when
can
I kill
myself

when can I let myself off a hook
as sharp as this one’s been
and hold
my dead head high

when can I be unreasonable
slip stupid thoughts over my eyes
like treacherous hoods and buy into
whatever I tell myself

damned if I know if I’ll ever be able to
seems I’ve got a plainclothes conscience
that sneaks up on me
I want to claim entrapment

give me a handcuff key
and let me go
the will to live isn’t all it’s
cracked up to be

word on the street is
I’ll never get my chance
word on the street says
I snitched and death

is too good for me

NOTE WELL!!!!!!!

I’m fine, ok? It’s a poem based in reflection on past feelings — not distant past, I admit, but past nonetheless.

Again: with my work and of course others, to assume the voice of the poem is automatically the voice of the poet can get you in trouble. I can see why folks might think that here; but really, I’m fine.

I really need to know, guys — who’s coming to iWPS?

You can tell me about other people you know are coming, too, if you know.

EDIT: Don’t care if you’re spectating, volunteering, or competing. I just want to get a sense of who’s out there as potential performers for the CD.

For a project at iWPS:

I’m trying to get a sense of who’s coming to the Worcester iWPS this year. We’re thinking of doing a studio recording of a variety of poets for a CD to be distributed in conjunction with the Worcester Review’s slam issue, and want to get a sense of who’s going to be in town.

PLEASE NOTE:

— this is NOT a promise that you’ll be recorded;
— this is NOT an invitation for you to explain WHY you should be recorded.

In conjunction with the other editor, I’ll make the decision of who should be on the recording — and we are the law! I just want to get a sense of who the available poets might be.

So — if you’re coming, let me know; if you know who else is coming, let me know; as competitors are chosen, LET ME KNOW.

Please distribute and cross post as you see fit. I’m not on slammasters’ or slam list anymore, so if you want to post it there, give em my e-mail:

chrysler.poet@verizon.net

We now return you to your accustomed angst and memes.

I think my dilemma of the past few years in my own work is very much this: that I want to maintain the “performability” of my work, while increasing the space inside it; increasing the detail and particularity of it without creating work that’s so specific that it can’t be understood by anyone except the “inner circle.”

I want sacred space in poems and readings — space where the intent of the audience and the poet combine and mesh in such a way that the expectation for each — to do their best to connect with the work — is the same, and is honored.

I want to be comfortable trusting the audience to follow the poem, not the poet; to not fret about “Did ya get it?” To trust that when I do my job right, the poem will be heard and absorbed even when the space in it is deep, and not immediately accessible to linear analysis and interpretation.

This is not to say, “to hell with accessibility.” Not at all. It’s a reinterpretation of what accessibility means; it’s not leading the audience by the nose, it’s creating a space for shared discovery.

Maybe I want too much.

I do know I don’t find this in slam, not nowadays; the superheated atmosphere in most of them no longer allows for this. I know I’ve heard “new veterans” telling “real newbies” to make sure they fill the three minutes with words; to use every bit of the space in the poem.

I think it’s sad, and silly, and frankly insecure.

It’s a new world I want — bring the excitement and stage values of slam into a poetic school that demands excellence and impact beyond the literal impact of strong words.

I want — I need — strong silence, too.

A conversation with a friend has just made me realize the single thing I hate most about a lot of poetry nowadays: a lack of space within the poem for the reader/listener to include their own experiences in their understanding of the poem.

We are drowned in the need of the poet to make sure we know exactly what he/she is talking about, no questions asked, every detail provided. Linear space/time is the rule in poems, with no chance of misconstruing the intent allowed.

The hectoring in political writing is one example. The lack of imagery and the prevalence of clumsy metaphor in so many slam poems is another.

There is a lack of generosity of spirit. We don’t trust our audiences to get us.

Add to this a healthy helping of atrocious writing skills (that sometimes make poems seem more difficult than they actually are) and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

Thoughts?

Our second hard frost of this season
has kicked in fall’s teeth. We put on
heavier jackets and dig our scrapers
out of our trunks.

