One Love Karma ...

There's war going on outside no man's safe/I too youngin' was cut down in the prime of my imagination & violently mentored to succumb to practicality/publicly transferred from the Nebuchadnezzar to Captain the Ezekiel over the event horizon/yep that's us/flying the miracle wheel smoked out at the wheel high in the middle of the sky/we watched them posse up to cut down strength & gouge out eyes like she was Delilah to my Samson/all because a clear look into my Soul'll get you aroused like seven bare naked ladies/I remember vividly how them snakes hissed at me but they were too blind to see I was 45,000 miles away from home/just a Hip Hop buddah monk coloring blues in the hood/sonin’ them young G's like my name was JC Williams/maybe a muthafucka might be safer walking the block shaped like a 'S'/can't rock a vest but could easily be this month's star bullet collector/minus the spotlight in ya vestibule don't grab your wallet or your testicles/fuck who you are when we snatch your manhood & dignity/whether it be PIG or your friendly neighbor hood-ass enemy/because everyday it's 96 degrees in the shade stuck to the wall naming shit like I'm Adam/thank God I still got the pen but ya'll don't hear me though/self-inflicted images of preg Jenny's, seeds in back seats on star trek runs & 40 yard dashes from Jake & the Fat Man/all before I hid out on Pastor Fast Talk for More Bucks Caddy/pulpit or the corner them niggaz men-tal's the same/never forget though corner boys pump project heat/traded my post as ignorant light post ornament for the mirage of my very own puppet regime/now every sentence is a penance asking the Father to forgive both sins/I live it write it down then watch it blow up/you know who I am/you read about my life every night/M

CT, NJ, Harlem, Q-Boro, LES, BX ...

Figured out I went the wrong route but now I'm back/alive on arrival/which simply means my pen game is hella mean/every time I spit a round I drop a pound leaving my metaphysical frame hella lean/that kind of shit makes me a Lion in the hood/with enough Grace to extend Love to the Lambs of the hood/converting raw materials into verbal gems/dumping ammunition like Popeye chewing bullets after a can of spinach/a peak into my imagination is like a Soul Asylum/Pop's shot dope, Mom's carried scriptures in a flask/thank God I got off at the Gateway/hood holocaust survivor/too many years & countin'/but me no slack a minute till this dark path of flat pockets is finished/ain't shit to me I bear my soul on page/in gladiator mode soon to release snap shots of the story on stage/could give a thousand explanations but truth be told I simply stayed way too long/in the title trace the trajectory of all the places I've lived/easy to see I was born to be free/my life is a mosaic of East Coast hardships dipped in luxury/not yet attained super stardom & real nigga quotes/story of my life in 22 bars/God Damn I'm dope ...

Ballad of a Broke Nigga ...

What's good cold world/it's your main nigga M/live from my hood to whichever hood you in/didn't plan to be a Vet but it must of been on the list/how do you explain pushing 40 still on the wrong side of the tracks with lean pockets & regular greens/caged up and ain't none of 'em fam/just hollow souls who'll stick your shit to the glass like Stevie Franchise/scheming tacatos kicking knowledge to wild ass seeds on the bus/plus them Cuban Linx niggaz quoting Nas, Mobb Deep & Wu/this is the life I chose or maybe it's just the life that chose me/phantom-like, black listed & part time black hearted/a brand new nigga or faded memory if you ask what's left of my peers/but shots follow the targets so I'll never have to chase ya'll/not sure what people know about out there but truth of the matter is shit's fucked up here/still plotting with mouse trap blueprints on how to snatch the cheese/wasted years due to fear stuck in a dead end career/didn't wanna make a scene but I had to get free/overlord in my kingdom of poverty belly of the beast living less than two blocks from Jake/Dragon red eyes that cry blood so let's celebrate and smoke an eighth of that potent shit/cuz we could trade places gettin' lifted in the staircases'/summer of '95 that was my favorite shit/inspect ya darts like I'm the New Wu dart inspector/God forbid I relapse to help them pulpit niggaz go and peddle they crack/deep inside my Soul swims the spirit of Leviathan/extended Grace to many who simply reciprocated with hate, ambivalence & fear/while I'm commissioned to check the condition of my battered, broken & suddenly bipolar heart/when the fridge & cupboards echo my demons of murder form a choir of screaming echo's singing fuck them, fuck that/trying to figure out why every extension of embrace is met again with silent echo's/still I write like the next word might change my life …

Walk wit me, don't run ...

