red circle blisters on ring-finger toes are the track marks of my walks around berkeley. whether the rose gardens, tilden, or that lil park near clark kerr, you'll see me lying down with bushy hair plucking at its knaps like a steel harp, and i'll probably have a black Pilot half empty from writing only when i need to, which is often in not the best, but the worst of times in a tale of two cities, happiness and frustration, and me caught in-between clutching an out-dated transfer slip that says "balance"; my mind will fluctuate like IMF-debt cycles as I try to figure out where/why/towhat I am walking. i will smile at the 8th floor dorm window, and wonder if its new resident can still pull the dark hairs out from beneath his pillow and match them to female faces i can no longer look at without darting my eyes, but still manage to think about every morning waking up to fragmented dreams of hugs and closed doors and awkward smiles and....i will go to kaiser tomorrow and begin to feel strong again. i will take the lessons i learned this past semester, mold them into arrows, and sling them over my back everyday, so that if a battle over self ever arises in my mind, i'll be the first aggressor and the only winner, because i have to win this time. i cannot loose to myself again.


songs of the moment:
At the Drive-in "Cosmonaut"
Stevie Wonder "All is Fair in Love" & "Summer Soft" & "As"
Rilo Kiley "The good that won't come out"
Common "Ghetto Heaven"
Bright Eyes "Bowl of Oranges"
A Tribe Called Quest "Electric Relaxation"
Erykah Badu "Appletree"
The Mars Volta "Roulette Dares"

job interviews...god they're horrible. i just feel so shitty sitting there, with my wavy-pseudo-fro all matted down with gel and shit, looking like a Columbian drug dealer in khakis, just sitting there like an ass. errr. it's frustrating. luckily, i got myself a job over at Doe Library on campus at the copy service department, xerox'ing shit all day. hopefully i can score some free copies for Chap Book production, either mine (this won't happen for awhile) or others, and start a lil business on the side. but no more unemployment for me...this could be good or bad.

went down to Lake Merritt...walking down International Blvd right where 1st Avenue starts all the way down to 12th Ave. was so eerily similar to East Harlem, where my pops grew up...within 12 blocks I saw a black dude get arrested, a young child smacked by her mother for talking back, a hobo "shooting" people with a red plastic gun with a yellow trigger, a dead possum, a crew of Asian gangbangers, and two 8 year olds riding around on toy motorized low-ride bikes (the irony). an interesting afternoon.

here's a list of the numerous occasions my name has been mispelled in mass Slam poetry e-mail newsletters across the bay:
Jose Valde
Jose Beagley (a lil cal slam mixup)
Jose Valdi
Jose Vodi (haha, thong)
Jose Vada (most recent)

so youth speaks offerred some of us spots on this nationally syndicated commercial against youth drug use...we got some info about it through e-mails, and the organization sponsoring the commercial wants us to (possibly) talk about themes such as: drugs alienates you from your family, drugs makes your grades slip, and all that jazz.....but what about alcohol? Not a damn person is talking about alcohol being a drug. I have seen some fucked up people on alcohol, we should be talking about that. Way more alcohol related deaths than weed smokers and all the herbal enthusiasts out there - and i'm not even one of them. I drink. It's stupid, i'm pretty over it, but yeah, i've done/still do it occasionally. So although this national commerical would get us "great exposures as up-and-coming youth poets", i'm probably/mostlikely/definitely not gonna do it. It be utterly hypocritical to have an underage drinker like me, who even uses prescription pain killers from time to time for recreation, to be a poetic poster boy for the anti-drug movement. Yes, fuck crack, fuck heroine, fuck cocaine, fuck acid and all that bullshit....but personally, i'm not gonna be a hypocrite just for the sake of my 'spoken word career'....this may be an extreme example, but it'd be like Bobby Brown doing a PSA against wife beating, or Lil Jon doing an Anti-Bad Music Tour, or Limp Bizkit actually making good music - it just wouldn't make sense.

maybe i'm just thinking about it too much and should do it for the sake that i DO feel drugs are bad, and that kids need to hear that, and what better way to hear it than through poetry?!?!?!

i am thinking too much.

which leads me into Eternal Sunshine - spontaneously saw it with tha Thong on Tuesday night for the second time, and man is it AMAZING the second time around. so much of it makes more sense, all the lil one-liners and whatnot....ah, and it does get you thinking of your ex's and your present lovers and all that jazz, but goddamn is it a beautiful movie, i need a bootleg of it now.

and i realized that in hindsight i think about all the things i could've said and should've done, and still don't have the balls to do it.

and probably won't for awhile.

done with my sophomore year. congrats to all those who have graduated :)

i have done 20 hours of co-op workshift in 3 days. I'm exhausted.

