The day i ruined Christmas....

When i was in the fifth grade i rode on a big yellow school bus to Forest Avenue elementary school. That year i was the oldest on my bus and therefore sat in the back... As the younger children sat quietly in the front and waited pateintly for time to grant them the privelge of being appointed to sit in the back row of brown leather seats, their i sat and stared out of the window as the houses slowly passed by... I cannot remember the exact day or the child's name but i know that it was in the month of December when i ruined Christmas for a first grader... I told him that Santa was a fake, a fraud, a myth, made up by parents to give kids something to believe in when in actuality the presents we were receiving under the evergreen trees in our respective living rooms was from our moms and dads. When i came home from school and told my mother what i had done, she was furious... She scolded me with a very disappointing glare and said, "Justin you just ruined Christmas for that boy and his family." It is not until now being some 16 years removed from the incident on that yellow bus that i realize the magnitude of what i had done....Its ironic that sometimes the things that mean the most in this world are the things you cannot explain, touch, or hold onto...It is with this preface that i write a testimony of December the 25th on the 25th year of my life...
My mind struggles to grasp the memories of Christmas past and the traditions that sustained me as a child... I remember leaving cookies (always Oreo) and a glass of milk for Santa Claus with carrots for his reindeer...Waking up with crusty eyes too cookie and carrot crumbs on that white dish with the gold trim. I remember watching the Christmas story on television and hanging on each unforgettable line as if I hadn't seen it a thousand times prior.. I can still vaguely feel the nerves in my body keeping me from sleep, and the bright Christmas lights on my neighbors lawns illuminating the block with a spirit so invigorating even scrooge would have to stop and take a second look... Modernity has changed me... I'm taller now, with more facial hair and less of desire to deck the halls.. I would die to walk in a winter wonderland but the snowflakes have turned to rain drops, no longer do i have holly jolly Christmases...Now caffeine gives me a manufactured alertness, and the neighbors are older and far to practical to leave their Christmas lights on all hours of the night...No longer do i tear open gifts as if it were the first thing i had ever received, no longer do i stand under mistletoe with protruding lips or write a list for old Saint Nick....

Suburbanites....... Back but not home....

Trapped like Odysseus on the island of Calypso
I gaze out at the monotonous houses that command authority from streets of my youth
As each building struggles for ambiguity through assimilation
My eyes are glued on naked trees stripped from their fall foliage
My senses are awakened by the cremation of forgotten lumber
And the faint sound of cars as they slowly creep up to stop signs
My mind recollects the pride i once found in calling this place home
However, amongst the beauty of this never ending suburbia
I'm am fixated on a distant horizon
On a bruised landscape that sings a sirens song,
Over skyscrapers and through alley ways
It's beat lours me back like a fiend.....


I miss the illadelph... but not as much as I miss Amelian....Two more days until blessed reunion.....

Teaching = malleable... Love = compromise

I am truly blessed... while my friends sit idol and alone in cubicles and interact with computer screens compartmentalizing their day between you tube, emails, and small talk at the water cooler with Todd and Jane.. I get to communicate with Bilal and Diyaldin about the importance of having more than just a jump shot, break up squabbles between Rolangyi and Diana, and inspire Kyrell and Lionel through ancient Greek literature.... The reason inner city educators don't make any money isn't because what we do is easy, half hearted, or unimportant... Its because we get to do all of the things other people tell themselves they could never do, in places they only read about in the headlines, with children who don't look, sound, or act like them... We get way more than we give.... While they give way more than they get.....

The day i was a Paul Bearer.....

December 17th 2007 is a moment that i will always remember as the day I was a Paul bearer. I've carried crosses, books, people, pain, joy, and a multitude of other inanimate feelings.... but never had i carried a casket.... Heavy and sluggish six men much older than myself carried him through the cemetery.. Counting the tombstones like the stars at night.. i glanced over at the names and dates of the skeletons that rested in their plots... Each lethargic step over the frozen ground made it clear that death is not a racist... It does not prefer blonde's over brunettes, men to women, skinny or overweight... Strange, but it comforted me to know that Death doesn't discriminate...The wind whipped at our backs as if we had done something terribly wrong.. Blood red carnations hung in our hands, those stars and stripes that he had once fought for in his stint as a patriot, those same stars that once illuminated his life and made his rural heart beat.... Its funny that paying our respects didn't cost us a thing.. as the flag draped over his coffin like a child's blanket....We stood in our Sunday's best on Monday and went back to the church to talk about eternity....