From streets where kids play under hanging wire like it ain't there & throw dirty foam blocks at each other for fun/where future hood enforcers roll stacked deep/packed like rats back to back under a barrage of maternal annihilation & systematic paternal invisibility/a breading ground for fraternal homicide/a sorority of pussy & suicide
on the installment plan/like muthafuckaz is supposed to go from stroller to cell block/like the local delivery guy telling me Jigga's a sell out cuz he ain't put a gang of green in the hand of every weak non MC whack bar tossing nigga from the hood/like Hip Hop is the new Lotto-Welfare/lil cousin I'm tryin' to learn ya somethin'/take you down into the post locked on to the blocks wit it/ don't ever let ya' self get caught outta position on these streets/you know niggaz love chicken wings/Bob Backlund/for the convenience of cost your man'll bicycle the well cooked beef/seeds planted to produce the broccoli/ohhhh Rev ain't right they whole church ain't right/ya'll know we all saw what we said we saw when we told ya'll we saw it/but these fat cats is too gassed up on the GodFather & mini Jesus comparisons to cop to it/damn shame/niggaz bleed just like us/putting 'em on a pedestal denying intuition when you listen/BX NY nigga it is what it is/Chef told me niggaz die faster than a pastor fucks/they cake game tight on every corner you could even swing the EBT card like a spiritual bodega/don't mind me/certified OG CT born cursin’ & crusin' in a catatonic state/mind still fractured from code speak & double talk/high on a Hill like Cypress cuz Stoned is the Way of the Walked ...

Poinsettias on the Pulpit [Expanded Version]

Metaphorically speaking, I went from pitching on the corner to fucking with the heavyweight connect but it's more like Cutty's journey to find Dennis/and yeah, just like moms I've washed clothes in the sink on Sunday before school/that shit might not have been new at the moment but it was always brand new to me/so I took to hanging in lots & on corners with niggaz who hate cuz it's a chance to breathe & breathe for a chance to hate/flash forward/the fact that every tabloid said she smoked crack never mattered when her voice boomed Holiday praise to the infant King for Sunday tithes & offerings/No! She can't sing in the play about His birth. She had sex. And besides if we let her, other kids will have sex and want to sing too. Can't you see? We have Poinsettias on the Pulpit/huffing & puffing like she's the big bad wolf/Bitch! Carnivorous, throwing shade towards every brownstone chick doing time in the hood/doubling down on the eye candy burden/self confidence & self-esteem killer, black face wearer, self-hate promoter/beat biter, dope style taker, tell you to your face, you ain't nothing but a faker/meanwhile I'm giving all praises due like Malcolm to Elijah Muhammad/hated by the shallow shadows for an effortless flash of a few soul deep scars/took a few chances before I spilled a few bars/blowin' down maaad trees like a muthafuckin' hurricane/call me/M breath EZ/figured I'd tell the story of how 7 shots missed me

Poinsettias on the Pulpit ...

The fact that every tabloid said she smoked crack never mattered when her voice boomed Holiday praise to the infant King for Sunday tithes & offerings.

No! She can't sing in the play about His birth, she had sex. And besides if we let her, other kids will have sex and then want to sing too. Don't you see, we have Poinsettias on the Pulpit.

Anti-gay bigots plunge Africa into new era of hate crimes | World news | The Observer

what's good fam?

i've been meaning to drop my two cents on this issue for a lil minute.

i wonder why these church cats are going all the way over to Africa to get people merked? why do evangelicals love smashing the Mother Land? why haven't we heard any of the major cats speaking up and checking their brothers? no time i guess when you still pumping the vision like crack ...

click the link below, read the article, and if you want, hit us up with your thoughts ... church people, no sermons please.

hold ya head my people.

M



Anti-gay bigots plunge Africa into new era of hate crimes | World news | The Observer

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Whatever happened to lamentations?

“Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian one must take up his cross, with all its difficulties and agonizing tension-packed content and carry it until that very cross leaves its mark upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering” – MLK Bearing The Cross

These words spoken by Dr. King have the ring of unmistakable truth and perspective to them that could only be born out of an understanding of personal and communal suffering. As our group explored the sheer scandal of The Cross we saw how The Cross was not only a scandal but it scandalizes. It seems vibrantly clear that God intentionally organized scandal into His family line because of their serious intentions concerning the incarnation (Jesus coming down to earth).

