep. Let me lay down my cross and walk carrying only the burden of me. Help me live one moment longer so that I may give you a new melody that may actually lend marrow to your aching bones. Believe in me once again and I'll try my best to believe in you. You are the thing that makes me understand the beauty and the ugliness of the part I play in this land. Villian and hero martyr and the one throwing the stone at the head of Stephen laughing at the pool of blood coming from his gnostic mind. No dont let me die this way without catching a glimpse of my own truth, proof that I have not yet live the way you created me to be...just be breathe with open eyes taking deep dark breaths that break the bronchi of my lungs fill them with your stuff, your breathe of life. Skull duggery be a deep dark part of me the voices in my head tell me that my insanity seems like sanity to me. Fill my face with the markings of my unknown tribe. but please dont let it die. no not tonight. Lazarus i am not. Let me dance like David until the filth of my sin is singed from my skin until the truth is uncovered making it self to the surface from a deep well from within. love is my religion and I long to see your face but not today, today just let me live on in this shell of a man that is neither flesh nor bone but something in between blood, Buddha, bible belt, and beer bellied preachers preaching messages that line pockets with god's green forgetting about God's green earth. Give me one more breathe with which i will express a new truth not yet heard., but felt by every heart and mind in due season and in due time. I ask of nothing but this and seal your promise with a kiss....

TIME ENDS

Sixteen Bars to Live or Die (Rappin in its Literary Form)

Will you continue to let them create your worldview

Let them feed you opinions and propaganda with no factual proof

Turn off your T.V. ; search the books

Find the false hoods; uncover the truth

Everyday contemplate on burning the pages

Learning life's lessons from the prayers of sages

And the observations of the elders faces

Listen to the heavens speak

Form the depths of meditation

Instead of a nation of people

We've become a nation of sheeple

On our backs in front of the tube

On our knees beneath a steeple

Always taking; never giving back to the earth

Ears attuned to death; But hearts never seeking rebirth

Wake up and live; rediscover what your life is worth.....

Da Blues # 1

I was born on a full moon night
And my mamma tell me dat' fire-flys were in the sky
I was born on a full moon night
And my mamma tell me dat' fire-flys were in the sky

But this deep darkness I feel
Makes me think my mamma lied.

"The Work is Never Done ..."

Today while in meditation this phrase maneuvered itself into my mind....and the proceeded to become the center phrase of my contemplation....

Inhale: The Work
Exhale: Is Never Done

It makes me ponder about the "practice" of yoga.....

Here in the west we have been conditioned to think of practice as something we do in order to perform well at a set point in time.....for example the football team has two-a day practices before the big game to ensure that they know the plays well enough to perform well and win the big game......

The practice of yoga is very different we practice...to simply practice....we do the work involved...to simply do the work.....A lot of times we get so excited and fixated on the big pay-off, the big game, the big vacation, and when it never comes along....the depression comes in its place, and along with depression comes bad health, lack of self care, and more depression...all because of how we view WORK.....

"The work" this is our everyday life, the simple things that we sometimes see as a hassle, as drudgery as somehow an evil intruder on our leisure time....you know...things like opening the mail, returning e-mail and phone calls, cooking a healthy meal, exercising, making it to bed at an decent hour...after working eight hours on "real job" who wants to come home to more WORK...we would rather grab a nice nerve numbing alcoholic beverage, turn on a nice mind numbing television program and be still....

The practice of yoga can teach us to be still, while engaging in our work as householders, and members of society. The asana these tiny groups of movements and pranayama the manipulating of the breath are just like those sometimes pain-stacking tasks of taking out the trash, and walking the dog. These two things are the work that prepares us for the practice of meditation. The practice of meditation reveals to us that we can be still, and numb to the noisiness of our mind and society and guess what we don't have to get plastered with alcohol and t.v advertisements in order to do it. We can disconnect and re-connect to our energy source and we didn't have to drop a lot of money for a airplane ticket. This feeling of ease and this connection to an unlimited source energy is the gift of yoga, which we must make good use of in our daily lives.

But even while meditating we are sitting in the asana of Sukhasana and remaining sturdy and strong in the body and we are taking deep, long inhales and exhales as we do in Pranayma practice...Therefore the work and practice are an amazing cycle of discovery and we are never done even when we are tuning out we must still work in stillness....What if there was never a pay-off in the end...What if you never are able to get into a full hand stand in your yoga practice? Do you simply stop practicing? Even leisure can be viewed as work...we are working to allow our bodies the time it needs to relax while the mind is fully aware of this state of relaxation, unlike when the mind is unconscious of this state when we are sleeping....Mmmmm....


Be still in your work. Know that whatever it is you are struggling to achieve you are achieving it every moment you are engaged in the work....therefore why would you every want the work to end.....YOGA is a LIFELONG PRACTICE and THAT IS THE ONLY THING THAT CAN BRING ABOUT LIFELONG CHANGE.