Baby Akbar

Allow me to introduce you to Baby Akbar. Afua and I have not selected a name yet nor do we intend to ascertain the sex of the child prior to birth. The due date is March 7th. If anyone would like to predict the sex of the baby - please contact me directly at summerhseven@yahoo.com with your prediction and methodology. I would like to write something about this period between conception and birth. Perhaps your comments may be included in the article. We will keep you posted.

HANG TIME!

To purchase Summer Hill Seven's latest book click here ----> HANG TIME!

To purchase Summer Hill Seven's latest book click here ----> HANG TIME!

Review from Germany

Emund Kraus wrote in Ex-Berliner magazine:

"The poetic essays of [Seven] Akbar are an indication of true sensitivity, pain, and the lust for life. They are the best example of mature Hip-Hop era literature that that has sprouted from the United States since the blues music of Public Enemy and the insight of conscious musicians such as the Roots. We are unclear as to what leads the way in film or literature or what constitutes serious theater. But Akbar and Dennis Leroy Moore seem to make a great combination. And if Akbar is anything like his writing, I would very much like to see him onstage. Dennis Leroy Moore announced he would be making a film with Akbar and we shall await that experiment with glee!"

Invisible Man: Thoughts on Notes of a Neurotic!

This scholarly and creative review by Dennis Leroy Moore, Groundbreaking Film Director of "As An Act of Protest" is published in CHICKEN BONES: A JOURNAL - http://www.nathanielturner.com/


Invisible Man: Thoughts on Summer Hill Seven's Notes of a Neurotic!

This is the first part of an essay in Two Parts By Dennis Leroy Moore

Originally reviewed March 5, 2005, Revised for publication July 29, 2005 © Copyright 7/29/05

Craziness on the Sleeve

"Sanity is not the goal. Since this book is by a self-proclaimed schizophrenic who inhabits a skitsofrantic life, then the lack of this state of being, often referred to as sanity, would have made these sololoquies impossible."

- Summer Hill Seven, "Trialogue"

I first met Alím Ákbar in the summer of 2002 in New York City. I had been asked to direct a play about a group of local gamblers in a harlem bar and had the arduous task of assisting the producer with the casting. I was not in the best of moods, was recovering from a nervous breakdown earlier that year, and was making a weak attempt at returning to directing plays which I had given up three years earlier in personal pursuit of filmmaking and writing. That summer, and well after that, I constantly had feelings of fragmentation, detachment, and rabid paranoia. I felt comfortable, however, upon meeting and eventually working with Alím Ákbar aka Summer Hill Seven. You see, Alím is also a mad man.

I didn't know much about Alím and still don't. I know what I have to know and seldom ask or pry into his personal affairs and he seems to do the same. Our paths crossed, we ran in the same circles for a period, got high once or twice together, and even dated the same girl once. The girl was a writer from Chicago. She wasn't crazy. This poor girl was psychotic and when I told Alím I would quit seeing her if he wanted to date her, he quipped: "Uh-uh, no, no you can have her." I know he misses his mother, he was married once, he writes every day like a junkie looking for a fix, he adores Shakespeare, and shares my love for the avant garde. I always liked the fact that he was a lawyer. He seems to dig that I went to Juilliard - but didn't graduate. We respect one another's art and the demons that seem to rage within us. Alím was easily the most charismatic and fearless actor I had worked with in 2002 and certainly one of the most passionate and determined actors I have ever known.

We live in a moment in time that is crunched down-held up-sewn within the seams. We are hanging onto dear life in a punching bag that dangles on its last leg. No one is willing to risk it all to express the pain around us. No one is willing to free-fall as the majectic clowns and poets of the old were willing to do. In short: we are all afraid of the good fight. This is a problem far too great for me to go into right now, but one that keeps popping up in my head even as I try to gain distance on the "the scene" in America from Berlin, where I write this. Alím is easily ten years my senior, we are just barely contemporaries and commentators of the same generation. What I hold inherently sacred and vital to life - Alím does as well. This is what attracts me to his writings in his book. You see, at times, I feel like I have written it. (And no, to clarify he's the schizo, I'm labeled the more fashionably - ahem - "Bi-polar")

I readily admit that the Americans have no poets; I cannot allow that they have no poetic ideas."
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Part II/Book One