* Jesus was Asian-born, identifying with more than 1/3 of the world’s population, He also came from a mixed racial heritage.
* His birth was shameful bringing Him into direct connection with the 79% of teenage unwed mothers in the U.S. and the 1,000,000 teenage girls who become pregnant annually.
* After He was born He instantly became a political refugee, easily connecting Him with the 50 million people worldwide who have had to flee their homes over the last 10 years due to political unrest.
* His immigrant status links Him with the 8.7 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.
* His living in poverty connects Him with the 1,745,663 children in the U.S. that live on less than $6,645 a year
* By 2020 over 60% of the worlds population will be urban, young, and poor-Jesus grew up in the same surrounding conditions
* Jesus said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nest, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” 3 million men, women, and children were homeless in the U.S. over the last year alone
* He was an outlaw – 25% of young African American males are incarcerated or on parole
* He was despised and rejected – Bias against race, religion, and sexual identities are the leading motivations for hate crimes in the U.S.
* He was an innocent victim – Every 11 minutes a child is reported abused or neglected in the U.S., that amounts to nearly 3 million
* Forsaken by His Father – Of the 72 million young people in the U.S., almost 25% live without their father and 50% of the 11.4 million young black people live without their father
* He was murdered – Black males 14-24 make up 1% of the U.S. population but 30% of all homicides
* He had to endure The Cross, which is the greatest scandal of all

“The first condition of healing is to bring the pain and suffering into view” – Kathleen M. O’Conner-Lamentations and Tears of the World

What do we do with a church systems that seems to have the complete hiding of pain and suffering as its number one agenda item? As a New Yorker there are certain sufferings I have become blind to seeing because of the lack of representation in my every day view of sight. An example of that type of silent suffering is the homeless, when Giuliani was in office he did such a “good” job with the homeless that you actually forgot about them because you hardly ever saw them. Since I did not see them I was extremely under aware of their pain and suffering, the same-out-of-sight-out-of-mind experience seems to be taking place within the church. We preach a Gospel of “upward mobility” with very little focus on the process and the actions that would help families and communities move toward a fullness of life with dignity, justice, peace, and hope.

What are we afraid of? Does the fear of actually being stripped of the 12-step approach to Christian vitality motivate this hiding of pain and suffering? It seems that we see Christ as the Holy conjurer and our actions and behaviors are the keys, which activate His acts of benevolence. If one of our fellow sojourners is lacking in the blessing department we can quickly subscribe a modification to their behavioral practices in hopes to appease the great giver of stuff. Somehow Christians interact with their loving creator as if He were god of mythological inclinations. I wonder what happened to our theology of suffering? That is a particularly messy branch of thought because we are continually at a lost to explain the sufferings of life; this is compounded by our utter lack of availability in the area of presence. Could our blind reliance on Divine healing be attributed to debilitating fear we have when forced to gaze upon pain and suffering?


Our desire to reduce the gospel in order to control it is alarmingly manifested as serpent theology when superimposed in the lives of those who suffer. Serpent Theology is a perversion, it happens when those who are powerless have already adopted and internalized the mindset of those in power. So those who suffer have internalized the belief that they are most certainly not more than conquers because their life circumstances dictate that they remain nameless, faceless, and doomed to suffer outside the gate. According to Hebrews 13 this puts them right next to the suffering savior but our rush to resurrect Him robs Him of the dignity accorded to His pain. It is our blind allegiance to the Easter experience which devalues the Garden experience, the beatings He suffered, the Via de la Rosa, and the cross itself. Why do we rob The Cross of its subversive power?

“Art does not answer the impossible theological questions. When thought and reason come to an end in the face of unthinkable evil or unbearable personal loss, art provides us with the means to invent or organize, to create a place of being where we are helped to endure the question: Where is God?
Amy Bryan – Contemporary Artist

When pain is fully exposed that is when it has the best opportunity to be healed, we believe that for our counseling sessions but not as a major component of our daily walk. Do we view pain and suffering as a distracting selling point to those we are trying to lure into a fulfilling tithing experience? I know prosperity seems like a logical selling point for those lost in what we perceive to be despair but maybe all they are really looking for is authenticity and presence. These two things were in abundance within the first century church because of the power of the Holy Spirit. This power was manifested in the fully when they attended to the Greek widows in Acts 6, their suffering was not overlooked, they were not further marginalized by the community which was suppose to simply see them.

How many suffering people have we done violence to by simply overlooking them and thereby stripping them of their dignity? Have we disallowed the gift of lamentations? All laments have in common the direct address to God, a list of complaints, words from the speaker that are reassuring to them, words of motivation for God to act, and a petition for Justice. Have we done violence to the poets as they lament their tragedy because of the uncomfortably their pain brings us?