The Reality of the Spoken Motherfucking Word

Back in the day, Rodrigo Motín, a disaffected leftist poet, was one of the Taino-American Poet Salon's leading lights. Rodrigo Motín wore fatigues, beret, and a beard like Che Guevara. The proprietor of the Salon, Arturo Demasiado, swore that Motín was the spitting image of Juan "Chu-Chu" Buenasuerte, the late cofounder of the salon with Demasiado. Buenasuerte had died in the early '80s of a rare disease associated with the handlers of roosters used for the illegal cockfights that were staged in the basement of a tenement on Avenue C. (It was later discovered that this same tenement had coincidentally once been the childhood home of the famous television personality Geraldo Rivera.)

That Motín was the bomb charisma-wise was undeniable--there was no other explanation for his success with poetry like this:

New York Latino with his consciousness so Stygian
Denies me the tradition of mi espiritu Caribbean
When el aguila canta of some phony freedom
History is trapped in the reservoir of a condom
Te quiero dearly Avenida C-ita
I just wish it were class oppression, not my heart
That was lo que se derrita

Motín's desire was to raise the consciousness of Nuyo-isleños so they could form the center of a sphere of influence that stretched from Los Angeles on the westernmost extreme, to Mexico City, to Havana on the southeastern corner. He didn't think that his native Isla would fulfill the 21st-century ideal of Raza Pos-blanquito until it freed itself from the grips of the current government, which had suspended the constitution and instituted a new export-driven economy based on products like lobster bibs, spermicide for contraceptive sponges, and coqui paperweights.

Rodrigo was born and raised in West Hempstead, Long Island to a Puerto Rican father and an Irish-American mother and grew up in a state of confusion as to what his “race” was. He had relatively light skin and green eyes but an unmistakable kink to his hair, and he was always moving back and forth between peer groups. As an undergraduate he drifted hopelessly from philosophy to anthropology, and finally, pathetically, to economics, where he sought to devise a plan to save La Isla from the U.S.-induced erosion of its agricultural economy.

Having never even studied literature, Motín dropped out of school and decided to move to the Lower East Side to live among "the people." Yet none of his adopted disciples knew that he was actually half-Irish on his mother's side--it's always the halfies that feel that they have to struggle twice as hard to prove they're oppressed.
Motín's revolutionary posturing was not heard by the majority of the city's Hispanic population, which was daunted by the high admission price and the alien bohemian atmosphere that ruled the Salon. His audience was primarily white, middle class NYU students, mostly in creative writing programs, or an obscure group of African American beatniks, some of whom doubled as jazz musicians and/or history professors, and others who had deteriorated into a bleak life of alcoholism.

One night, while working the bar, he stole about $1000 from the cash register and he was banned from the Salon for about a year. Most people were shocked, although there were a few sycophantic types who always maintained that everyone was trying to steal from Arturo Demasiado. The burly professor, who taught art history at the Univesity of the Streets and owned a remarkable collection of José Campeche jíbaro nudes, turned his back on him and began promoting Johnny “Da Get-toe” Torres, who had a much more real attitude. Almost overnight Johnny Tee, as Torres called himself, began to dominate the circles there, leaving Motín to straggle along on the periphery with his longtime sidekicks Prior and Tirade.

It was Prior and Tirade who gave him sustenance, through their own alienation, as well as inability to flow in the same direction the Poets Salon was moving in. They gathered in leaky roach-ridden apartments to watch black exploitation movies and figure out how to use the brand name for the latest brown Mexican heroin in their poems. ("Liberty" was a favorite, as well as "Tyson," "Trump," and "Popeye.") One night they inevitably made their way toward the Salon, because they all lived within a block and a half of it. A dingy Lower East Side art mob pulsed outside, irritating Mario the doorman, whom Rodrigo, Prior, and Tirade gave skin to as the pushed in ahead of the dilletantes.

They were inside for a few minutes when Prior left because he couldn't stand it anymore, his fingers clutching a brown bag with about 28 ounces of Olde English 800 in it. "This shit is dead," he'd sneered, and they veered around the corner to a record release party at one of those fake tapas places on Avenue B. The party was some sick shit about music video and music video hos and guys with dreads and development deals. Prior was talking about honesty in the work, whatever it was, jazz, poetry, music videos…He said there wasn't much honesty in any of the shit he’d been seeing. Honesty--he used that word instead of real because real wasn't real anymore--everybody knew that the Flintstones cartoon was more real than the Flintstone movies so talking real was real tired especially if you didn’t give a shit anymore. "Honesty?"

