Troubleman
robert lashley
- Location
- Bellingham, Washington,
- Birthday
- July 16
- Bio
- A semi finalist for the PEN/Rosenthal fellowship, Robert lashley often performs at Northwest spoken word venues and has helped Bellingham, where he lives, develop one of the nation's finest poetry slam scenes. He has had poems published in such Journals as Feminete, No Regrets, and Your Hands, Your Mouth. His poetry was also featured in "Many Trails To The Summit", an anthology of Northwest form and Lyric poetry. His full length book, Songs My City Taught Me, was published by Radical Lunchbox Press in 2009.
MY RECENT POSTS
- Just Where Was The Love?
December 10, 2011 05:10AM - Why Questlove Screwed Up
November 25, 2011 03:58AM - Invisible Man: Joe Frazier
(1944-2011)
November 09, 2011 02:59AM - On Black Men And Street
Harassment In The Pacific
Northwest
October 30, 2011 04:39PM - Trampled Gardens: A Response
To Jerry Ward
April 18, 2011 03:58AM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “No, let me rephrase
that: Pathological
sensitivity.”
April 11, 2010 02:28AM - “It's interesting that,
in your critique of the
article, you
didnt mention the
sen…”
April 11, 2010 02:27AM - “This is a good
series.
Neil, not a
soul should chide you for your
language.”
June 01, 2009 08:04AM - “kathy
thank
you”
May 23, 2009 09:01AM - “waking,
I
worked on the line breaks to
make it work better on
the
page”
May 23, 2009 08:44AM
Robert lashley's Links
Just Where Was The Love?
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/02/showbiz/music/love-songs/index.html
( trigger warning)
What's wrong with Soul Music? I have a theory, and it doesn't have anything to do with how stupid and evil young black people are.
Fifteen years ago, Bill Clinton signed The 1996 Telecommunicatio… Read full post »
Why Questlove Screwed Up
　
Here’s what Jimmy Fallon and Questlove would have done if they had spines. They would have had Michelle Bachmann on, but have big Freeda and Katey Red-avatars of New Orleans’ Sissy Bounce music scene-to jam with the band in between breaks. Since Fallon has an affinity… Read full post »
Invisible Man: Joe Frazier (1944-2011)
On Black Men And Street Harassment In The Pacific Northwest
The street outside the Tacoma Art Place is a pastiche of history on top of history. The remade apartment complex above the building sits diagonally across a set of dilapidated building more than 50 years old. Under those rooms, three trendy Pho restaurants nestle the pawn shop where addicts like my… Read full post »
Trampled Gardens: A Response To Jerry Ward
http://www.nathanielturner.com/defenseofrichardwrightandotherwriters.htm
Professor Ward.
First, A mea culpa. I should have emphasized how Wright evolved in the mid to late 50's, his emphatic dismissal of Hemingway's perversely macho portrait's of Spain, his empathy for the… Read full post »
Review F.A.M.E, Chris Brown
In F.A.M.E, his 4th studio album, Chris Brown desperately tries to put back up a curtain. Slipping into his familiar veneer of club tracks, Michael Jackson samples, and disneyfied bad boy platitudes; Brown begs his fans to love him as they did before. Over and over the themes repeat,with more than… Read full post »
Poem: Mrs Dawkins' Blues: Lament For A Waffle Hut
The stars are dead; the animals will not look:
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help or pardon.
W.H Auden, Spain 1937
The light of a cornbread basillica dims
in reconstruction, assemblages to… Read full post »
Poem: What Is The River Jordan To The Young Halfwit?
"Or Bobby, stop writing poems in church and pass the goddamm collection plate"
1: Communion
The train, an envelope of everything
and nothing, an accent-bass toned-over
church bound cadences, thick sliding
trombones disssonant in the
telling and retelling of exodus.
Th… Read full post »
Poem: Commencement For a G Street Memorial
( Or Aubade? Didn’t that nigga play bass for the Whispers?)
"We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
grayed in, and gray."
