Category: Blog

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team up

I wrote this while listening to Kendrick Lamar’s ‘dodger blue’

The same team that beat my yankees on their largest stage

I’ve been processing rage and sadness, but not cuz of baseball, 

It’s other-shit-just-fuckin’ up-my life, trying to not take it personal

but it gets personal af when the demons you know and love to hate

come back with armor – sterling, stainless steel metal upgrades,

And all you have to fight back with is your hands – once again I feel like I got played.

the demons been kickin’ in the door wavin’ the four four since the mid 2000s

but my team showed up in force, their strength was boundless.

I didn’t have to face it on my own cuz my Avengers already assembled 

and with time and love I made my own demons fucking tremble.

My team is across more places than in the past but we still team up nevertheless,

It could be a day or 10+ years, if you’re on the team you already know there’s no stress.

No uniform needed, and the field is just life,

The love of my fam and friends is the energy that gets me through strife. 

So whether it’s dodger blue, yankee blue, mets blue,

Team up for your loved ones and your true colors will shine through. – RSM

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Arm Rest Ash Trays

As a young child (as one does) I imagined quite a lot and explored with my mind and hands;


So oddly enough I became randomly enamored with empty ash trays in the arms of the backseats of old cars –


It was like discovering a little hidden pool or crawlspace in an otherwise bland landscape.


Beneath the fake wood as my mom drove us around in my grandfather’s 1970s landboat

I found a world of wonder in these mini metal trap doors originally meant for other people’s cigarettes.

They were clean and unused, though still a bad look for kids to play in –

They were (in my mind) little hot tubs, bunkers, a random place to put my fingers,
somewhere where I could put my toys as they came along for the ride.

I became fascinated by hidden ash trays, almost like an art form it felt like finding the smallest of elegant little spaces

that harked back to a time and space when the adults in the room were not only the only voices, but tobacco filled, gritty sounding voices that carried like the feeling of rubbing your palms against loose gravel.


While I learned the lyrics to ‘It Takes Two’ by Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock and my light up sneakers flickered brilliantly, I still yearned to know more about yesteryear,


and like a tiny early 90s archaeologist I always searched for the hidden compartments until I found them – the ever classy built-in ash tray; an unlikely calling card to my childhood.


They’re all but gone now, surviving only in especially well-preserved chariots of the mid to late 1900s, but for a time they were an iconic part of my world – a call to love the world for what it was; a place to explore. – RSM

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Punish Me With Bliss

Give me what I want until I can’t stand it anymore

Tell me all is well to the point where it sickens me

Lead me to ‘the good place’ that’s really ‘the other place’

Take the wind out of my sails

Let the weather be perfect until I wish for a blizzard, and yet it stays perfect

May my scores be so perfect and records be new and improved every time

Until they’re rendered meaningless.

May I be undefeated to the point where I am begging to taste defeat.

Kill me with kindness, but don’t let me die. – RSM

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Sonnet Vol.4: Serenity

A peaceful transition of moment to moment, to infinity

or as long as it lasts, whichever comes first.

A straight road ahead, balanced by equanimity,

a resignation so satisfying, like a live performance – unrehearsed.

The vibrations of your local jazz club,

or perhaps the waves crashing along your favorite beach.

The way your favorite dish tastes at your favorite gastropub

taking a nap with your phone off and out of arm’s reach.

That feeling after a good workout

That one memory that leaves you beaming.

When you and your friends barter with apps

and there’s no limit to video streaming!

People call it many things, so call it what you like

But please, live it! Don’t let it slip from your sights. – RSM

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Collapse Into Words

In the eyes of the beholder holds beauty itself, 

Such a lovely scene of crisp books standing along the shelf

And as my inner child picks out his favorite one

I’m dragged back in, like a flare to the sun,

Into an alternate world, filled with action,

Mystery, wonder, young love gaining traction,

Different lives lived within thin slices of tree

How immortal is the mind who finds time to read. - RSM
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Comfort Movies & Shows

A familiar scene overtakes the screen, but this time it’s not déjà vu;
The time and space on display replays and we recognize the screenplay
for countless of times we’ve exclaimed along to upcoming explosion
or cried along to the ‘sad part’ or sat in awe of all the Hollywood commotion.

