“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

~ Alice Walker, The Color Purple

I’m gonna be honest; I’m not a big fan of Frida Kahlo’s work. That may be because I’m freaked out by unibrows.

Yes, I’m superficial…..

Even with my aversion to unibrows, I do love this quote from Frida. It’s very inspiring!

I spotted this art installation at famed chef/restaurateur Rick Bayless’ restaurant Frontera Grill during a recent trip to Chicago.

“Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” Frida Kahlo, 1953

When I saw this Mercedes Benz illustration on Kiss My Black Ads, I got a little hype. Talk about cool design that appeals to my right brained self.  The imagery alone is stimulating but the brain descriptions read like poetry. Doesn’t seem like much of a cars sales ad but hey!

Left Brain- I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.

Right Brain – I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feet. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.

Credits
Name of project: Left Brain/Right Brain
Client: Mercedes Benz
Agency: Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R Interactive Tel Aviv

Voodoo, Hoodoo, Black Magic, Obeah or Ms. Celie’s Curse. Don’t make me throw this on you.

I got potions, lotions, loaded thoughts, bones, bits and pieces & a few herbs.

I can be a witch doctor, a conjure man or a mofo you really just don’t want to deal with.

My great grandmother told me a secret.

We called her Ymoja. They called her Gal.

She was Black. Real Black! Black hands, black eyes, black tongue, black everything!

This secret is at least 110 years old & it protects my African soul.

It is both bad and good, just depends on the view.

When I watched her die, I was 9.

I saw this secret lift off of her body like a thin wisp smoke.

It was: Strange. Scary. Confusing. Comforting.

I think about her often. I think about the secret more.

If I make it, no when I make it to the phase of my life, I will share this secret with my oldest great grandchild knowing that I will slip into an unknown future.

Voodoo, Hoodoo, Black Magic, Obeah or Ms. Celie’s Curse. Don’t make me throw this on you.

So my last trip to NYC was to be the trip that I completed my NYC Analog Portraits series with my Mamiya camera. This trip, I expected to get some GREAT street looks since I would be near Lincoln Center for Fashion Week.

Well, long story short is that I got some AMAZING shots & one shot that I was especially proud of was one of Kelly Rowland who actually stopped & posed for me after I ran to catch up with here. It was a paparazzi moment that I did not intend on happening. You should have seen me. Me running, trying not to fall all to get a snapshot.

Fast forward to the end of the trip & nearly the end of my roll of film  & I discover that my ISO was reset to 100. The problem is that my film was 400 ISO. This means that my exposures were not exposed long enough to be properly developed.

When I noticed this I died a quick death in my head. I was done. At least 20+ photos potentially ruined.

I wanted to cry.

BLAH!!!!! Such a Rookie mistake. I was too caught up into my environment & moving to quick to pay attention to this little detail.

Lesson learned: Check my damn settings between shots!

So I had a few exposures left & spent them in Detroit at a recent event (TEDxDetroit if you must know). This time around, my ISO was set correctly. And… to wrap up the roll, was my girl & super-mutha-fucking-poet Jessica Care Moore.

Jessica, thank you for being a vision of beauty and the hottest shot on my roll!

Wild Irish Rose by Jessica Care Moore
(A poem/song from The Missing Project: Pieces of the D)

“Stay away from women
With stems extended far away
From their flower

Stay away from women
With stems extended far away
From their flower

Women with Sudanese amber hiding behind
Their ears healing with peppermint and dollar
Store candles masquerading in the trenches of a city
With no intention on leaving
Traveling beyond the perimeters of expressways and dirty
Rivers melting into the colors of graffiti
Painting the urban landscape with music
Waiting for the butterflies early morning commute
Praying to be landed on like the old woodward hoes
Wishing for winter clothes

Stay Away from women
With stems extended far away
From their flower

I am Wild Irish Rose

& There are eighty proof reasons
Why I’ve always loved hard
Why my saliva got u drunk
The night u promised to promise
My spirit slid down your throat
Making conversation with all the
Things you meant to say
I see why you always got choked up
When It came to talking to me

My thorns, your rhymes
My poems, your paint
My rhymes, your thorns

I was a field flower
Bleeding purple nectar
Moving the night to make
Your days seems longer
My roots grasping for air
A mouthful of  breath while
Pulling your hair
Anything to make this ghetto turn into

A garden.
My petals harden, hoping to blend with dandelions
We remain friends
Associate with the one who get stepped on
Fighting to keep my weeds remembered
Snow-covered girls forgotten in December.

Stay away from women
With stems extended far away
From their flower
Feet familiar with the soil of many cities
Camouflaged inside the gritty

A Wild Irish Rose says
Come and get me baby
Pick me.

