Tag: original

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Falling In Love With Creative Writing

It was some time in the first grade.
“I’ll Be Missing You”, “Don’t Speak,” and “Tearin’ Up My Heart” were some of the radio’s preferred songs of the day
while I was in my classroom, learning and playing.
We had an assignment to write a few sentences each on large index cards, to hang in the hallways on full display.

I didn’t quite know what “creative writing” meant back then, but I went hard at the task-
Finished early, my teacher gave me her approval, a smile, and I knew I had passed.
But then I sat down at my desk
And then thought of a few phrases better then the ones I used, I didn’t let it rest-
I started making edits for already finished work.

I smiled wider with each improvement I made to what I wrote.
My teacher noticed and said “Ruben, that’s great, but I need to review all the changes you make!”
Before I knew it I went back to her to approve three or four, or maybe more changes to my work,
almost running out of time while perfecting my craft.



Looking back, this was when the writer’s lightbulb went off in my head.
It felt like I was traversing the world and my mind at the same time. Still does.


If life is an ocean, this is the day I built my creative writing raft. – RSM

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A Beastie Boys Sonnet

Doing the least but I go on stage LAST

No sleep ‘til Brooklyn I’m on my way NOW

Can’t pay a ticket but I still roll FAST

They read the car’s plates NOW, but don’t slow DOWN!

Intergalactic on repeat FLYIN’

To another PLACE deep in outer SPACE

Pass the Brass Monkey cuz I’m just TRYIN’

I said I felt ill my homeboys said GREAT

HATERS stay tryna sabotage my LIFE

Fighting for my right to party mad LATE

I can’t keep it down dude I’m filled with STRIFE

All of my neighbors are in bed by EIGHT

Posse in effect but we have bad KNEES

Maybe just sit around and smoke some WEED!

– RSM

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Time Is Never Time At All

It’s a roller coaster that doesn’t care if you’re strapped in, no discretion.

Sankofa’s in a twist – got you upside down, speeding forward, but still looking back when

we lose our sense of direction.

Off the rails of this crazy train, it’s a chaotic scene to be in between the safety harness

and your seat –

“I wanna go again!” We flirt with danger on repeat,

we spend it for thrills, make sure we have the quality version for our loved ones,

Waste too much of it – or so we think, measure everything with it, use it to chart the stars, moon, sun;

It’s a dictator, an angry god, we all follow along to maintain, trying to not let it get away,

And we don’t even know if it’s a ‘real’ thing, or if it was just all made up one day.

Origins – a mystery if you keep digging, some say now it can fold or be like strings,

We all follow it blindly, until our nightly solace is disrupted by the songs our alarm clocks sing. – RSM

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Ride The Waves

Anxiety washes away like waves
along the winding coastlines of SoCal during the day
No matter how many times I beat it, it returns
Just like how a fresh new crest of a wave re-emerges,


Eternally growing, moving, charging, crashing, repeating the cycle again,
when anxiety peaks I think of the sound of waves crashing
And try to think of things from a different lens. – RSM

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Bad Bitch Part 3

Miss Independent, that’s what they call her

Heads turn wherever she goes, but none of them stall her

Whether she’s walking , running, driving away

She got time for no MAN at the end of the day

Marathon Bae out here lookin’ FIERCE

Out of your league, boo, you ain’t getting near

The Baddest Bitch alive just doin’ her thang

Got these fellas’ heads spinning like a boomerang

Timeless, ageless, this Queen can’t be stopped

So keep on killing it just like you thought! – 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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Flying Toward The Sunrise on Christmas Morning

It’s been a while since I’ve spent Christmas in The Bronx,


but when I stroll back in and take my coat off, I feel lost within the familiar.


My oldest memories, just me and la familia –


Throwing miniature present ornaments into the tree and seeing where they land,


Decorating our tree as well as hula hoops with lights to make a wreath


to hang out on our balcony, and from the streets beneath


it made such a grand stand in the sky, burning bright for blocks, our Christmas parties were rockin’,


Sega Genesis and N64 games stuffed in our stockings,


The adults drank coquito and danced the night away –


And as the sun shines today onto my airplane’s windows, I can’t help but feel some kind of way.


As the world evolved and revolved we resolved each year


To persevere – through the dark times and the bright ones too, to spread cheer,


Whether it’s toys, new floors, or new iPods,


what’s always mattered more are memories

made, mainly a mix of family, friends, food,

laughs, and smiles on Christmas Day. – RSM

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The Great Nothing

A violent storm brews on a sunny day, internally,

a disconnect between the thoughts I think and the world I see,

the great nothing attacks with calculated poignancy

and a million little no ones have their fingers pointed back towards me.

 

A lot of names it goes by, the DSM gives it definitions galore,

an idle mind be wildin’ out, creating fake,

demonic children running around my inner self’s candy store –

breaking down all the shelves, they’re giving the clerk hell,

until I restart my mind it all subsides, this grand swell

of my mind’s river finally dies down. Sometimes it takes a nanosecond,

other times the inner storm rages all day, and I just gotta lie down.

 

Nothing motivational here, just an expression of

my thoughts, breakdancing sideways, inside of a closed confessional,

chaotic combinations coming to crux with the pressure from

not the atmosphere, but reality/society/these phantom obsessions, bro. – RSM

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Periwinkle Skies; A Sign

A light purple, if you will,

So trill, the hue of royalty hangs itself above the ever-moving metropolis,

it’s a shade that flirts with blue, purple, and grey – every so often, this, horizon

glows above us, quietly, yet proudly.

Not unlike the dusk that follows, it wanes into darker times, yet reminding us to be not afraid of the night. – RSM

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Backpacks Dropping

Carrying one has given me perspective.

Kinda like when Goku and Krillin took their turtle shells in Dragonball,

you’re taking on a debt of labor to bring what you need along with you

and far and wide, near and close that weight is literally on your shoulders.

The parable of fool’s gold regulates the way we lug along those things we need for wherever we are going;

and booooyyy let me tell you when that weight is released –

whether it was books for class, I had just got home, touched down across the world, or just got to the car – I feel the difference. 

I feel free. – RSM