personally

sweep around your own front door
do not try to sweep around mines
do not be worried about my actions
or whatever consequences YOU have in mind
simply hope that YOU are right
or beg that man for mercy
YOU are not going to Hell for my sins
I have to see him personally

Price Tags

PASS U BUY

written by

Son of Wisdom



forty years gone
just like that

thought i had time
to get on track

looking for the right time
to shine

it never comes

grab the bull by the horns
for the ride or die

standers on the sideline
just get to wave, shake hands or say hi

want in the game
get in the game

time out for excuses

conspiracy theories

and the like

faith is now

never one day

thinking long

thinking wrong

keep on thinking

and it will cost you

to watch

opportunities

pass

u

bye

I Was Born A Poor Black Child

Today if you drove through the neighborhood I grew up in you would think that I was born a poor black child. Unlike Navin Johnson (Steve Martin's character in his timeless, comic masterpiece "The Jerk") I knew I was white. You couldn't help knowing you were white growing up in the Hyde Park section of Boston in the 60's and 70's. Two words: Forced Busing.

Not only did you know you were white, you knew you were Irish. Every kid in my neighborhood had an Irish surname, Burke, Whelan, Brady, Hurley, Norton, McGonagle, Flynn, Galvin...Costa (we had one Italian kid nicknamed "the mini-guinea"; as the name implies he was a short guinea). We had one black family and one Hispanic family in "the projects". The Fairmount Development was the whitest of the projects in Boston with maybe the exception of those in Southie. Family lore is that my dad's Uncle Jimmy, who had been a Mass. State Rep. pulled some strings to get my mother and father in there soon after I was born. It had the reputation as being one of the cleanest and nicest developments in the city. It borders Milton on one side, so there was this feeling that we were almost in the Suburbs. This proximity to people owning their own houses and cars that weren't two-toned and rusting gave many of those growing up there a sense that the projects weren't the end of the road. It gave others the ample opportunity to hone their skills as car thieves and burglars.

We were the poorest of the poor families living in the projects. My father left when I was seven, after impregnating my mother six times, once with twins, in seven years. After my brother Derek died (two months old) and my father left, my Aunt Rosie moved in to our two bedroom apartment raising the tally to two adult women, three boys and two girls in about 800 square feet. We were the U.S. version of "Angela's Ashes" poverty, dead babies, tea and cigarettes.

My mother, god rest her soul, somehow found a way to send me and my brother Mark to Catholic School which was great for our education, but horrific for our self-esteem. Being the early 70's busing was a boon for the Catholic schools . The parents that did not want to move to the suburbs to avoid having their kids bussed from Hyde Park to Roxbury or elsewhere sent their kids to Catholic Schools. These kids weren't the lower middle-class kids that populated the Catholic schools when my mother went to Mission Grammar School or Mission High School in the 50's and 60's. These were upper middle-class kids who had no problem reminding my brother and I on a daily basis how poor we were either directly by pointing out that our school blazers were not bought at through the school store(Bradlees specials) or bragging about their trips to Florida or Bermuda on school vacation. We had one black girl in our school, a few grades ahead of me, but we were the white equivalent: living in the projects, on welfare with chips on our shoulders.

We moved to Northampton, Massachusetts in February of 1977, but we might have well moved to the moon. You could not find anywhere in the Commonwealth more different than Hyde Park as Northampton. The nickname for the greater Northampton area is "The Happy Valley"; the area is known for its large lesbian community, it's colleges and tolerance. We moved into the projects, but unlike the projects in Boston these were privately owned subsidized apartments called "Hampton Gardens". There were no gardens in sight, but things were a lot rosier. For one we weren't the poorest family in the place (that title could be shared by a number of Puerto Rican families, whose extended families overflowed even the spacious four bedroom apartments). My Aunt stayed in Boston, so we now had four bedrooms for six of us. Another plus is I didn't get in my first fist fight for a week. Living in Hyde Park, two days didn't go by without someone punching me in the head or me punching someone in the head. That was refreshing. There was one huge change, Desegregation. What Judge Garrity couldn't do in Boston, my mother did with a 100 mile move due west. Hampton Gardens was a melting pot. Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Whites, Cats, Dogs living together....in relative harmony. There was one scary moment the second day living there when four Puerto Rican kids ambushed me and my brother with snowballs (I was amazed how good they were at making and throwing snowballs being from such a hot climate), but it wasn't driven by a hatred for whitey; we were the new guys and needed to be initiated.

I had never talked to any black kids my age before moving to Northampton. My Grandma Norton had some black co-workers at Peter Bent/Brigham Hospital who would sneak me some desert from the cafeteria where they worked. I thought they were nice, but I always feared the black kids I would see getting on and off the train every time I would take the Orange Line into downtown Boston. The most common sentiment expressed about blacks in my Irish-Catholic en cleave was "Niggers Die". My mother was in the minority as far as her opinion about blacks. She never uttered the N-word and the few times she heard me say it, I got a good, well-deserved whack in the head. I quickly realized that my friends from Hyde Park were wrong, black kids didn't smell different (although their skin does get ashy if they don't lotion up), they weren't all thieves (if anything they stole a whole lot less than my friends in Boston) and you could see them at night, even if they weren't smiling.

