There I go, quoting another rapper again. I consider myself a rap fan by most standards, but today especially, I recognize the power of their words. When Jay-Z speaks of the “genesis of a nemesis” when telling of the birth of a drug dealer, when 2Pac speaks of hopelessness throughout most of his records, and when Joe Budden points out this blog’s title, discussing just how hard it is out there for people who don’t see a way out, I hear it and have been exposed to it for decades. Yesterday was the first day, though, that a foregone conclusion of the street soldier / thug lifestyle hit this close to home.

My cousin Richard was a young, handsome, charismatic man who frankly got caught up in the life. I don’t want to put all of his business out there, but over the last 10 years, he’s spent more time in the clink than out of it, and in some ways, it hurt. It’s family that’s in there. He was the first guy who made me a Yankees fan before 96, teaching me about Don Mattingly, Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neill, and Jim Leyritz. He made it cool. He was always winning the sports trophies at the local Boys’ Club, and he always had the hottest girl in the class. He had a drive and a way of selling himself that made you an instant believer. And of course, he always had the latest rap mixtape in his crib.

But I also know of the fights we got into in our youth, the trouble he constantly got into, the secrets he told me that shook me for almost a week, his 2 daughters by different mothers that he loved but he couldn’t always keep up with, and the habits that he got caught up in were hazardous for his mental and physical health. Despite the disappointment I felt about how his life turned out, seeing his cadaver yesterday reminds me why I do what I do. He had just gotten out of jail, but like so many of our troubled youth, he predicted his own death, and in timely fashion.

I’m loath to call him a rat, a piece of shit, or a worthless vagabond, terms that have been used for him. That was my cousin. I knew something was wrong with him when I felt my heart tighten up the night before. He’s one of the primary reasons I do more than just worry if my kids are scoring high on their state tests. In the position I’m in, I find myself conscious of the effect I have on some of my own children, especially when I already see some of them turning into my cousin. When your life expectancy is “any day now,” investing in your own life is really about the short term.

And the rain yesterday washed over us like a baptism, carrying his soul to a place where he doesn’t have to worry about these Earthly things …

RIP my cousin Rich …

jose, who has no idea how he’s getting into school tomorrow like this …

I went with my girlfriend a week ago to the American Museum of Natural History near Central Park (NYC), mainly to watch the movie Colossal Collisions with the voice of Robert Redford (wondrous, really). and it just got me to thinking about our place on this Earth. For all that we clutter our lives with, the politics, debates, bills, social life, anger, hate, and yes, even love and / or lack thereof, we also forget how really infinitesimally small we are compared to the rest of the universe, and even the galaxy. Thus, it’s imperative for us to also keep everything in perspective, even whilst the universe changes all around us.

I think of this today in light of my cousin’s mother’s death. Though I don’t believe I’ve ever actually met her mother, my heart sank when I heard the tragic news. Death is as serious as it gets for us, and what’s more, my cousin came to celebrate life (a birthday) rather than death. This cousin’s been like a sister to me, and to know that this long-time struggle with her mother’s health has come to this, hurts hard. It’s put my own relationship with my mother in perspective, with the tension we’ve had. In light of this recent death, the overall feelings for my mother is that I love her; none of our clashes can compare to that understanding.

Something Robert Redford said caught my attention somewhere between me wondering how they put this production together, and that’s the fact we look at all the major collisions that have happened in our universe, some insignificant and routine while others looked disastrous and cataclysmic. Yet, these collisions also produced Earth, and the Moon, and the universe around us, creating beauty and life all around us. Maybe we can take something away from the much larger celestial beings, as we too clash and burn, and how often, even when it seems the stars above us seem distant, they’re just like us in our rudimentary behaviors.

jose, who often theorizes on humans’ gravitational pull …

No one knows my struggle, they only see the trouble
Not knowin it’s hard to carry on when no one loves you
Picture me inside the misery of poverty
No man alive has ever witnessed struggles I survived
Prayin’ hard for better days, promise to hold on …

Now that part of “Thug Mansion” by 2Pac feat. Nas and J. Phoenix is the only tune that replays every time I see her. At first, I thought she was as dopey as some of the other students in her class. She rarely participated, and her attention lied elsewhere, and I was a bit frustrated with her progress or lack thereof in my class. She didn’t have any points of entry where she and I could have a good conversation about something other than math, as I seem to have had with my other students. Yet, in my eternal optimism, I decided to move her to the front.

Since then, she’s been doing very well for me, even more recently opening up and scratching on the 90 she’ll soon earn when she steps it up on her participation. Her writing is more meaty, and her math skills have shined brighter. This might even be the case in her other classes. She’s grown a little taller, too, almost eclipsing my own height, and for a girl her age, that might make others around her nervous …

… and it does …

She’s constantly picked on. People start problems with her for no reason. People diss her for her height, making rumors up about her body odor (of which I’m not aware) or her lack of girly qualities, whatever that means. At first, I tried to monitor how she handled it. Her demeanor doesn’t give anything away, so there was no sense in prying since there were no inherent “symptoms” of any social problems. Then, her other teacher read an excerpt of a poem she wrote, and my heart dropped.

