Can’t wait for the pandemic to be over. It’ll be so good to breathe in people’s faces and touch people with dirty hands again.

I imagine being a black Republican is like being a solitary deer on a country road with a car barreling towards you; by the time you see the light, it’s already too late.

People tell me I sing like an angel. They don’t mention it’s the angel of death.

It’s been over 5 months now. If you still don’t know how to use Zoom by now, please walk into the sea.

The birthright of being young is poor judgment.

Some brushes are made with boar bristles. Pig hairs. Not by the hairs on my chinny chin chin are actually on my chinny chin chin.

Activation Energy – the amount of energy it takes for you to get up and do a task. Whatever it takes for you to get out of bed, learn something new, exercise, whatever. I heard this term the other day and can’t get it out of my head.

The only time I hear the word “categorically” is when some man (or his lawyer) categorically disputes all of the sexual assault accusations made against him.

Did they ever looked for Carmen Sandiego in San Diego?

Was any member of Nirvana Buddhist?

Overly excitable weathermen need to calm down. When they get all fired up, they get off-topic. I need them to stick to the sky, what’s coming down from the sky, and when the ground shakes. I need them to focus.

Even the act of pursuing someone is steeped in violence. What do you do when you’re attracted to someone? You hit on them…

Malibu scrambled around is labium.

Just saw a pharma commercial for a drug that treats diabetes but can cause necrotizing fasciitis, which is “a rare but serious bacterial infection that causes damage to the tissue under the skin in the area between and around your anus and genitals (perineum).” I’m good.

Who coined the word “coined”?

If you’re going to ignore all grammar rules throughout your sentence, then don’t even muster up the gaul to end that shit with a period.

Twitter is the graveyard for English grammar.

You can’t zoom in or out in a Zoom meeting.

Shouldn’t a unicorn be called a unihorn?

Do doves cry?

There are no marching events in March.

America is a funny place. We will willingly give up all our personal data to a website or tech company, hop in rideshares with complete strangers, allow our digital personal assistants on our phones and in our homes to eavesdrop on us, share a cigarette with several other people, and use sweaty gym equipment without cleaning it first, but wearing a mask to protect ourselves and everyone else around us during a global pandemic is too much to ask and is “infringing on our civil liberties.”

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”
— James Baldwin

“The Black woman in the South who raises sons, grandsons and nephews had her heartstrings tied to a hanging noose. Any break from routine may herald for them unbearable news.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.” 
– Ta-Nehisi Coates

“Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You hear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“The man’ll shoot you in the face in Mississippi, and you turn around he’ll shoot you in the back here.”
— Fannie Lou Hamer, on Northern racism, speaking in NY

“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.”
― Langston Hughes

                              * * *

“The colonization of the Southern economy by capitalists from the North gave lynching its most vigorous impulse. If Black people, by means of terror and violence, could remain the most brutally exploited group within the swelling ranks of the working class, the capitalists could enjoy a double advantage. Extra profits would result from the superexploitation of Black labor, and white workers’ hostilities toward their employers would be defused. White workers who assented to lynching necessarily assumed a posture of racial solidarity with the white men who were really their oppressors. This was a critical moment in the popularization of racist ideology.”

“In the case of the United States, Black and Native lives are systematically choked by an enduring white supremacy that thrives on oppression and settler colonialism, and is backed by drones, the dispossession of territory and identity to millions, mass incarceration, the un-peopleing of people, and resource grabs that deny that indigenous lives matter and that our planet matters.”
— Angela Y. Davis

                              * * *

“When I’m asked about the relevance to black people of what I do, I take that as an affront. It presupposes that black people have never been involved in exploring the heavens, but this is not so. Ancient African empires — Mali, Songhai, Egypt — had scientists, astronomers. The fact is that space and its resources belong to all of us, not to any one group.”
— Mae Jemison

“Black is beautiful—which is to say that the black body is beautiful, that black hair must be guarded against the torture of processing and lye, that black skin must be guarded against bleach, that our noses and mouths must be protected against modern surgery. We are all our beautiful bodies and so must never be prostrate before barbarians, must never submit our original self, our one of one, to defiling and plunder.” 
– Ta-Nehisi Coates

“This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the right of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America”
― Paul Robeson

                              * * *

“How are the white folks treating you?” He looked at me and sneered.