Notes of a Neurotic is an eclectic mélange of poems, humorous interludes, observations, and dramatic fiction. It is designed to "heal the emotions of the reader, the speaker, and the writer." This book is clearly a work of art that is reflective of the chaos in this world; a journey of an unstable man trying to find his way in this world...It is in many ways the spiritual biography of Alím Ákbar. Part manifesto, part confession - it is the current analogy in literature to what I tried to accomplish with my 2002 film As an Act of Protest. And being one of the only artists in New York City to publicly and proudly support my film (he taught it and screened it to his students), Alím's work shimmers with a similar fever that mine has been dipped in. That is the fever of the split atom, the "crazy" urban black intellectual, the scared revolutionary artist...the neurotic. What I tried to do formally and structurally within my own directorial work Alím has done as a writer. The difference is that where I may or may not have succeeded (my opinion alters depending on the day and my mood), I believe Alím has. Dashes and flashes of brilliance flicker, for example, in his Schizophrenic Skitsofrantic Soliloquies.section These come off as Haikus or proverbs or as they have been aptly described as "the fruit of the poet tree".

In "Observation," he writes:

I find that my life is a lot happier when I avoid white men in robes, whether they are black or white...robes.

Writing as an Arab American, he poignantly writes:
George Bush declared war on somebody and I don't know who and I am losing my mind because everyone I know doesn't like me and everyone I know doesn't trust me.

Alím's wicked and cool sense of humor stands to attention in "Peace," which easily could have been part of a Richard Pryor monologue in the 1970's. Check it out:

I prayed for peace and got it!
I was so dam bored I saw a dog and shot it.
The dog came back to haunt me,
Smoking a blunt and drinking coffee.
Can you imagine a dog with a caffeine high?
But cool cuz he has chronic burning in his mind's eye?

Alím is a theater artist and I say this to re-iterate his approach and style to writing and assembling the works collected in Notes. In many ways, I feel relieved that he has begun to accomplish what I was waiting for. A new black literary voice who had one foot in theater, one foot in poetry, and one foot – in hand - in outer space, or somewhere...Cosmic Humor is what I suppose we can call it. Something I myself have been tempted to explore. The combinations and mixes and the rapid pace of the altering styles is one of the main features of the new wave of Black American fine artists that emerged in the late 20th-early 21st century. Most of us who were interested in expressing his or her own unique voice - particularly those of us in Northern urban areas - did it in whatever vein we saw fit, even when the moods and shapes changed drastically from one moment to the next. Some just don't understand the jazz of our work. Charles Mingus said that for him Byrd was it - the greatest - simply because he was expressing how he felt. The greatest self-expression abounds in simplicity, and yet its meanings and emotions are so doubled and tripled and full of inborn contradictions and philosophies about life you can experience the work over and over and never get tired of it.

Form follows function in Alím's Theater of Neurosis. And just when I feel Alím is going along with the flow of the stream and giving in to what the audience wants, he opts to swim his own way. This is his saving grace and what keeps him rooted as an artist. His interest in people, his pathologies, his political convictions, his sexual appetites, his impish desire at times to shock and annoy, most importantly - his sensitivity to the musical tones of life and the presence of death in our every day existence. In his own unique way, Alím has created a post-modern metropolitan black Spoon River Anthology. Yes. This is another bizarre connection I have to Alím. The River Flows, the 1993 adaptation, was the first off-Broadway play I ever did....I played Death himself and was like a character torn from Notes. These are not coincidences, for things don't just happen -they happen justly.

In Notes, Alím liberally sprinkles his book with quotes from everyone from Saint Baldwin (James) to the prophetic rancor of early Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and the poetic wisdom of William Shakespeare. These quotes serve to remind the reader of either a theme or concept being explored or expressed and/or to give the actor reading it a cerebral inspiration on the page that may lead him down the correct path as he begins to dramatically interpret and perform a specific text. The book - a slim 148 pages - is packed with conceptual ideas, puns, clever plays on words and titles (i.e. poet tree, poemedies, essalogues, etc.,) but I am not interested in or willing to indulge us into the meanings behind those phrases or titles or explain how "clever" Alím can be. Who cares? Real art is not about being clever. It is about expressing how much you know about life. And for all of Alim's broader appeal (when he performs, my wife refers to him as "the thinking man's Will Smith" in the sense that he is good-looking and charming enough to be able to garner a willing and very harmless mixed crowd) and his ability to hold court with a potentially more varied audience than me, for example, his strength is not in the trappings and superficial aspects of his more liberal and accessible poetry. No. It is, I believe, in the heart and soul of his prose and monologues-proper. Or what he refers to as his Essalogues. This is where Alím excites me the most and where he is at his best.

