it was a saturday nite in brooklyn and i admit i was faaaaaded with folks -- too many vodka shots with randy frickin bunnao [yes, punk, i got home w/o tossing up -- and you?!]

and a dope spot it was -- beautiful young folks kickin it on a rooftop -- dj reborn spinning in one room -- robert, randy, and i talkin smack in the other -- tiiiiight --

even nicer -- feelin the mad buzz upstairs on the roof -- 2 women ask us for samples of our shit -- and something holy stepped down to kick it with us for the nite ...

so, here's a piece the boys just heard for the first time this evening -- but which i wrote for an asian/pacific islander theater performance in 1993...

foreward:

too much
the meaning
but i wonder if it was there before
or if i lived this life in a
bind
blind
but thats a perfect phrase for me to spit
sittin here eloquently styled poetic
and makin myself deeper cause i
supposedly think on some
shit
and makin myself stronger cause i can say my world's gone mad
and then
articulate it

with a pretty flash of phrase
or a rhyme that builds its own
beat
a rhyme losing itself in a
self margin turned
maze

cause, maybe
the baby cage couldnt hold its shit
and maybe,
i can check myself on this
transcendance--

--which brings US far
and lets US choose
to keep on goin

and gives us
feathers
to the wings to the span of a sky
that keeps callin my name to fly
and i can even smile
on the way up
cause im
on the way out
of this mess

and id be
free
to drop this
body's oppressiveness
with a flicker of the stars

i
had the chance before
but my route
went out
towards the sound of a devil
cause theres more than one you know
and even he aint all bad


and the route is a weather-worn path
cause we got
'artists'
who call themselves
'artists'
cause 'art' -- is a term they
supposedly own, and
'art'
is a pretty spot on a canvas, and
'art'
is a cute 'artists' smile
like that
actor onstage in the spotlight who's lovin his time

and the words are just
phrases
and the words are just
phases
and the words are just
noises
cause thats how it
sounds

after all, the

sound

is what matters tonite
and the
'artists'
have got
to make it sound

nice

[initially printed in ALAY - a publication of the Filipino Students' Association at UC Santa Cruz -- Copyright 1998]

melinda corazon foley