Editor’s Note: One of the main goals for our website is to give the reader an inside look at California’s art scene from the ground up. We want street culture mixed with the decadence that only the sunshine state can offer. The world’s view of California is only through the lens of Hollywood. It’s hard to capture the soul of 40 million people with one snapshot. A lot of the whole story gets left untold. Creating a platform for free expression of local artists to contribute is paramount in our mission. “A Local Artist Story” will be an ongoing column covering different California cities and different mediums. This edition will be San Diego’s poets. Myself, Serena, and Jade are everyday people. All three of us bring a different style to the table. Serena is passionate about poetry in the purest form. I met her at a dinner party where I didn’t know too many people and I had too much to drink. From what I remember of that night it was a pleasant conversation and she expressed interest in the site. Serena was heavily involved in the art scene during her college years and currently has her own blog which you can see at the end of the page. When I read “friends” it was like drinking a warm cup of coffee after dinner. I know from experience that your chosen family is the one that you really reach to in hard times. “Friends” left me feeling good with a smile on my face. Jade on the other hand is a wild horse. Her story is a mystery to me. We met on social media which is becoming the new norm. I couldn’t tell if she was a model, poet, skater, or entrepreneur. I still can’t put my finger on it if I am going to be honest. Jade is a straight shooter and those are the kind of people we are looking for here. Her poem is short but powerful, it made me mad at how simple and complex it is at the same time. We met at a pop up shop for our friends at The SD Collective, Tracy introduced us. The one thing I can say about both Jade and Serena is that I can tell it has taken a lot of work to get where they are at now. I see a lot of little tricks that they use that comes from dedication as well as trial and error. Our conflicting subject matter shows the light, dark, and everything in between. You will get each writer’s perspective in their separate testimony.
The following is Jade Carlson’s testimony.
I have to be honest…
When J-Walk asked me to write about why I write poetry, my heart skipped a couple of beats. It wasn’t until recently that others started calling me a writer and I honestly started taking it seriously. I’m still not sure that I even do take it that seriously, it’s just something that I enjoy doing and others seem to really like what I have to write. People keep encouraging me to share. That, in itself, has been an incredible journey from feeling vulnerable, which was something I had avoided for a while. I write because I have to get these thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc., out of me. I have to let them run wild and be free to find a path of their own and not let them make homes in my bones. I’ve always thought that I was my own worst enemy: pushing myself to these limits, getting so close to the edge, and always feeling as if I had nothing to lose. The older I get and the more I look back on my writings, I see the pieces of my journey as a constellation of what I have become. Writing keeps me in a free-flowing motion of adapting and evolving. I’m constantly pushing myself, so that I can have these experiences that help me put these words on pages, and so that I always feel challenged to never settle for mediocre or boring.
Begin Again
There was a luminous shadow casting over me, the catacombs of the stardust that filled my bones began to break apart and then I came to the realization that I was going back to the start.
Written by J-Walk
Writing was an outlet for me when I had nowhere else to turn. The universe has given me a few tough shakes in life, lets just say i’ve been to a lot more funerals than weddings. I’ve a lot of people I love incarcerated. I’ve been kicked in the teeth literally and figuratively. I kept a journal when I was a kid and have read religiously from my formative years till now. I love books. I love classic literature. That being said my first introduction to poetry was actually Hip-Hop music. The Beastie Boys “Intergalactic” music video changed my life. I love Hip-Hop because the song writing style can fit into any genre. That developed into a love of rock music that used rap style poetry elements. My two biggest influences are Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Zach De La Rocha for Rage Against the Machine. Anthony shares his deepest secrets while using symbolism, I love giving the reader just enough to figure the meaning out but not enough to be sure. In my my poem I use “The Man in Black” as an all encompassing representation of all my demons which I do not have enough time to list off. It’s also an ode to Johnny Cash. Zach gave me a brown angry kid with an afro to look up to during my teenage years. He wore his heart on his sleeve, pushed lyrical limits in terms of provocativeness, and really stood for something that he believed in. My favorite Hip Hop lyricists are KRS-One, Vinny Paz, Missy Elliot, Earl Sweatshirt, Method Man, Nas, Mos Def, and too many more to name.
I started rapping in high school just fooling around with my friends after we had too much cheap beer (probably keystone). I bar none, without hesitation will say I was the worst. Like anything the more I practiced the better I became. Along the way I began to realized that it relaxed me and calmed a once restless mind. I got through many tough times in my life by voicing my frustration with whoever or whatever on a piece of paper rather than taking it out on anyone else. When I came to rapping the thing I didn’t understand in the early years was the rhymes don’t matter; the delivery, confidence, and ability to stay on beat matter. If you can add quality puns, alliteration, onomatopoeias, symbols, while actually rhyming now we’re talking. Through the years I met more musicians and more opportunities arose. I recorded with a few djs that don’t dj any more. Rappers that I honestly can’t even remember their names. So many jam sessions. These were some of the best times of my life, making music helped my soul heal after losing my father. I’ve done it off and on for about 10 years and I don’t see an end. I have alot of material out there but its scattered on the internet and on old technology. Where those tapes are who knows. We never recorded ourselves to get likes. We just wanted to make music that we would enjoy listening too. I have a binder in my closet that looks like a handwritten version of the communist manifesto. (To any of my old musician friends that may be reading this, yea I still have the binder). It’s full of old poems, verses, hooks, prewrites, first versions, short stories, and rambling garbage. I put so much time into that thing the last ten years it’s exhausting to look at. As you get older you lose a lot of free time you took for granted when you were younger. I’ve taken the last couple of years off honestly because my career took center stage. Only recently I’ve realized that whole time my main focus should have been my mental and physical health. Once I started writing again a lot of the stress melted away with every keystroke on my laptop. I even started making music again with my buddies and a bunch of those old songs are still etched on the inside of my skull. At the nuts and bolts of it poems are collections of letters, I view it as a word game. I love creating writing patterns using every tool I have up my sleeve.
