Classroom Poetry Week 1/ Eye Of A Needle.

Lets cheat
And advance ourselves, our territories, our politics and our cultures
Not beyond intangible lines of maps and blinking radars
With blimps of potential threats and hazards, but under
The plumbing and foundations of the current Hippocratic future
Forming before our eyes in the forms of excuses due to insufficiency.
The Black Panthers and glamorized boycotts made noise.
We can be discreet.
In the midnight darkness, with ski-masks, we can all be
Leaders or remain immobilized by the current modern stigmas.
These myths and attitudes that have replaced figures of power
And stereotypes must be the first to be thrown out the window.
A mob of black cannot be seen in the 25th hour
But the footprints will remain permanent, suggesting an imminent
Threat to perceptions of our society.
You can believe in Failure or you can believe in Defeat.
The former offers the wisdom necessary to avoid the latter.
What we choose for ourselves to believe is what orchestrates our progression to dominance.
Once pushed to the margins, we will be amongst greater headlines
That will never be printed in order to avoid the chaos of propaganda.
A circus of flames, spreading like wildfire fitting in the eye of a needle, burning every street.
It takes the heart of one matched by a million to engineer a
Movement motivated by thousands of injustices and insufficiency.
The writing on the wall is not graffiti, they are my demands and the corresponding numbers
Are deadlines.
There's no need to fear a system that we can beat.
It's impossible to predict the outcomes of massive unity.
The numbers of them are normal.
The numbers of us can cause panic when we emerge from hidden depths like a black smoke
With advanced territories, education and tactics, unafraid of the common stigma.
Only then will my dream be complete.


Very often, I lose focus in class and stop paying attention. I'll get the grasp of what I need to know for the next quiz and anything else coming up, then completely zone out. I'm going to start writing a quick piece every time I zone out to see what I can come up with in the 2, 3, or even 4 hour class (I have two 4-hour classes). Today I started writing down small phrases quoted from my professor and put them in my own words to keep the topic together.

This is what I am capable of creating in less than 3 hours. I didn't edit any lines, or go back and change something. I think I'll continue to work on this and tweek it a little bit. I don't think I'm finished with this.

Constant.

Most sharks need to constantly swim in order to breathe and cannot sleep very long, if at all, or they will sink.

Be a shark. The day you stop swimming is the day you start slipping and let others catch up to you. Don't get eaten up by a school of Rookie-ass guppies just because you wanted to relax. And in order to be at the top of the food chain, you must prove yourself to be a superior predator. Must be Frightening yet fascinating. Be a shark. Be a threat.

Some sharks sleep with only one brain hemisphere at a time, thus maintaining enough consciousness to breathe and to watch for possible predators and other threats.

Buzz/Woody.

"Right now, poised at the edge of the galaxy, Emperor Zurg has been secretly building a weapon with the destructive capacity to annihilate an entire planet! I alone have information that reveals this weapon's only weakness. And *you*, my friend, are responsible for delaying my rendezvous with Star Command!"

"YOU! ARE! A! TOYYYYY! You aren't the real Buzz Lightyear! You're - you're an action figure!"

"You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity. "

I Like This Look On Girls.

Tight denim with the loosey.

I'm Working On Transferring To:

So I can get my Obama on.

Simple Things.

We can all agree that everyone just wants everything to work out, right?

I see too many of my friends putting their entire lives out on Myspace and Facebook updates just for attention. Apparently, everyone's been going through some shit and never know how to deal with it. Thing about it is-it's almost as if they believe its ABNORMAL to face obstacles and tough challenges. It's like they expect to play a perfect game of Monopoly without ever getting sent to jail, landing on someone's property with houses and paying no taxes. In order to pass Go and collect those $200, you've got to play by the dice and head to wherever they take you.

I hate seeing people with shit like "OMG...FML!" Can anything be so serious as to force you to say Fuck Your Life?
"No milk for my cereal...FML"
"Still Hungover...FML"
"Class at 10...FML"

Simple things.
If you want to be apart of the simple things of life, you're going to be respected as a simple minded person. To me, "simple things of life" include activities that don't take you anywhere such as being in a gang/clique, getting "shitfaced" on the weekends, weed...shit like that.
There's more to life than letting something or someone take control of you.