For the first time since I was in 5th grade, I was privy to someone who seriously considered committing suicide. While suicide attempts have even become eerily viral, many of these pronounced wishes never come to fruition. With this girl, though, I knew she was serious. And I knew because I know of someone who wanted to commit suicide, too, back in that grade. The signs were there: honest and brutal poetry, anti-socialism, concentration on school to detach oneself from their problems, and problems concerning their parents.

If the teacher doesn’t do the right thing and refer the student but also speak to the child directly about their observations, then the student becomes a victim of his or her own suicidal thoughts. In many underrepresented communities, suicide is thoroughly looked down upon as a selfish and cowardly act. Nevermind that suicide is really a call for help, and the last resort in a list of options the person had in their cry for love. So I fear for the girl, knowing that the parents might blame the suicide on her and not on the circumstances that led to her feeling like there was no way out.

In this day and age, when people quip about committing suicide sarcastically or really just as a teenage hyperbolic social indicator, it takes an awful lot of understanding and listening to know who will commit suicide. And I fear for her, since when I look into her downtrodden and detached eyes, I …

… I see me …

jose, mr. v, and all the other entities I’ve assumed over the last few decades …

“Find your dreams come true
And I wonder if you know
What it means
To find your dreams …”

I’ve been forced to do a lot of reflection as far as my father’s terrible health right now. The growth I’ve gone through since I’ve seen him has been tremendous. I don’t think I’ve gone through this much growth in such a short period of time since adolescence, and it’s been more inner growth than anything. I’ve come to a bunch of realizations:

- I can’t stand when kids keep getting switched from class to class; it’s bad enough they don’t have stable situations at home. Now we have to switch them constantly in school too? Everything’s in flux for them and school should be more stable than that. I’m going to write a letter to the principal about that. Just when we were starting to gel as a class, and getting things in order, this abrupt change happens. Kinda like a father who comes and goes as he pleases, we have to wonder how the student will react to that constant change.

- I’m completely not ready for children. As much as I’m excited about the prospect of having a child someday, I also realize it’s hard work, and it takes a certain mentality to be a good parent. I’m not ready for that responsibility, and I’m not willing to bend my definition of what it means to be a father for my own selfish purposes. I’d like to be there through and through, but that’s the whole thing about being my age: much more mature than most people in my age group, yet not mature enough to just shut down all that comes with this youth. I’ve resisted becoming so much like my father that it scares me when I even get an inkling that I might be following his path.

- I’m over it. That visit to him in February really helped me grow as a person. I thought I’d swear him off forever, but I made my peace with that man. For those who’ve just met me, check the next poem.

“Original of the Species” by JLV 2007 ©

He’s got this raspy bass about his voice
A French accent to accompany the vocals, too
His dark, rough, weathered, and brown skin
Glistened against the reflected light from the dashboard
His frames tinted, as any Miami resident should have
I envisioned this rather handsome gentleman seducing the women
Who soon became my brothers’ and sisters’ mothers
And mine as well
The ID hanging from his rear view mirror took me aback
For it felt that the ID had some sort of mirror
I started to scan his face for the manly features in my own frame
My lips were certainly fuller than his
And my eyes bulged while his just barely opened
Yet his head and mine were almost identical
His mind and mine worked similarly
And his squint reminded me of mine
I felt like that kid again
The one who admired the other half of his DNA
His intonations through some of his questions yielding a sense of promise
As if the past was too quickly gone and
The future was ours
His charm only enhanced by the fact that I knew who he passed it onto
I came to this city seeking some sort of completeness from seeing him
And showing him that I am a man now
Despite his own faults
Instead, I am a man because of his faults
I inherit all from him
And as I grew, I had to filter out that which was not me about him
Become someone
Become that man
Become me
I am now the original of my species …

jose, who flies out on Thursday …

Today marks 2 years after I last saw Jamal James, former president of Syracuse University’s student government in 2001 and active member of the SU community. I had walked around the Pride parade in NYC that day and as I turned on West 4th, I saw him and a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in ages. Little did any of us know that that would be the last parade he’d ever attend. Sadly, he was found dead in his apartment building three weeks after that moment. I was never tight with him, but to know that I was one of the last people to see him on this Earth really hit me hard.

I attended the wake, hoping to at least show support as a fellow Black SU alum. What I found was a huge following of people who loved him for just him. Exes, roommates, classmates, family, and friends just wanted to pay the greatest tribute to him. They did this regardless of his color or sexual orientation. Just then it hit me: how does one disregard those elements of the person if that’s what made him who he was?

For that matter, how does anyone disregard or say “in spite of” about anyone’s sexual orientation or color? And how do we tell ourselves that we’re against any sort of prejudice yet neglect our friends and family of the LGBT community? How can we act as if a certain person’s relationship with another adult is not love just because it’s with someone of the same sex? One of the more memorable characteristics about Jamal was his flamboyance and energy as he ran around the student government office in Syracuse. His personality, hence, wasn’t a “despite” but a “because.”

Today, I walked around the Pride parade, in memory of this acquaintance, knowing that, as far as I see, we’re not any closer to taking hate crimes like the one against this man more seriously than we did two years ago. R.I.P. Jamal James …

jose, in the name of love …