The poem is called “Dark Side of the Moon and Mushrooms” because I wrote this after taking Mushrooms and listening to Pink Floyd albums with my old roommates years ago. The piece has dark subject matter but it talks about my whole journey and that feeling of helplessness during chaos. When I think about it now we were all just kids. The time we spent in that home will always be special to all of us because we so innocent in our intentions but foolish in our actions. Every single one of them was a musician, they never snickered when I wanted to join in even though I was a beginner. The house was enormous with six rooms and seven tenants. There was always someone to jam with. They showed me how to play a jembe, power chords on the guitar, and the one known as “Big Guy” even taught me how to play a few drum rolls. Learning to play the drums was my biggest help, it changed the way I looked at music and how I write poetry. I learned rhythm, how to roll, and create patterns with letters.It’s almost like they showed me a side of myself that I was never able to reveal because I didn’t have an outlet. These tools improved my grasp on music as a whole and flipped my understanding upside down. This one is for Raab Himself and the rest of the Acoma Boys. I hope you like it.
Dark Side of the Moon and Mushrooms. I've come so close to quitting' so making times it's sickenin', it's like a waste of time making rhymes Truth is it takes time Our one restriction. If you're down I can be uplifting like your last sunset pink, orange, & crimson My head is a storage While this heart is a prison My eyes are blindfolded and it's blocking my vision hands are tied when the man in black arrives “SON IT'S OUR TIME TO RIDE!” "LETS GO TO THE DESSERT LETS TO LOSE OUR MINDS!" Are we just the victims of these sour times? Is the government the deaf-dumb leading the blind? & IM! TRYING! to make what's left right! back in the day this kid never thought twice on to the next life on to the next vice sad some people had so to see the light just to pay the price!
Written by Serena Stuvé
I write poetry because it forces me to sit with the nakedness of my thoughts and bathe in the discomfort of my unadulterated truths.
There is no escaping, no hiding.
When I write, I feel exposed.
I am finally uncloaked from the lies I tell myself daily. Lies about who I am, the life that I am living, and the different acts that I put on for the world— the acts that we all put on. The ones that say “everything is fine,” “life is good,” and that we are “always happy.” Sadly we all know that’s bullshit.
Most, if not all of our lives are spent acting, or “pretending”. Perhaps it is because “pretending” makes life more palatable. It’s safer to hide behind the false version of ourselves rather than acknowledge who we truly are at our very core: vulnerable beings whom are deeply affected by life’s joys and tragedies.
Poetry sheds light on the human experience and exposes us for who we are at various stages in our lives. It gives meaning to our lived realities that are exhilarating, gritty, and heart-wrenching. It is these moments that shake the very foundations of our beings, and remind us that we are truly alive. Rather than masking our shame, our fears of being hurt, our fears of being rejected, abandoned, poetry embraces these imperfections. For we will never know love and happiness, if we never know loss and pain. The duality of our experiences provide a framework through which we can better understand our narratives, and our context in this crazy, little thing called life; Our words give them greater strength, power, and meaning.
Sarah Kay and Rupi Kaur are both feminist poets who inspire my passion. Sarah Kay is a spoken word artist who I began to listen to in college when I participated in the “Vagina Monologues,” which is a play written by Eve Ensler that explores body image, hook-up culture, sexual consent, and other topics. Both Rupi and Sarah are extremely unique in their styles because they tell it like it is. Neither shies away from the heaviness to which they write because that would detract from reality: the reality that although the objectification of women in society is brutal, it has been normalized by patriarchal society. Rupi and Sarah also delve into the heartbreak that they face not only as women, but as women of color, which is something that resonates with me very deeply. I find meaning in their work mainly because we share a common outlook life, love, relationships, and self. Other inspirations include Brené Brown, a researcher who studies vulnerability, and Bell Hooks. She is an American author, feminist, and social activist.
Writing poetry makes me feel invigorated, powerful, and very much alive. It is one of the most liberating things to be able to write and express our deepest emotions that sometimes even we weren’t aware of ourselves, before we wrote and crafted them into existence.
My inspiration for the poem “Friends,” very much stems from my childhood upbringing through the Harry Potter books. The series had a great impact on me because I read it with my grandmother, who raised me, and passed away in my college years. What I find interesting, too, is that although Harry Potter is widely considered to be a children’s series, in reality it is not. The pages of its books are filled with allegories that explore the difficult topics of love, loss, friendship, while exploring the dark and light side of human nature. Harry Potter, in many ways, helped me to endure some of the most difficult times in my life, reminding me that we as humans are truly resilient if we choose to be. Friends are our chosen family, they are central to our identity and our journey throughout life. They hold up the mirrors that show us who we really are. For that we must be grateful.
Friends Friends. Surround yourself in them, The ones who call. Late at night When you’ve texted them, You’re heart-broken. Good friends, not just any. The ones who dress your 4am wounds With whiskey. And Wine. And Laughter. And Chocolate. The ones who remind you what it feels like to be alive, When you’ve forgotten. In that moment, Good friends wipe your tears. Hold a mirror to your face, And remind you. How Beautiful And Strong, You Are. That you are so much more Than wasting precious tears Over someone who does not value Your Existence. Or Your Time. Or Your Worth. Do not let the Muggles get you down. In dark times, Friends remind you; That one must never forget To turn on the light.
Written by J-Walk, Serena Stuvé, & Jade Carlson
Illustrations by J-Walk
