The Legends League

I Can’t Work Tonight
by Bryan Espiritu.
(I wrote this this morning while on my way home from LiveStock. It is a true recollection of one of my reoccuring bouts with schizophrenia while I was in high school. Thanks for reading.)

——————————–

Lori had left me and by the time I could make it down the gank, beiged hallway and down the stairs I had already soaked my chin hairs sparse with tears. Careful not to slip, I walked down the twenty-odd steps with grease between the treads of my work boots and pushed through the double emergency doors with the panes of plastic blinds covering them. Once they shut behind me there was no re-entering.

On my hands was blood, from tips to wrists and the pain of my chest was stringing my teeth. I couldn’t bare to look at them any longer. I walked quickly toward the tram stop, hoping one would be available for me to just hop onto and hide into, but there were none. Not a one. Not a soul could know how it felt that afternoon to see two children and a grown man devilishly demonize the bus towards the mall. And that poor woman with her ankles leaking blood from how tightly the straps had been wired around her lower leg - …

I am not dreaming, if dreams are built of clouds and lightly things. This is not a nightly scare or ‘mare’ since the lights from sunshine brings me glows. I have fell much further below. But today is the hello to my sanity’s goodbye, and I am sorry, I cannot work my shift tonight.

I rushed through the back greens and through the track to get to the hole in the fence on my way to work. I must have fucked 2 or 3 times that morning knowing how feisty I was those days. Mostly men of my age at that point would be gleaming to have had these sprees. Not me. Not under these circumstances or with these pills. Then, almost towards the pole that I would circle to get to the bus shelter, I looked and there my hands were covered red. My breathing shortened and my vision lengthened then closed like in old horror films. My hearing was dulled, my beating chest was heaving for breath. My hands were full. And the stench had me reeling. I boarded the bus and the demons came.

And so my eyes have never been the same.

——————————–

Welcome To TheLegendsLeague

One of the most open conversations I’ve had in a very long time happened last night with my homegirl cris. This is the dialogue exactly as it happened.

be:
I wish my parents had homes I could move into man.
I wish.

cris:
??

be:
So I could persue my shit properly.
I can’t afford my dreams and my rent and my bills.

cris:
I feel you.

be:
My mom lives with my cousins and their fam and my pops lives in someone’s basement.

cris:
I don’t know what to say, that just crushed me.

be:
??
Why

cris:
I believe you’ll never stop.

be:
I probably won’t.

cris:
I know
I don’t want you to either.

be:
I’m not sure what to do with this writing thing though.
I’m really scared…
about dying now that I don’t want to be dead.

When you’re suicidal you’re pretty fearless.
Because the end of your life would actually be quite fulfilling.
Now that I feel more recognition for my life I’m worried that I’ll die before I can do what needs to be done.

Don’t get me wrong, because this isn’t the romanticized version of thinking I’ll die young like all the greats. It’s the fear that time is actually against me.

I design clothing to fulfill a few aspects of my creative vision - as a designer and as someone who enjoys some of the fair vanities that come with making some money. But I also do it because I know it will provide me with money. Money to continue to write, and at some point, live without the burden of someone else’s clock.

cris:
You really have that fear? Do you still have those thoughts?
There is a reason you’re still here.
Many I’m sure of it.

be:
When the time comes that designing has paid me enough that I can live to write - I’m finished.
And I’ll feel my purpose has been served.

cris:
Look how far you’ve come with LL and Ideall as a whole.
Your determination and focus.
So many people feel you.

be:
But because there are steps to take - so many of them - before this all happens, I’m worried that I’ll pass before I can do what I’ve always dreamt of doing. And that’s writing this book.

cris:
I have no doubt in my mind that people will react the same to your writing.

Well why do you feel like that? Is it because you were suicidal? Or because you still are?
What is it in you that makes you feel that way?

be:
I’ve always felt like this.
I never thought I’d live passed my early 20’s.

cris:
I don’t think you’re done.
No where near done.

be:
I’m definitely not done. I’ll know when I am.
And it has everything to do with this book.

But I’m not suggesting that I’m suicidal and thinking of taking my own life.
I’m sure my life will just take itself away unannounced.

We’ll just have to see I guess.
…

thanks cris.

Nothing quite echoes my sentiment about never letting ya’LL down like J-Ivy’s verse on Kanye’s College Dropout.

We are all here for a reason on a particular path
You don’t need a curriculum to know that you are part of the math
Cats think I’m delirious, but I’m so damn serious
That’s why I expose my soul to the globe, the world

So I guess I’m one of a kind in a full house
Cuz whenever I open my heart, my soul, or my mouth
A touch of God reigns out…

Lately I’ve been going back into my archives of writing and poetry to find inspiration. I hope it means something to those of you who take the time to read it.

Here’s a semi-old story I wrote a little while ago…

What’s The Buzz Code

Welcome To The Legends League

The “It’s About Fucking Time” Obama tees will be available at LiveStock Toronto TOMORROW and are available Online at our shop.

One of my favorite poems I’ve ever written is featured and has been featured on the myspace page of a LONG time LegendsLeague supporter, my homegirl Nadia. She is a talented visual artist, has an impeccable taste for dope music, and shows nothing but love for the brands and people she supports.

I don’t exactly know why it’s on her page. I don’t know what she took from the piece that made her post it, or how she feels about the poem, but it’s there. And it’s a nice reminder to me of what that myspace page did for people when it was at it’s peak. I’ll never get that time back. That moment in TheLegendsLeague’s history and life was a very, very precious time, and I loved it very much.

