Of two worlds, my brother Sean and I

Today I am reading Maloutas.  The Whole Marie.  She slips me effortless as a stream in to the poetry, the poetic dream.  The inside-imagination place stunning as it is sacred, the place where it all is: what could be.

It is an ordinary day, like all others that mean something to me:  I exhibited choice. Choice not just in my approach to the day but also, for Wednesday is my Sunday, my last day of my weekend, in what I would do.  Not just how and who but what.

Today I will be poet, I get to be one hundred percent me-poet-me. Engaged in the act of the dream, engulfed.  The poet dream, the miraculous consciousness.  In bed.  Today, I will not get out of bed.  The books the blank page the candles and oils burning the cozies the blankies the coffee, o the coffee, and me.

I've been out of bed five times.  The poet's life is tough, this is the silver grain, this is the seed that falls from the grail.  I love to be engulfed!!  I only ever want to be engulfed!  Even if it hurts to pull myself out again.  Even if Narnia and the traces of her magic wands linger in the fingerprints left on my work apron, my work clothes, my work tucked behind my ear up in bobbypins hair.  The fingerprints how they pain me.  This is the gentle, furtive discipline.  Knowing when to say when--knowing when to say it is time to give to the seeds, to palm them in repetitive warming, to crack them from the hull, to till their bed-ground, to lay open.  In 2008 at this time I thought the dream Craziness, illusory, not real. Thought myself half-mad and on my way to proving insanity wasn't worth it by fighting it every step of the way.  YIKES.  No one tells you the dream is what you give to it, the madness what you take away, or refuse.  You have to define that landscape for yourself.

The half and half.  I've been out of bed five times today, up for three hours and yet to write, til now.  When I first woke the waking was whole and real. With the inside peace, that all-knowing perspective place of knowledge, that round calm room easy to see as a door, opened.  The understanding, congruent feeling there sometimes is upon waking, the creation of which we have no control.  In the middle of the night I dreamt of my brother, it was raining out and what woke me in the center of the dream was the most delicious, monstrous thunder and flashes of lightening outside white as a beam.  Our first spring thunder storm. This part was real, not a dream.  Then when I woke from the thunder-sleep the rain in my dream had washed out the side of the house, and Sean and I were falling down the side of the rain-wave, floating, waving to the other, laughing at the oncoming crash.  Why haven't you talked to me? I was asking him.  Then I was awake it was morning and I wanted to write, nothing more in the world was there except to write, and not my book but from the poetryplaceallllday, but also there were all my dreams and I had to talk to Sean.

He texted this morning Nate Dogg died.  Turns out he dreamt about me too and in his dream he asked me wutsup with you how come we haven't been talking which of course meant we had to talk, and now.

I love him so much, my brother.  We are very, very different.  He is in a corporate job and in June of last year he and his fiance moved 2000 miles away in order to pursue the growth of her corporate position.  They live in an enormous brick home in the suburbs of Memphis the kind with interior decoration and an inground swimming pool, they married this past fall in a huge fancy affair, they are now expecting their first kid. And this is it, the half and half.  None of that lifestyle is part of me, but that life and those who people it are, and so on my slip-slide in to the poetry dream this morning I called him back because this is what it is to be de dos mundos or "of two worlds", the first world is the inner, the poetic dreamworld where myth is real, and reality bendable, and world number two is where most the other people always live, the topside world of responsibilities, obligations, where also our relationships and heart-ties lay.  I have an enormous amount of relationships and have always put a lot of myself in to my work.  It is a hard walk to keep the line of--being of two worlds.   I talked to my brother strongly, clearly, he is the only one now that I've told about all the inner quiet things happening.  The hopes, the action.  The topside realities blended with the inner poetry visions, the alchemy.  The blending of both worlds, the manifestations of my true dreams.  For most I dont have the energy or clarity to speak it all out, but I told it best I could to him, I told it all.  Likewise my brother, the man I admire and look up to most in this world, told me his. 

Sean and I were suburb brats raised in a coosh lifestyle, playing 'intendo and crossing the swingset and riding BMX bikes and hanging with the many other kids like us in the neighborhood.  Kickball in the deadend and playing games I'd make up like murder mystery or war games that would take us for hours out and about on foot.  Just miles away was Baltimore City, hon, its highrise projects and kitschy thrift-lovin stoop-hons and blue collar factory workers corner to corner from the other.  In the early 90's hiphop gave way to gangsta rap, 92Q and V103 out of the city were hot and here is the miracle of how poetry, the poetic dream does. I was becoming a drug addict then, just starting, and Doggystyle was Sean and I's shit and it felt so real!  All that funk us white kids were nodding our heads to, without even knowing it was the very soundtrack miles away in our own city.  Playing out from the bathroom boombox, shaping us and shaping me and our popular culture sure as we shaped it.   I watched 8 mile last night for the first time in a while, the battle at the end gives me chills.  That movie was supposed to be 95, the year I graduated highschool. Biggie and Mob Deep are all over the background while they drive beater cars and puff blunts and dream of some day.  I did that same shit in 1995.   But I went back to my coosh life at mom's at the end of the day.

I love that Nate Dogg, all these years later and from way different places, is where my brother and I meet in the middle of those two worlds.

Here is my fave most recent clip of Nate D. Be sure to check it out, 1:28. Listening today I realized what I always loved most about him, how his baritone voice was low enough to serve as a baseline interlude.    Ahhh god just hearing him makes me hottt

Also, for good measure.  A little Snoop Dogg, original shiznet for dat ass~
RIP Nate D (fb users go here)