new york city is a huge ass place. they say it's easy to get lost in it, to be stricken with an immense sensation of insignificance. so many people, everyone's a rapper. everyone's got a mixtape, owns a record label, and is cousins with someone they're trying to prove to you they're as famous as. hella pizza.

in the city that never sleeps, if you live in the heart of harlem, and you're hungry past 11, you're pretty much screwed. just a 24-hour fried chicken spot that still drips with white goo from it sandwiches, even if you asked for no mayo. have to shoulder past a dude in a t-shirt of an iced-out wile e. coyote trying to convince you that he runs the streets all the way from here to west 130th.

dare i say it, new york has hit me with an extreme void of inspiration. i've hardly written. and i'm sorry y'all, i know that whole "nyc day 1" thing must have left the impression that i'd be updating everyday, as i had planned to do. but new york gives you so many excuses--the train didn't get me home until 3am...it's humid as fuck...the apartment's messy...if anything, my creativity has found its honing place in my never-ending arsenal of reasons why i can't write.


the past week has been very difficult for ill-literacy. 4 shows in 3 nights, smack-dab in times square is no joke. walking past the mammoth fluorescent coca-cola signs, roc-a-wear posters, and spazzy screens selling everything from cell phones to instant noodles, it's like having the babylonian empire crouching over your miniscule self and pushing down on you with its pinky. as we pace through 42nd street, i feel the city sucking in my energy, and it becomes quite apparent where all the bright lights and buildings get their power from--by depleting the souls of humans.

i feel discouraged. don't feel right in my own body. i've hardly engaged in conversation with myself, and every journal entry (the few that i've had) refer to the time that my computer got stolen, over a month ago. what do i need to do to get back in this place? it was in new york over a year ago that i found it, pulled myself out of my block (though i've referred to plenty of other times where that has "happened"). i need to find my peace of mind. quite honestly. i need to get into a place where i can do basic things that truly matter--like pray, meditate, be in my own thoughts without anyone owning my time but my own. it's completely necessary.



the rain has been frequenting this new york june. so humid, i hardly fall asleep feeling clean. more than the work that i've been doing on the daily basis is the knowledge that this won't end until august. how bleak it is, to imagine not being home for another month and a half. and how much this is reflective of what i've always wanted. so what is it that i want really? can i really figure it out on fucking...gmail documents, while eavesdropping on conversation between helene and ruby in the other room? the fact that i've been too restless to even journal like this in so long, despite how much good it will do for me...just like prayer...and exercise...and devoting time to myself, but alas. my time is not my own. how do i get it back?

i miss the nights when i would fall asleep writing, when i felt the need to do it no matter what. it's like going to bed hungry, and i've been doing it ever since i got here.

truth one. fame is a motherfucker. being a spoken word artist, in this continuum of spoken word neo incense-burning righteousness, the only thing lately that has been overpowering my despicable lust for bright lights is my guilt for wanting it so bad. poetry lately hasn't been about release, or purging of the soul, and keep it real, i became so comfortable writing about struggling with the world that my mind runs blank in realizing that my most brutal opponent is my own inhibition. some call it hustle. i call it workaholicism, sitting in front of so many inboxes, it's like i'm boxed into my own digital cubicle. droned in my own 12 to 12, a 24-hour cycle of self enslavement, shackled by my ambitions, like everything i want but can't have has me manhandled and i can't stand to think that my future won't be exactly what i picture. and i can't bear to imagine that every angle i've turned in this labyrinth of future-finding could just land me head first worst than when i started. because i swear before i embarked on trying to be some poet-prophet-artist-martyr with the universe fragilely teetering in the thin void between my arms it was so much simpler to just be a man. to just stand with bare-flesh-feet on earth and unearth these poems because they were raw, and they were me, and no audience could criticize how real these testaments were, spilling from my smooth young palms. i miss writing, just to write. and i miss the days when there wasn't so much pressure to make every breath a revolution.