Being in a gang does not take you anywhere nor does it bring you anything but discern for your contemporaries. Unless your gang is bringing in some kind of monthly revenue or some shit, where are you going to go with being a member? Can't put it on a resume and it damn fucking sure does not count as community service. If you want to be loyal, be loyal to your blood family and I don't mean crip/blood family. I mean be loyal to the man who you came out of from conception and the woman who you came out from at birth.

Get to making love and art. Stop wasting time getting wasted.
Stop asking to follow your damn Twitter. Who cares what show you're watching, what fast food is good, or Drake/Lil Wayne lyrics. Shit like this makes me wish Malcolm X had a Twitter:
@MalcolmX:Hey guyz, going on a pilgrimage to Mecca.
@MalcolmX: The Nation Of Islam iz a bunch of H8terz.

"Now before I finish.... let me just say I did not come here to show out.. did not come here to impress you. Because to tell you the truth when I leave here I'm GONE! And I don't care WHAT you think about me - but just remember.. when it hits the fan brother..... whether it's next year, ten years, twenty years from now.. you'll never be able to say that these brothers lied to you JACK!"

Progress.

"Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress."-Nicholas Murray Butler

Strong progress takes a lot of hard work and dedication. I constantly work toward my future and the main reason why I'm comfortable with such hard work is because I'm doing what I love, what I'm passionate about. I've recently inherited more responsibilities and I see the ways in which I've grown throughout the past two years.

I remember seeing my dad having virtually his entire business in his briefcase. Hundreds of papers, the manila folders, ball point pens and business cards all disorganized in this brown leather briefcase. My mom would have her purse and fashion portfolio and it seemed like everything that was important was always in their clutches. I noticed this earlier this week when I was stepping up to my door and couldn't open it because I had my messenger bag, backpack, gym duffle bag and a few bags of groceries.

We are all in charge of our rate of progression and within that, the rate that we grow. Two integral points in life, in my opinion, are sacrifice and priority. Especially now as a full-time college student, in asking myself what grade I deserve, I look at the time I sacrificed and how dedicated I was. There's a quote by someone out there stating "the more you sacrifice, the greater the reward at the end." When you see that "A" at the end of the semester, reflecting on all the "kick-backs" and shit that you missed out on just to study suddenly seems irrelevant.

And then there's priority. It's one thing to acknowledge that school come before anything but it's another to actually put it into affect. My life is in the books, in my poetry, and in the Pharmacy so I don't have time to post up hundreds of pictures on Facebook and shit. I see all of the pictures of my friends that go out for a night and take 300 pictures all in the same position, with the same people-putting up a front as if they're rockstars doing big things. We're college students and the majority of us are broke. Ya'll showing up to the "clubs" in a damn Toyota Tercell with at least 6 cats deep trying to wild out at a FLYER PARTY. SMH.

So progress. Advance beyond what is expected of you. Don't just do what is required of you but exceed the mandatory minimum.

More on this later.

Drederick Tatum.

Drederick Tatum is my favorite character on The Simpsons. Maybe because he's based on Mike Tyson but every show with Drederick is hilarious! I've always wanted to shape my goatee exactly like his and get a Four-pack like his. Of all the celebrities that are parodiedon The Simpsons, I think this one is the best because the Mike Tyson lisp is and language is on point.

Tatum: I think Homer Simpson is a good man. I like him. I have nothing against him, but I will definitely make orphans of his children.

and also in the same episode-

Jimbo: Hey Simpson, wanna trade belts?

Bart: Well, not really, 'cause yours is just a piece of extension cord.

Kearney: Hey, dude, he's ragging on your cord.

FTW.

Scholarship Money For The Win!

This is how you win scholarships for $2000. You gotta come correct, keep it 100. Here's a snippet of the essay I wrote.


My primary reason for pursuing a career in the health care industry is because I feel it is the field I can make the biggest impact in. I have always lived in underserved communities where disadvantaged families struggle to afford the appropriate health care and parents must resort to a lower quality for themselves and their children. I have always felt that one man should not receive a higher quality health care over another man simply because he has more money. I chose to pursue a degree in the health care industry, specifically Charles Drew University, because my mission runs along with theirs. Aimed at providing patient care with excellence and compassion and transform the health in the underserved communities where I am from.

As a Costa Rican, I am proud to represent an underrepresented country through my educational endeavors. I hope to give back to the community by setting a positive example to the youth by volunteering and being involved in mentoring programs especially to those that wish to pursue a career in the health care industry.

(This was one of those "hurry up and snap the damn picture!" kind of smiles)