Pulling out of Moody Street
before my back window defrosts,
pulling into this world where
radio stations chatter endlessly
about their politics, where
newspapers draw conclusions
from trivia, where fanatics come and go
splintering Michaelangelo,
where (if I opt for silence)
there are always bumper stickers
to deal with,

I’m starting to think that
we should delete “the”
from our vocabulary.
We’re too frozen.
It’s an icy world out there now.
When I look into its eyes,
my head slows down, my breath
turns sluggish, all I see is
a mass of bergs
with nothing below.

I don’t want things
to be so definite.
I don’t want to know
everything for certain.
I want a world of particulars
where we need to get close enough
to feel each other’s heat so we
can understand ourselves
and keep warm.

But tomorrow is supposed to be
colder, and colder still
next week and next month;
so I guess I’ll just
turn up my collar,
speak only when spoken to,
think for myself
until spring.

Aerial photos of Fallujah, a military map, and current photos from the battlefield of “coalition” and “insurgent” troops in action. (Quotes added to reinforce the difficulty in distinguishing one from the other at times.)

From my favorite wonk website, Cryptome

–You have five minutes on HBO, primetime, audience of millions, to do whatever you would like (song, poem, political rant, original or cover, whatever you say). How do you spend those five minutes?

Performing “DIY”, one of my poems, then walking off the stage.

–Describe a completely satisfying slam experience, as audience.

Watching Bao, from Minneapolis, in 1999 drop his last poem in a semifinal slam in favor of an amazing poem on a crumpled piece of notebook paper that turned into a declaration of love for his girlfriend.

–What’s something you learned from a teacher, however you define that, that has stayed with you?

My high school junior year English teacher, Ralph Hughes, beat into me the importance of editing my work, and took some of the hubris out of me.

–Is there a conviction you once held deeply, but later found to be misguided? What changed your belief?

A fight in that same junior year with a senior bully taught me that violence worked. I later met him in a bar when I was about 22 and he literally ran from me, and it took me a week to figure out why, as I could only dimly recall why I knew him. Taught me the beginnings of a lesson in how scarring this could be for all involved.

–Which is worse: to be inflexibly and mercilessly sure you’re right, or to be open-minded but not very passionate? Elaborate.

I am the latter. I used to be the former. I hold with the belief that neither is particularly useful, but that the former at least stands a chance of being right, while the latter gets nothing done. Ask a Democrat this year.

–What’s the coolest—not the most meaningful or the deepest or the wisest, but the COOLEST—thing you ever did?

Wow.

Smoked a joint with Jerry Garcia in 1979; got drunk with the Replacements more than once; and took the mike from Ian MacKaye once to scream lyrics into at a Fugazi show;

but I gotta go with:

meeting Frank Sinatra, and not asking for his autograph.

Failure

I always wanted to write the one
definitive poem that
defined me well enough that I
could just sit back afterward and
watch the truth roll in.

Twenty years later and I keep trying,
no matter how little I have changed.
You’d think I’d have done it by now,
but no; still, I keep at it as if the next one
will really do the trick.

There’s a point coming where I will
have to admit that every new poem is
a failure, a testament
to the ineffectiveness of
the previous one.

Still, it’s like biting on tinfoil
sometimes to write a poem over and over again,
as if I might be able to get past it this time —
the blinding, the surprise that
there is still something to feel.

anymore, anyway.

Lately, some folks have found me a little tough to take — being in a blood mood has made me unpopular, and somewhat suspect, to some folks. I want to explain that a bit.

I don’t talk about this a lot, but I used to be a lot more violent than I am now.

Been in my share of schoolyard and barroom fights, was actually a bit of a bully in my one year of prep school (easy to do as I was a townie day student, and we had it ALL over the preps in terms of cred), and (when I was selling dope) familiar with all sorts of concealable weapons. Most folks who know me know that I typically carry at least one knife to this day; a habit I can’t seem to break without feeling totally vulnerable. (My doctor calls it hypervigilance, if that helps.)

In my early twenties, I worked a part time job as concert security at a couple of large local venues at least in part because it gave me a license to hit people. While doing that job at a Motley Crue concert, I got into a fight with a 15 year old kid and won (of course — I outweighed him by 100 lbs or so and beat the snot out of him) and promptly got sick to my stomach because I realized how much I enjoyed it.

Spectaguard, the agency who ran security, covered up the incident as they always did — these were the same guys whose guard killed a kid at a Dead concert in the Meadowlands, and that was never resolved, as far as I know.