Heads Up

The short story "Heads" is one of the most provocative and honest pieces in the entire collection. In its Raymond Carver-esque minimalism, tongue-in-cheek bravado, and muted satire, Alím recounts how he killed three white people ( a racist punk, a lawyer, and a landlady) and is completely at wits end working and living with white people. They are simply too much to deal with and they do nothing but constantly aggravate and annoy. The entire idea - whether it is treated humorously or with straight up tragic insinuations - of killing white people or the "oppressor" is one that has infiltrated and consumed a great deal of modern Black American art work. It runs through the plays of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, the music of Public Enemy, and has been finessed and relayed masterfully by composers such as Bob Marley and is hinted at within the canvasses of the painter Aaron Douglas. Not literally, but in spirit. Even my own early work constantly wrestled with my own anger and frustration over what to do when living in a racist society. Alím’s treatment of the matter is less directly heavy handed, however, and not as tragic. It is much more absurd and has the maturity it takes to see the scenario through a simple and clean filter: it's all in a day's work. The humor is venomous and already present in the opening paragraph:

I mean the idea of killing four white people in the twenty-first century
just for what, to redress some historical wrong? I just simply was not with it.
But now, that I have already killed three, I am starting to get into it.
I mean, I really am starting to get the hang of it.

Funny stuff. Very dry, very simple. What makes it funny is the element of truth behind it, what makes it creepy is that you know the narrator is tired and doesn't have time for jokes. Or perhaps the former is the latter and the latter is the former? I don't know, now I've confused myself. Anyway, it doesn't matter - what the story reveals and how Alím seems to express it so effortlessly is what counts. Our narrator tells us he killed his first victim because he was called a "nigger," he killed his second victim because he couldn't stand working with, for, under this incredibly arrogant and prejudiced man who was one of the head lawyers in a law firm that had hired our brown-skinned narrator. Any black person who has ever worked in an office setting or corporate environment instantly recognizes the sort of white male that Terry Apath is. This is where you know that the bond and anticipated audience of this story is black because of the casualness and simplicity unto which the story is relayed. As with the tradition of African American literature - the story is very oral and has a great deal of "signifying," and radicalizing simply within the speech/text. I point this out because I do find it important that black writers still approach their work in such a cool and naturally stated way. In an era of "Who is your audience?" and "No one will understand your references, people are not smart as they used to be," it is refreshing that Alím invites the reader into his world, into his neurosis and doesn't comment on what they may or may not understand. Instantly you are a confidante and this is what made some of the white listeners uncomfortable at the Book Party in February 2005, when portions of the book were read in public. Not that anyone objected, no. White people will never object to anything considered "artistic," within a black or mixed milieu for fear of being labeled racist or a "phony liberal." They will just roll their eyes, squirm, or smirk - as if to say, "That is sooo hateful, I could never...! I'm more developed than you, gosh you people with your Superfly-Shaft-Badass-anger. I've seen it all before! I'm Jewish and I don't write stories or fantasize about killing Germans or Arabs!"

First of all that would be a lame excuse and a ridiculous comparison. But of course they don't have to write about anything similar - white people take out all their aggression directly. They don't have to write stories, they can blow up countries. They don't believe in art or therapy and when they do - they site only musical artists. As if to imply that music is "free" from any political-social relevance...I am obviously generalizing here to make a very serious point.
Most Americans (particularly the young white American) miss the point when evaluating or simply even reading real African American fiction. It would be misleading, however, to imply that Alím is writing for white people. He isn't. And when he does he makes it clear that he is. But this problem infiltrates black readers' minds as well as whites. There shouldn't be a need to specify or diffuse either way but we all know history and the way this world works.