BUT i finally saw Eternal Sunshine today, and goddamn it is so amazing. The writing, the acting, the filming, the crazy editing...a real gem. Worth my $7 and $2 snuck-in candy and soda. Quotes of the movie: "I am building a birdhouse" - David Cross....and Jim Carrey talking about boring couples at restaurants as "the dining dead."

If anybody is or knows any artists that would like to help kids from Oakland design and renovate their own school through big murals and paintings, let me know. It's called the Youth Empowerment School in Oakland - kids design the curriculum, have a voice in deciding which teachers the school should hire, and this summer will renovate and remodel their new campus in Oakland hills. I'm interning there and with Youth Speaks this summer, should be fun...still need a job though.

My friend/heterosexuallifepartner Camilo moved out of Foothill and left me a whole bunch of crap to store in my big ass double this summer. One of these pieces of crap is his record player and vinyl collection. It is the greatest thing ever. I immediately bought Stevie Wonder's "innervisions", Sam Cookes "Live in Harlem, 1963" and last but not least PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION "PURPLE RAIN" all on Vinyl. ahhhh, so wonderful.

I miss Los Angeles, specifically, Pomona.

I got lucky and made it into the finals for the Oakland Slam Poetry Team on Thursday night. Jamie Kennedy KILLED it that night. It's a good slam that died for awhile, but has now been resurrected by some cool folks. Come to the next slam, June 10th (last qualifier) and June 17th (finals) at the Oakland Box in Downtown Oakland.

The highlight of the week: Emily Kagan's graduation party on Friday night. That was awesome. The whole slam community there with her family, seeing her graduate, her parents all proud and shit...man...nice times. Nothing but smiles that day.

The other highlight: Camilo stumbling into my co-op at 8am on Saturday, still drunk from drinking the night before, moving in his shit for summer storage. Dumbass.

This is a really long post, and there's probably a lot more I could blabber about, but it's probably unnecessary anyway. bleh. I'm feeling good these days, lots of smiles and laughs and smoothies and no cheeseburgers and buying vinyl and trying to write new shit and listening to music and reflecting on this crazy semester and shy glances at attractive girls on the streets and walking around aimlessly in north berkeley and being single and not drinking and not having strep throat and yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah.

Ah, summer....

last final in 6 hours. my second year at uc berkeley will soon be complete. only two or three more years to go.

with all this graduation commotion, there's one song lyric that's been buzzing in my head these last few days:

"But we just talk about
The people we have met in the last five years
And will we remember them in ten more?"

SOMEBODY'S lame for not going to carl's jr tomorrow. hahaha. jk.

feeling highschoolish.

bleh.

while studying, got a late night phone call from one of my best friends from La Verne - Courtney Wills. we've known each other since pre-school, like 3 or 4 years old, and we still talk...we've been through so much crap these past 14 or 15 years...for me, my best and most honest friendships aren't claustrophobic. you can have space and still be family. i see Courtney maybe once or twice a year...and yet, the moment i said "hello," it felt like we were picking up where our last conversation left off...

and that feels so damn good these days.


