Oakland Inspires?? 2

This is no way an attempt to put a black eye on a city that has matured me and been my home for the past 20 some odd years, but this is just a reality in the O at times. Makes me wonder when I come back from LA why I'm coming back. Regardless at the end of the day we have moved and where I am now is quiet, quiet, quiet. Somehow I think the experiences along with the solitude is better for the music these days, cause as I stated before it's all inspiration and whether directed at musical notes, lyric, or theatre/film, it's all there for use it's just sometimes sad that's all. This picture was taken from my front porch. Thanks Oakland


November 8, 2011
Before I begin to write I need to apologize, not to the readers (if there were any) but to myself for waiting so long since the last time I wrote. I know I have taken longer breaks than this in the past but this is after I said I would not take any more breaks. Okay, on October 28th I hit a milestone, reached a new point in my life – I saw a dead body. Don’t get me wrong I’ve seen dead bodies before, but not one just victimized by 6 shots of a handgun. That’s right I heard the shots and about one and a half minutes later looked a few feet down the block to see the victim on the ground.
It was Thursday night about 11:00 and Jaliza and I were laying in bed trying to find a way to waste our time with Netflix. We were looking at our instant cue when 6 shots rang out – sounded like it came from our front yard. We followed the normal drill – we’ve heard shots many times here before – rolled off the bed, got down low and Jaliza went into the babies room to check on them. At the same time I called 911 and looked out the window. By the time I hung up the phone cops were flying up and down my street. Jaliza came back into the room about a minute later and told me she had looked out the babies room window after seeing the red and blue flashes. She said the street was crawling with cops. This by the way means that they must have been flooded with calls cause they never come that damn fast. We both went down stairs, and I mean within probably one minute we were on the front porch and the cops were taping off the street and everything was blocked off. As we looked up at the corner house across the street, there lay a man face down on the sidewalk. The police made no attempt to revive him, the fire truck and ambulance came and left – the brotha was dead. What the Fuck!! On my block, in my neighborhood, 3 houses away, on this cold ass night this brotha lay dead, face down on even colder concrete. Within 5 minutes an officer came over and asked me if I heard or saw anything. I gave him the answer he probably expected. I didn’t hear anything but the shots – no cars speeding off, no screams, no yells, no cries for help. Just 6 shots and a dead man – who I found out later was only 30 years old – lying face down in a small pool of blood. Amazing the brotha lay dead right beside 2 trash cans. It seems to mean something but I don’t know what. Does it mean that we throw away our lives or that we have become in our own eyes a throw away people. I don’t know, but it is and was fucked up. I didn’t turn away from the sight but felt a sort of numbness, like the numbness of Novocain keeping you from feeling pain while the dentist drills your teeth. You know it’s not good but can’t quite grasp the gravity of it. It was painful, don’t get me wrong, but it was a deep pain that was so deep I couldn’t feel it one the surface. Jaliza on the other hand lost it!!! She came in the house, went down stairs and lost her fucking mind. She kicked things around, punched at the air, and cried a deep, deep cry. All she kept saying was that “there was someone’s baby out there lying on the ground. How could someone do that? Someone just lost a child and they don’t even know it and the cops just keep walking around the person looking at him like it’s just the thing to do, like it’s not even a person out there.” She was hurt!! And then, she went on to say that “people are dying on our street and we’re still here with our kids. What does that say about us?” I wondered. What did that say about us?