TheLegendsLeague

(This might be the best piece I never finished… I stopped writing in when I got off the streetcar.)

This Life Goes Gone
by Bryan Espiritu

When this life goes,
The story will hold me like glorious robes
(Of) purple and golds..
Or hurtfully told whispers
That show mercy for my sister
(For) I control not what she knows.
But (I) sought our closure.

I bought my raggedy rage through a rumble.
- A Bumble (be.) with stingers like swigging rum bottles -
And fought my composure
With hands that were beat.
(Slander in droves).

A man of his feet
Mustn’t point with his toes
Or lose a soul in defeat.

I still breathe through my nose
When I know stress comes
Closer and near.

(To) a love once tangled,
In batters of flowers and beer,
I offer a new turned leaf for her patience,
A broach for her fears,
And toast my new lady
For keeping me here.

But when this goes
I will be buried in Black.Buried
In typed talk with a messenger text,
Dreaming mostly of being close with those
Whom remember me best.
But still wishing the brightest for those
Who shone a flicker too dull.

The fruits of our (friend)ships
are without a chipped hull.
Missed trips.
Slipped tongues.
Slim risks.
And some sons of bitch
Bitch types who talked shit about me like
They knew my kind.

I wish they knew my unkind days,
My confined space,
my rum diet wasted
On unquiet phases
Through strikes and calling out
Like umpires’ rage.

I dumb down for no one.
I’d rather know all.

(Id) Rather rise to suns shining
Til Summers
From Fall,
And the days where I was more comfortable
Being in dirt -
Than sleeping with sleazes
Who’d feed me dessert.

I don’t wear my wealth for you
To read my worth.
You may just learn it
When This Life Goes Gone.

In short
I will report a,
“So long”.

Good-bye waves
To the hoods
I’ve saved.
Or should
I say,
All the good
I’ve gave?
Or should
I think,
That just negates
My giving
If I say it’s all good
While I’m living?

I wear my heart on my sleeve
And my arm in a sling,
(I) stare at a coward to
Ponder a king,
And only Respect as much as I see.

What more would you expect
From me.
(?)

Welcome To TheLegendsLeague
Anything Less Would Be Everything Else.

So Much.
by Bryan Espiritu

a: I can do so much.
be.: You can only do so much.

a: I can only hurt you so much.
be.: You hurt me. And that’s enough.

First.
by Bryan Espiritu.

The 1st person I called was you
On 3 completely seperate phones.
2 of which were from out of town.
All 3 were towards your home.

The 1st was from my cell number,
Then Georgia, then up north.
But you’re not used to staying up,
Of course.
Off course, of course.

I stood outside the balcony
On snow beside the dogs,
While I looked inside the sliding doors;
Celebrations through the fog.

I thought I may not get through to you
So I called for another 10.
I called for another 15 minutes.
Then I called, and called again.

I didn’t want to bother you
So when I got through to your machine
I told you how I loved you
And how hard calling you had been.

I waited by my phone all night
Expecting to see your name.

And I waited by my phone all day
And expected to see your name.

Now the 1st has slowly closed
Towards a celebration’s past.
And the memory of our memories
Are the ones I’d like to last.

But I feel you won’t remember me
As you get older and time slows down.
And you see me less than you saw me then
When we see each other now.

And this evening was the 1st time
I got to talk with you again.
And ask you if you’d received
The New Year’s message I had sent.

And you said you hadn’t heard it
And I teared up and grit my teeth.
And knew you could never overstand
How that hurt from underneath.

Because I don’t know if you know
That I would have loved to start the year,
Just making sure your voice was
Both the last and First I’d hear.

Welcome To TheLegendsLeague

So, it’s that time of year again - New Years Eve! A time when everyone decides they need to reassess their lives and make some improvements and fine tunings in order to be a better person in the coming year and hopefully enjoy their lives a little bit more. We’ve all taken time at one point in our lives to create resolutions. A lot of times they’re ridiculous, too pricey, and not realistic, and most of the time they end up nearly entirely forgotten by the time Valentine’s Day comes around. My thought on this is that it’s not that we give up so much as it’s the fact that we’re not totally equipped with the advice and tools we need to really tackle some of these goals we set for ourselves every January 1st.

