Papered

Rizla, Zig Zag, Smoking, they’re all different brands of rolling paper. And to discourage any false notions about their function, ‘cigarette rolling paper’ is clearly mentioned on the cover, just below the name. A few brands go on to give you the base of the paper, its cut etc. but the fact remains, its function is mentioned, straight up, right on the front of the pack. You hardly find this kind of commitment these days. When was the last time you bought a pack of cornflakes and read ‘to be eaten’ on the front of the pack?
Right, getting along, now since its function is mentioned straight up there’s no need for any confusion right? Wrong, you’d be amazed by the number of bizarre things people have thought up as functions for rolling paper. I shall illustrate a list below.

Chewing gum disposal paper: “It’s like so handy ya. Every time I like want to get rid of my gum I like just pull out a leaf of paper and wrap it in that. It’s like so cute ya. I’m just trying to like keep the city clean ya. I’m so cool.”

Miniature tracing paper: “A friend explained this functional aspect of rolling paper to his mother when she stumbled upon it in his room. She bought it”

Post its!: Just write, lick and stick. Completely hassle free. But wait, what are the ‘Post-its’ for then???

The handy cigarette fixers: So you were a little too enthusiastic about lighting one up and you’ve gone and got a tear in it. Have no fear the handy cigarette fixer is here! Rather convenient don’t you think? And to have them mass produced and branded like this must mean that a lot of people are as spastic with their cigarettes as well. God damn, someone understands me.

And this last one I just love.

“Hey, you know they now have special tissues for boogers?”

So here’s a little note to all you non-smokers and all you claimed-smokers out there. Rolling paper is for rolling, hence the name. They are not ‘thingys’ or ‘tissues’ or ‘fix-me-ups’. They are ‘papers’ plain and simple and king-size and slim and corner-cut and rice and flavoured. You guys stick to your campaigning and prophesizing. Leave the smoking to us.

The fabulous life of Batman

There’s a programme on VH1 called ‘The Fabulous Life Of…’. You’ve got your hip-hop stars, movie stars, businessmen and the like. And they’re all loaded. The thing is, imagining that kind of wealth is well, unimaginable for most of us.

One episode even proclaimed the high fashion statement of jewel encrusted hubcaps! Imagine that!

So since they’re all beyond our imagination anyway, I see no real need for the show to be based on real people. Why not do an episode on ‘The Fabulous Life Of Batman’. Now that’s quality entertainment!

Bank balance: Well, he’s the unofficial prince of Gotham City (as Bruce Wayne of course), so I’m guessing it’s pretty big. And he doesn’t have to endure tea with the queen.

Place of residence: He’s got a massive house but prefers to spend most of his time in the bat cave (what with a wide screen TV and all). Filled with electronic gadgetry that even the US defence forces would be envious of and keep the most tech savvy guy busy for a couple of years.

Marital status: Bachelorhood, and definitely the most eligible one around. And you’ve seen the part with him and the two chicks in the hotel right?

Clothing: Did some say fur was in? Fuck em’, then fuck em’ again. Black reinforced Kevlar combat armour is where it’s at. With titanium alloy harnesses and an in-built receiving/transmitting device in the graphite helmet. An ultrasonic transmitter in the heel of his boots and a magnetic Nomex and Kevlar woven cape that comes ‘alive’ when a current is passed through it. Now that’s high fashion!

Rap Sheet: You need to catch him to actually charge him.

Basic transport: Are you kidding?? Probably the coolest car to ever hit the road.
Primary power comes from a 500-HP Chevy 350 V8 driving four 44" bullet proof Super Swamper tyres (Was ol P Diddy bragging about his 26”ers??) via titanium axles. Dual axle front tyres and auxiliary power comes from a rear mounted angle adjustable jet engine.
For normal driving situations, you simply sit in the left seat. In "attack" mode, you move to the center of the car, and you’re repositioned to lay face-down with your head in the center section between the front wheels.

So there you have it. The Fabulous Life of Batman. VH1 can suck dick.

before i start this poem

Just something i read, then re-read, then read again till I knew every line.
I hope you'll love it.


Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silenceIn honour of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence
For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes,
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the US And if I could just add one more thing...

A full day of silenceFor the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of US-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year US embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin And the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people, not a war - for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret war .... ssssshhhhh.... Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.
Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador ...
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ...
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos ...
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas 25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west... 100 years of silence...
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness ...

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.
Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be.
Not like it always has been.
Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.
And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children

Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.
If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.
If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys.
If you want a moment of silence,
Then take itOn Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of JulyDuring Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautifulpeople have gathered.
You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.But take it all...
Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.
But we, Tonight we will keep right on singing...
For our dead.