My point: if White Americans aren't going to read their masters or really dig into their own problems - the way Bob Dylan and Paul Simon did thirty-five years ago, then they had better read and taste the folk art of the Black American if they want to begin to understand their country, their world, their history...their neurosis. Alím doesn't write about Pimps in the street and spray "hip" derogatory terms throughout his work. He's beyond that, even though it is what is expected from Black writers and filmmakers. He doesn't exploit "blackness," women, or the so-called "urban jungle." His grievances are real. He reveals the scowl behind the grin, the anger that is just below the surface. But for all his genius, no one seems to pay attention to Alím or several other artists working within the same mix. Folks will say: "Well, he's got no audience, yet cause he hasn't been on TV or featured on the front page of the Arts & Leisure section of the NY Times, or he hasn't debut with some rising Pop Star-Gangster-Wanna-be-Hip Hop buffoon. Lies and excuses, my friends. But the reason this cuts deep is because being a theater artist almost lends itself to invisibility. Besides the Lincoln Center effete crowd and a few organizations, and a handful of WASPS in New England or Boston or even in good old "progressive" San Francisco - the theater means very little to people. Artists or otherwise. I often wonder if maybe that's not the way it has always been....
For those who believe playwright Suzan Lori-Parks or David Mamet still have any true power or progressive instincts on stage - they are holding worthless promissory notes. Mamet imitates himself, Parks cashes in on what the mainstream audiences will expect her to turn in or evaluate - particularly as an African American woman. Neither is of the current state of consciousness emanating within the arts (whatever is left of it, that is) and both are very comfortable. Those looking for the real news, the truthful insights, and the still untamed social and political observations should read Alim's work and go underground...wherever that is. I guarantee the monologues and theatrical texts that Alím offers are a thousand times purer, personal, and poetic than anything in the mainstream theater or poetry houses. Because, similarly, if Russel Simmons destroyed comedy with Def Jam Comedy (as Bernie Mac claims he did) then he absolutely murdered poetry with his Def Jam Poetry. Nowadays, it is typical and passé' to hear some Black or Latino or East Asian or Middle Eastern poet or some gay white chick with piercings get on stage and whine (these people don't even know how to scream) about racism, sexism, the War in Iraq - all in familiar and rhetorical cadences, with a wink, nod, and bow to the word(s) "my nigga," "George Bush-shit," and/or something to do with "pussy-bush-the ghetto-the street-Gucci-Donna Karan-Park Ave-USA-" Blah, blah, blah, blah...Empty. It's all empty. Such is the nature of pop. Particularly when it is popular to assume a stance of righteous anger. Alím himself is not innocent of any of these popular and accepted streams of current poetry, but Alím is not a poseur. He's been to the gutter and back. He's lived and as much as he loves poetry, even he has admitted that - similar to the state of hip hop and Pop music - the poetry in NYC scene is dead. It is dead because it has been co-opted.

Poetry, like the theater, is dead because it still sells itself out to pimps who want to rape it. Poets continue to bend over (like their cousins - the independent filmmakers) and completely ignore their pride, talent, and soul. Why should poets perform on mainstage theaters, why should filmmakers want their films to be seen in malls? Is that the most we can achieve and hope for? Wouldn't we rather gather in someone's intimate apartment and create our own studio? Are artists that contemptuous of each other that we really can't work together because we all just want to be richer than each other and get revenge on our un-supportive families or patronizing bosses or apathetic teachers? The poets of the night are dead - because they want to be. They drop their pants, grab their ankles and give up any virtue or innocence left. They are like victims who beg to be raped and then cry when someone tells them "Are you nuts? You need to do something about this! You need to call the police!"

Keeping that in mind, read the following and imagine it is the last scene of a play. Imagine you saw every atrocious slice of nonsense on Broadway, then got a headache from the imposters Off-Broadway. You went home, vomited, felt a lot better and swore to yourself over that toilet-bowl that you would never go "drinking" again. A friend begs you (or if you have no friends imagine a little angel flies into your face) to go and read/see Alím's work and "taste" something new... You go, taste it, and realize maybe even half-way through - that what you are drinking ain't new, its just what most of us under 40 are constantly denied: truth within the arts.

So, imagine: you are seated somewhere and it is dark. There is a slight chill that runs up your spine. There are maybe twenty people in this audience. Under the moon, the stage lights flash up from below - they are dim but we see our Narrator clearly - because we experience something almost foreign in its brightness. The lights slowly dim as our Narrator admits: (perhaps in a choked up whisper)

Terry was fun to kill; killing the landlord was out of anger and I just did it because.
It was kind of funny, technically speaking I am not sure if it was on the same day
because the Arabs start their day in the dark at 12 am. But, as you already know the
landlord was Jewish, and for the life of me I don't know when they start their day.
But since her Jewishness was incidental to the cause of her death, I guess it didn't really matter.
I just strangled her for no more than a minute or two.
I had on the same blue-green Isotoner® gloves that I strangled Terry with.

Our man tries to smile, but can't. He looks at his gloves, lights a cigarette, and looks out into the audience. Blackout

The Source site for this review is: http://www.nathanielturner.com/invisiblemanthoughtssummerhillseven.htm

Overture L’ Ouverture

Your American Dream

Pardon moi - pardon moi.
Pardon moi - pardon moi:

‘scuse me for interrupting
Your American Dream…but…but

but I can’t sleep – I’m homeless
and I can’t eat – I’m foodless
and I can’t read – I’m in bliss.

