Joseph Kony Guilt: Let's Wait And Be Sure.

Joseph Kony Speaks. Check out this interview done with the notorious Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony. We already have one interpretation of the the 20 yr old conflict in Uganda by the filmmakers of the Kony/2012 video, but before you jump on the bandwagon and light a torch, at least become constituent to all the voices involved. I am not imploring anyone to believe any of these voices, for truth is usually a composite of all the information involved, but I am asking us to be informed, intellectual beings who are the result of our best effort, not an empassioned mob moving from slumber to anger in our collective illiteracy. If Joseph kony is guilty of these crimes against humanity, let him be proven guilty with evidence, not a film by a some dude from Hermosa Beach. Note: Most fundraising missions in Africa are scams, moneymakers. So before you buy that wristband that the Capture Jospeh Kony movement is selling, please have the facts straight, or you could be simply funding someone's rock n' roll dreams.

http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhEk16p80re9j8X31h

Problems With The Film About Joseph Kony

People, those of you who are conscious beings, check out this video with a critical eye and tell me what you think. I agree that what is going on in with Joseph Kony is incomprehensibly appalling, the crimes against humanity he and his cohorts are involved in, but there are many dynamics at work here that are left out of this film, and as a result we are presented a very naive, paternal perspective on African conflicts. I wonder who's benefiting from these sustained conflicts, who's funding and arming Joseph kony, what western corporations have financial interests in the region, what European colonial power still has resource interest in the area, why is there such unwillingness by western powers to end the conflict? I don't see a single interview with anyone African but they boy. There are many African activists fighting hard to end this conflict and save these children. Why not introduce them to the world? This is how Bono from U2 became the self appointed ambassador for African suffering. This filmmaker is well intentioned, but seems to arise from the suburban white bliss and innocence that many Americans cocoon themselves in, all the while benefiting from the resources garnered from these conflicts in places such as Africa. Requisite to this convenient political blindness is the assumption that all things western are working for the good of the world, and that, despite the connectivity of the planet, atrocities happen in isolation, and in this isolation, can be solved with the good intentions and muffins of a phalanx of soccer moms. I applaud this filmmaker for bringing this issue to the world's consciousness, and his naivete is not his fault. Let's just hope the real experts on African and world issues are going to now be heard by the masses for, once again, there have been many African voices, in Africa and in the diaspora, screaming about this matter for some time, hoping the world community would hear them, they were just the wrong color.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

KONY 2012

Something That Needs To Be Said

Recently I have been embroiled in an issue that pertains to a poem I wrote about a childhood friend named Robert James. He was killed when we were 14, like so many other black boys succumb to the mystery of urban amorality and find their fangs at that age, making the conscious choice to do more than survive, but to live aggressively, to predate. I penned a narrative poem about his death that said, in some detail, how he was killed and the madness that he came from, that all those tragic young boys come from when they find that killing is for the killers. I posted myself reading the poem on Youtube about 2 and a half months ago. Sometime this week Robert James’ niece, who is twice as old as he was when he was killed,  was told that the posting existed.  She contacted me. I learned through our conversation that other people from my neighborhood had become aware of the piece and were upset. I can see them being upset for Robert’s death was such a tragic event in our lives. Robert’s murder, only a year or so after the murder of another childhood friend, Tyson Kuumba, was the one of the profound happenings that introduced us to our mortality, introduced us to the deadly randomness, and stole our innocence.

                In the fire of the throes of the give, and mostly take, that has taken place over the last day or so with cats from my old hood, suffering their vitriol, the battle has been clearly defined in an odd way.  I have come to understand that the true import of this mess is how we are going to speak fondly of our hood; will we laud the good times and people and live in that beautiful regret and loss, or will we do as many black communities do, colloquialize the bullshit trouble we had to suffer growing up urban, make it a cute series of adventures that somehow define us racially and regionally, and mute down crips and bloods to being lovable outlaws who laced our existences with excitement? What tale shall we tell, one that charts the herculean efforts of working class Black people in underserviced areas who fought the encroaching darkness daily and let us know that the world existed and needed us and our best effort, or do we lay in the decorative damage and blissfully spin the more convenient yarns of the very rats and roaches who cannot allow our reflections on our childhoods, for fear of indictment,  to be a real mirror of the times and people?  Gangster life has usurped the Black experience  and come to color our memories. They now revolve around the infamous gang members who lived in our communities. We have, through the lens of an outlaw’s selfishness and lack of sensibility and our own ritualized fear, criminalized our past.

                So I stand here today saying fuck them! You should join me. Put up the proverbial middle finger to all the people who sold crack and aspired to be pimps and thugs and the rancid madness, woeful ignorance, and generational illiteracy they grow like cancer from.  I have vowed to never tell another story about Sintown, where I grew up, and speak of hoodlums  in ways that, by default, mitigate the evil they did in our communities. And this isn’t being judgemental. This is about standing with the victims of gangs and celebrating our survival. This is simply choosing to be honest about people who, in their strength, were licentious predators, yet now, as we are grown, eat at the legacy of my Pomona by living in the shadows and lies of our cultural conceit.