Gwendolyn Brooks. A Street In Bronzeville
We were of untidy tones, involuntary
shadows, the first light of black upon blue in the… Read full post »
On The Book Of Rhymes
The problems with Adam Bradley's Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop? Where do I start? That the only references to female MC's are 2 sentences about Lauryn Hill, and one reference to Mc Lyte, Roxanne Shante, Sha rock, and Jean Grae? That there ar/… Read full post »
Mixed Unlike Me: A Response To Social Psychology Quarterly .
http://www.newswise.com/articles/biracial-and-passing-as-black
This kind of dark, dense human symbology( in which social
scientists use the examples of a few to make broad, sweeping
statements on many) not only does absolutely nothing constructive
for race relations, it's spits in the face of people w… Read full post »
Let me begin this review of Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls with a personal statement: I have 15 people (relatives, close friends, writers) in my inner circle with strong thoughts about Tyler Perry. Six of them swear by him, nine of them hate his guts. Though I stand firmly in the lat/… Read full post »
The Last Time I saw Derek.
Steel upon steel. Hairlines, fibers
twined and balled into a ribbing
beyond madness
It was the memory that triggered you, the reminiscing
that drove you mad, the good talking
that made you touch me in the head with it
as intimate as the way you threw/… Read full post »
Do You Know What It Means To Miss Her On Saturdays?
How The Holy Ghost Came To A Skeptic
From the hand in the hand, the lasting arms
in synthesis with energy, air.
In the space, the soul clap becomes a channel.
A wavelength of force, unrestrained energy
individual yet, in the spasm of movement
theirs and theirs/… Read full post »
Everythang Soup
improvised in need, necessity.In the pot
nothing is worthless, expendable
nothing not salvaged in the tranfer from rot
to treasure. It is no secret what the pot can do
no mythology in the constellation of scraps
leftovers; nothing but the sustenance/… Read full post »
Hilltop Safeway Aisle, After Church
all are kept in the discounts, all their pangs
and hunger spasms will be soothed from the Voice,
the Dispatch, the Tribune. The carrier of their burdens
the voucher on the hill and that something
for their journey, the sequence moving still
toward the mai/… Read full post »
Grandpa Tastes The Dirt From His Sweet Tomato Garden
A interchange of earth and the body
In the garden, all agony is sanctified, made holy
washed clean in the sediments, the purifying of mud
and the field, for a moment, redeemed
in the spring crop, the blue gummed meridian
To the Elders Sizing Up A Young Waiter From A Porter Car
a custom, old as the rails. Through the passage
orders and lived, and lived over, routines
as uniform as the order of their outfits, the attire
and shield of the day and workday past. They move
and the elders move with th/… Read full post »
Poem: Hymn From A Waffle Hut
( editors note. I took the title from Wallace Stevens' Hymn From a
Watermelon Pavillon. I also wanted to edit this because I felt that
my concept of divinity and food was too limiting)
1
By the light of a cornbread basilica her preparations
Start- her assemblages, process of scraps
leftovers,… Read full post »
Poem:To the ICP Head Outside the Saturday Night Shelter Feed
Poem: To The Easter Jerk Dancers On 17th
How far-how far-but then how near, youngbloods
your hoofing, remade in kinetic stride
in the disjointed call, the step in response
to concrete. How near-how near, your nascent circle
this phoenix of rechalked threshing flo/… Read full post »
Poem: Notes From a Gangbanger Baptizm
They are brought forth the calf, and promptly fed
in trays and painted plates of gold
in their Sunday best, their carpet rolled
for those who snatched dowry, who left them, who fled
And they anoit their feet holy, then body, then head
and wash clean their robes of red, and… Read full post »
Poem: Ode To a Basement Hair Salon.
the strands are swift, finely woven
tied together in layer and counter layer
in time, the pain of the hotcomb subsides
in time, the long and natty waves
will be tethered in row after row
in time these tears, these layers of sweat
will carry you a funky fresh crown
It's ok, baby, I aint gonna take… Read full post »
Poem: Homeboy Tries To Go Home From School, 1991.
in the evenings, they would beat you there
the cars that drove so slowly through street corners, alleys
where
runners would emerge from the ether. Faceless in their
calls, they would seek a brown boy to care
for them, to feed their itch
to tend and still their ache and twitch
and “hey, hey” y… Read full post »
Bill Maher
Danielle Patrick
Joan Walsh
Kerry Lauerman
Salon.com