Motin groaned so loudly that some ADs and DJs turned their heads, almost unconsciously, for a second. "I'll tell you where honesty gets you man, here I got it right here." Motin reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a piece of lined looseleaf paper, on which was a letter."Your honesty makes me very happy," began the letter, which was from Maya, the most excellent New Wave babe, flamenco dancer, and santeria devotee from the San Fernando Valley. "You're so real. Many men have a lot to learn from you. I love you very much," Motin read sarcastically as more rain came down and made the ink run on the page, blurring the words a little. "I'll be in New York next week. I'll be staying with Ramon."

"See what I mean? This is how far honesty got me, man. This is what I get for being honest--an `I'm staying with Ramon' letter!" Prior scratched his shaved head, ripples of furrowed concentration flexing. He could hear Tirade in the next room hunkered down with old man Pete in his usual corner. “What does this shit matter if it don't work on the page?” said Pete. To which Tirade, who justly or unjustly included himself in the "condemned as shit that doesn't work on the page" category, wouldn't have it. "What is this shit about the page? What is this page shit? Who said that was important?"

They had the oral tradition working but no one could say it didn't work on the page. They were mediating the the double meaning culture, playing trickster gatekeepers, playing translators, playing cajolers, playing devils that weren't what people want you to believe devils are. Good devils. Guardian devils.

But this was some really esoteric shit and maybe Tirade and Prior's main problem was their relationship to Cody, who was the MC at the Salon. Cody was fucking everything up. He'd been corrupted by television money (One MILLION dollars, like Mike Meyers said) and could no longer distinguish between the fantasy of performance poetry as a viable commodity and the reality of the Spoken Motherfucking Word. Lately there are too many actors from around the way auditioning for jobs as performance poets. Funny thing was, there were no jobs.
When the last cigarette came spilling out of the Marlboro box and into his hard hand, this is what Tirade said: "In my dream, there are two languages. The language of the individual and the language of society. The language of the society is one of elites and the language of the individual is one of liberation."

Where did Tirade, Prior, and Cody fit into this paradigm? How did they avoid being the agent of the elite, resisting from the top down, when the reality of all of this is that the masses are all rebels, normatively, but maybe they just don't realize this yet? Forgive them, father, for they know not what they do? Or do you take Tirade's position, which is unforgiving: The muddle class must be held accountable for the mess the world's in.
Motin split, knowing Tirade would either not notice or sleep it off, went wheeling onto Avenue B, past the tattooed nosepierced leggy art babes and blanquitos with dreads and Tito on the corner with Esmeralda saying "coke, smoke, dope," their faces smeared with the boredom that comes from getting past desperation. Motin thought for a moment that maybe he should go back to doing drugs so these people, his people, could quit work a little earlier and go back to their flea-bitten beds, shoot up and be nodding by the late-late show came on, but then he thought to himself, now that is some sick shit, shut the fuck up, Rodrigo.

The next morning Rodrigo’s agent, Baxter Bling called to offer him a spot on a new Swipe sneaker campaign that was going to feature poets and MCs doing little performances of shit that was vaguely related to sports and competition.

“Exactly what does this shit entail?” asked Motín.
“Not a hell of a lot, Rodrigo,” said Bling.. “It’s about a 30-second spot, and you have to fill up about 23 of those seconds with actual spoken word.”
“Do we have any control over the editing?”
“Are you kidding? Of course not.”
“How much are they offering?”
“Well it’s 10K for about a day and a half’s work?”
“A thousand motherfucking Ben Franklins?”
“Yeah, that would be right.”
“Who else is doing it?”
“Well, I’m not sure about that, but I did hear that Da Get-toe turned it down.”
“What? Johnny Tee? ”
“It turns out Edgardo Vecindario-Malo, that guy from the '70s who moved to Madison, Wisconsin to teach, well he wrote some long protest letter that got published in the alternative press about Swipe’s sweatshop practices in the Pacific Rim or something like that.”
"You shittin' me. ”
“If you want, I’ll e-mail it to you. I really don’t think it’s much to concern yourself with. But why don’t you call me back tomorrow or something?”
“Okay, bet.”

Rodrigo was in the middle of a motherfucking dilemma here. He really needed that scratch, what with those dental bills coming up and his Visa was maxed because of that In Search of Color: Writers Who Are Down conference in Paris last year that he had to pay for himself. But he had been hearing about Swipe and the shit it was doing with contaminated glue and the peeps who were manufacturing those sweet shoes over there in Asia-land. He knew it would take Bling no time to send the relevant text, so he opened up his Powerbook and booted it up so he could read it.

