Poetry, Essays, Short Stories & Platforms

Black Panther is Marvel’s first Oscar-winning film. Patrick A. Howell explores the impact of Black Panther on our history and culture, global imagination, establishing the new imagination and Afro form & beyond the award recognition.

Last son of the Harlem Renaissance opens up about being a bestselling author and Civil Rights thinker and leader. 

Maya Angelou. Amiri Baraka. Tupac Amaru Shakur.  Allen Ginsberg. Joni Mitchell. Revolutionaries, renaissance artist or political leaders? The Matrix. V is for Vendetta. Toni Morrison’s Beloved? Prince’s ‘Sign of the Times’? NWA’s ‘Fuck the Police’. Artwork, manifestos or political treatises? 

Dr. Tom Lutz, founder of the Los Angeles Review of Books eviscerates America in his fictional debut, "Born Slippy".   Patrick A. Howell has a revealing conversation with the 2007 American Book winner discussing race in America and the global publishing industry.

The first time I saw the graphic illustration above, I fell deeply in love.     A sensation of profound sadness balanced with even greater elation and wonder.  Well, what if someone else saw it and realized it was as beautiful as I did? 

Patrick A. Howell speaks with Hollywood producer Tori Reid about writing, catching dreams, and her forthcoming memoir, Love Yourself Through It. 

 Oscar Awards 2014. Whew, done with the Tinsel Town exceptionally-produced minstrel show. 

I met Dr. Tamara Pizzoli at the Harlem Book Fair this summer, just around the corner from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; her pavilion at the outdoor festival was a ray of light, absolutely beaming, where many a passerby more often than not, formed a line to purchase her book and talk to the vibrant author. 

“Blackish” is a hilarious potpourri of colorful comedy featuring a variety of opinions and takes on the modern upper middle class family, full of a never-ending diversity of opinions and a marriage commoditized into slapstick.

 “I hope and pray for the unity of the people/ hands clasped initial glance reveals/ I may have the world in my hands/ but this, man is just a man,/ but didn’t God put power in my hands?” 

"It is widely reported that your Tennessee grandmother, Louvenia Watson, played a huge role in forming your consciousness for justice, love, and righteousness for your people.   Are we in just and loving world."

Kevin Feige’s brilliant casting of Mahershala Ali in a new Blade feature film would be genius with Wesley Snipes as Whistler.   If Downey's Iron Man is the Root of MCU, Blade is the seed.

I had to laugh and just shake my head in quiet disbelief—another article about Phylicia Rashad, America’s mom, and how the Cosby Show of the 80’s was vilified because it thought it was all that. Haters never ever give in do they? 

Hard as it might be to believe because of all the dissonance, polarities and turbulence of these times, this is the New Age.  Or, as Nobel Laureate, *General Gabriel Garcia Marquez jested, “If God hadn’t rested on Sunday, he would have had time to finish the world”.   The seeds for the end of systems and a New Age are now sewn.

It’s Black History Month.

My son is 7.  We watch NBA games together in our self-styled man space, the so-called ‘Heat Zone’ – recliners in the loft, championship poster, authentic nunchucks and sling shot, vanilla soda pops, a couple framed rookie cards of King James in his Cleveland Cavalier uniform

A young June Jordan spoke those lines into being in 1978 at the United Nations.    The poem was called the “Passion“. The occasion was a commemoration of the 40,000 women and children who presented themselves as a wall of protest against apartheid.  That quote is often taken out of context but has become a clarion call for a generation of Millennials.    

Oceanside is an eclectic beach side military town without a lot of pretense.   Unlike other cities up and down the Coast Highway as Malibu, Laguna Beach or La Jolla in San Diego, the real world is very much a part of the working class beach town.   That isn’t to say, it isn’t in the least magical or charming with it’s own set of gravity defying properties.   Because Oceanside also pops. 

"I grew up in Jamaica and moved to Trinidad when I was 10. After about a decade in New York, I moved to St. Croix, USVI where I now live. All of these places have some form of carnival and while each are pretty distinct, they all provide an incredible outlet for celebration, release, storytelling, connection… Coming back to Trinidad this year though was especially significant because, for the first time, I was part of the design team for Lost Tribe. "

 NYC author Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is simply impossible to miss.   She has a distinct style braided with magical African couture.   Her intellectual and spiritual je nes sais quoi is as much a part of her appeal as any designer brand.  “I try to work with a lot of up and coming African fashion lines or entrepreneurial brands.” she says, “Ghana, where my parents are from, is a clothier society.   The clothes there are all tailored.” 

Maybe there are wizards in our midst?  Mystical alchemist time travelers unseen who import the past worlds into the current one? 

I only say this because of the experiences I have had at  Communal Coffee, the North Park Nursery and Native Poppy these last few months.  The world in those walls is a throwback to a magical time.  Or, the invitation of a new one.

 Did it ever occur to you that we are the gold?

I often contemplate the wealth of Africa and our inheritance. There is always talk of what was stolen from us. But I mean Africa birthed humanity. And for us folk, darker than blue, melanin is the marker. We are the carriers of Her creative and triumphant spirit across the galaxies. It means that we belong to a special tribe of global and spirit explorers.