Listen to The Mars Volta.

when in the fuck did libraries become the new social spot? goddanm, during finals every loud mouth motherfuckin quasi-fratboy Red Bull drinkin asshole HAS to be laughing with their "bro's" as they group study, HAS to have his cell phone on at the loudest ring tone heavenly possible, and HAS to be wearing a Laker jersey, and not even an old school Michael Cooper or James Worthy one, but like a Rick Fox one or something. trying to blank them out, i put on my headphones (Radiohead "Kid A", one of the greatest) and halfway through "The National Anthem", the batteries die, as I'm reading about the 1954 coup in Guatemala that these crackaASScarsonDalywannabeASSHOLES's Grandparents probably supported during the Red Scare. When Christina tells me about parties with primarily brown attendees getting shut down early, and frat parties blasting until 5am, it's not even suprising....if those loud ass mutafuggas had on Celtics throwbacks and Iversons, motherfuckers would've complained - but the Hurley t-shirt wearing, cargo short sportin, flip flop flapping, bleached hair Arnette sunglass wearing, backward trucker hat rockin motherfuckers that I saw tonight got off scott fuckin free. not a peep of dissent from the whole 4th floor @ moffit, and my quiet lanky ass cannot overtake 10 ashton kutcher lookalikes. like frat parties going on till the break of down without a siren in sight, it seemed appropriate...

[venting done]

this morning on the other hand was FANTASTIC! having brunch with the whole Cal Slam squad at Cafe Durant while drinking REALLY good Horchata (ah, i had 2 glasses) was splendid. And congrats to Jimmy Tran for making SF SLAM FINALS!!!!!! Go support his ass here::::
The SF Adult Slam Finals are June 13 @ 8pm at
Studio Z (314 Eleventh Street @ Folsom, SF

Buy me this and this now :)

one more final. then some slams. then some co-op bullshit. and hopefully, a summer.

peace.

some more new stuff.....

"Michelle"
Seeing an ex-girlfriend
Is like seeing your 4th grade picture
For the first time in 10 years
First you cringe at the sight of your braces
Then laugh at your MC Hammer t-shirt
Then you wanna burn that picture
With a blow torch

I went straight to the third feeling
When I saw Michelle again
It had been a year since we last spoke
But when I saw her
I realized why men write in clichés when talking about beautiful women
Not even my morning shadow could hide
My grimace when we made eye contact on campus
Like watching your grandparents fuck to a crunked out Lil Jon beat
It was a little awkward

The moment I saw her lips
I remembered living in the dorms
Her roommate and my roommate were going out
Allowing Michelle and I to see each other
Every day for a whole semester

She spent the night twice as friends
And by the third night
We were sharing an underwear drawer

Our relationship was so emo
Each time we hugged
The static from our Alligator sweaters
Turned my computer off

Her Dashboard Confessional cd’s
Replaced my Common Sense
The soundtrack to our first kiss
Was Journey’s “Greatest Hits” –
Not a good sign

Within a few weeks
It was over
We had our last date
Over a hot plate of pasta with Pesto sauce
I hate Pesto sauce
But when you’re sharing the same plate on a cheap ass date
You gotta put in a lil sacrifice

She said she wanted to be friends
And no, I didn’t believe her either

I had been fucked over by this girl
More times than the Halloween I spent at Castro
Dressed up as an anus

And yet I still wanted her
Really
Really
Bad

A year later and now I stand here
Staring at her
Gecko green tank top
Clinging to her body like seram wrap
That damn near anorexic collar bone
Leading up to her
Brown eyes and straight black hair
That nerdy Tina Fey type cuteness
Men need to find more attractive

We didn’t say anything to each other
Just let the darting distance between our eyes
Shape the timeline of our relationship

The day after my mom started chemotherapy
Michelle told me she wanted to be friends

That day I started to believe in fate

After our encounter I walked around my college campus for hours
A year ago today we were probably in bed together
Holding hands tighter than Chinese finger traps

I buy a donut and Sun Chips at an overpriced on-campus café
And realize
This is where I last ate Pesto sauce
This is where I last saw her
This is where our relationship ended

And this is the time
When awkwardness
Covers me in a blanket
Of memories laced with morning kisses
And I smile
For having had the chance to smile
And have someone else
Smile back

“Swan Dive”

She calls herself a cliff hanger
Because when she gets high
She dives into oceans of regret
Battles its currents
Until she gets sober

She awakes with scars
From the ocean rocks
That grazed her fall
Reminders that
Life and Death
Are inches from each other

5 foot 6
Nappy hair
Glitter eye shadow
Jeans tightly painted on her
Auburn skin
Her eyes
Charcoal remnants of extinguished bonfires