All this was going on precisely while I was involved with groups like Amnesty International, CISPES, and the Green Party charter drive in MA. Such a paradox: all that non violence, all that peace, all that understanding in the face of calculated injustice. Maybe it fed my rage; I’m not sure.

Anyway: it was that incident that made me first go into therapy; first got me started on a course of understanding myself enough to try and ease that rage that I never even knew I had.

I’m not like I used to be; but sometimes, the rage gives me a tinge of red when I’m pressed.

This week has pressed me a lot. And I know I’ve come out swinging.

I don’t know that it won’t happen again; I’m not yet even sure there’s not a place for it in the resistance. (Just being honest here.)

But I do apologize for the tinge so far.

A man has killed himself at Ground Zero, apparently in protest of Bush’s re-election.

An angry mob in North Carolina has vandalized and set fires at GOP headquarters.

These are probably sad coincidences, isolated incidents, random acts of despair.

Of course they are.

Y’all should answer this meme if you haven’t already.
I’ll start off by putting my answers up in the comments section.

1. Tell me something obvious about yourself.
2. Tell me something about yourself that I don’t know.
3. What is your biggest fear?
4. Do you normally take the safe route or the shortcut?
5. What is the one thing you want the most that you can’t buy with money?
6. What is your most treasured possession?
7. What is the one thing you hate most about yourself that you do the most often?
8. Tell me something about you sexually that I don’t know.
9. Tell me something about you sexually that everybody knows.
10. What is your favorite lie to tell?
11. Name something you have done once that you can’t wait to do again.
12. Are you the jealous type?
13. What is the 1 person, place or thing that you can never say no to?
14. What is the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?
15. If you could do something crazy right now, what would it be?
16. When was the last time you cried?
17. When was the last time you felt so good that nothing else mattered?
18. Do you feel comfortable in public with no shirt on?
19. Name something embarassing you did while drunk.
20. If you post this in your journal, do you want me to answer it?

I was at a funeral for most of today and at a wake last night, so I was behind on it. It just got posted.

I find myself getting sentimental about this as the time winds down to the last column, but I suppose I’m entitled.

Anyway, it’s short and actually sweet this week…a diversion from the week’s events. It includes the poem from my last entry and some thoughts on the place of a poet in dark times.

If you must read it, and of course you must, head over here.

___________________________________________________________

I’m about done with blurbs for the book. Thanks to all who sent something along; hoping we go to print this week.

___________________________________________________________

I think, sometimes, that social change is one of the most difficult things we do not because of the big battles, but because of the small ones — the individual conversations in which you try to make a difference.

When it works, it’s empowering.

When it doesn’t, it can leave us heartsick.

We should do it anyway, of course. Who else will?

I just hate the pain that sometimes comes from it; the breaking relationships, the cold stares, the bafflement and the anger.

It sometimes seems not to be worth it. Better, I sometimes think, to keep silent.

But I know I do that too often. So…

I recommit myself to enduring immediate pain in the pursuit of eventual joy.

The edge
of my seat
is bent from me sitting here.

Stand up, I tell myself.
A poem can’t save the world. Get
to it.

When I step away from the poem
for a moment,
a world builds itself upon the paper.

When I come back, the room’s underwater
and the poem rises above it,
a white seaport, everything sails toward it.

I go and sit on its docks. What was it
I was thinking before, before the new world
rose in the heart of the poem?

For everyone saying that this election was so close:

I went back and did a little research.

There were elections that were monster margins of victory — 1956 (13%), 1972(23% — that was McGovern/Nixon), 1980(10%), 1984(18% — ah, Dukakis), etc.

But the margin of victory overall frequently isn’t nearly that big.

1976: 2%
1988: 7%
1992: 6%
1996: 8% (this, by the way, was Clinton/Dole, usually described as a blowout)

2000 we all know about.

The roughly 2% margin here was definitely close, but not razor thin.

Stop looking for fraud, conspiracy, and intimidation to explain the margin of victory. While they may indeed have happened, they were not enough of a factor to make the difference.

The Dems got beat because they didn’t have people voting for them.

Remember:

Conspiracy theories let you off the hook for your own responsibility for change.