No No Noah........

I give an enthusiastic thumbs down for Margot at the wedding. It was a post modern mess, with no plot, no story line, and no resolutions. The characters were manic and cold but oddly relatable. The movie had no natural climax so the writer shuffled in a handful of random disturbing scenes that evoked unnatural reactions of shame and pity. Better luck next time Noah….The movie lackluster and stale left less of an impression than building that I watched the movie in….

Driving into Bryn Mar, in four cylinders of Japanese pride. The houses were excessive and showy but empty. Standing dormant like sleepy giants they sat on hills like Kings reigning over thrones of peasants. The sign to the movie theater which was meant to be classics felt gaudy, bright, and unwarranted. The yellow and red lights smashed into each other for another one night stand...Green with envy the bright green lights jealousy watched with tired watchful eyes. The movie theatre was tired but vibrant as it held together the vital strands of the town’s history. The worn weathered glass wrapped around the brick like a veil. Theatre 1 was long and narrow like an escalator it kept revolving through the black room. The popcorn was soft and soggy from the butter, I didn’t use salt because I didn’t want anything to drink. The bathroom tiles were cracked and brown from years of nonchalant cleaning from high school employees unimpressed with minimum wage.

No woman is an Island...

With a quiet pacifism, my mouth moves like a nomad in search of a place that I could one day call home.... I bottle up my brash thoughts, in a glass jar with a bronze lid like the one that i used to catch lightning bugs in the summers of my youth... On and on my lips meet each other, smashing together in a silent symphony, for the tone deaf.... Like a child addicted to questions, I inquistively ask why? Why do people treat each other like plastic?

In school today during a writing assignment in one my classes, one of my students wrote of being raped by an uncle......
I felt like Goliath after David's lucky aim with his slingshot. The news hit me like the assasination of JFK.... Like JFK the criminal got away... Just as the Kennedy's count their curses, so will she count her issues without a reason for why.........

No woman is an island....

St. John the vulnerable

As my brother Nicholas says, “if vulnerability was color then it would look rather stunning on everyone”. Nicholas is my older brother, (25 whole minutes) for which my mother said felt like an eternity. Its interesting, that the first thing that people ask my brother and I is if we ever played pranks on people when we were younger. We have heard this line a thousand times from hundreds of different lips. Sometimes I feel like original thoughts died with original sin, but I digress. Without fail we look at each other and smile like children, and respond in perfect unison, “our mother told us that we could only use our twin powers for good, never for evil. After hearing this the inevitable happens, people go into a reckless preamble about how they wished they had a twin. They say outrageous and outlandish things that would never really of happen if they had someone that looked like them. They fantasize about all of the mischief they would have caused, all of the girls they would have shared. (its funny how doing the wrong thing makes people feel so vibrant) doing the right thing never inspired such smiles. At church on Sunday night we learned more about St. John the Baptist. I think another fitting name would have been St. John the vulnerable. To others he was stoic and strong, never weak. But with Jesus he was like a child.. Gentle in spirit he had the type of joy around Jesus that people have when they think no one else is looking. Those moments were social grace isn't a concern, were cool points have yet to be tallied. Like my incredible replica Nicholas and St. John I want to be open to those vulnerable child like moments that escape my more jaded quarter life self......

We drank, We danced, We conquered...

Last nights festivities was a barrage of alcohol, teacher jargon, eductional eulogy's, and geniune compliments between collegues that barely have the time to say more than good morning... The sun woke up before me yet again.. As the televisons conversation was mudane but just loud enough to shake me from slumber. Upon opening fermented eyes, i stepped out into winter and payed my last respects to the fallen leaves of autumn. The orange and yellow leaves fervishly held onto their colors like patriots hold onto flags. Empty red paint buckets and brushes lied motionless on the ground from the nights brouhaha.. Nothing was lost last night except fo my keys, some brain cells, and a piece of my liver......Last night was a beautiful mess...Maybe its the IHOP that sits like a brick in my stomach or the lathorgy of my bones from the booze...But as the vinyl spins warmth back into the cold corners of my home..Petsounds has never sounded so lovely......

Old souls around the world Unite and take over......