As he expected, the e-mail was waiting in his Inbox folder. The letter, which was addressed to the Board of Directors of Swipe International, Limited Liability Corporation was written by Vecindario-Malo, one-time Young Lord, minor-league baseball player, and author of Our People Are Fucked/Estamos Jodido: Songs of Imagined Retribution. This is what the letter said:

To Whom It May Concern:

Just to be writing this letter and having any kind of contact with you is an insult to my people, and freedom-loving oppressed people everywhere. I’m trying not to think about the fact that as this missive leaves my hand and reaches yours, somewhere, somehow, I have been contaminated by the very act of communicating with a consciousness such as yours.
Obviously you have no idea what I write about, because my writing is primarily focused on how corporations like yours have totally fucked up me and my people.
Obviously you wouldn’t let me say what I would want to say in your “ad,” because what I’d say is that corporations like yours have totally fucked up me and my people.
Obviously you’re not aware of life out here where ni*&!*s smoke each other daily for the money to buy your goddamn sneakers.
Obviously you don’t realize that I don’t buy anything that is made with non-union labor—I’ve had to give up almost all commodities because of this, because it’s worth it. I grow all my own food, don’t watch television, and manufacture my own paper in a small mill that I built last year. The computer I’m writing this on was put together with electrical parts I found discarded, and I don’t use soap or toothpaste.
Obviously you’re going to give that $10,000 to some sold-out motherfucker who needs the money much more than I do, since I am a tenured professor and a likely candidate for a cabinet position in the next Democratic administration. And you are less than pool scum to take advantage of another one of my suffering people. But that doesn’t mean you won’t feel the unrelenting glare of my rage, and the swift bite of my avenging keystroke. So take this job and shove it, and don’t call me…ever again.

Sincerely
Edgard0 Vecindario-Malo

Vecindario-Malo's totally righteous stance-taking was a difficult pill for Rodrigo to swallow. It wasn’t just the money, but the exposure the spot would bring, since it would be broadcast during the 2002 Super Bowl. Rodrigo thought of his rent, which was due in 10 days, his parents, who hadn’t lent him money for two years, and the fact that his career hadn’t gone anywhere since Johnny Tee came on the scene. He thought about Weird Joe Shulevitz, who had gotten a six-figure advance from Simon and Schuster for his book of pederasty poems, and Wanda Kayak, that Chicana from L.A. who was going to be guest-hosting for Conan for a month or so as a prelude to setting her up with a new talk show. They were all old buddies from the Salon, and none of them was returning his calls anymore.
So he called Tirade, who was always thinking long and hard about these issues. Tirade had this theory that capitalism was actually revolutionary and niggas been crazy Stalinist for too long especially since the death of the New Left. Actually even the New Left was part of this mad conspiracy joint Tirade has hooked everything up with. Tirade thinks capitalism was the real revolutionary moment (it occurred to him while once listening to Sly and the Family Stone's "Everybody Is a Star") in which the nobility motherfuckers was overthrown and capital was created by individuals and not inherited. But the ultimate weapon of the nobility was the language of tribe and they were using it to pollute the whole system, so we were actually just reproducing the social relations of monarchy. It was kinda like how monopoly capitalism was keeping ruling tribes in power. Think of China.

There was also this thing called the Shadow, which throws all motherfuckers into obscurity by creating scenarios of false social change, which has the function of preventing actual change from taking place. In several discussions with Tirade, Motin and Prior argued over whether Marx was actually part of the Shadow, and agreed that it wasn't Karl but Marx-ism that threw shade. The shade was roughly high yellow. How could motherfuckers actually think a planned economy could work? That shit takes away people's freedom as much as monopoly capitalism does.
Sure, it was hard to justify going against Vecindario-Malo and Johnny Tee, but how else was Rodrigo going to get his work out there? Vecindario-Malo probably had the 401K all up in there with his assistant professor salary.

So Rodrigo thought positive on it. Maybe someday Swipe would get its shit together and stop stepping on those Indonesian workers and we could all buy them jams at a much lower price, and people would get what they wanted to get, because people aren’t about getting ugly shoes just because it wasn’t cool to get the pretty ones. He had to do it because maybe somehow with his work tacked on to the Swipe juggernaut, the message would get turned around, and people would see his face, the face of freedom, subverting the cold corporatist monarchy.
The poem would have to be submitted in 10 days, so Rodrigo called up Bling and told him to tell Swipe he was on, and he spent nine days and nine nights in his room, not taking phone calls, reading Baudelaire, Bukowski, Baraka, Baldwin, and everyone else, until his eyes almost fell out of their sockets. He reached all the way inside himself and squeezed what came out like a wet rag, draining and straining, culling the words that would jibe with Swipe’s primary operational directive: the imperative of commerce always outweigh the demands of art.

And this is what Rodrigo came up with:

An island
Unafraid
Competed with the mainland
Like country versus town
Like rabble against royal
We shot down the Eagle
With athletic alchemy
A kind of ain’t no stoppin’
Urban-tropical will
To make the greatest foe
Chill

In my Caribbean space
No one can hear you swish
Swipe…it’s salsa in your shoes

© Ed Morales 2004