a little rap in the middle

when i was little, and was listening to mason betha, dmx, and the like, i used to dream about being a rap superstar. i loved the art of storytelling through rhythm and rhyme, so much so that right around 6th or 7th grade, i even started to right my own raps on sheets of paper, just like eminem in "8 mile". they were about how i was so better than you, and about every line used the word "like", and i had pictured it perfectly. for a 11 or 12-year-old, i had some pretty good wit and a pretty good vocabulary, i was on my way to stardom. now isn't that little dream of mine just precious?

i learned soon enough that my hardly-urban neighborhood in pacifica would not give me enough street-cred to be a rap superstar in amurrica and that i would have to restrain myself from writing anymore rap sheets in order to prevent any embarrassment if i were to run for office later in my life. i would also learn later in life that i would never survive a freestyle battle, or even a casual cipher, as i discovered that my mind and my mouth aren't always together on the same page as each other. rap was never meant to be and my outlet for expression would have to be of a different medium.

enter poetry.

poetry is nice because in a lot of ways, it can be very similar to rap, but at the same time it can have nothing in common in rap. i can write with or without rhythm, with or without rhyme, with our without fries on the side, it doesn't matter! i do prefer, however, to try and incorporate rhyme and rhythm into my poems whenever possible, just for fun.

maybe for about a year now i've been wanting to write a poem about myself. kinna a self-affirmation poem and kinna i'm better than you poem, you know, cuz poems like that are cool and make people in cafes snap their fingers and "mmMm!" when you get it just right. the problem i've been having is that every line i think of has that generic artsy BS feel to it, which i hate. kinna like "i am a swirling thunderstorm/i am an peaceful river". i also want to have it so i don't use the phrase "i am" in the poem, ever, which is pretty hard when you're trying to write a poem about yourself. go ahead, try it.

anyways, as ashamed as i am, i must admit that i've resorted to attaching some sort of media to my blogs, because i learned somewhere that that's just what good bloggers do. also, because nicky told me that sometimes he doesn't read the blog, he just looks at the pictures or watches the video. and really, most of the time the media attached has nothing to do with what i'm blogging about, it's just there so at least you have something to look at if you don't wanna read my blog. most of the time it's prolly just some picture or video i took note of sometime in the past week.

here's a picture of something i wish i was better at.
no, not being a skinny white dude. drawing/sketching.
even though you can see where the corner is and this dude has the absolute blankest look on his face and his hair slopes down to the left quite a bit, it still makes a pretty good myspace picture.