In Plain Sight: Finding What Was Never Lost

Hush your mouth!

I’ll fold you like clean clothing

You should be focused on hoping

My vocal chords are swollen

My voice box is locked

Disfigured or even broken

And my train of Black Thoughts

Gets lost and never spoken

I...

Wrote these bars (for my hip hop heads) or lyrics (for everyone else) while riding the subway to work after dropping off my son at the ridiculous time of 7:15 AM so that I can make it to work by 8.

My day starts at 5:05 (in a perfect world), actually it starts at 2:30 or 3 depending on the amount of sleep my mind and God decides to give me for the pure entertainment of watching me attempt to gracefully walk the banana peel covered ice rink that is my life. Some days, I’m Baryshnikov: gracefully avoiding disaster while making it seem effortless to do so. Most days, I have the energy of Eeyore and the grace of a puppy running at full speed on a shiny new marble floor who then attempts to sharply turn the corner. It’s adorable and makes you laugh but is frustrating as hell for the puppy. Especially frustrating is trying to sleep to get those remaining two hours my mind and God have conspired to keep from me to test my metal. So far, I’m in the medieval times/shark suit family. I’m dinged up and that shit weighs a ton (or it could just be the stress and lack of sleep). I manage to shower, get dressed, eat, dress my sleeping son and leave the apartment by 6:15 each morning. My son rarely wakes during this home edition of American Ninja Warrior. I get us on the crowded Q train where men and women will see me carrying my sleeping child in my arms.. Rarely is anyone awake enough to offer me a seat at this time of morning but even the sun shines on a dog’s ass some days, Billy Ho! We ride the train for 15 minutes, transfer at Atlantic Terminal/ Barclays Center from the Q to the D train and ride an addition 20 minutes to daycare.

After I drop off my son and get back on the train, I usually put on my Avantree Audition over the ear wireless headphones (black with the red trim) to listen to something to get me in the right frame of mind to deal with a 45 minutes ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan on a train that is packed like a can of Asian, White and a few Latin and Black sardines.

Courtesy of Pitchfork

On this day, the music of choice is The Allegory by Royce da 5’9”. Aside from Black Thought aka Tariq Trotter of the legendary Roots crew and Andre’ Benjamin aka Andre’ 3000 one half of the greatest rap duo of all time, OutKast, Royce gets my vote for being in the conversation of “Top 5 Dead or Alive MCs”. Do yourself a favor and listen to his latest project, The Allegory, on your favorite streaming service and you’ll see what I mean. Hip Hop needs someone who is unapologetically black and can walk the fine line of being street and conscious with brilliant wordplay and thought provoking lyrics. There’s a time and place for mumble rap and all the pop shit that radio stations play but for the cats like me who’ve been listening to hip hop since the days of cassette tapes of Schooly D and Kool G Rap, Royce keeps our fingers off the panic button.

Where am I going with this...? Oh yeah, the bars/lyrics at the top of this post! I was listening to the track Thou Shall and words just started coming to me as if to say, “See? You’re still creative! Now write this shit down because you don’t get enough sleep to remember this gift.” And that’s when it hit me: my creativity is always inside of me, it just manifests itself in unexpected ways in the form of bars/lyrics, dinner ideas, how I dress, getting my son to take a bath, etc. I went on to write 36 bars before getting off the train to walk to work. I may finish a full 48, I may not.

The good thing is: my mind is still sharp even though it is fatigued from sleepless nights and concerns about my nonexistent finances, my need for a new place to live, wondering if I’m worth more to my son being dead than alive, and a myriad of other thoughts that plague my mind in the midst of my longing to get back on stage, in front of a camera or in a booth to record music. There’s also the longing to be able to look my son in the eyes and know that even though everything has been taken from me, including him, I am still here and somewhere in me is a fighter who has ideas to get back on track and show him that his Dad is NOT a loser, or failure, or liar, or punk, or fake, or any other wonderful words that have been used to describe me.

My mere being here and deciding to not end it all and deciding to do whatever I need to do to be in his life and find a way to regain my own is a battle that many will trivialize and few will understand. I don’t say this for sympathy, but to remind myself that my time is not up. There is still an opportunity to be and do outstanding things and find people who care and aren’t only there for the highlights but are there during the ascension to them. Hopefully this reaches someone who needs to be reminded of these things. Thank you for reading!