EMMANUEL ORTIZ, 11 Sep 2002

[Emmanuel Ortiz is a third-generation Chicano/Puerto Rican/Irish-American community organizer and spoken word poet residing in Minneapolis, MN. He is the author of a chapbook of poems, The Word is a Machete, and his poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including two books published in Australia: Open Boat - Barbed Wire Sky (Live Poets' Press) an anthology of poems to aid refugees and asylum-seekers, and Passion for Peace: Exercising Power Creatively (UNSW Press). His poetry will also appear in the forthcoming FreedomBook, an anthology of writings in support of Puerto Rican political prisoners. He currently serves on the board of directors for the Minnesota Spoken Word Association, and is the coordinator of Guerrilla Wordfare, a Twin Cities-based grassroots project bringing together artists of color to address socio-political issues and raise funds for progressive organizing in communities of color through art as a tool of social change.]

House arrest

It’s been about 10 months since I moved to this god forsaken city and last weekend, during a particularly jobless but stoned Sunday afternoon (Read usual Sunday afternoon) I decided to get myself a snack. Now a house that has 2 guys for occupants is not a house where one would expect to find a well stocked fridge, clean dishes, water etc. You might however find enough weed to tide you over about 40 days of rain, some beer chilling in the fridge and enough tobacco to get you through a weekend. And of course, tons of CDs, a couple of games, movies, a PlayStation, a TV and so on. But not dishes.

Right, getting back to that Sunday afternoon… now I wanted a snack and the dishes hadn’t been done. There they lay, in a greasy pile with droplets of water standing defiantly over layers and layers of oil. As I looked at the dishes I thought to myself, ‘man, I’ve been here 10 months and I don’t even have enough plates for two people!’.

What I’m trying to say is, I’ve got just one plate.

One.

For two people.

Of course I’ve been meaning to pick up more plates but ten months is just too short a time to go down to the store and actually buy the damn things.
And it’s not just the plates mind you, there are a lot of things that I’ve been ‘meaning’ to get done. Lets see,

A pillow (even a constant neck pain can’t seem to get me to buy that)
A spike buster (so I can fix my computer)
Someone to fix my computer (which I miss dearly)
My bike papers (I tried…)
Nails (hardware store?)
A new tyre (skiiiiiiddd……..crash!)
My drums (sniff…)
A few light bulbs (hot wax burns)
A new PlayStation joystick (It’s my turn!!!!)
Blanket (scratch that, it’s been donated)

It goes on.

So I shall desist, partly to save some of your time and partly because embarrassment has just kicked in. It’s not that these things are very expensive, nor are they hard to get. It’s just that they just don’t deliver these sorta things. Which will require me to actually STEP OUT and get them.

If anyone would like to contribute any of the aforementioned, well, do so. You’ll save me time and money.

And if you could just pop over and deliver it, that’ll be great.

Johns' geometry

Jamming. Ask anybody and they’ll have a version of it, from paper getting jammed in the copier to sitting and thrashing out ideas. But to a musician it means grabbing the guitars, drums, amps and belting out a few tunes.

Right, since we’ve got that out of the way, boiling down to the whole point of this. Jamming (in the aforementioned meaning) is a lot of fun, quite obviously. You’ve got a whole bunch of styles and feels floating around. As well as some people who are really experienced and others who are not. Not to mention the laypeople hanging around. Now throw in some smoke and alcohol and you’ve got yourself a virtual carnival going.

Anyway, that having been said, I’ve noticed of late that the best jamming, in terms of tightness and flow comes when it’s a trio. For me it was a guy on bass, a guy on guitar and me. And it was one of the best jams I’ve ever been to, simply because it was so easy to co-ordinate with only two other people.

If you think about it’s almost geometric, the progression of things. A trio forms a triangle if you connect all of them. There are no awkward lines. And it’s impossible to collapse. Each point will always be in sync with each other, because they’re all connected. And heaven will burn before a triangle dissolves. It’s the ultimate form. The absolute.

If you look slightly closer you’ll find that there a whole bunch of things, if not everything, that are so efficient because of their innate geometric skeletons.

It’s here that I find myself at a loss for words. I’ve only just stumbled on the theory and the sudden urge to write just crept in. Therefore I haven’t had the time to substantiate this with a few more examples. If anyone out there thinks up anything, well, do tell.

I for one will henceforth jam only as a trio. Or make sure that I’m sufficiently drunk to play quartet, or more.