“This is Alabama, son,” he said, though he seemed younger than I. “How do you think they’re treating us?”
― Eddy L. Harris, South of Haunted Dreams: A Memoir

                              * * *

“Countermovements among racists and sexists and Nazifiers are just as relentless as dirt on a coffee table…Every housewife knows that if you don’t sooner or later dust…the whole place will be dirty again.”

“I’m just a loud-mouthed, middle-aged colored lady with a fused spine and three feet of intestines missing and a lot of people think I’m crazy. Maybe you do, too, but I never stop to wonder why I’m not like other people. The mystery to me is why more people aren’t like me.”
— Florynce Kennedy

                              * * *

“Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
— James Baldwin

                              * * *

“When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

“As I have said elsewhere, it is not the destiny of black America to repeat white America’s mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life. If black men continue to do so, defining ‘femininity’ in its archaic European terms, this augurs ill for our survival as a people, let alone our survival as individuals. Freedom and future for blacks do not mean absorbing the dominant white male disease.”

“As black people, we cannot begin our dialogue by denying the oppressive nature of male privilege. And if black males choose to assume that privilege, for whatever reason, raping, brutalizing, and killing women, then we cannot ignore black male oppression. One oppression does not justify another.”

“Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.”
— Audre Lorde

                              * * *

“If you’re black, you got to look at America a little bit different. You got to look at America like the uncle who paid for you to go to college, but who molested you.”
— Chris Rock

“To be Negro in America is to hope against hope.” 
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

                              * * *

“The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

                              * * *

“Most Black lesbians were closeted, correctly recognizing the Black community’s lack of interest in our position, as well as the many more immediate threats to our survival as Black people in a racist society. It was hard enough to be Black, to be Black and female, to be Black and female, and gay. To be Black, female, gay, and out of the closet in a white environment, even to the extent of dancing in the Bagatelle, was considered by many Black lesbians to be simply suicidal.”
― Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

“Being black is one of the most extreme sports in America. We don’t need to invent new ways of risking our lives because the old ones have been working for decades.”
― Rudy Francisco, Helium

“I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.”
— Harriet Tubman

“I always thought that would be really neat if black people ever got control of the United States we would, of course, tear down some of the statues because we just don’t like them…like all of Richmond would probably not have a statue standing.”
― Nikki Giovanni, Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking At The Harlem Renaissance Through Poems

“The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.  As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it – whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.”  
— Harper Lee

                              * * *

“It is impossible for any white person in the United States, no matter how sympathetic and broad, to realize what life would mean to him if his incentive to effort were suddenly snatched away. To the lack of incentive to effort, which is the awful shadow under which we live, may be traced the wreck and ruin of score of colored youth.”

“Surely nowhere in the world do oppression and persecution based solely on the color of the skin appear more hateful and hideous than in the capital of the United States, because the chasm between the principles upon which this Government was founded, in which it still professes to believe, and those which are daily practiced under the protection of the flag, yawn so wide and deep.”

“As a colored woman I may enter more than one white church in Washington without receiving that welcome which as a human being I have the right to expect in the sanctuary of God.”
— Mary Church Terrell

                              * * *

“There is also this to consider: The name Hitler does not offend a black South African because Hitler is not the worst thing a black South African can imagine. Every country thinks their history is the most important, and that’s especially true in the West. But if black South Africans could go back in time and kill one Person, Cecil Rhodes would come up before Hitler. If people in the Congo could go back in time and kill one person, Belgium’s King Leopold would come way before Hitler. If Native Americans could go back in time and kill one person, it would probably be Christopher Columbus or Andrew Jackson.”
— Trevor Noah

“I can imagine no more dissatisfied human being than an educated, cultured, and refined colored man in the United States.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

                              * * *

“DuBois pointed out that in order to fully abolish the oppressive conditions produced by slavery, new democratic institutions would have to be created. Because this did not occur; black people encountered new forms of slavery—from debt peonage and the convict lease system to segregated and second-class education. The prison system continues to carry out this terrible legacy. It has become a receptacle for all of those human beings who bear the inheritance of the failure to create abolition democracy in the aftermath of slavery. And this inheritance is not only born by black prisoners, but by poor Latino, Native American, Asians, and white prisoners. Moreover, its use as such a receptacle for people who are deemed the detritus of society is on the rise throughout the world.”