We part like the red sea, without the confines of our frailty…
This simile feels stale in my stomach like a piece of moldy bread
My hunger subsides for now, but will rise again……


I think of the first line… We part like the red sea….It feels like a different person wrote that line. Today a different skeleton shakes…. Gray hairs have begun to salt my scalp…my muscles take longer to heal from the marathon days that they endure. My hand shake is firmer, beard is thicker, my eyes are more careful then they once had been. The reality of my experiences has strengthened me with the power to discern my ambitions so I no longer get lost in my dreams… Like Narcissus I loved my old reflection….. Less Narcissistic and more realistic I appreciate my new reproduction more than I ever have, I look forward to getting older and the clarity that comes with experience….. Like an old man shouting from his wheelchair, pot belly and all.. I declare youth to be wonderfully exciting and fresh, invigorating and wistful. And yet I highly anticipate the longing for prune juice, dentures, cardigans, and comfortable Velcro shoes.

Disgruntled syllables

I woke up this morning to the sound of a beautiful yet disgruntled voice on my answering machine, and this response was inspired...... If she could only realize..

Stretching its color into the sky with a groggy yawn.
The sky reminded me of your skin
The morning, quiet as a funeral
The silence stung my chest like second hand smoke
Until you broke my grief with a sound to beautiful to be deemed noise
You raced through my mind like public transportation
Grinding on like a train through the traffic of my thoughts
Persistently creeping like a cab into the corners of my mind
You never rest, never stop, your never cease
To meet me where I am
With the punctuality of Mussolini.

Maybe

Maybe I feel like a typewriter, an old and outdated relic that reminds people of the times we remember fondly but seldom recollect long enough to hold.
Maybe I feel like a computer, new and clever constantly evolving, I crash with a convience that is easy to forgive but impossible to forget
Maybe I feel like Napoleon, courageous and confident, I scratch my imperialistic itch with a spirit of revolution as the guilltoine laughs
Maybe i feel like Ghandi, brittle but bold, with a quiet peace I smash Britain into a million pieces while the Queen sips tea
Maybe i feel like ghost, lost and fumbling for a feeling that I cannot hold in my translucent hands.
Maybe i feel like a begger, drunk and stumbling for anything but peoples pity, without any hands to recieve the silver change that cannot change me
Maybe i feel like a saint, pious and proud, worshipped for a faith that was never mine by people who love to believe in strangers
Maybe i feel like a sinner, selfish and faithless i try to fly to salvation with metal wings when no one has ever heard of forgiveness.
Maybe we all feel like a church with broken pews and empty aisles
Maybe we all feel like Lions praying for challenging prey
Maybe
we
all
feel.............

Astronauts(JRP) vs. Astronomers(AKH)

Like kids in love when the sun goes down i desperately wish that I could bully the moon to go away. While she stands wide eyed to wait for it to come and show its many shapes. I curse the stars, while she sings them to sleep. Laying in the wake of the day i stretch my tired bones toward the sky, breathing in the ashes of the day, I sound a yawn for sleep to rescue my weary soul. She stands in the fullness of the night and tries to catch airplanes with her index and middle fingers and talks to the satelites about the problems with technology. It is here that i have to break this poetic preamble and give an accurate description of what i am doing and feeling that cannot be lost with my attempts to be clever with my words.


I'm laying in my bed left with only empty sighs and blank stares at the mute cracks in my ceiling that offer an ear but never a sound to help me survive the longing i have to be understood by her. I love that we care enough to fight about nothing. Others would kill to fight about what we fight about. Its like my dad always said "women, cant live with them, cant shoot them" (for the record i dont really want to shoot anyone it just makes me smile to think about my dad's funny sayings)

"YOU MIGHT SLEEP BUT YOU'LL NEVER DREAM, ONWARD PROGRESS OR SO IT SEEMS"

As i lay in bed, i think of my generation
Pondering what they are getting themselves into
Red faced, with breath that stings of alcohol
Watching each other like detectives
From across crowded dance floors
Girls concealing their age with concealer
Guys staring away at monotonous sports highlights
Giving thier two cents when no one keeps their pennies
Hoping for love at first sight
They waited all week to learn about each others bodies
They slaved 40 hours to tip "their" bartender
And listen to the pop songs
That they cannot stand
But sing when no one is listening
"AND YOU MIGHT SLEEP BUT YOU'LL NEVER DREAM"



My skin feels elastic as my body yurns for ovaltine
My brittle bones ache for calicum
In and out my eyes struggle to stay open like a broken shade
Use to giving in to these urges of holding my pillow like a lost love
I dream of a far away girl and a morning cup of coffee
"ONWARD PROGRESS OR SO IT SEEMS"

Like a Knife...