Pardon moi - pardon moi.
Pardon moi - pardon moi:

no, don’t have a home
yes, do have a hood
piece of real estate
to roam & feel good
I own it not
yet it:

owns me
refines me
finds me
defines me:

hood gait & hood speak:

owns me
refines me
finds me
defines me:

worn on our 4head
like a government stamp!

Harlem
Detroit
Cincy-the-natti
St. Louis
Indy-the-naptown
Oaktown
Chicago
Gary
Compton
Philly
Long beach
Watts
San Juan
Negril
Port-au-Prince
S.E. DC & me:
Arbor Hill – Summer Hill - never ran – never will -
North Trenton – Norph - Trenton makes -
The world takes.

‘scuse me for interrupting
Your American Dream…but…but

still I cant sleep because I’m homeless -
and I cant leave because I’d be missed -
we employ the city, state
& federal employees -
those lower middle classes
they need our black asses
for their liberal programs
designed to save the masses
bourgeoisie need me, et. al.
to cushion them from a fall.

Pardon moi - pardon moi:
‘scuse me for interrupting
Your American Dream…but…but

I’m having a nightmare in
which I’m trapped in a tenement
building and the pea colored
urine stained walls won’t let me
inside the dangerous halls -
I really can’t reach my door
so I wander around the
vacant lots decorated
with broken glass ‘til I reach
the outer perimeter of my area.

Pardon moi - pardon moi:
‘scuse me but this nightmare is
still & still getting scarier:
now stepping through the very
visible demarcation
into an antebellum
pre-civil war southern nation.

I’m chased by the n-y-p
the l-a-p - Philly p
followed closely by pd
of Anytown U.S.A.
or is that the K.K.K.?
They - have on their riot gear
over their raw white cotton sheets
they capture me and beat me
then unjustly convict me
with attempting to escape
My American Nightmare!

Pardon moi? Pardon moi?
& then they punish me by
trapping me in a church with
four little ebony children
bombing us repeatedly
bombing us unceasingly
dragging our remains out
to hang from the highest tree.

Pardon moi - pardon moi?
‘scuse me for interrupting
Your American Dream…but…but
we’re swinging from a tall tree.

Still don’t you dare cry for we
this is our overture
for Toussaint L’Ouverture
we’ve finally been set free
with more hang time than Jordan
with no basketball burden
but plenty of time to hang and
our soul’s are all escaping
but our bodies are brought back
we’re near free ‘til they put we
& our souls in chains again
we take a long boat ride
back through the middle passage
taking we to Haiti on
August 1800 where we meet
Toussaint L’Ouverture.

“Pardon moi? Pardon moi?
Let’s make the European
authors of my nightmare dance”.

Touissant and we defeat France!

Pardon moi? Pardon moi?

‘scuse me for interrupting
Your American Dream!…but…but

I know Gabriel and Nathaniel too.

FIRE AND FLAGS – The Two Book Ends of Civilization © July 2005

Rakim Hudson woke up at 7 am to burn an American Flag to mark the 230th anniversary of the signing of the declaration of independence. He had been celebrating the fourth of July in this manner for the past three years. This summer would be the first time he would mark the occasion outside of New York City. In fact, way outside of New York City in a small western town in southern Utah – the former filming location of the 1970’s television show Gun Smoke.

In the heart of Mormon country, burning an American flag was a brave act on Rakim’s part. He was fortunate not to see any of his peers as he discreetly left another company member’s apartment at half past seven - most of the other company members from the Renaissance Theatre Festival (RTF) were still hung over from the opening weekend party the previous night. He did of course bump into Juliet who had gotten up to see why he had left her bed before she woke up.

“Justice”, she quietly called him from her porch. Everyone that knew Rakim personally called him Justice because that was the name he used most frequently when he performed his poetry. “Jusssstice”, Juliet moaned loud enough to stop Rakim mid-step.

Rakim held up his index finger – indicating that he would return to her shortly. She waved her hand beckoning him in that way he now found impossible to resist. Rakim had noticed and pursued Juliet since the first day of orientation at RTF. Yet she had not noticed him – other than to note that he was the only black actor in the cast of each of the three plays in the outdoor theatre.

“Yes, may I help you,” Rakim whispered loudly as he turned to approach Juliet.

“Come here”, Juliet wined as she batted her big thespian turquoise eyes and then licking her thin pink lips. As he arrived – “Should I start calling you Injustice? That wasn’t fair to leave me without saying goodbye” – her good speech was gone and her strong Wisconsin sounds were all in place.