                This entry also pertains to South Central LA, Compton, Lynwood, Inglewood, Gardena, Wilmington, Carson, Long Beach, Ect ect ect. Take back your streets! But also take back your histories!

James The Worker

James is a worker, profoundly straight, wonderfully green, and heavily weighted in good. He ignores the names thrown at him, the occasional scream, for often he daydreams. He wanders, his boss claims. “He is often not here.”

 The boss contends James' aims curve into clouds and clear skies, that his eyes sometimes wander the wharf and peer through telescope lenses, that his senses love routini and roses, and the religion of business and its cries fade to rivers running wild and wide, He says they bound into crystal blue sleepy lagoons and silent tides or merchant ships, fishing nets tattooed to their sides.

“James dreams of games of catch in parks,  Paris shimmering in the moments before dark, monks in Eritrea, market places in Senegal, Taiwanese skyscraper builders in a shower of sparks.”

 Indeed James' boss claims that James is not in the game. Each day there is more of the same clear-eyed daydreaming, more hours awash, more of the deep afternoon, a new window in the office each day. Yes, the 2pm oceans at the shore of James' desk, children at play, caravans of camels in the narrow halls, fields of unharvested hay, New England meadows, Diego Rivera murals,  and beautiful opal eyed horses in wooden stalls. Oh, James does travel sometimes. He is a nomad with all the Gobi desert to call home, all Venice and Rio De Janeiro and Libreville to roam, James ferried by a myriad of hot air balloons sunblown. James carries the world in his pocket. Cairo to Dallas,  Capetown and the Czar's winter palace,  millions in haj to Mecca's sacred stone. James suffices to be alone.

And while Serengettis bask in the heat of a beautiful day, as the great wall of China reclines in its strength,  or a young couple drives the coast and sparkles along its sunlit length, somewhere a long lost friend is on the phone. For James there are afternoons everywhere to call his own.

"JAMES JAMES, where is your working?! Oh, James," the boss exclaims."Effort has gone amiss! There is nothing much plainer than this. Would you much rather kiss rich ladies and remain forever in that bliss? Would you rather nap or tote tea while your coworkers hiss? That is that and this is this! James, I see flowers in your hair. I see air between your ears. I fear, yes I fear what I see and what I hear! The nothingness from your desk. The lack of hurried mess James, I fear not meeting projections at the end of the fiscal year!"

Oh, the apologizing James, abandoning the Mediterranean, hitching up horses and trekking in from the plains, kissing Paris goodbye, regretting Kilimanjaro's high trails and leaving Fijiian skies and confronting stacks of files, leaving his laughter wafting in the Nile to negotiate the  piles and piles of figures

at his lonely little desk. He is immediately hurrying from parades in New York to work the insurance claims. Outside, under the scheduled squares of city sky, a Ferris wheel is slowing.  In the northern thickets Thoreau has gone for the sake of going. In the wince and stammer attendant the tumult of falling back to earth, the music and events are lost among the names. Like a coming godhand, the great panes of afternoon grey to rain and the apologizing James, adjusting his frantic heart and eyes, mountains stitched together with cascading railroad ties, tufts of Mozart in Austrian winter skies, majestic dragonflies, Samuri warriors turning east, waving heartfelt goodbyes…

EBT and The Hood

Rut Roh, ya'll got me up thinking this late/early am. I was thinking of some cats I saw in the Dollar Tree. Well, I was in the Dollar Tree buying Ibuprofen. They sell a whole bottle for a dollar! In the shriek of a clearing cough, I pulled a muscle in my ribcage, thus the Ibuprofen. Anyway, in line ahead of me with about 40 dollars worth of items was a couple paying with an EBT card. Both had tattoos on their necks and faces. They guy had several piercings and his pants hanging off his ass. Both his girl's hands were tattooed as well as her breasts. Hmmmm. Disturbs you too huh? Hmmmmm..yep! I'll say it because you are too gentle to say it. Such rats, or as Snoop would say, rizzats, should be cut off from welfare. As I understand it, people with EBT cards must be looking for work. But peep game, how can one possibly claim they are looking for work if, by their mere appearance, they are unemployable? I cannot take a cat seriously who is covered with tats, wearing his pants off his ass. When I look for work I get myself together. I do the three S's: shit, shave and shower. My clothes will be clean and my manners British. And I understand that they may have children. No one say Romus don't love the beebees. But how can two grown people parade around town looking like thunder dome fist fighters and claim they need help feeding themselves? Welfare should tighten down on people who make no effort to meet the state in the middle. Cut em off! Imagine that, on welfare with freshly done tattoos on your necks. What manner of idiots are these?

Hello world, this is my first entry into my new blog. I named the monster "Romus Speaks" because it is me speaking and it's hot everywhere, mostly in our churning minds and hearts, and some of our boodies . So we kept it short. I have a good feeling about this blog. My balls are resonating happy times! Can anyone dig it? We are going to talk honestly about many things. I promise to be honest and to never dull the truth down to where it loses it's edge. Agree with me or not, I gives a Sintown damn. Be sure to leave your responses and love, your offerings and honesty. This blog is a place where all voices are welcomed, appreciated, considered to be intrinsic to the composite truth of the world, and given the scope and opportunity to be heard in earnest. So let's talk about it..get bow legged and walk about it.