The day felt like a rusty razorblade. Fimilar but dull... Running a marathon around the hallways, caffeine echoed through my veins... It wasn't until cell at Joe's Coffe bar that I really started to breathe the day in with some youthful vigor. The couple across from me were awkward to say the least. The women age 27- 32 looked hardened but fresh in some strange way. Her jittery movements made her seem uneasy as if she was being watched from a distance. The man was 30- 35.. He was very gangly as his body looked mangled in a delicate sort of way as if his mother had babied him through his entire childhood. Friendless and addicted to atari he never played football with his friends, for it was as if he had not one awkward growth spurt but two. I would have never guessed that these to souls were married, if it hadn't been for the rock that held her left hand in submission... And the band that lay limp on fourth finger of his less dominant hand....My eyes couldn't help but be fixated on them. They sat together as if they had no memory of why they even loved each other at all. Their lips seemed to move but thier bodies despised the sounds that crashed from their tongues. They talked about Christmas plans as if they were retelling the Holocaust. They looked extremely miserable but they were together in that undeniable emotion......Snaped out of my secret staring contest with them my mind stumbled upon Enoch and Quincy Miller... The inquirer said that the altercation was over some clothes, in the end 18 year old Qunicy stabbed his 23 year old brother Enoch in the head and neck.... Enoch is in a much better place, as Quincy hides out from the men in blue.....Thinking about the brothers makes me feel like an invalid....

Technology is for the birds

I loathe technology.... so much so that even as i type this it is hard to come up with a decent reason why... the reasons for my disdain are to lenghty to list... I've never been very "advanced".. I've never been big on downloads...never had napster or limewire probably because i didn't know where to download them before they became certified illegal.... Never really been a good web surfer.... And now it seems as though all the information that i couldn't live without wont come off my hard drive... Technology is for the birds..... Is it to much to ask to recover some of my prose, a couple of short stories, some hip tracks, and kodak moments.... Maybe it is... and maybe it is?!

My My My My....

I am 24 years and 364 days old today. Getting older does very varing things to people. Some people try to hold onto their youth like a snowball in June. Others gracefully adhere to the natural order of things (and getting plastic surgery or buy expensive material things) Me, I don't like to hold on to things that are inevitable... it comforts me to know that no matter how pious, proud, rich, poor, faithful, faithless, intelligent or shit for brains a person is that he/she will not be sparred from the following....
Number 1 sitting in traffic
Number 2 aging
Number 3 Death
It is on this foundation of fact that i must list my blessings (in no particular order of importance)
My health
My family
My Mother/angel
My blood brother/twin brother Nicholas
My Friends
My Girl (boots)
My Tattoos
My Lord and Savior
My Hope
My career
My students
My House
My Illadelphia
My finanical stablity
My mind
My passions
My My My I truely have a lot to be thankful for.........

Adjectives derive from Bling..

(The picture above is a birthday present from one of my favorite students Radzeedha Watkins)
A
N
D
This is how I FEEL
Wonder, admiration, amazement, surprised, astonishment, bewilderment, flabbergasted, stunned, taken aback. These aren't just ordinary adjectives that are learned to describe an emotion. These adjectives that derive from Bling are designed to paint my black and white world with the vivid colors of my admiration for the little things in my life the make such massive difference...
Cash Money Millonaire 4 Life dun............

I heart winter.......

I just got back from a run to Rittenhouse Square and the air was just cool enough to burn my lungs...
My bones feel electric as my heart tires from beating up my chest and quietly fades into a pleasant rythm.
I love the winter, the dead leaves sprawled out over the cobblestone like martyrs
The smell of fallen trees seeps over the powerlines and thickens the cold air
while couples bundle up their love in layers of winter garb.
Hiding silence under scarves, their happiness hangs like a halo over hoods,
As fingertips desperate for the touch of skin patiently wait in mittens for the rush of blood against theirs.
The winters are warmer than i remember as a boy, it snows less than it used too.
I pity the boys and girls that will never lose feeling in their fingertips from feeling snow for the first time
I ache for the running noses that will stop running like a faucet, the children who will never get hit with a snowball.
The future atheletes who will never play kill the man with the ball on a cloud of snow over frozen soil.
The next soldiers who will never build a snow fort and tunnel their way towards freedom away from the aim of enemy snowballs.
We all lose things, if we stop to recollect what it is that we had....