So I took it upon myself to take a second and Google Search some of the most popular New Years Resolutions, and I came across this list:

10. Get Organized
9. Help Others
8. Learn Something New
7. Get Out Of Debt
6. Quit Drinking
5. Enjoy Life More
4. Quit Smoking
3. Tame The Bulge
2. Fit In Fitness
1. Spend Time With Family & Friends

I thought these were great resolutions and thought I would give some of my insight and opinions on each of them to hopefully help you guys out with some of the ones, which I’m sure are on this list, that you’ve decided to implement into your lives for 2009!

Your support this year has been AMAZING, and 2008 wouldn’t have been the same without you. Thank you for all the love shown and for continuing to believe in my work, my goals, and what I strive to put forward with TheLegendsLeague.

Enjoy the videos and be safe tonight.

Love&Respect as usual.
be.

Welcome To TheLegendsLeague

TheLegendsLeague: NYE Resolutions
#10 Get Organized
be. (TheLegendsLeague) on “Getting Organized”

TheLegendsLeague: NYE Resolutions
#9 Help Others
be. (TheLegendsLeague) on “Helping Others”

TheLegendsLeague: NYE Resolutions
#8 Learn Something New
be. (TheLegendsLeague) on “Learning Something New”

TheLegendsLeague: NYE Resolutions
#7 Get Out Of Debt
be. (TheLegendsLeague) on “Getting Out Of Debt”

TheLegendsLeague: NYE Resolutions
#6 Quit Drinking
be. (TheLegendsLeague) on “Quitting Drinking”

TheLegendsLeague: NYE Resolutions
#5 Enjoy Life More
be. (TheLegendsLeague) on “Enjoying Life More”

TheLegendsLeague: NYE Resolutions
#4 Quit Smoking
be. (TheLegendsLeague) on “Quitting Smoking”

TheLegendsLeague: NYE Resolutions
#3 Tame The Bulge
be. (TheLegendsLeague) on “Taming The Bulge”

TheLegendsLeague: NYE Resolutions
#2 Fit In Fitness
be. (TheLegendsLeague) on “Fitting In Fitness”

TheLegendsLeague: NYE Resolutions
#1 Spend Time With Family & Friends
be. (TheLegendsLeague) on “Spending Time With Family & Friends”

Good luck with these guys..
Lemme know what your resolutions are and whether they’re on the Top Ten.

Til next year..

The Umph Degree
by Bryan Espiritu

I need her for 3 minutes.
Her half will need me too.
And we two, can have six.
like 3 hundred and 60 secs.
Revolving around time
like hands
circling in hugs;
murmuring the certain things of Love.

For ours
and ours.

Welcome To TheLegendsLeague

(photo by Stanley J. Forman)

Room With A View
by Bryan Espiritu

We climbed these steps
thought to surpass fast doors.
Up steeps, crept
through the last half floors.

We heaved deep breaths
pulled just passed one another.
He - was my best friend,
She - was my mate.

At last we had found
through the top floor land,
A sight that would gnaw
through the core of a man.

She pushed as we raced
to the edge of the roof.
She - was my mate.
He - fell to fate.

We stared as he,
scared,
tumbled down to the street.
Paired with his life
underneath our feet.

We chased through the stairwells.
3 turned to 2.
What we’d do
for a room
with a view.

Welcome To TheLegendsLeague

be.: There’s so much backwardness happening it’s crazy. It feels like it’s a test or it’s a testament to my loyal friends and acquaintances. I think it’s a bit of both.

cris: For real.

————————

So here I am in my living room, perusing facebook and wasting time - more of it. I’m wasting more of the time that I could and should be using to be a friend, if not just a face in places that are being populated by those who I call my ‘friends’. I have had a few conversations recently about that term, how it means so much to those who are aware that it really means so little these days. And if nothing else, I have come to a few conclusions.

I’ve been very sad lately, very depressed and depriving myself of various things that I know or have been known to cure these curses. These ‘things’ generally consist of one common denominator - the ones I love. You see, I have separation issues. And I have whatever the opposite of that is, is. I am always feeling like the people who ‘love’ me will somehow end up screwing me over and hurting me more than my enemies. Yes, this has been traced back to my father, my mother, my family basically. Shelter shelter, Helter Skelter - a scary place it was sometimes, I tell you. (But at least now things have improved). The opposite of this fear is that before someone can leave me, I tend to stray away out of a fear of our relationship/friendship/kinship going bad. Self destructive, right? Trust me, I know. It’s like I don’t want their last memories of me to be bad ones, so I let our relationships fade with good final thoughts. What really ends up happening is a sourness that is difficult to make sweet again.