“You already know why I have to leave,” he declared forthrightly.

“Yes. I know why you have to leave, I just don’t know why you have to leave without saying goodbye.”

“You’re right.”

“I know.” She smiled at him – enjoying her quick victory over him. “So how are you gonna make it up to me.”

Rakim smiled. “I don’t know.”

“You’re lucky that you have somebody waiting for you in your apartment right now,” Juliet conceded.

“Yeah, real lucky,” he smirked.

“But….” she held the pregnant pause on the tip of her tongue as she subtly revealed more cleavage.

“But?” Rakim wondered allowed. She couldn’t possibly want him to come back to bed. He had already taken a big risk last night. Rakim’s former director from the off-Broadway production of the Old Settler at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre and long-time married lover, Angela Anderson had come to spend a few days in Utah with him. But he could not resist Juliet’s offer last night. It seemed to him like Juliet was turned on by her own sexual abilities that forced Rakim to submit to her despite having another woman waiting for him in his apartment – in his bed. The fact that Angela was black may have made the victory all the more sweet for Juliet - the grandchild of Irish immigrants. Maybe not? He wasn’t sure about her racial politics yet.

“But …you have to kiss me goodbye before you go.” Juliet stared at him knowing that he would comply but not knowing how he would comply. Then with a moment of hesitation she began to wonder if he would comply at all. She took a step closer – now the robe was completely open and she stood on the porch in her burgundy silk Victoria Secret matching bra and thong set. She stopped waiting for him to comply. She kissed him.

He kissed her back. He already loved her but was intimidated by her both because she was beautiful and she was white. He had joked about Kobe Bryant’s rape charges but it really was a serious concern for him. He knew of too many and too-recent cases of black men being falsely accused of raping white women. He forgot about this possibility while he kissed her - his vital parts became warm and tense draining the blood away from his brain.

They both stopped kissing at exactly the same time staring in each other’s eyes for moments that seemed to transcend time itself. As Rakim turned and walked away with the purpose of a lone freedom fighter trapped behind enemy lines – Juliet watched him glide past the backdrop of southern Utah’s red hills and snow-capped mountains. The scene was well played from end to beginning.



When Rakim returned home - Angela was snoring and curled into a ball. She flew in yesterday afternoon immediately after her production of TopDog/UnderDog opened at the Arena stage in Washington, D.C. She declined Rakim’s invitation to go to the opening night party slyly stating - “Roc’ I’m gonna get some rest so I’ll have enough strength to do what I came here to do.” She refused to call him Justice – except when he made her call it out while she was in compromised and enjoyable positions.

“Don’t wait up - Old Settler”, Rakim let slip before he left that night. Now that he was back and Angela still was not awake he almost forgot that he had shared passionate and intimate moments for the first time with a woman he had just fallen in love with. He was about to climb in bed with this beautiful and athletic walnut complexioned goddess who was nearly twice his age – although no one ever believed she was older than 35. But when he peeled back the covers - Angela was lying virtually naked wearing the exact same pair of burgundy Victoria Secret matching underwear that Juliet was wearing as Rakim left her apartment. He jumped back and almost vocalized his feeling of horror. Partly because he remembered it would be nasty to have sex with two women consecutively without showering in between – partly because he needed to reflect and see if this coincidence may be an omen. Rakim lived his life based on omens but often the omens were impossible to decipher – like the time he was dating two dancers with the exact same type of birth mark on the exact same spot just below their left buttock.

When the steamy hot water hit his finger-nail-scarred back Rakim finally let out an audible enough sound to alert Angela that he had come home. The pain from the water hitting the fresh fingernail scars made it impossible for him to think about anything other than the ecstasy he just experienced while being one with Juliet. He replayed everything from the night before as he briskly scrubbed his private parts hoping to remember what it was he did right with Juliet so that he would be sure to create those moments anew in the future.

He had been dancing alone in the middle of the dance floor. The deejay played an eclectic mix of rock, swing, country and hip-hop for this virtually all white gathering of the RTF Company. Despite his skill on stage he was actually too shy to ask anyone to dance. Besides the feeling of rejection from someone that you don’t really want to dance with was not his favorite experience when he was in a room full of non-black partygoers. So when Juliet came up behind him and started rubbing her full C-cup breast up against his back he resisted the impulse to quickly peel around and see who was behind him. Perhaps that was the first thing he did right.