I wish some of you only knew.

Here’s the piece.
Thanks Nadia. For always showing me and (*LL) love.

The wind blew twice,
one time it threw
my wrongside right,
and my life in two.
Between these scenes,
my neck cut crew,
then seen through seams
how much I grew.
To believe this dream
and from where they flew,
but more to fuse
what I’d confused.
I cleansed my sheets
and bleached them new,
and now I sleep…
for you.

- Be. (Legends League)

They say you don’t know what you got til it’s
gone.

Love&Respect as usual.
be.

For some, this is new. For others it will be a reminder.
Thanks for paying attention as much as you all have.
Love&Above.

be.

Re-Occur

So I stomped my bed so hard that my back lifted from the mattress and my shoulders pressed into the pillows underneath me; my eyes squeezing out tears and my jaw stretching open til the veins in my neck were pressing out of the skin like a wire hanger creases your undershirts. I could feel the spit attach from my lower to upper teeth and would grunt a heap of relief as soon as I could surpass the panting from the exhaustion.

You swear this is a game.

My nails long and jagged from being shottily cut 2 months prior rip through the skin on my thighs, pinking the skin then stinging.. then feeling wet.. not with blood, but whatever it is that yellows a scar to a crusted scab when it does.. and then stinging.

Next door i can hear my ’sister’ singing off key and the television way too loud in my dad’s room. My mom is in her room probably sleeping underneath a book she’s tired of reading. I’m face deep in a pillow screaming with a scar across my cheek fresh enough to attach itself to the sheets if I stick around for too long. I’m tired of hearing the same old song but she’ll keep going until the phone rings.

I drink 8 oz of rum, pop a few pain killers, a few sleeping pills, and some zoloft before walking myself backwards up the wall; my bare feet pulling the bed sheet right off and my neck against the ‘hate’ piece covering the holes I had punched through the walls over the years. I smash my head against the wood panel but nobody hears. I do it over. and over. hoping for brain damage, hoping for a forgetful wake up into 1992 before this all came to an explosive crumble. We applauded ourselves so goddamn much that the avalanche was bound to come tumbling down.

I yell and hear echoes,
never a response.

I am not you and for that i am grateful.
You are not me and should never wish for it.

In my closet is the skeleton for success - a writing inside the inside panel of the sliding door that used to be there, scribed the crying, lying with a lampshade, a life of hiding from a man who never made me learn how to become a man.

Hate and love are so close they cuddle.

As I die to go to sleep, screamed in sheets, what I breathe just muffles and I hear my dad react to something funny that Howie Mandel just said. I prop my head up, now on my stomach going sideways along the bed like kanye, me, and my boy thomas know how to fit 3 by the head and 3 by the leg. The sheet tangles my left ankle and I’m at such an angle that if i try to kick it off it’d probably get worse. Now I’m searching for the plastic 10-12oz cup with the flowers on it that’s half full once again with something that’s about to make me feel like daisies.

(In this age, the pot is broken and hip-hop is dead. So they say. In reality I was raised not on it, but by it. Given my own biases I drove past the bullshit quick and became a listener.)

Again, I hear, ’sister’ but now she yells my name, followed by, “Phone”.
I clear my throat and answer it..

“hello?”

You talk so much about yourself that you barely notice I’ve put a wire hanger in the bottom of my eyelid and am pulling until this yanking dream stops keeping my eyes glued closed.

deep.
deep.
deep breath through the nose.

Now wipe that pain off your face fucker, it’s just about time for the show.

Welcome To The Legends League

WithDrawal

I’m coping still
With withdrawal
But I’m enthrawled
with how dope this feels.

And all of my trips
Maybe not inline..
Shit,
If it makes me just as shaky as
A spokeless wheel..
Let’s hope this heals.

Today is just another weighed scale swayed ways.
From blacks to the white light glow
Through the greys.
I flow with the waves.

And know
if I graded what I’ve done
Its all A’s.
Canadians say,

“We’re strong and we’re free”.
While the rockets glare red,
We’re tryina shoot for stars above the stripes of the feds.
Crop cops…

From the image of our lives.
You get the picture.
To them we are just:
(Enter word here)

First there was the interum scare -
“If I take it from my life
Will the pendulum care?”

I am steady swinging
With my legs ready
Kicking any habits
That have damaged
Anything that’s worth giving of myself.

And now the focus is my health.
Hell if I aint happy with the wages of my wealth.

My bank account is hefty as the
Packaging of trash cans.
And my feelings are as open as the acting of a masked man -
After the curtain falls last and
All is left is the walk home briskly.

I talk thoughts like their not
at all costs risky.

And god saw everything
that I saw within me.
So I don’t pray nightly.
I just say whattup
and tip my hat down politely.

“Hello, sir.”

I know I am just closer
To building things
The homies and my girl
Can raise a toast for.

From here here its all cheers
‘Cause I have clapped every aspect of all fears.

And I have now fully shifted self through all gears.

The pace might brake.
But won’t stop.

The pain this takes
Puts the “H” through the “ace”.
And not many will look
that “acHe” in the face
for the long term.

Maybe I am in the wrong land.
Bad plans misdirected like a wrong turn.
Bad hands that I’ve never tried to fold.

Put your hands together and breathe.

He is cold like a slight sick sniffle.
The light might flicker,
The chances of the flame going out
are much thinner
than an alley cats whisker.

So why submit to your figure for?
A dope excuse to use a metaphor.

I’ve gone sober for a plethora of reasons,
But mostly so that I could just breathe.

Believe me.

- be.