My mother passed away in the Summer of 1999. That fall we had a an informal gathering at Saint Joseph's Cemetery in West Roxbury where her ashes are buried with my Aunt Rosie and Grandma Norton as well as thousands of other poor Irish-American Bostonians. After gathering at the cemetery I took my brother Greg and my sisters Deb and Chris back to 26 Woodglen Road in the Fairmount projects. They were amazed that we ever lived there having no recollection of the place. They couldn't believe we crammed seven people into such a small place. On that spectacular fall afternoon we were the only white faces around. The current residents must have thought "Damn Jehovah Witnesses, kids don't answer that door!!!". I watched my sister Deb while she surveyed the abject, color-filled surroundings and pronounced "I was born a poor black child.....".

Midnight tonight - don't miss this final chance

We thank everyone who submitted pieces to be considered for our publication. There is still time! If you want to promote your work you have until Midnight tonight (no matter your time zone) to send in poetry or prose (excerpts of works in progress accepted). For details: Click here!

Do not be frightened by this amazing opportunity! And don't miss this chance - tomorrow it will be a g h o s t of a memory...

*click image for source.

EXPLICIT CONTENT!

Therapy

So this is what it felt like to be in love. To want someone so much that every rule and convention you had would be negotiable.
She steadied herself as she watched him leave the building and stalk his way to his car. Her breath caught in her throat, she could not swallow (not yet at least). His lights flashed and she waited until he pulled into the street and rounded the corner before she turned the key in the ignition to follow him...to heaven.

She stepped out of the car in front of the small wood frame house and waited for the shades to open and close signaling her to move into position. She approached the house on wobbly legs and clenched her teeth as she listened to sound of her Red Patent Leather stilettos echo on the pavement. She knocked three times exactly and waited for further instruction.
A brown and beautiful woman answered the door and looked her up and down with a mixture of disdain and tinge of curiosity.
"Well!" the woman seemed angry and nearly barked at her as she stood transfixed on her radiance and war like demeanor. She was already wet. She answered in hopes that it would distract her attraction and mask her rampant lust.
"Yes Mistress, I'm sorry Mistress. I am here. You look so beautiful--"
Her flow of words stopped when a rough female hand gripped a handful of her hand and pulled her into a hard kiss.
"You are late! Get in here!" A hard slap landed on her full bottom and she nearly jumped from her skin with exuberance. She was inside the house and could be put through her paces properly now. She followed the routine happily, almost giddy in anticipation and happiness.
"Have you been good?"
"Yes Mistress."
"So you have earned a treat them?"
"Oh yes Mistress. Please."
She fell to her knees at the pretty woman's feet and buried her face in the fabric of the robe covering her crotch. She ran her hands of the back of bare thighs beneath the cumbersome robe and looked up for permission to proceed. Her Mistress picked up a bell and shook it once. He emerged from the room completely nude and just as excited as the woman kneeling before her mistress.
"You may take your reward now."
The kneeling woman leaned toward the erect man and captured him between her lips, pulling the head of his cock into her mouth like a ripe plum. He sighed and stroked her hair as she pulled and suckled him in the wet cave of her mouth. She pulled him deeper into her mouth until her nostrils met the source of him. Her mistress had seen enough.
"Enough. Come to me."
She eased him from her lips and crawled on her hands and knees to her mistress, now seated with her brown legs wide.
"Did you miss me?"
"Yes Mistress."
"Did you miss him?"
"Yes mistress."
"Good. You have earned the opportunity to Prove it."
"Thank you mistress."
She eased between her Mistresses legs and caressed her thighs again as he eased to his knees behind her and caressed her back. She dipped her spine and he slid home deep within her.
"Oh God. Just Like That," she managed to squeak out.
"Yeah, baby. Anything you want. You can't be this wet! I would have remembered pussy this good girl!"
Her Mistress smiled as she gripped the moaning woman's head and pulled her mouth to rest at the lips of her sex. She obliged her Mistress in full. She tongued and tasted her as she would a ripe mango. Coating her lips and face with sticky nectar. Her Mistress moaned her approval and finally gave her what she wanted. She braced herself for her reward as her mistress gave him the command.
"Punish her. Reward yourself this time."
She kept up pace within her Mistresses folds as he chastised her from behind with the force of a piston. His heavy hand landing on her tender cheeks time and time again until she convulsed on his cock, milking and squeezing him to an eruption deep within her walls. Her Mistress gripped her hair and shook out a violent orgasm.
The three fell away from one another.
They dressed in silence and they walked to the door as the Mistress grabbed up her remote to turn on the tv. The woman turned holding stilettos in one hand and a wad of cash in the other.
"What time next week?"
"After church on Sunday. My kid has band practice all next week. There's a big game coming up so.." The Mistress took the money and tossed it into an open drawer connected to lovely hall table near the door.
"Great. We'll see you then," he answered.
They descended the steps together hand in hand--something that hadn't done in years.
"You still think therapy is silly?" Her question made him smile wide and grip her hand tighter.
"No." He looked at her in a way that she hadn't seen in years.
"You still love me?"
"Always."
They embraced and kissed deeply. He broke the kiss and whispered into her ear all the things he loved about her and proceeded to walk her to her car.
"I'll see you at home."
"Can't wait."

Femigog the Sable Eklektik

You Already Know What It Is...

social running knots
choking my hardened cold soul
begging to be free

Lord make me over
Guide me towards your vision
Living to serve you

Have a good week.