Her swan dive
Ballet in flesh
Knees bent
Chin held high above the skyline
Toes tip the cliffs edge
She takes a breath

As a college student
She is overwhelmed by lectures
Finds comfort in Jim Bean’s burning aftertaste
Finds strength in the jangle of pills
A heavy film of Vicodin and Codeine
Scar the inside of her cheek
Medicinal hieroglyphics
Describe her dive into
A sea of white pills
That cup her hand
Like the marbles she once threw as a child

Limbs numb
Veins pumped with prescriptions
Mind woozy with the fear
That one day
She’ll wake up mediocre
Clothed in Spiegel business suit straight jackets
Unable to swim in California’s giant pool

They say you find the meaning of life in your lover’s eyes
She found 6 in one month
Learned nothing
Called a slut
Cried in a closet
Littered with professional attire
Bought by ex-boyfriends
To make her feel
Successful
Eyes rusty with the crusty shame
Of tears
That swim out her eyes
Like broken dams
After six lessons
Queen size bed has never felt
Less decadent
Than today

Today

She wants to forget her past and
Join her generation
Wants to pay her life in Star Bucks
Wants to go to
High School dances
Play eye-tag with older boys
Regain the childhood she lost
When she learned
How to dive

But her past
Gnaws at her heals
Memories inscribed on her back
Regret inserted between her legs
Getting drunk
To vomit the sun
No way to write
In bed for hours she realizes

Reality is too real to deal with
When all you have is the future in front of you

And sometimes the reflection of sea shells washed on the shore
Shine like the new bicycle she never had as a child

And sometimes the rocks at the bottom of the cliff foam at the mouth
As the waves crash upon them, glistening in the sunlight

Sometimes she breathes so deeply before a jump
She inhales the moon
Reshapes the constellations
To form mountains of tomorrows
Within her stomach
Rotting from not being able
To exhale into yesterdays

Sometimes she wishes she never learned how to swan dive

But one day
She hopes she can tell people
That she is not real
Merely an extended metaphor used in a poem
To describe the very author of her story

So I arch my back
Wait for the wind to erase my skin,
Scream at my ear lobes,
And make life a muffled dim

Because sometimes
The point of impact during a dive is hard to see
Rocks
Or
Water
Inches from one another
What’s it gonna be

Sometimes
It’s hard to believe
That this woman
Is me

my trip to the ER

as many of you know, i've been batteling strep throat since the end of April, when i got back from the Youth Speaks nationals in my hometown of Los Angeles. I finished my medication on Thursday for said illness. Saturday night, I felt a resurgance of my illness. I couldn't sleep all night, unable to breathe properly at times, with a high fever. My medical insurance is through Kaiser, so i took the first BART train to MacArthur at 8am, looking like hell - snot and blood all over my mouth/face. At the ER, the nurse is passive at best, looks at me like a fucking five year old. I cannot speak properly, so I literally spell out my problems to her. Thankfully, my doctors were terrific. Turns out my problem wasn't strep throat, but a collection of mucus that had developed in the right side of my mouth - how and why, i don't know just yet - so with a syringe, they literally stabbed this growths, and extracted the mucus from them. One of the worst pains I've ever had in a long time. I cried like a 4 year old with a scraped knee. I tugged on the Doctor's white coat with force. I was hurting so much, they gave me a shot of morphine in the muscle of my thigh.

Thankfully, I got better by about 11/noon. Morphine is great for pain my friends :) My friend Nadiyah was kind enough to pick me up from the hospital...I don't see her too often, and found it ironic that the one time I see her is when I'm utterly high on pain killers and coming out of ER. Regardless, it was great seeing her and meeting her friend Mike. Had a smoothie with Pimp of the Year, Jimmy Tran, then rented "Malcolm X" and "American Splendor" on DVD, and have been watching them/falling asleep to them all day.

I have no idea why in one semester, I have had strep throat twice, a huge breakout of hives, and now this...on top of personal stuff with women, friends, and the whole SLAM scene stuff that kinda exploded for me this semester....I don't know what's happening to me, but amazingly, I feel alright.