“What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.”
— Angela Y. Davis

                              * * *

“There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.” (Equal Rights Convention, New York, 1867)
— Sojourner Truth

“To be black in America is a wild and endless assault on the senses. You can spend every day fighting off your spiritual and intellectual extinction.”
― Carvell Wallace

“If you’re colored, you get the short end of the stick. If you’re a woman, you get the short end of the stick. So what do we get for being colored and women?”
― Sherri L. Smith, Flygirl

“What keeps a poor child in Appalachia poor is not what keeps a poor child in Chicago poor – even if from a distance, the outcomes look the same. And what keeps an able-bodied black woman poor is not what keeps a disabled white man poor, even if the outcomes look the same.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“To be a black male is to be always at war, and no flight to the county can save us, because even there we are met by the assupmtion of violence, by the specter of who we might turn on next.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood

“I’m dying twice as fast as any other American between eighteen and thirty-five. This disturbs me, but I try not to show it in public.”
― Essex Hemphill

“You don’t participate in your own dehumanization. You don’t give them the power to determine your actions when you’re not doing anything wrong. To alter your behavior, to comply to their wishes, to give in to their desire to be satisfied, to be comforted, to have their unwarranted fears placated by you justifying your existence. You just don’t do it. It’s against any principle of human dignity.”
— Christian Cooper, on why he wouldn’t give his name to a white woman who called the police on him and falsely accused him of attacking her

Next time you visit The City That Never Sleeps
Beyond the Jags, Rolls Royces, SUVs and Jeeps
See the skyscrapers, condos, and tokens of excess
The expensive real estate that’s all meant to impress
Symbols of success, the hustling on the concrete
Charging Bull, eager lenders of legal tender, Wall Street
The financial foundation of the nation of the Home of the Brave
Stands on the graves of 15,000 to 20,000 African slaves
The stock market was built off the back of the slave market
They’re under you when your cabbie decides to park it
Near Wall, Water, and Pearl Streets, when you’re around
Recognize you’re walking on a sacred burial ground
From slave traders to day traders, from jingling bells to ringing bells
Stock whips to stocks, bondage to bonds
Stockpile people to stockbreed, a new industry was spawned
Human stock was exchanged, even kids, most certainly
NYSE should stand for ‘Neath, Youth Sleep Eternally
And the truth cuts deep like a double-edged saber
This country got rich off centuries of free labor
African slaves built Wall Street, and I mean literally
As waves of them arrived in the states litorally
This history isn’t taught in American school curicula
Find the hidden truth, hear it loud in your auricula
Two-step on the lies, cakewalk on the bullshit
Cha-cha slide to the love, Hallelujah in the pulpit
So next time you do Broadway to see some new quartet
Next time you splurge on Fifth Ave & acquire more debt
Respect the lives lost; make sure that you come correct
Now you’ve got 2 reasons in NYC to say “Never forget.”

Sun’s low. The day’s so slow. Cool breeze.
Decide to walk around some to stretch my knees.
Mask on. Not my first choice ’cause that was unattainable.
Had to go with cloth since N95’s ain’t available.
Unless I could buy that access like the famous and the rich
Saw gloves on the sidewalk that somebody ditched
Going on 10 weeks stuck in this sole apartment.
Cramped like registrations in glove compartments.
Thank God I’ve a job that promotes working remotely.
Adapting to this new way of life that we’ve learned rotely
This walk feels different but I know nothing’s changed.
Should I walk far? Nah, I’ll keep it in range.
Everyone’s got on masks; we’re daywalkers like Blade
No party in sight but it looks like a masquerade
Usually ’round this time of year, you’d probably find
Concerts at The Rey, tour buses, lights, long lines
Security at the entrance pattin’ ’em down
Graduates, all smiles in their caps and gowns
Jazz at the museum, trombones to harmonicas
As the 720 snakes thru, DTLA to Santa Monica
Coffee shops closed; I’m going to need some caffeine
I don’t sleep well, sheeeeit, you know my routine
Early bird, night owl; no occasion’s too small
These days I hang out on Hangouts and Zoom calls
Seeing Wilshire so quiet is pretty freaky to me
The only sound’s the rustling of garbage and debris
Time’s standing still and I’m skirting on the edges
Feeling like Will Smith in Times Square in I Am Legend
A jogger bumps into me, no “sorry” or contact of irises
No mask either, guess he’s gonna outrun these viruses
All of these stores have been closed since March
Flattening the curve may flatten the Golden Arch
Can’t watch the news anymore, only bleak projections
Have to catch my breath when I see the rising infections
I have family and friends on the front lines of this war
In hospitals, ambulances, and grocery stores
They’re all doing God’s work so we all support them
And presidential parades and flyovers do nothing for them
Sirens blare on the regular, chasing these speed demons
Decreased traffic has increased cars flipped over on the cement
Saw an accident the other day just down Olympic
Human minds sometimes are excruciatingly simplistic
Haven’t seen a protester yet, saying their pain is systemic
And that their freedom trumps the public health in pandemics
When her life depended on it, Anne Frank stayed inside for 2 years
3 weeks in, we’re screaming about pedicures, BBQs, & barber shears
We’ve got to manage this whine like a sommelier
Bourbon waiting for me back at the atelier
The neighborhood cheers for essential workers at 8pm
Showing our appreciation is the least we can do for them
Hand claps, pots, pans, air horns, cymbals, acapellas
Probably the only time I’ll get to blow my blue vuvuzela
Sun’s set. The night’s here. Nocturnal chill to the bone.
Time to cease this roam and head on back home.
Make sure my mask’s secure ’cause it’s trying to slide
Through the streets of LA, my mind flies and glides
But uncertainty rules the night as the day steps aside
As I wonder how we’ll be on the other side.

