Ellison.

"I am an invisible man.

No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination - indeed, everything and anything except me." .



I am an invisible man. And I'm out of cup noodles.

Dawn.

It has been rather grey lately; ominous grey clouds loom over the hills obscuring the snow-topped peaks, globs of brown and black slush blanket the grass, and vicious, eager puddles await the soles of poor unsuspecting victims as they step out of their fancy automobiles. Yet still, I have found my days to be illuminated with brief but caressing sunlight, streaming through the windowsills and gently pouring onto the various surfaces of marble and wood, onto the blank canvases of my skin. The sedentary flora around my house enthralls my heart and enhances my senses, extenuating the stresses and worries of the outside world while at the same time satiating my mind to the brim. Moments pass and the sunlight fades, but it's warmth remains still.


"It's always darkest before the dawn."

Deja Vu.

I was able to talk a bit with a friend of mine yesterday outside of class. She asked me, "Would you wait for her?"

My answer was "Yes."

"That's sweet," she said.






All over again.

Pick Me Apart.

For decades my people were oppressed by the
sights of a war-torn country unable to speak their minds
or express their rights under this iron fist that we call
communism so twenty-eight years ago my parents
hopped on a boat set adrift in the waves not knowing
where they would go or where they would end but
they knew that they had to take the chance that they were
given and they risked their life to give me mine
and sacrificed everything just so I could have something
and for sixteen years they raised me right but
still I feel trapped like a lab rat caught in
this maze that I thought was love because
from the day we first met I had so much faith
to keep moving on no matter what trying desperately
to find the prize but in the end my greed made
me blind and I couldn't see that you were treating
me like shit and that you never cared and
that you never shared your love it was all
a charade for you to get what you want
by any means necessary even if it meant
breaking my heart but you never felt regret or remorse
as you picked me apart so now we're not friends and
I had to learn to depend on only me and no one
else because when you give your heart that means you
lose yourself but I have been found by the Lord at last
This isn't a rap, this is my soul on blast.

Mad World.

I woke up today at 6:38 A.M. By 6:58 A.M. I had finished showering. I left my house at 7:09 A.M. and stepped foot inside of my classroom at 7:15 A.M.

Another hour of language, followed by an hour with the Blueberry. Little more than an hour later, I received a surprise "hello" from a girl I used to know. I am to talk to her tonight, although what that will accomplish is still unclear.

Two hours of western philosophy. I hear her bright voice from behind my seat, but now I cannot turn around. I take out my black notebook and begin to write. A compound of sorrow and frustration fuels me to write these lyrical bombs with which I will attack. No more words are exchanged, although if it were possible, I would let her know that I still do care, truly.

More of my daily routine. I dropped my extra credit into the filled basket and walked out the door. Familiar faces surround me as I wait for nothing. I played footsies with a friend as another threw balls of clay at my head. A lovely yet forbidden companion comes along with her significant other. I see the girl with the new phone and ask her if I could see it. Bodies all around me, coming and going.

I decided to walk home rather than to wait. As I walked, I felt a presence surrounding me. I whirled around, multiple times, to see nothing. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a young boy of white walk slowly towards me. I look up and he is gone. I am surrounded by images of the invisible, figments of my imagation, fragments of my life that have come and gone. It is the ungraspable phantom.

I turned the corner to enter these familiar streets, "my hood". I am greeted with the sight of an ambulance parked outside one of the houses. Slowly I glided past and out of courtesy, I tried not to look, yet my curiosity won and I took furtive glances. I willed myself to walk to the end of the street, to my house. I opened the mailbox, took out the mail, picked up the newspaper and entered my house. Instantly I set everything down and was lured to the piano room, a room which my heart and soul resides in. I stare blankly out the window at the scene; a limp body was lifted onto the stretcher and heaved into the ambulance. It began to drive off, but stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. The driver went through her papers, apparently found what she was looking for, and continued to drive away. It turns the corner and disappears from view.

My world is spinning. Our tragedy has cut me deep, yet I cannot feel any blood. I fear I may have fallen for another, one which I should not even think about falling for, one which won't work out. I pray that this is just a phase. Old friends begin to annoy me and new ones just don't cut it anymore. Tonight, a group of friends are coming over to my house. Party it up. I am looking forward to it, although this feeling will simply not leave. Perhaps I can drink it all away.




Perhaps I can dream it all away.

Hard-Knock Life

I'm slippin', but I'm still here.

Out of the hundreds, maybe even thousands of people I know, I still feel as if none of them truly understand me. But listening to my favorite music artists, people who I have never met in my life and would be lucky to make acquaintance with, I feel as if all of them understand me, in such a way that is not humanly possible, that they understand me so much that words do not even need to be spoken if we were to be in the same room together. Why is it that total strangers seem, to me, like old friends?

Poverty, education, friendships, love. I am unemployed, living off the welfare that is the presence of those around me. Uneducated in the ways of social interaction, my friendships lie in bad company and I have not experienced the meaning of true, requited love. Through these tough times, music is what keeps me going, and I feel as if the people who make it are the only ones who truly get it. The ones who have faced adversity on such a scale that I cannot even become to imagine, and have defeated it to get where they are today, spittin' their soul on the mic for people like me to hear. These are my kind of people.

Perhaps no one will ever truly understand the love that I have. The love that I possess for my family, my friends, for music and food, for football games in HD and late-night conversations, for vacations long-gone and memories of happier days, for feeling and blinking and breathing. A love that runs so deep throughout my veins that I cannot even begin to describe it, so deep that I cannot say what it is, only how much I will miss it if it ever went away.

Someday, someone will share this with me. Until then, it's just a hard-knock life.

Half-Full

Dear World,

From now until whenever, this blog will be a place for me to put down my thoughts and feelings. My domain. My sanctuary. Mine and mine alone.

So what is mkyEND? What does it mean? Well, it traces back to the final line of Lupe Fiasco's song "Fighters", in which he says "Now we got just one more to go, l-u-p END. Lupe revealed in an interview that his next album will be his last album, hence "one more to go". He expressed his opinions on the state of hip-hop, stating that it was becoming too watered down, too meaningless, that it was dead. The "l-u-p" is a reference to the 8-bit gaming era of the original Nintendo Entertainment System and Ataris, in which every time you completed the game, a prompt would appear, asking you to input three letters or initials. I would probably enter in "m-k-y" if I got a high score, so people would know that it was me. And the "END"? Well, that's self explanatory; Lupe felt just like that. He came into the hip-hop game, took his best shots, and did all that he could. His deed was done, and it truly was the end.

Why did I choose mky END as my username? It first started out as an AIM SN. At the time, I was very troubled and depressed, and "Fighters" was one of my favorite songs. I listened to it over and over and memorized every word as if I wrote it myself. I put a twist on Lupe's line and made it into my own, reasoning that my very own social life has died. I felt alone, isolated. I had no one to turn to, no one I could trust, no one I could love. I began to drink, and started to get moody, even yelling at my parents. There was not much meaning to life anymore.

In the eight months from then until now, much has changed. My insight on life has changed. I came to realize that everything comes to an end, but with that comes new beginnings. I gradually became wiser, making note of each mistake I've made, absorbing every lecture I've receieved, taking the words of my friends and family to heart. Still, there is a lot to be fixed. I'm not perfect. I'm only human. But I've realized that the glass is half-full, not half-empty...and that's a start.

"I can see things more clearly, that's why they fear me."

-Nasir Jones