Angela climbing into the Shower with him – “you have barely kissed me since I arrived – don’t try to shirk your responsibility Husband”, interrupted his mental replay of the events. Angela called him by the name of the character he played in her production of The Old Settler whenever she wanted to acknowledge both her superiority in age and professional status. She was deliberately pulling rank and he knew it.

“Nah, Bess come here and let me show you how I handles my responsibilities,” Rakim said in the same general southern drawl she had directed him to use in the premiere performance. He then reinterpreted the original improvisation that first began their illicit affair exactly three years before on this very day. Angela is happily married yet she exercised the privilege that powerful women frequently turn to as a way to stimulate their youthfulness – a younger lover – a mastress –as Rakim described himself.

In many ways these visits were work for Rakim. He had received steady stage work in the three years since graduating from the University of Delaware’s Professional Theatre Training Program. In addition to the five productions directed by Angela in which he had played leading roles – her efforts had yielded him major roles at top regional theatres throughout the country including 12MilesWest in New Jersey, The Goodman in Chicago, Freedom Theatre in Philadelphia, Asolo in Florida and the Guthrie in Minnesota. In fact this gig at the RTF was the first theatre job in three years Rakim had gotten that was not a result of his relationship with Angela. She had never directed at the RTF but she would be recognized by a number of actors, stage managers or technicians: therefore she was on self-imposed confinement to Rakim’s bedroom for the two days she came in to celebrate their third anniversary together.

After thoroughly sharing one another during the shared shower she asked Rakim to accompany him to his traditional private flag burning ritual he annually performed on the morning of the fourth of July. She expected him to deny her request. She didn’t know that he had already invited his new homie – Zachary – an RTF lighting designer. “Z”, as Rakim reflexively began to refer to Zachary within a week of their initial meeting after the RTF orientation, was a Florida born Haitian and an amateur spoken word artist. The night before they were talking about the personal benefits – namely political cleansing – that Rakim derived from flag burning and other annual rituals he performed throughout the year - like those on “smoke-out” (to legalize marijuana) day and “coochie-eaters” day.

“Say word is bond Justice!” – Z commanded in disbelief after Rakim described his Independence day ritual.

“Word is bond.” Then seizing a philosophical moment he added: “It allows me to take advantage of my personal independence …to advance the independence of humanity. By beginning to meditate on the significance of independence early in the day - I am actually influencing the expansion of world-wide independence and justice throughout the entire day – the entire year.” Marijuana inspired these profound and complicated thoughts but it was his gift as a writer that made the ideas seem so poetic.

With no transition – American standard speech becomes urban vernacular as Rakim took the conversation straight to the gutter – “but yo, I got this bad chick waitin’ for me at the crib and I’m out chasin’ ho’s – you know I’m a nigga that is really serious and dedicated to independence in every area of my life.”

Z noticed that Juliet had been giving Rakim preferential treatment at the party and asked – “are you doing Justice to that ass” with a glance of his eyes towards Juliet who was still in the middle of the dance floor clearly performing to arouse his attention.

Rakim, master of turning phrases – “the real question is - is that ass doing Justice.”

“That’s what I’m asking” Z said after letting out a too-loud laugh both because he was no longer sober and to make it obvious to Juliet that they were talking about her. She smiled and beckoned to Rakim with her finger in front of this room full of white theatre-makers. Her long red curly hair in full effect framing a dancers figure subtly exposed by her sheer kelly green blouse and pink mini-skirt. Some of these same people now witnessing her aggressive advances - would no doubt be at the public flag burning ceremony where Justice would be spitting fiery protest poetry.

Rakim simply slowly shook his head “no” and continued talking to Z hoping Juliet would not push the issue. He wanted to do “it” to her and enjoyed talking to her but she was a liability to his political personality. In fact, his perspective on relationships in general was that they – romantic relationships with the opposite sex - were mostly a liability that inevitably compromised an artist in one way or another.

Looking at Juliet dance and shake “what her mama gave her” – he thought – she has to have some black in her. Still talking to Z – Rakim continued “Yeah this chick at my crib is an older director and she’s married. I been boning her for longer than any relationship I ever had and the skins is always…” sucking on his lower lip “ succulent. She got kids and everything - but she flew out here to be with me for two days of mo’ better. I wish I knew what I did to hook her …cuz I’d do more of it” he confessed in a short-lived moment of honesty.

Z almost forgetting that he knew someone that fit that description - involuntarily replied – “sometimes …its just like that - and you didn’t even have to do anything. It’s crazy cuz you want to try and do it at-will but you can’t.”