As a result of these things, many of my actual friends have been shorted by me.

I don’t answer my phone.
I don’t make any calls.
I don’t respond to messages, texts, and emails.
I wouldn’t respond to my fucking name if you weren’t right in front of me staring me in the face, for god’s sake.

I know this is wrong. I know this is not how friends treat one another. But I also know that this, really and truly, is a result of how I’ve been feeling for the past 2 or 3 months.

Most days I’m on the streetcar home as soon as I get out of the office. I make a stop off at LiveStock to see my peoples and check the sales, and then head back to the west, back to the apartment, and back to this eerie silence that makes me cringe when it is broken. Here, I sit around watching my laptop screen - waiting for art to come to mind, designs to unfold in my face, and listening for a chirp on my blackberry.

I still check my statcounter to see how many hits my sites have.
- they’re declining.

I still check my facebook to see if I have add requests or new messages from real friends.
- I usually don’t.

And I still don’t respond to the phone when it rings and says “Royalz” or “Brock” or “Drex” or “Mikey” or “TT”, etc, etc, etc.

Why?
Because I need some silence.

(bullshit)

I need some time to reassess the statement that I made earlier.

“One grey hair can make you forget a full head of black”.

Someone sent me a message on facebook today saying something like, “Wait til you have 20 grey hairs”. Even Andy commented on the blog saying, “Getting some snow on the roof, oldman?” or something like that.

Point missed.

Quite honestly, in the hubbub of numbers and friend requests, add requests, hook up requests and my hatred for all-request video music shows, I have lost site of my great relationships. And they are plenty.

So I am requesting my life back. How’s that for something to accept?

I realize that we’re in the 21st century. (It just sounds uber futuristic, right?) But just because time passes, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t great things about the past that will just be the best ways to do things. It’s like the idea that no idea’s original. Look, no matter how you spice it up, the best way to make a wheel is to make sure it’s round. There’s a caveman somewhere in neanderthal heaven grunting his cheekbone hairs off at anyone trying to do otherwise. And while we do our damnedest to have the best online relationships and pay the most attention to each others profiles and updates and mini-feeds and pokes at the convenient lengths of the interweb and it’s ease, there’s one harsh truth that is glaring - we are all alone in our own personal spaces being friends at a distance that doesn’t even allow for words and sounds to be exchanged, let alone physical interaction - just voyeuristic big brothery and cyber fuckery.

I want human connections back. Anyone?

There are so many names in my Blackberry that I don’t recognize. There are so many “friends” on my facebook page that I’ve never actually met. And most importantly, there are so many actual friends of mine that have disappeared in the mirage of that title - “Friends”. I am guilty of letting this happen, and guilty of not regulating when I needed to. But in the midst of understanding my wrongdoings I am prepared to serve this sentence -

“The word ‘friend’ is a title that comes around after friendships are built”.
(quote me on that one)

We have grown so accustomed to seeing the word, “Friends”, that somehow having 1546 of them on facebook is some measure of popularity. Really, all this amounts to is you, or me, having the most people in our rooms.

Have you ever gone to a huge wedding reception and only knew a few people at your table? A couple of people mingle, some fuck in the bathroom, others get drunk at the open bar, and the majority just sit at their own tables conversing with the small group of people that they actually do know. At the end of the night, everyone parts ways and they never speak to one another again, until the next enormous wedding where they may or may not cross paths. This is what has become of the online haberdashery known as facebook. I really and truly do not need your trinkets and toys for sale. I need sustainable, respectable, enjoyable people to warm my soul with something hearty. It usually starts with a heart, and ends with a hug.

Sappy right? Well I’m a fucking Maple tree of emotions, so fuck off.

Don’t get me wrong now, if we slapped hands at a bar through a friend, talked business at Remix, or on the street, or at LiveStock, or laughed at the same joke at a friends party, go ahead and add me, because I’ll probably add you too. But if you’re gonna use me as a means to tag your photos, videos, products and notes to get exposure for the bullshit that you’re doing, then please lay off and find someone else to wipe your turd on.

And maybe this is where my frustration comes from. (epiphany anyone?)

I watched a video the other day with this girl talking about everyone becoming a rapper, a photographer, a this or that. It got boring rather quickly, but it held a trunksworth of truth in it. There are too many empty seats in the stands to have everyone up on stage, in my opinion. I heard 50 cent once say something to the effect of, “Everyone talks with a mouth of a critic rather than admiring with the eyes of a fan”. This, he says, is a result of everybody swearing they’re a rapper. And if they’re not a rapper, their man is nice on the mic. I nod my head in whole to this quote.

