Haters Hate: The Ron Paul Phenomenon

2012 is almost here, and with it, the real start of the Presidential Election campaign. In less than a week a few voters in Iowa will brave freezing temperatures and pick their favorite Republican to go up against Obama in November. As I write this, most polls indicate that one Dr. Ronald Ernest Paul is poised to capture the hearts and minds of die-hard Iowans.

I can see his appeal. Ron Paul is no dyed-in-the-wool Republican. Although he served in Congress as a Republican during the mid to late 70s and early 80s, Ronnie rose to political prominence as a Libertarian when he ran for President in 1988 and got over 400,000 votes, third most that election. After that loss, Ronnie took some time off from politics and went back to medicine, his first love. Throughout this time, though, Ronnie continued to push his political agenda, most notably through Ron Paul & Associates, a company that he established in 1984 that produce various newsletters, including The Ron Paul Investment Letter, The Ron Paul Survival Report, and Ron Paul Political Report. He gained tens of thousands of subscribers and earned millions of dollars with these newsletters promoting his Libertarian ideas.

Flash forward twenty years...

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From the Bottom Up on The Urban Twist.

The Daisy Field

The Daisy Field

I walked past 

a daisy field

today—
a rock garden
casting shadows

on my head—
my heart

searched for you,
lost in a haze.

But this heart, 

you see,
this heart

still has problems
with the way

things ended—
left so suddenly—
so unprepared.

& who was I

to deny
your request

that you find rest
traveling

the many rivers
of our motherland,
not trapped

with worms & things

that crawl & squirm?

¡Pero coño, mami!
Would've been nice
to have a place

to visit you 
on lonelier days—
to think

about those too few years
we were granted

together.

Now, unless I fly

a thousand miles
to find

your beachfront

home, I'm left

to the sterile

corners 

of my room—

left to strain

for memories—
sometimes

I strain so hard
my tears burn

worse than the loss.

An Open Letter to Jerry Falwell

Originally written in April, 2006, I'm reposting this ( with a few updates) from my old MySpace blog in memory of renowned writer & atheist extraordinaire, Christopher Hitchens. I know Falwell & his hate have been dead for a few years, but I like to think Hitchens would have appreciated my candor.


Fuck You:

Every time you open your mouth about Family Values, you insult me. Your claims that nontraditional families are leading to the decline of our country are equal to spitting in my face. What the fuck do you know about families, particularly nontraditional ones? You were raised in a world of lily-white palaces, where it was alright to treat a black man like a nigger. I read about your "conversion" from your segregationist ideals. I suppose segregation is a hard habit to break.

You want a nontraditional family, look at mine. My mother was a heroin addict for most of her life. There were hard times. There were even tragic times. But my mother, without the aid of my father— without the aid of any man for a lot of her life— taught us about the important things in life. She taught us to love everyone, regardless of who they are. She taught us not to judge others; that rather than judge, we should offer our help if they truly need it and we are capable. She taught us to strive for anything we wanted out of life.

Granted, not everything turned out roses. My mother died of AIDS in 1991. She never even told me she had it because of a stigma that you helped to foment in those days. The irony is that she had, seemingly, finally beaten her addictions, and was just starting to go after her dreams when death took her. My uncle succumbed to AIDS, and my little brother, who was 16 when my mother died, battled his own addictions and only a little less shame. He died of the same disease.

My sister, however, is the Queen of Retail, happily married and buying her first house. As for me, I've recently finished a novel and am working on a second. Hopefully, I can get them published. You probably wouldn't like them though. I model for art classes for a living. For now.  I have two wonderful sons who cause as much trouble as teenagers are prone to cause.

I have a sister-in-law whose gay who has a wonderful young son who is intelligent, talented, tolerant and plays a mean game of basketball. Most important is that he is happy. I will love him whether he's gay or straight. Jesus would, too.

So you see, your ideas of morality have no effect on the way families succeed or fail. Success and failure happen with nearly equal proportions in black families, white families, religious families, Atheist families and yes, gay families.

Please Jerry, stop insulting me and my intelligence almost every tine you show your face on television. Let God, if there is just one or any, be the judge of our lives here on the planet. Divert your energy to the issues that need them, like poverty, hunger and literacy. They are still here, Jerry.