You like being that dude.
You like being that chick.
You like fooling around in school.
You think underachieving is cool.
You like ridiculing those aiming higher
You like being disengaged, not being aware
You like turning your back on your people.
You like going for self, ignoring everyone else.
You like disrespecting elders w/ knowledge to share.
You like poisoning those who look like you.
You like hating yourself and those w/ your hue.
You like dipping out on your responsibilities.
You like not caring or giving a fuck about your neighbor.
You like walking past those in need on the street.
You see your brother needs help, you say, “That ain’t me.”
You ask a sister for aid, treating her good faith as a freebie
You walk through doors and lock them all behind you.
You like climbing ladders, kicking away those beside you
You like crossing bridges, burning them like Nazi brigades
You like doing dumb shit, immune to embarrassment
You like willful ignorance, no respect for history or sacrifice
You like being disruptive more than productive.
You like falling and failing more than rising and raising
You like excuses; the less accountability, the better
You like all lives mattering more than your own
You ain’t down for the cause; you like putting the cause down
You like to take, take, take when others give freely
You like to flirt with death while others need you to live
You like ignoring that your forebearers fought, marched, were burned, hanged from trees, shot, mutilated, disenfranchised, discriminated against, and went through hell just so you could have at least a glimpse of heaven.
“Nah, tho”
You like being “that dude.”
You like being “that chick.”
You like being “that nigga.”
You like being “that bitch.”
You like being no help at all.
You like having low expectations; you like thinking you don’t deserve more
Or can be more. Or can achieve more.

But you see
the problem is

They like it, too.

Don’t be a stereotype.
Be better than they say you are.
Be better than you think you are.
Levitate, my gods.
Elevate.

It’s getting hot again. Time for the latest edition of I Run Hot.  Catch the first installment here: https://inqthink.com/2013/05/31/i-run-hot/

———-

Walking at a leisurely pace, I sweat on my way to the gym.

My beads of sweat have beads of sweat.

Wore a white suit to wedding once. Everyone was supposed to wear white. The suit later became a color that Crayola and Pantone can only describe as “underarm yellow-tinged.”

In the event that the sun burns out in the next thousand years or so, I am strongly being considered as a backup energy source for the galaxy.

I walked to Chik-Fil-A and nearly passed out. Got so mad, started fanning myself with that spicy chicken sandwich. It eventually disintegrated. Fucked up my lunch.

Whenever I’m in a car, within 5 minutes, windows on my side fog up. This happens across all seasons. No joke here. This is real.

Nashville Hot Chicken has to put on gloves to handle me.

Ten seconds after I jump in the pool, there’s a lot of steam and it looks like a pot that’s boiled all of the water out.

I don’t shake hands in interviews or meetings. Not unless they specifically want wet hands.

Anytime I visit a park, it becomes a water park.

I can hold a fish out of water in my hands and it’ll live forever.

Kiss me and drown.

Solved the California drought crisis by sticking my finger in the ground.

