"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...