What would Jesus do? Otherwise, I hope that everyone wakes up to your hateful lack of tolerance, and stops giving money to a bigot, a bigot who doesn't know Jesus from an asshole, not even to realize he is one, an asshole that is. You could change today, Jerry: be a Jesus instead of an asshole. I certainly pray you do. If not, please just go fuck yourself, and leave me and my families alone.

Irreverently Yours,
The Word Pimp
Fernando Quijano III

Black Thursday: Did Black Friday ‘Jump the Shark’ by Not Caring About Thanksgiving?

Editor’s note: this may contain offensive language to some. – BJ

Black Friday has officially jumped the shark. For those of you who might not be familiar with the phrase, it’s the moment when something that was once popular attempts to maintain or regain that popularity with a grand, attention-getting stunt that ends up failing miserably. It comes from 70s television hit Happy Days. In the show’s waning days, there was an episode where Fonzie, the main character of the show and icon of everything cool back then, jumps over a shark, while on water skis and wearing his leather jacket with a pair of swim trunks.

The show, having hit its creative peak, continued to offer storylines that were more grandiose than previous ones. It was that episode where most of the adults who were still watching Happy Days realized it had become a joke. The show went on for a few more years, but it was never the same. Now it’s Black Friday’s turn...

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Life with Mom: My Hero, My Heroin Addict

Artwork inspired by my mom & Mary Janes, her favorite candy

It’s odd having been raised by a mother who remembered being at Woodstock, but who didn’t remember where I, her six-week-old son, was that weekend. However, odd barely begins to explain my childhood and my mother.

Miriam Esther Figueroa, my mother, left home when she was 15. The story Mom told me was that her mother had caught her kissing a man on the fire escape during her Quinceañera, her 15th birthday party. She dragged my mother by her hair, through the window, back into the party, and proceeded to beat her in front of her guests. When the man who kissed her, her first kiss, offered to take her away from her abusive mother a few days later, my mom jumped at the chance.

She didn’t know this man. She didn’t know he was much older than she was or what he even did for a living. She definitely didn’t know he was a heroin addict. One evening, enticing her with the idea that it would make sex more interesting, he injected mom with a dose. Not very long after that, my mom found out she was expecting a child. The man soon abandoned my mother—pregnant, addicted to heroin.

She struggled during her pregnancy, eating at diners in New York and sneaking out when it came time to pay the bill, doing whatever it took to survive and maintain her habit. Carlos, my older brother, was born addicted to heroin and had to go through detox. My mother, frustrated that her child didn’t even have a crib—he slept in the bottom drawer of a dresser stuffed with a blanket—finally went to her mother, pleading with her to take her back. My grandmother turned her away, but offered to take Carlos. Having little choice, mom obliged.

I was not born addicted to heroin. When I came along, in the summer of 1969, my mother was happily married and clean. However, her criminal past eventually caught up with her. I was still an infant when my parents’ apartment was raided. The cops claimed to have found illegal drugs in the medicine cabinet. My father came home just as they were about to arrest Mom and I was about to be carted off by Child Protective Services. She was pregnant with my younger sister, Kyra. My dad claimed the drugs were his and let them arrest him, instead.

The loss of my father, convicted & sentenced to five years, sent my mother into a dark spiral. She began using, again. Kyra was also born addicted to heroin.

As you might imagine, mine was not the easiest of childhoods. I was a fairly aware child, and it didn’t take me long to realize there was something wrong with Mom. Everything came into focus, though, during fifth grade. We had a unit about illegal drugs. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had the all the information I needed to understand Mom, to help her.

I could hardly contain my excitement. I ran all the way home. I’d barely stepped through the door of our apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey, when I started telling Mom everything I’d learned, and that I finally understood what was wrong, and that I could help her stay off drugs. She looked at me, unmoved, and said, “What do you know? You don’t know shit! You kids are the reason I use drugs.”

I never mentioned her habit again, unprompted.

It wasn’t always bad. My mother was actually a very loving woman. She had an open door policy, willing to help anyone she could with their problems. After we moved to Baltimore in 1984, she did a lot of work helping to establish Baltimore’s Hispanic community. She helped families who arrived here find housing, employment and social services—whatever they needed to help make Baltimore home. She even translated for them and helped them get into English classes.

