Portrait of a narcissist, a few essential traits
A slight never forgotten, don't you make that mistake
A double heart filled with unspoken threats
He wears the mask the audience deserves

Portrait of an opportunist, moral flexibility in abundance
Reversals galore but he rolls with the punches
His interests always trump friendships, let's call it expedience
For survival beyond the day's end is his sole allegiance

Portrait of the vain, hollow on the inside
Entitlement in stiff competition with pride
His secret weapon, a genuine sense of self importance
Chock full of certainty about the rightness of his cause
To call him self centered is to merely state the obvious

Portrait of a deceiver, all things to all men
Lying with a straight face, his enduring strength
Pitch perfect delivery, you could swear he believes every untruth
Surely, to impugn the purity of his motives? What are you, uncouth?

Carried Fanon's book around for a full year - wretched
Still occasionally tries to read it (practice makes perfect)
But underneath everything is a fundamental insecurity
Mommy and Daddy issues, the bitter roots of his immaturity

The need for speed, horses his first love
But anything with an engine would do
Nights out with the running partners
Booze, the hard stuff, ladies of easy virtue
After dark, how exciting, and all in the same room

It's fair to say that there are multitudes inside of this man
Characterized, everyone says, by his tremendous charm
Unrestrained, unfiltered, half baked, half-cocked
Empty but empowered, half truths, half thought

Absolved, then, of the burden of any sense of responsibility
Free to be a political actor altogether allergic to empathy
A chameleon - mercurial, they call him, the luckiest man alive
Just your luck that you're stuck with him, the best years of your life

Bad, a playlist

For what it's worth, this playlist was intended to stand alone but seeing as I haven't written up the liner notes in the 17 years since I made it, I suppose I can repurpose it as the soundtrack for this note. A couple of hours on a bad man (spotify version)

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

...

See previously The Conqueror's Catechism


File under: humour, hatchet job, rogues, satire, culture, observation, perception, military, dictator, blood, sin, greed, gremlins, Africa, violence, strategy, Fallen Angels, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 18, 2022

Remember the suburban novel? Books about attractive white families in nice houses who turn out to be miserable? Examples include Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road (1961), the work of the Johns (Cheever and Updike), Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter (1986) and Independence Day (1995), and Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm (1994). If so, you’re probably middle-aged, or […]

Late afternoon at the Africarib market,
  the brothers in the know were picking up some yam
(A fresh shipment of puna yam had just arrived from the motherland)
Man cannot live on bread alone

I was more interested in the kenkey
 that had also arrived that Wednesday,
Driven up from Houston by an ex-military man,
  his wife was the one who prepared the kenkey
Nigerians were out in force -
  yam for their swallow obviously, and much more:
Stockfish, herring and even snails.
  The shop was well stocked today

One of the elders recounted a long tale
 about how hard things were back home - believe him
We learned about the three year old child who was suffering,
  crying when he'd last called home
The story was that two ears of corn had been prepared in the morning -
 his share for the day
But that before it could be given out, a fowl -
  unclear whether it was a chicken or guinea fowl,
Had gone behind him, poor thing,
  and absconded with the corn

And the child had set about on the chase,
  and duly tripped and fell,
And was now disconsolate,
  bleeding, and still crying hours after the deed
And hungry too, for the corn was long gone
There was an object lesson in the tale
 about the hardship that our people were facing,
Inflation, poverty and worse - how for do? Na wow
Now even little ones have to compete with fowls for their daily corn

Just then we saw the headlines
On the screen above the check out counter
Breaking news, school shooting... CNN...
Two children killed... many injured... More to follow
"So these people...
School don open just this week and they go shoot am...
America..."
Shaking heads all around.

Our laments about the continent were cut short - these people
I quickly settled with Walter. And made my excuses to the circle:
"I need to pick up the kids from school"
Head nods. We all sobered up promptly,
The expected banter postponed for another time
I'll admit, I drove rather fast to the school

Defensive Posture, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. Musical protection. (spotify version)

Bonus beats: Immigrant by Sade

See previously Silt and Sediment, Action Items, Prone and Defensive Accounting

File under: immigration, culture, observation, perception, social, Africa, USA, blood, violence, modernity, guns, outrage, The Rough Beast, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: August 28, 2025

Pink lines are the new shape of dread
The weary anticipation of the so-called rapid test
Faint traces of the untimely failures of our defenses
Or an unwelcome rejoinder to our wilful recklessness

Red lines that bellicose nations brandish
Their diplomats echoing aggressive rhetoric
Not to be crossed or we'll give you the "or else" treatment
The new warfare, like the old, is said to be indecent
By design, it's hard to trace the contours of these boundaries
Seeing as they are drawn up essentially to support a casus belli

White lines that crackle with the powder of addiction
Just say no, resist the temptation, said the erstwhile First Lady
"No Dope, No Drugs", for good measure, chimed in Mr T
For white lines mark the streets with broken dreams

Yellow lines outline a zone, never cross the double ones
Symbolic, indicating waiting or parking restrictions
The DC Metro one tends to shut down for up to eight months
The price of deferred maintenance, repairs and rehabilitation
Safety first, passing is forbidden in both directions
Prohibition, as inconveniences grow, try to avoid obstructions

Power lines, careful around them, electricity
The skeletal frame of our modernity
Infrastructure, what you realize in its absence that you miss
Prime candidate for what went wrong in the root cause analysis

Don't leave anything behind, always put it all on the line
Read the room, be forever mindful of the party line
Embrace euphemism, ambiguity and blurred lines
Careful as you go, tread warily, walk a thin line
Lines in the sand, drawing up lessons learned
Histories remade by the storyteller and promptly unlearned
Comfort suites of ephemera, until such time
Caution, take heed, where you end up down the line
For if the front line is where names are made
It is also where most of the bodies are laid

Lines, a playlist

A funky soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• The Line by D'Angelo
• Blue Lines by Massive Attack
• Down the Line by Gregory Isaacs
• White Lines by Grandmaster Melle Melle
• The Groove Line by Heatwave
• Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke
• Lines by Eric Leeds
• Put it on the line by Lyn Collins
• Dub on the Front Line by King Jammy
• Front Line by Chuckii Booker
• The Line by Prince

File under: humour, whimsy, culture, observation, life, language, perception, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 14, 2022

Ground zero
The moon tower marks the spot
Not too far from the state cemetery
At the intersection where cable cars used to stop
A block away from the offices of the N.A.A.C.P
The mural is being restored as a kind of testimony

The blast radius
Gentrification spreads outwards
Progress, as viewed from one perspective
For many parts indeed had fallen into disrepair
But what is the fabric of communities?
And how much hollowing can a place bear
Before it loses its identity?

Change is turbulence
For the reverse is also true
Things - and places, are to be used
The inexorable logic of our economy
The foundation of land use theories
Displacement, a shedding of skin
The debates are about the nature of this new molting
Prosperity's impact on demography

Soundtrack for this note

• What Happened to Austin? by Lench
  A little heavy handed but quite accurate.

File under: gentrification, Austin, change, urban, city, displacement, development, culture, observation, perception, economics, USA, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 22, 2022

In June 1980 Amina Claudine Myers was in a New York City studio, recording a tribute to the great blues singer Bessie Smith, when she began to improvise a theme on the piano: slow, stately, swelling with emotion. Myers is a deeply religious woman, and as she played she felt as if a spirit had […]