It seems like everyone on my fucking friends list claims to be involved in one of the following fields of work:

Rappers
Designers
DJs
Clothing Line’rs
Barbers
Promoters
Photographers
and worst worst worst of all,
Bloggers whose content is driven by the blogs of others.
ie. stealing content from Inqmnd, Kanye, NahRight, OVO, HypeBeast, etc, etc.
CHECK YOURSELVES!

But let’s set something straight very quickly. If you are NOT getting paid doing any of the above mentioned things, you fall under ONE category in my eyes:

Hobbyists.

You do those things as a HOBBY, and not as a career. So stop fooling yourself, your friends, and throwing your hobby on unsuspecting facebookers. It’s disturbing, and in short, quite annoying.

I am not trying to categorize myself in the field of “HATERS” by any means. I understand the premise of “doing you”, and letting people “do them”. But it’s hard for me to “do my work” when I get 100 bullshit messages a day from people who are “doing bullshit”.

It is very possible to be doing these things on a hobby level to get yourselves up to a professional level. We all go through it, and I’m not trying to bash a person’s hustle. I mentor young artists and designers, so slow yourselves down on trying to call me out. Hell, I just bought a camera that I don’t know how to use, in hopes of learning to be as sick with it as some of my peers. But I will never claim the ranks of a photographer until my work puts me in a place where the photographers that I respect within my circle of acquaintances and friends consider me as such. And I will definitely not let that title precede my talents.

But I digress.

It seems that the people who have flooded the pools water with piss have spoiled my afternoon hopes of letting my feet soak.

All I really need from this point forward is honesty, loyalty, integrity, and genuine people in my life. I am closing in on a few years to 30, and I have admitted to the feeling of getting old. But I will not succumb to the feeling of becoming irrelevant. The work that I do to express myself has thankfully turned into a sustainable way for me to make a living. I am a designer, an artist, and I write my heart out on my blog. But before all of this, I was a friend to many who have waited for me to continue to pursue this career and taken a back burner to my hustle.

While climbing my personal and professional ladders I have met a large number of snakes, whose venom is both non-toxic and barely worth me wiping the surface off with. I see them, I acknowledge them, and I let their skin shed accordingly. But I haven’t the time to slay a serpent with a staff that I could use for standing. There is an importance that I place in friendships that goes beyond popularity and posing. It’s about caring for one another, the enjoyment of shared company, and knowing when there is a greater gratification in watching your people eat in full than satisfying your own hunger.

I am thankful for those who have decided that I am worth splitting the ration.

“The percentage that don’t understand is higher than the percentage that do.
Check yourself, what percentage is you?”

Welcome To TheLegendsLeague

15 Years ago today, “3 days” turned into 2 weeks of growing up too fast, 8 boys, 8 girls, no shoelaces, no belts, no standing at the table, tapped phone calls, abuse, growth, self help, council, love, fear, strapped to mattresses, no daylight, no physical contact, a young girl, younger than my daughter, who dreamed of burning herself to death, and a level of understanding of this world that is irreplaceable for me now, and me then, at 12 years old.

I met Aaron. And Billy. And Jorge. And Heather. And Charlene. And all the others. And I hope that they have taken the control over their lives that they deserve to have. We fucking deserve this all. We deserve it. You fucking hear me?

When I say that this world is not for me, maybe I mean that my world is just not for you to understand.

Today also marks the anniversary of the death of my Auntie Remy.
We Love & Miss You.

This track speaks volumes on where my head is at.

Take it in…
No codes here.

What I’m searching for,
to tell it straight,
I’m trying to build a wall.
Walking by myself
down avenues
that reek of time to kill.
If you see me
keep going
be a pass by waver.
Build me up, bring me down,
just leave me out,
you name dropper.
Stop trying to catch my eye,
I see you good,
you forced faker.
Just make it easy,
You’re my enemy,
you fast talker.

Change, change, change, change.
I want to get up out of my skin.
Tell you what,
if I can shake it
I’m ‘a make this
something worth dreaming of…

Welcome To TheLegendsLeague
.the only thing that matters in only a matter of years.

What’s The Buzz Code
A short story by Bryan Espiritu

Welcome To The Legends League