She was a strict mother, sometimes too strict. She put an emphasis on education and expected her children to achieve their potential, and she didn’t accept excuses. Most importantly, she believed in us. Mom always told us to believe in ourselves. She supported my desire to be a writer from a very early age, making me promise only that I would one day tell her story. But she also taught us that it didn’t matter what we became. “Fernando,” she told me once, “I don’t care if you’re a garbageman, as long as you’re a happy garbageman. As long as that’s what you want to do with your life, I’ll be proud of you.”

That’s perhaps what was oddest about my mother, that she could have such a profound understanding of life, but had to struggle so mightily to shake an addiction that wasn’t even really her choice. She did, eventually. Then, in 1989, she went through some training programs and got her first job working for the Census Bureau. We worked there together for a bit, in an office in Towson, Maryland. For the first time in my memory, I got to see my mother walk through life as if on a feather. She finally had purpose. She had drive.

Tragically, that all stopped when she was diagnosed with AIDS. She’d unknowingly had it for some time, and it was already at an advanced stage. She died of AIDS-related complications in 1991. She was 41 years old. AIDS would also take the life of her brother, Andres, whom she deeply regretted introducing to heroin. Uncle Andy, as I knew him, was the closest thing I had to a consistent father figure growing up. My little brother, Joe, who was not quite 16 when mom passed away, would end up fighting his own vicious struggle with addiction. He eventually contracted AIDS, as well. We lost him on the day after Christmas, 2006.

It was an incredibly odd feeling when I made it to my 42nd birthday. I was happy to have made it, but outliving my own mother bothered me. She had warned us that she didn’t expect to reach old age. Mom constantly told me the story of how, after Woodstock, she’d brought Janis Joplin over to our place, how Janice had cuddled, even fed me. My mother was shocked to hear of Janis’ death, just a little over a year later. She also realized that, considering they shared the same habit, she might not be too far behind.

When my sons each turned 13, I took them out for a fancy dinner. We discussed girls over appetizers. They each proclaimed to know much; I reinforced the need to treat women with dignity and respect, and to protect against starting a family before being ready, something my mother and I had both failed at. Over dinner, we discussed the perils of alcoholism and addiction. I told them my mother’s story, the grandmother they met only as infants, and I was honest about my own struggles with alcohol during my early teens. Over dessert, I let them know that they could become anything they dreamed of. But I also let them know that I’d always be proud of them, even if they became garbagemen, as long as they were happy doing it.

Originally published in Baltimore Fishbowl, November 16, 2011

Paradise Regained: How I Killed Bin Laden

It's just a feeling, a sense that something isn't... right. I'm strolling through El Yunque, the rainforest high in the mountains of northeastern Puerto Rico when it registers—an imbalance. Maybe eddies in the time space continuum. It's hard to explain. I'll try.

I come here to see the sky being born, to watch the clouds peel off the mountaintops and drift towards the sea. I come to listen to the higuaca birds croak and the coqui frogs chirp. In short, I come to be with God. It's not hard to feel a flaw on God's throne.

I'll admit that my first instinct's to avoid it. After all, I'm here to be cleansed, not to detail God's chair. But it's like ignoring trash because someone else left it behind—it's bad form. So I'm compelled to follow the disturbance to it's source.

The source is just some old jibaro, the Puerto Rican hillbillies who roam the mountains living off the land. I greet him graciously, and he offers me a cordial welcome and a box of mangoes, for five dollars. He's a dirty, old man, tall & gangly, wearing burlap clothes as tattered as his long beard and his wide sombrero. He's carrying a lot of weight, not the mangoes, but the gravity of thousands of dead souls.

"Viejo, you seem tired," I say, "¿Have you been to the fountain?" He bows his head a bit, shakes it slowly. "¡Bueno! Vamonos."

I lead him to the top of Las Minas, the waterfall the locals hike miles to for its waters' curative properties. We wade in. He's more cautious than I am, taking long but hesitant strides. "¿Lo sientes?" I ask, "You can feel it, can't you?"

I turn back to see his eyes widening wildly. "Si, but the current, la curriente—" His English is bad, his Spanish is worse, but he's right. I stop in the middle of the river and watch as he drifts closer to the edge.

"¿Ques pasa, viejo?" I shout at him, "¿Too much power?"