If I leave a seed on every corner
Maybe my people won’t forget me

I know God sent me
Or the wind might of  dreamt me
So many spirits sitting on top of motor cities
But I gotta do something with the power my
Ancestors leant me.

Maybe a farmer or a hustler will
Make me calm
I read from Psalms
Another garden gone
Another black girl song paused.
Daddy and the greenhouse
Disappeared at Dawn
I’mma give birth on the damn front lawn

I want to be a rose
But all I see are flaws
It’s hard being young gifted and black
And fucking with y a’ll

Stay away from women
With stems extended far away
From their flower

I am a Wild Irish Rose.

Come and get me baby.

Pick me.”

This makes me happy!

h/t Scrill Kosby

The fragrance: Sweet
The petals: Many & delicate
The color: Bright & vibrate
The history: Rich & wide spread

Black Magic: Her Hands
Black Magic: Her Smile
Black Magic: Her Skin
Black Magic: Her Being
Black Magic: Her Promise
Black Magic: Her Love

Art Credits:
2010 Tafari Stevenson-Howard
Muse: Tamara Rasberry

Where are your heroes, my little Black ones

You are the Indian you so disdainfully shoot
Not the big bad sheriff on his faggoty white horse

You should play run-away-slave
Or Mau Mau
These are more in line with your history

Ask your mothers for a Rap Brown gun
Santa just may comply if you wish hard enough
Ask for CULLURD instead on Monopoly
DO NOT SIT DO NOT FOLLOW KING
GO DIRECTLY TO STREETS
This is a game you can win.

As you sit there with all your understanding eyes
You know the truth of what I’m saying
Play Back-to-Black
Grow a natural and practice vandalism
These are useful games (some say a skill even learned)

There is a new game I must tell you of
Its called Catch The Leader Lying
(and knowing your sense of the absurd you will enjoy this)

also a company called revolution has just issued a special kit for little boys called Burn Baby
I’m told it has full instructions on how to siphon gas and fill a bottle

Then our old friend Hide and Seek becomes valid
Because we have much to seek and ourselves to hide from a lecherous dog

And this poem I give is worth much more than any nickle bag or ten cent toy
And you will understand all too soon
That you, my children of battle, are your heroes
You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.

Art Credits:
Poem: “Poem for Black Boys” by Nikki Giovanni

“…I came from what they call a broken home but if they ever really called it a house, they would have known how wrong they were.

We were working on our lives and our homes dealing with what we had not what we didn’t have.

My Life has been guided by women, but because of them, I am a man.

God bless you momma.” ~ 2010 Gil Scott-Heron

Right now, she’s my baby.

Tomorrow, she’s my baby.

Forever she is mine to care for, love, nurture & hold.

I value her playfulness, inquisitiveness & yes sometimes her wild child craziness.

She is my daughter.

A perfect being in my eye.

The spitting images of love between my wife and I.

What more can a man want but more.

Jíbaro, mi negro lindo
De los bosques de caña
Caciques de luz
Tiempo es una cosa cómica.

Jíbaro, my pretty nigga.
Father of my yearning for the soil,
The land,
The earth of my people.

Father of the sweet smells of fruit in my mother’s womb,
the earth brown of my skin,
the thoughts of freedom that butterfly through my insides.

Jíbaro, my pretty nigga.
Sweating bullets of blood and bedbugs,
Swaying slowly to the softly strummed stains of a five string guitar
Remembering ancient empires
Of sun gods and black spirits and things that were once
So simple.

How times have changed Man.
how Man has changed time.
“Unnatural,” screams the wind.
“Unnatural.”

Jíbaro, my pretty nigga man.
Fish smells and cane smells and
Fish smells and cane smells and
Tobacco
And oppression makes even God smell foul.

As foul as the bowels of the ship
That vomited you up on the harbors of a cold metal city to die.
No sun, no sand, no palm trees

And you clung,
Yes, you clung to the slimy ribs of an animal
Called the Marine Tiger,
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost Amen.

Jíbaro, did you know you my nigga?
I love the curve of your brow,
The slant of your baby’s eyes
The calves of your woman dancing;
I dig you!

You can’t hide.
I ride with you on subways.
I touch shoulders with you in dances.
I make crazy love to your daughter.
yea, you my cold nigga man.
And I love you ’cause you’re mine.

And I’ll never let you go.
And I’ll never let you go.
(You mine, nigga!)
And I’ll never let you go.
Forget about self.
We’re together now.
And I’ll never let you go!
Uh’uh
Never, Nigga.

Art Credits:
Poem: “Jibaro My Pretty Nigger” by Felipe Luciano
Image: “Obama” by Andrew Bannecker