Are we at a tattoo contest or a vagina contest?

Its hard to bottle up the events of last night in their entirety and due any justice to the mind F*CK that was last night but here goes....
THE TOP 8 REASONS WHY LAST NIGHT SUCKED
8. The music the DJ was spinning sounded like my 6th grade dance circa 1994
7. In attempts to look "cool and fit in" No one was dancing, again very remeniscent of my 6th grade dance
6. The bartender heard Tequila n tonic when i asked for tanqueray n tonic
5. By the name one would assume the new 24/7 convenience store is actually open 24/7... One would be wrong...
4. Realizing without a shadow of a doubt that we live in a sexist society that values a womens vagina more than amazing body art
3. The flyer read best tattoo contest, but alas it was best vagina contest.
2. Nicholas lost two free tickets to Vegas to a girl with a heart on her crotch the size of a freckle
1. That i cared enought last night to actually compartmentalize my disdain for the night into a list

People say that the longer you live the more you understand about this oblate spheriod that most refer to as earth.....
If last night is any indication of this statement then i think i had more understanding as a fetus then i do now....

Everybody meet Mr. Me too

Today at school we rocked a role reversal... the students dressed like teachers and we did our best to dress as students with sloppy untucked white shirts and ties that looked more like fragile nooses that dangled away from our necks... Nick's junior high school dance was the jump off... Over two hundred junior high school cats descended on the senior gym like the bubonic plague on europe... But back to the lecture at hand.....Like an eskimo in a heat wave it was really neat to see the students dressed to impress in their best attempts to recreate my classic teacher style.. The day was so light hearted and it made me realize that teaching is more than delivering knowledge, raising reading levels, learning organizational skills, or how to do math problems void of a calculator that you will never have to do again in any aspect of your regular life.. Teaching is about relationships... Its about breaking down age barriers, and racial walls, showing a youth that learns more about diversity from MTV than they do from living in the ghetto... The ghetto is so segregated the only white people my students see are the plastic skeletons on Laguana Beach, police officers, and teachers.... This may sound wierd but it gives me a huge Kool-Aid smile to know that anyone of my students would take a bat to the back of someones head if they messed with me.... You can't buy that type of respect you can only earn it.... Well i digress, my tired eyes are again filled with a thrist for sleep... Seacrest out....

Without time can you be timeless?

Matthew Broderick said it best in the 80's teen classic Ferris Buellers day off,
" Life moves by pretty fast.... if your not careful it will pass you by"
At times I feel like a robot without oil, or a conquistador without a compass...
This very dramatic and doubtfully poetic rant is how i begin my life as a blogger,
as the 21st century crashes in to me i meet it head on with no regard for my safety
No seat belt, I’m too cool for the safe belt, and far to practical for side airbags...
My day started today as it usually does i made it to work on time by the skin of my teeth
with caffeine provoked alertness i energetically high fived and head nodded students as i carried my bones through the hallowed halls of my high school in North Philly, trying to amp myself up like a gladiator entering the coliseum.
I sat down at my desk said hello to my fellow teachers and stared at Amelians picture on my computer screen...
It must have been about 10 seconds into my staring contest with Amelians picture that i realized "crap i am at work"
Pulling myself away i noticed the stack of papers that lined my desk as if a blizzard of dead trees had just come down on my work space and i swore the weather men had called for sunshine.. My day went much the same, as my morning, i felt distant, sluggish, like i had never talked to anyone in my life.. My words came out as if English was my second language....
My existence at work felt as awkward as a first kiss, but then in the midst of feeling overwhelmed i did the outlandish, i did the extreme... i prayed.... For me lately this has felt like a radical thing to do because i have been running around chasing hours that feel like seconds... It was only about a minute of silence, but in that silence i was saved from being so egocentric.... When i opened my eyes and looked around at my classroom i was sucker punched by a startling fact... I am incredibly blessed.. I stared at my computer screen and saw the smiling face of a beautiful girl who thinks that i am the cats meow... And who i am in constant awe of her beauty both inside and out.... i gazed at pictures and artwork of students i had taught and it all made sense... "Time moves pretty fast if your not careful it will pass you by" My fellow skeletons i call you all to silence... In all the static we can find clarity if we can just quiet ourselves through the noise that pollutes our peace.... Here is were i must retire my syllables witha kool aid smile.... and count my blessings like P Diddy counts Benjamins...