He's coming at me now, or at least he's trying to. He leaps out of the water towards me, but only ends up closer to Las Minas. "¡Help me!" He cries, finally, "I'm very rich. ¡I'll make you rich!"

"Look around you, viejo. I'm as rich as they come."

"¡Poder! ¡I can make you very powerful!" He has to shout now in order to be heard.

"And yet you're the one being pulled towards the fall." I laugh. He drifts.

"¡¿Do you know who I am?!" He's shouting at the top of his lungs, but it sounds like a whisper. I can't quite make out the rest, muffled as it is by the fury of the water as it cascades off the cliff. It doesn't matter.

All that matters is that he didn't belong in paradise, especially not selling mangoes. All that matters is that the energy of El Yunque is slowly being restored as the dark, old man anchored by the weight of thousands of murdered souls is being washed out to the sea. I can now continue on my pilgrimage comfortably. I can now go watch clouds being born, in peace.

☠

In Memoriam: Joseph Anthony Soto

My little brother, we called him Jojo, would have turned 46 today (May 1, 2020). Below is the obituary I wrote for him, followed by a poem/rap we collaborated on back in the 90s. Happy Birthday, Joe. You are profoundly missed.

Joseph Anthony Soto, Sr. of 1439 Rennert Road, Lumberton, North Carolina, was born in Jersey City, NJ, on May 1, 1974.He finally found peace on December 26, 2006, after a long battle with AIDS, at the age of 32. He was preceded in death by his mother, Miriam Esther Figueroa.

Joe gained the love and respect of almost everyone he met, and although he didn't always show it, he greatly apprecated all the love and care he received from the generous people of Lumberton.

Joe is survived by the love of his life, Sabrina Jones, his three children, Joseph Anthony Soto, Jr., Jada Miriam Soto and Jarren Evan Soto, his brothers, Carlos Carmona and Fernando Quijano III, his sister, Kyra Quijano, and a host of other friends and relatives. He will be sorely missed.

I've written three obituaries in my life, and that had to have been the saddest one so far, not just because he was my baby brother, not just because he died so young, nor just because he is the third member of my family (My mother died in 1991, my uncle Andy a few years later) to succumb to AIDS. Yes, it's sad because he leaves behind a wife and three young kids, but what makes it even sadder is the lost potential of a young man  whose power was never truly tapped.

Yes, there are lessons we can still take away from the loss of my baby brother. Always a "man," he would have us believe that he acquired HIV via unprotected sex, but as he was also a drug addict, could have almost as likely gotten it shooting up heroin. The irony that he died of the same disease that killed my mother and uncle, and that he likely started using drugs as a method of coping with my mother's death (Joe was only 16) doesn't elude me. And I'm sure we all need the occassional reminder that AIDS is still virulent here in the U.S.

Nevertheless, I will miss him and his stories. He had many to tell, all entertaining, many I will never hear. Below is a poem, a rap, that Jojo started, and that I helped to polish. It's neither the best example of Hip Hop nor poetry, but it reflected a moment in our lives when we used our grief to create something together. Something we were both proud of. After all, isn't good art merely an honest attempt at expressing our deepest emotions?

Rocked by Ages

You think you had it rough?
Well I think I had it rougher
Mommy was a dope fiend
Daddy was a puffer

Five years old and learning how to suffer
watching Mommy jump from one man to another
Daddy disappeared when I turned Seven 

He's in jail or hell... know he ain't in heaven

Nine years old, livin' off cheese & Kix 

Mommy sold the foodstamps so she could get her next fix

Eleven years old, first time I saw the needle in her arm 

Imagine my confusion, imagine my alarm

Just that day, I learned about drugs in school

They said it was for losers, they said it was for fools

Tryin' to get her to stop, I laid down some law

She just laughed in my face, said it was my fault

& I crashed

Thirteen years old, hitting rock bottom

The disadvantages of life, yeah I got 'em

so I hit the bottle and the joint to set me free

Started off slow, but soon nothing could stop me

'til I looked in the mirror, and all I saw was Mommy

Fifteen, time to quit while ahead

Before I was too deep, before I was dead

while at it, I'd get Mommy out too

Get her in rehab, start our lives brand new

But for Mommy things would never be the same

Cuz she'd caught that big disease with the itty bitty name

Sixteen years old, at the hospital to say goodbye

But I couldn't say shit, I just watched Mommy die

& I crashed...