And sadly, I could not compete in tonight's last qualifier for the San Francisco team...i was kinda pissed, but now realize that I need to relax with slams for awhile, and get my health/head together, and start studying for these finals.

I do have some goals though: changing my diet (learning what fruits and veggies are), no alcohol consumption, no all-nighters, no more complaining, no more selfishness/victimization.

I've learned a lot this semester. I miss Los Angeles. On this mother's day, it's hard to go to the doctor alone. I needed her today. 400 miles is a long gap between me and her. I miss her dearly.

first pee wee herman...then george michael....now this?

Meraj on the trials and tribulations of Kobe Bryant:

BombardmentSoc: geez. gotta admit its impressive that he has the threat of going to prison and he still has 30 point games

brilliant.

head rested against the linoleum bathroom floor, best friend smacking my back, i realize drinking is overrated.

oooo man, Rumsfeld being interrogated by various Senators today was an amazing display of how fucked up politics is today. Hillary Clinton got her jabs in, I was very impressed by Sen. Mark Dayton, who completely tore Rumsfeld a new asshole. True, Dayton is a Democrat in favor of the war and all that crap, but he called the failure of the military to properly and quickly respond to the torture of Iraqi soldiers as "antithetical to the principles of democracy" and attacked the military for calling CBS to instruct them to hide the photos of the torture victims from the eyes of the American people. Rumsfeld was like a 4th grader playing dodge ball - avoiding everything that was thrown at him, as expected. A very interesting meeting though. I sincerely hope Rumsfeld gets fired, gets tried as a war criminal, and spends the rest of his life rotting away in some horrible prison....this will never happen, but it's nice to dream.

And Disney, the owner of Miramax, is prohibiting Miramax from putting out Michael Moore's new film "Fahrenheit 9/11" in fear of loosing tax breaks for their resorts in Florida from Jeb Bush due to Moore's film discussing the financial and political connections between the Bush family and the royal Saudi family AND Osama bin Laden. Goddamn you Mickey Mouse.

went to Goodwill with twenty bucks, came out with a dollar and a nickel.

Lakers down 2 games. HA! And Saturday, my Kings will dominate once again. Sorry KG.

Kings demolished the Wolves in game 1 tonight. Bibby killed. the entire game was dominated by 3 pointers. Maddogg Madsen air balled another free throw - why ain't he mvp? Vlade killed Johnson.

Got a call from The Trench (geoff trenchard) the other day. He's helping organizing the construction/design/decoration of this new school being built in the nice part of Berkeley. turns out the students of this new school are designing all the murals, the outlook, the whole thing - they're building their own school the way they want it. So now I got a little internship via Geoff. my job - doing the bitch work of calling up local business joints and getting some free donations for the construction of this school. being a secretary, really, but active with getting shit done. the money is kinda low, but when's the next time kids can build their own school? very awesome, should be a blast.

i got some new poems, and i'm excited.

a great quote by slam champ Jason Bayani on all the drama in the slam scene about making city teams:

"Just shut up and write some fucking poems already. That's the meat and potatoes of it all. That's the heart of it. Not the poets, not the organizers, not the coaches, not the teams, not the judges. The fucking poems."

I'm feeling Vast Aire's solo cd right now. His voice is soo unique, and his cd is a definite change from the Cannibal Ox stuff. some cool lines:::

"All MC's repeat after me -
Oh you can catch a gashed face fucking with V -
A - S - T
A to the I to the R and the E
So syllable free
Therefore you ain't the king like Coretta
Man I defeated you with 8 letters
So imagine if I formed a sentence
You wouldn't even be here
You'd be past tense"

they say become a doctor, but i don't have the patients...

Common, my favorite mc, comes with it again::::

"nigga i'm nasty
my style is sound porn-
ographic
exposin wack asses
I MC as free
As Ol Dirty Bastard
You think you Catholic
Tryin ta appeal to the masses
The Cassius Clay
Of rap today
Rock the beard like Castaway
You couldn't be dope for even half a day
We keep it hot like it's after May"

- "Wack Niggaz" from Talib Kweli's "The Beautiful Mixtape", hosted by Rick James.

feeling much much better.