age: 39 (May 17, 1974)
MEMBER SINCE: July 2009
occupation: youth worker, writer, community organizer
stats: 6'1" 195#
makes me happy: my dogs.the struggle. POC space. soccer. guacamole. a good book. stimulating conversation. mangos.
crush: Rosario Dawson. Salma Hayek. Arundhati Roy
body mods: pierced ears. 3 tattoos.
fantasy: people's liberation. justice.
makes me sad: racism, white privilege, euro-centricism, capitalism, imperialism, war, assimilation, loss of language and culture
i lost my virginity: years ago.
heroes: the Zapatistas. Puerto Rican Independenistas.
BLOGS
The Day Marvin Gaye Died
(I wrote this poem a couple of years agi, and it appears in my chapbook, "Brown unLike Me: Poems From the Second Layer of Our Skin" (Calaca Press/Red Salmon Press, 2009) but I thought I would throw it out there for the world today, the 27th anniversary of Marvin Gaye's death. Enjoy. -E.O.
The Day Marvin Gaye Died
Every generation has its historical moments
Of collective grief and disbelief
Moments we forever remember
Exactly where we were when…
The deaths of Kennedy, King, Clemente, Cobain
The space shuttle Challenger explosion
When the plans hit the towers on 9/11
Some of these things I was around for
Some I was not.
But I remember the day Marvin Gaye died
It was the day I saw my father cry.
In 1984
I was halfway to manhood,
Living halfway between Motown
And Michael Jackson's hometown,
I knew nothing of Orwell's Big Brother,
Reaganomics,
Beirut, or the Contras.
My world consisted of playing guns with my brothers
A meager allowance
And the Dallas Cowboys.
I was nine years old – almost 10 -
That April Fool's Day.
My father and I seated side by side
On the burgundy brick-patterned couch,
Living room awash
In the electric blue-gray glow of the television
Father and son
Sharing a can of Pepsi
As fathers and sons are wont to do
In the last remnants of a spring Sunday evening
Before it slips away into work and school.
The talking head announces
The shooting of a soul
Singer
By his father in a furious fit
On the day before his forty-fifth birthday.
My own father,
Barely thirty,
Slumps back
As if a bullet has struck him in the chest
Puts his working man's hands
To his music lover's ears
As if by blocking out the messenger's voice
He can make the message come undone.
I watch my father
Watch the newscaster,
...
(I wrote this poem a couple of years agi, and it appears in my chapbook, "Brown unLike Me: Poems From the Second Layer of Our Skin" (Calaca Press/Red Salmon Press, 2009) but I thought I would throw it out there for the world today, the 27th anniversary of Marvin Gaye's death. Enjoy. -E.O.
The Day Marvin Gaye Died
Every generation has its historical moments
Of collective grief and disbelief
Moments we forever remember
Exactly where we were when…
The deaths of Kennedy, King, Clemente, Cobain
The space shuttle Challenger explosion
When the plans hit the towers on 9/11
Some of these things I was around for
Some I was not.
But I remember the day Marvin Gaye died
It was the day I saw my father cry.
In 1984
I was halfway to manhood,
Living halfway between Motown
And Michael Jackson's hometown,
I knew nothing of Orwell's Big Brother,
Reaganomics,
Beirut, or the Contras.
My world consisted of playing guns with my brothers
A meager allowance
And the Dallas Cowboys.
I was nine years old – almost 10 -
That April Fool's Day.
My father and I seated side by side
On the burgundy brick-patterned couch,
Living room awash
In the electric blue-gray glow of the television
Father and son
Sharing a can of Pepsi
As fathers and sons are wont to do
In the last remnants of a spring Sunday evening
Before it slips away into work and school.
The talking head announces
The shooting of a soul
Singer
By his father in a furious fit
On the day before his forty-fifth birthday.
My own father,
Barely thirty,
Slumps back
As if a bullet has struck him in the chest
Puts his working man's hands
To his music lover's ears
As if by blocking out the messenger's voice
He can make the message come undone.
I watch my father
Watch the newscaster,
...
NOVEMBER 2012
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Marceau