Around the world and back we go in a loop that plays on our favorite screens,
we cling on to them like plush toys we’ve had since we’ve been kids or teens,
like a scented candle – they set the tone of the space,
enveloping the room in its signature hue and emitting a particular feeling of grace. – RSM

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The Faces in the Leaves

I was feeling stuck, even tho I wasn’t really –

I was in bed, but far from sleepy.

Within the leaves outside the wind blew a concoction – so creepy,

I saw a hundred little leaf monsters smile and greet me!

At the time I didn’t care or not if they were what we call “real,”

it was more about the visual, and about my inner feels

I was reeling from seeing these beings, just, being

so casual and cheery with me, I felt like I had nothing to conceal.

Some looked like dragons, they were cool af, just vibin’,

Others were small and all stood in a crowd together, like a choir almost,

It looked like there was a party on that tree and I was invited,

and eventually I got there, after closing my eyelids. -RSM

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Red Hat Basura

The world spins round and it’s all up and down,

To me at least it feels like it when I walk around downtown

It’s terrible, deplorable, the world I see surrounds me

Red hats galore bring the activist out of me

I feel like a bull and they want me to chase them

They see my people and want to erase them

So what other choice do we have but to stand strong

While the grand old cowards look down on us like we don’t belong

It doesn’t really matter what the comfortable ignorants think

Because sadly they’ve been taught to not think for themselves

But gladly I do, and even if my own people ‘other’ me,

Puerto Rico is beautiful, and I’ll see the haters in hell. – RSM

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Wow, Sean. I Looked Up To You.

The first rap song I ever learned was

‘Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems,’ first grade, it was all over the radio,

I heard it so much and I would rap it on the daily, bro,

I asked my mom and dad if I could get a little boombox for my room, had it on Z100 for a while, but then I found Hot 97 on the dial,

It was wild! I was a huge hip hop fan since I was a young child.

Bad Boy Records dominated NYC, MTV, and everything else hip hop that you’d see,

I learned ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ before I ever heard of the band The Police

I was PROUD that Puff Daddy went to Mount Saint Michael in my neighborhood

and how he lifted up so many other artists all the way up beyond the stars, this,

Super fly business savvy young dude from Harlem and Mount Vernon

Putting on for the city and the culture, but I’ve learned,

That what once was “cool” in the past often changes

The same way every generation has their entertainment favorites,

Bad Boy Records was the door that opened into my love for hip hop

and my whole life I was motivated by the phrase “CAN’T STOP, WON’T STOP!(Eh-eh, Eh-eh)” 

I joined the track team in the 6th grade, around the same time that Diddy ran the city,

Ran through Biggie’s whole catalogue – took it on my OG white brick iPod to school with me,

“Everybody sing it now PASS THE CARVOURSIER!”

Oh sure, yeah, dude, I still love all the music, 

But truly, how does hip hop culture get through this?!

He’s not the only one for sure, just look at Hollywood,

there are far more media moguls making mad shady happenings happen and for decades it’s been happening 

So how was I so naïve to think that the rumors may not have been true,

about one of the most successful dudes from around where I grew?!

The rumors aren’t true – because the truth is actually far WORSE

And it’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of an entertainment industry that’s so perverse,

And now here I am, a true student of the game, and I’m looking at Diddy, like, 

“What a fucking shame.” – RSM

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Don Zachariah and the Endless Storm

A ferocious wind whirrs, while in bed he turns, tosses and swerves,
Don Zachariah has moved up the ranks
and traded in his old sandals for new ones,
And remembers the times when he had just landed, with the hot humid air amplifying the sun,


Baking under the gaze of the jungle,
Wondering how he ended up there,
and where to go next.

Once a young monk in search of redemption,
Now a bit older, wiser; a bigger, heavier storm rages along, destroying the canoes and huts he helped to build.


And even though it’s a challenge, he’s been there before,
heavier winds of yesteryear’s past has
provided him experience to withstand any storm, inside and out.
The sun re-emerges, but the storm isn’t settled. He smiles at the challenge, though. – RSM