Drones In Jersey, Nikki G. and Luigi

and my first earthquake

Drones In Jersey

Would you believe me if I told you those drones in Jersey have been flying around looking for me? My extraterrestrial family has, at last, come to relieve me of a 25-year sentence on earth. And no, we are not aliens..

The problem is, no one told headquarters I’ve been hiding out in Cali and so they will cease to exist until I make it back to Jersey bright and early Sunday morning and then the skies in Jersey will go back to normal.

Sorry for the inconvenience guys ;)

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Dear Luigi, I don’t hate billionaires and CEOs

If my brother hits the lottery tomorrow should I hate ‘em?

If my sister is successful in that business venture would it make sense if I used the eat the rich catchphrase verbatim?

If my mom slipped and fell in an expensive store would you hate her for filing suit?

Or is our hate for billionaires and CEO’s a misplaced unreasonable pursuit?

I think we are missing a voice of reason, I genuinely can’t believe people are actually thinking, a man who inherited the same capitalist system as every other American deserved to die?

Killing a CEO does not make much sense, a new one will be promoted tomorrow, the crowd will say it’s bringing awareness, and the verdict is still out on that one.

The revolution will be negotiated.

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Nikki Giovanni

At 3:30 pm: an earthquake swayed the table I studied on and the building shifted— it was a calm sway, very gentle and subtle, It’s an indescribable feeling that I am so ecstatic to feel for the first time. I thought for a second I had finally lost my mind after three weeks of hard-core studying for finals. Then I curiously searched earthquake and it further made sense.

At 9pm: I opened up substack and people were saying the Princess of Black poetry, Ms. Nikki Giovanni passed away and I genuinely felt her loss and felt very sad about it. This was odd to me and not like myself, I’m just not all that sentimental when it comes to practical strangers but I guess you don’t realize what a person means to you until they’re gone.

My grandma introduced me to Nikki Giovanni summer of 2018 and that period in my life & a few years later I was practically obsessed with her poems, I even used her photo as my lock screen for several months.

A couple of my favorite poems from Nikki Giovanni

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Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day

“Don't look now
I'm fading away
Into the gray of my mornings
Or the blues of every night
Is it that my nails
keep breaking
Or maybe the corn
on my second little piggy
Things keep popping out
on my face or of my life
It seems no matter how I try

I become more difficult
to hold
I am not an easy woman
to want
They have asked
the psychiatrists . . . psychologists . . .
politicians and social workers
What this decade will be
known for
There is no doubt . . . it is
loneliness”

Nikki Giovanni

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Nikki-Rosa “childhood remembrances are always a drag if you’re Black you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet and if you become famous or something

they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother all to yourself and how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in

and somehow when you talk about home it never gets across how much you understood their feelings

as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale and even though you remember your biographers never understand your father’s pain as he sells his stock

and another dream goes

And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that concerns you

and though they fought a lot it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference

but only that everybody is together and you and your sister have happy birthdays and very good Christmases

and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me because they never understand

Black love is Black wealth and they’ll probably talk about my hard childhood

and never understand that

all the while I was quite happy.”

Nikki Giovanni

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My favorite Nikki Giovanni Interview

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1. So I survived my first semester of Law school and I’m feeling like I can conquer the world now, finally!! I have some ideas