Recovering as the Gin and Tonics began to take effect – “Shiiiit - nigga speak for yourself – I always mac at-will.”

“My bad, I shoulda knew …a player like you don’t have that problem.” As if Z’s last statement was prophecy - Juliet purposefully walks over to Rakim grabs his hand and pulls him out the room, down the stairs and out the front door to the parking lot.

“Justice what does a lady have to do to get your affection and attention?” Juliet’s diction was so clear and her sounds were coming right out of the front of her mask. Since she was inebriated she had no sense of the proper volume and her words floated through the air filling the 100 square yard parking lot bouncing off the steel of the surrounding automobiles.

He was too afraid to speak so he stood motionless debating with himself whether he should be in this southern Utah parking lot alone with a drunk white lady. As he completed making the argument in favor of staying but before he could entertain arguments for leaving - she dragged him to the corner of the parking lot behind a commercial van pulled up her pink mini skirt revealing her nakedness and began grinding on his attentive vital organ.

Explaining to her that he had someone waiting at home for him while yielding to the weakness of their flesh – “I really must go” – hoping that she would have some decency. He knew he didn’t have any. Decency was a low priority on his list of areas in which to attempt personal growth.




Angela never expected decency from Rakim yet she was touched when he agreed to let her accompany him this morning to his private independence day ritual. He already picked out the spot in the Cedar City Mountains where he had felt the greatest connection to both the earth and the ancestral past of the land.

Juliet did not know what to make of this ritual when he had explained it to her before she fell asleep in his arms last night. Yet they had been to the location together on the first pitch-blue night walk they had shared together. She remembered the location so well because he had captured the description precisely in the poem he was inspired to write after their first walk.

It was already going on 8:40am before he came near the location where he was to perform this ritual. As Rakim ventured out to where the reddest rocks jutted out to cover the raging creek, he was looking for Z – who was less certain about the exact location. He was in such disbelief as he approached the location that he thought to himself - “I am really sprung - I think I see a vision of Juliet angelically standing there dressed all in white.” With every step his heart started to race because this was not a vision - this was actually Juliet.

“You said to wear all-white right?” she beamed as he came within ear shot of the exact location he told her about earlier that same morning; adding “you’re late.”

“I know.” With the stoicism of a monk and the steely nerves of a surgeon (or stage actor) he warmly introduced Angela to Juliet making certain to mention in front of Angela that Juliet was aware of her visit. Yet he was careful to avoid mentioning that she was a director and professor in the performance studies department at the Tisch School of Drama of NYU. The less conversation - the better he thought. This type of situation would have been awkward in the hands of a less independent person but Rakim’s defining trait of transcendence allowed for grace under pressure.

After the exchange of casual curiosities like “how long have you known Justice;” followed by distant and cryptic replies like “before he was Justice” – Rakim was ready to begin what for him was far more important than any single relationship he could ever share – specifically his direct relationship with the universal all. Before he completed setting up the alter of various flags including many from the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and of course the United States – news clippings he had saved throughout the year for this occasion - marijuana, liquor, incense, food items – just then Z slowly walked up with his mouth wide open staring at Angela as if frightened by an evil spirit.

As Angela caught his eye the same fear of evil came over her entire body. These looks in turn frightened Rakim making the butterflies in his stomach compete in a race throughout the whole of his body. Angela’s face told Rakim that Z’s look was not inspired by Juliet as he first thought - instead Z’s horror was a result of his long-time lover – Angela Anderson. He thought – “had they been lovers too?” That would not surprise or offend Rakim – he and Angela were independent in nearly every way of one another except in the memories and experiences they shared. Z’s initial utterance resolved the mystery.

“Aunt Angela?” Long silence as everyone looks at the most significant person present for him or her. “You know Justice?” Long silence as the white person turns pink on the outside and the black people turn pink on the inside. There was nothing to say yet there was plenty to listen. Together they listened to the earth – speech sounds of desert animals of all varieties – the wind song – symphony of the continually crashing creek. They listened to the independence of the universe.

Eventually as they drifted into a circle around the alter they listened to the independence of ancestral cries for eternal independence. They listened to the pounding hearts of one another as Justice set each of the flags present on fire declaring his and their independence from any single nation – thereby joining the brotherhood and sisterhood of mankind in claiming their inheritance to the independence of the universe. Holding hands around this burning alter they listened to their own cries for independence through unification. “Fire and flags – the two book ends of civilization” Rakim began his public address later that afternoon with an independence greater than any he had ever known.