dubblex at pregunta

Thanks to Marilyn Thomas King for hosting La Pregunta and a kick ass show. Thanks to Dean Washington for videotaping. Thanks Fred Arcoleo, accompanying on guitar.

Choices

Bring it
I sing it
Just gonna fling it
Go off the top and wing it
I got to do my best
So put me to the test
Let the troubles come son
And watch me overcome every one
This life is a constant fight
In the thick of the fight of my life
It’s life or death so i got to be set
it’s my survival
It’s my instinct
I stay on the brink trying not to sink
So bring it
Yet another day
Another trouble
For the dubble-X
What’s next got to be ready for whatever
Death haunts me, wants to sever my connections
But I’m gonna survive this hurricane weather
Whatever it takes
I try not to break
So bring it
I can curve and move straight
Through the hard times
The tough binds
I won’t resign
On the edge of crossing the last line
Dancing on my last nerve
Tinkering on the edge caught in a wedge
So bring it
Another bad job
Another rowdy kid mob
I motivate watch me create
I got what it takes since I busted out the gate
So bring it watch me sting it
I’m cooked but not done
I get stunned
Get knocked to the mat
then I snap right back

Pass The Hat

You stand in hot uncomfortable noisy subways
Underneath the city
Musical notes intermingled with your passing jingle
Dollar bills and spare change find their way into your hat
You play and play until notes go flat
You are that street musician
the one to whom we seldom listen
Maybe you used to be somebody maybe you were never anybody
you’re here to make it big to get discovered and pick up gigs
You’re that subway musician where people are forced to listen
Your sets are quick in between the next train licks
Your audience never remains
They leave mid verse well before your last note
music jams with breaking steel wheels
Corporate high heels
You play along to public service out of service announcements
And the untimely wrong notes of closing subway car doors
Some got CD’s to sell
You’re homeless
A deranged junky
you don’t speak English
Trying to hustle in the rush hour bustle
Some stare many don’t care
Trapped inside their ipods
You play on though drowned out completely while trains come and go
You’re that subway musician sweat dripping on your instrument
You play for hours with no electric power
That street beat some smile tap their feet to your beat
Some look from encapsulated plastic covered windows at your non-stop show
Your music gets lost in the roar of subway wind you catch a short grin
Another dollar another dime another moment in 4/4 time


* Check out Saw Lady's blog by Natalia Paruz where she posted this poem:

Digital speech meets 24/7 hustling soon to stick

A POCKET FULL OF POETRY

Folded creased and smushed
Sat on and crumbled
barely legible
chicken scratch writing
Number 2 pencil used
smearing like cried out mascara
Sun faded
fingers stained from making Jamaican greasy beef patties
Extra words written in margins with detour arrows to follow
Cross outs and skipped lines
Life’s pace unable to grasp unfinished endings
A pocketful of poetry like a full belly
A mouthful of birthday cake
Words imagined
captured and retained in ink as it sinks into thin sheets of wood
Other words dance in my mind long forgotten like rotten cheese
Most times my pockets contain the contents of
Loose change jingles intermittently with an assortment of jagged edged keys
a partially damaged CELL phone lies dormant deep in my pocket next to a tattered bill folded next to some grimy ones
The usual pocket hole as pens and pencils escape like fleeing
prisoners in the cover of darkness
I reach inside my pockets to retrieve words
Reflections of VISIONS of the day
Slanted perspective

Hungry and complete at the same time
These poems pop up anytime like crime
Sometimes words replace nickels and dimes
In the local grocery store,
the cashier is aghast that I possess no cash
a pocketful of poetry leaves a man poor
My pockets can only afford metaphors

The Money Changers

I got my check from the board of Ed bank
who got it from who knows
Who got it from who knows
so I got my check
put it in HSBC
first Amalgamated
Then HSBC
withdrew $60 cash
went to the deli
bought a bottle of water and a protein bar
Gave $4 to Brian cash register dude
in drawer end of day
2 of my 4 dollars goes to Juan the sandwich man in Deli
Juan goes to John the weed man to pick up a dub
John gives money to Jennifer, his supplier
She gives to Shawn who buys a strawberry filly blunt at the deli
His money is given to Miriam Liebowitz as change for coffee
She puts it under her mattress where her daughter discovers it 20 years later
And buys a pack of double mint gum and the money turns to change