krŏn'ĭk-O's witnesses the trajectories reflected in intersecting front lines and encourages the exchanges and expressions of experiences, inspirations, and practical means of loving and living.
Author/Poet/Organizer, L.A. Profe, is a queer Oaxaqueña raised in the Venice Boardwalk. Initated by the streets of L.A. she comes from a long line of sidelined intellectuals, of displaced indigenous farmers, shaped and influenced by matriarchal figures of resistance.
I feel lost in translation
i know there is always an explanation that
gets me high on frustration
frustration of knowing better and choosing worse...
of wanting to boil down differences into similarities
all the meanwhile holding on to a truth that is more complex than
just single minded attitudes...
to ask questions that don't have answers, yet.
but the fact that they are voiced onto the universe projects
a deeper understanding by knowing there are ways to go about learning
that we have yet to comprehend...
SLINGSHOT HIP HOP
what does it say about the essence of hip hop when images translate concepts and notions without understanding the language in which these are articulated?
what does it mean when baggy attire is still consumed internationally to demarcate hip hop yet the new bone thugs and harmony album cover has them all suited and booted? ooh the good all days...
in trying to attempt to understand the road ahead, I look back at the roots of our desire to challenge and challenge over again to plenitude what we have come to qualify as our truth.
Maybe I didn’t understand him right away, or why he blew up when a young tod stepped on his foot. It was the disrespect, the disregard. I asked him to be honest about where it was coming from. To be honest that it wasn’t just another little brat on the bus messing his ride home.
Oh yes, a blog a about state enmity, it started as hostility.
It made my day though, amongst other things. Another black brother stood firmly from his seat once the young kid got off. He made eye contact with the other older black brother. A smirk set it off. The brother standing up, wearing a blue tank, tight pants, and pretty firm for being 53 asked him why he handled the situation the way he did. The smirked fucked with the brother sitting down, who evidently was disrespecting his elder, as he was only 51. And of course, the brother standing up calling his actions “acting like a little girl” didn’t help any. It was hilarious, an exchange of crotch grabbing every chance the brother sitting down felt threatened. I was surprised when the brother standing up was accused, like if it was a crime, of being a faggot and didn’t react. Instead he took his mouthpiece, dentures, out of his mouth and said, “your girl would roll over twice with these ”and then proceeded to grab his man piece and say “this is your homosexual”l- the conversation then turned against the last woman the man sitting down had been with. A debate about trickery of all sorts resulted.
The man sitting down made a good point, though I don’t think his fuck you’s to the bus allowed for others to really hear him. When he first got on the bus, he took two seats next to me, put his bag on one, and spread his legs wide covering both seats. What was lost was his response to the brother standing up when he was accused of taunting a little boy, he said to him “well what’s that little boy going to grow up to be? A man right? So I’m going to treat him like one.”
The irony was that when the brother wearing blue got off, the brother sitting down changed seats, to my right. The aisle reclining to the back of the bus. When he did, he pushed his bag on me and I said, excuse you. That’s how I got to know a little more about the man who had a sliced scar across his neck. The man who screamed faggot to the brother wearing blue and who confessed his own daughter had come out to him and confused him a couple of months later by announcing she was with child. A man who was tired. A man who later on, while making my way home, waiting for the bus off of Spring I saw again. It made sense. He shared the nuances of black and brown.
Before I let you go, while buying incense off of 6th/L.A. and hassling debit or credit for an $8 purchase at a place that had a minimum of $10 purchase to use my card I met a brother who identified as a moor. Funny me, the first thing I said to him “yes I studied them (I remember this being one of the most fascinating facts I learned during my last quarter in college, they had some sick Don Quijote looking suits,-the closest pic to the archive shown to me that I could find- they were the royalty and the brute face of African royalty)They were the ones who owned slaves” he said yeah “we sold ourselves onto slavery”. I forget his name, but not his impression and grace, and amazing character. Funny, it was the“uncle sam stole our land” shirt that broke the ice between us.
I asked the brother sitting down when I ran into him again if he was doing better. He had a cig and a cell phone and pointed to both and said “yea much, I just went to drop my bag off”
Skidrow was cleaning up for tonights ARTWALK. So funny how white people are roaming the streets getting ready for the nightlife as poor bodies are pushed out; all so the same people they see on their way to the party don’t mess up their funk on their way back home.
We got off on the same stop. The last of the 33 at 6th/Main. I always like to shake hands to close an encounter. To seal our destiny. Synchronize the road. He was a hustler, a survivor of all sorts. I appreciate him. I shared my name. His name was Willy.