The lyric “Don’t go chasing waterfalls” in TLC’s “Waterfalls” is widely misunderstood.  It’s actually a cautionary tale to not run after me for any reason.  If you do, it will only cause me to run faster, which will make me sweat more, which will produce stronger currents behind me, which will cause you to get caught up in the riptide.  Sorry.

Planes can now fly continuously for days at a time…as long as my oily forehead’s onboard to fuel them.

Me + any fan = water sprinkler

I can flick a bead of sweat off my fingertips with 99% accuracy at speeds up to 117 mph.

Unlike Thanos, when I snap my fingers, half of sentient life gets drenched.

I can see your shadow in the dark
Your presence is a present from on high
I memorize you because you mesmerize me
You fill the void, the space
The truth leaves your lips, dancing, dangling,
Longing to live free, it transforms into the wind
I miss your space
The air you occupy
Your matter that matters
The heat you radiate
You take my breath away

To be beautiful is to be frightened
Always questioning, never sure
Second-guessing others’ intentions and motives
Not knowing your own mettle
Arms weary from bearing heavy shields
Lay your arms down, love
I come in peace

Seeing sunlight
Tinted blue from the cornflower curtains
Gently touch your face
You roll over into the toasty rays sent from cold, dark space
I try to keep still but you open one eye
Peer at me
Your eyes smile
Then go back to sleep
And it kills me because right now is not forever

the way is it now is not the way it will be
we both know
yet we remain
in this bed
in this present
in this love
to be loved is to be frightened
the way it is now is not the way it will be
but it is the now we have
and that’s more than enough
so we lie here, staring at each other,
staring into space, looking for answers
hoping that today stays wide awake
and tomorrow falls asleep

Achebe comes to mind. Things fall apart.
The tail wagging the dog. The horse before the cart.
We’re all wondering how we got here.
The watchful feared, while the ignorant cheered.
Ask Crispus Attucks, we were fucked from the start.

All of this damn money. All of this damn tech.
All of this damn data. All of this damn regret.
We saw it coming halfway around the globe.
Predictions were made, but you weren’t sold.
So you ruined the system built to keep this thing in check.

Now we’re all sitting inside, your plans come asunder.
We’re all paying the price for your gargantuan blunders.
Generations will wonder why
The nation elected* this guy.
Now we’ve got to be 6 feet apart so we won’t be 6 feet under.

So with less vision than a Cyclops and hair like a gorgon,
You tried to play us all like we were keys on an organ.
More conspiracy theories than Mulder and Scully.
Piloting this disaster, thinking you’re Captain Sully,
But you’re more like Captain Crunch drunk off Captain Morgan.

Your pairs of lies paralyze the spread of factual information.
Your feral eyes terrorize democracy w/ every fabrication.
In case you’re confused, let us clarify.
So terrified of the truth is where your error lies.
You’re a virus; America should be sterilized with no hesitation.

You say “all the best talent,” but your team’s full of glitches.
“All the best words,” but you’re too big for your britches.
Nero’s playing the fiddle while Rome’s ablaze.
Your crew of MBAs’ eyes look glazed and dazed.
You’re all an embarrassment of riches, you embarrassing bitches.

You threw rallies and golfed while it made its way to the States.
People can’t breathe in NY yet you say their pain is fake.
Their blood’s on your hands, we’re all in the suck.
We must remove this xenophobic, sociopathic fuck,
By any means necessary; however, wherever, whatever it takes.

“This airplane is designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys,” said one Boeing pilot in messages to a colleague in 2016, about the 737 Max airliner.

Anaphylaxis sounds like the name of a Greek news correspondent.

When someone says, “Maybe it’s just me talking,” it literally is just that person talking.

Heard someone say that their 2-year-old had a great memory. Of course that kid does. He really doesn’t have much to remember.

Some of the hottest clothes at Ross/Marshalls/TJ Maxx are on the floor.

Only park in a loading-only zone only when you’re about to get loaded.

When someone says the night is still young, that person is usually…old.

What the hell does duper mean?

Some abbreviations aren’t doing their jobs.  They should be shorter than the phrase they’re shortening, right?  WFH has less syllables than Work From Home. So does GSW for gunshot wound. Saying *www” is crazy. It has three times as many syllables as World Wide Web.

Why is it when Europeans and Americans went into a land to conquer, colonize, and take over, it’s called immigration or colonization. But when people of color go into the country of their colonizers or any other country just to live, then people say it’s an invasion?