I’ve been looking at a bunch of poetry slam sites that advertise their upcoming features.

A couple of thoughts:

— I noticed a lot of comparisons to musicians to describe the performance style of the features;

— I noticed a lot of comparisons to other slam poets’s work to describe their poetry.

Certainly, it’s about knowing your audience…but it’s also lazy and a little too self-referential.

I know many if not most venues use the bios they’re given. I can’t really blame them as much as I do the artists themselves.

Such an insular group…it’s like we only understand our art in reference to each other’s work.

I don’t have a profound thought about it; just an observation.

I am on vast amounts of psychiatric medications.

I know crazy when I see it.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/06/jealous.husband.ap/index.html

Add the Andrea Yates decision into the mix and I have to say it’s been an interesting day for jurisprudence in TX.

There’s a woman in town
who used to live in a treehouse
screaming as if in ecstasy
over the least thing:

green leaves, TV Guide
hologram covers, ecstasy itself.
She woke the whole neighborhood
once a night at least.

Finally,
cops were sent
to take her down.
She surrendered at once.

As she was led away she was asked
for some reason for what she’d done. She said,
“I was lonely, and I knew
someone would come sooner or later.”

All over town it’s the same:
people living like bulls, pent up
and chock-a-block
with fertility and anger.

Look past the keno screens
and poker runs. Past the turkey shoots
and meat raffles. Past the single cruiser on
a weeknight, the cop crying from boredom.

See that woman leap past it
from the treehouse
into the waiting arms
of someone to talk to.

See the red cape fall.
See everyone paying attention.
See the earth smoke underfoot.
See the way they chase their long-denied joy.

One:

it’s snowing, but not sticking. limited visibility past the parking lot. ink, meet paper; screen, meet font.

Two:

choosing your life is like flipping a foreign coin, seeing the result, then walking away. you know what you got, but you never learn what was on the other side.

Three:

if you turn a guitar amplifier’s gain control all the way up you’ll hear the air crackle in front of the grille. the guitar itself won’t bark till it’s stroked. stroke it; you’ll hear the air grate fuzz and shatter itself solid. a life is like that; built of broken symphonics that are lovely because they are broken.

Four:

on the edge of the parking lot is a path. no footsteps in it. slick as a flatwound string. frost’s kind of trail. stay off it; no amount of silver will buy your way back out again, and there’s more than enough literature out there about such roads.

when do you leave?

money water electricity and time

you can take all
the money in my wallet
there’s not enough there
to pay attention

as for water i’ve
had enough in my life
to drown a coastline
wet my whistle
and put my fire out

electricity’s just another word
for how a fire starts
before it’s drowned

so now
it’s all up
to you:

give me one thing that truly lasts
one thing that stays strong forever
one immutable element to build on

if you’ve got nothing
then
all the money in your wallet
all the water over your head
all the current in your currency

won’t buy enough reach
to match my grasp

My old friend Paul David Mena has a column about haiku on gotpoetry.com that I thought many of you might like to check out.

It’s a particularly interesting column on his process this week.

There are also some associated links on the site that you might find interesting.

Haiku have always been one poetic form I have never enjoyed writing (and only marginally enjoyed reading), but I know many of you do, so here’s to it.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I’m gonna stay away from here for a few days. Hit me backchannel if you need me.

Train Poem

I’m pulling away
from the platform.
Can’t say who’s
waving back there.

Freight today is antiques
and stopped watches. Can’t say
who’s getting them
at the end of the run.

The passengers sit in the second car
and play cards because they’ve seen all the movies
that said they should. Can’t say
who’s winning.

I’m smoking like a devil in hell
and missing every switch.
Forget what I left.
Can’t let a hand hold me.

Everyone’s hanging on for dear life
except the driver, the fireman, and the conductor.
They jumped off miles back. Can’t see anything
but straight on to where the view disappears.

Poem From a Reptile Son

“three things to recall, son,
if you are ever
in a knife fight:

one, a knife fight
that lasts more than thirty seconds
is being fought by two amateurs.

two,
expect
to get cut.

three, you must become
a reptile when you fight.
you get your humanity back by winning,

but never all of it.
some part of you
will grow scales.

you’ll need a rock
in your dreams at night
to warm yourself on.

for the rest of your life
you’ll shed skins but never look
any different,

a little of you can break off
and if you leave it behind
people will think they’ve got you.”

this is what my lean father told me
without ever looking at me as he showed me his scars
and explained how he sharpened his knife.

they say that mammals love
and reptiles cast offspring aside
to fend for themselves.

they know nothing. I still have
the knife my father gave me. I’ve grown
scales in his honor.

I never face anyone
for more than thirty seconds.
no one’s got any of me that matters.

This will be among my resolutionary-type things for the year, by the way…

I’m going to tell you up front that I’ve done some thinking here, and I am not especially comfortable with what I’m about to reveal; but I think it needs saying, and the resulting actions will need reinforcement from you, among others.

1.
After some soul-searching: I am, admittedly, anti-Christian.

Not anti extremism, not anti fundamentalism, not anti-intolerance or theocracy; truly, I am anti Christian, as in the base dogma of the faiths that have derived from the Christian mythos bother me and disturb me, run counter to my own beliefs, and makes me feel threatened and angry.

I admit this now, knowing it is deeply uncool to admit a bias of this sort; I am sorry for those of you offended, upset, and disgusted with this. Please bear with me as I move forward.

2.
My deep seated dislike and anger at the social structures we live within is at least in part driven by this. There is, of course, more to it, far more; but I think this is a large underpinning of how I see the world.

3.
One of my resolutions for this year will be to work harder, much harder, to ensure that my actions do not draw so deeply from this bias; that I do no let my blinders about Christianity keep me from seeing and befriending and treating with respect and fairness those I meet; and that when I take a stand on an issue of morality and value, it will not simply be “not Christian, so OK.”

4.
At the same time, I’ll work harder to define morality and values in ways that allow others in while not compromising my own spiritual values in pursuit of harmony.

There’s more to be said, of course; specifics, history, examples. But not now.

Now, I just want it out there.

Help hold me to it.

Edit: I think, upon reading this, that I should reframe my issue as one of being “anti-Christianity”, not “anti-Christian.” An important difference, I think.

We spent it in Boston with the recently married Dan and Mike, who just got back from Laos and Southern Thailand. (Yup, in the area hit by the tsunami. They just beat it.)

You’re definitely getting old when the drinking is done by 8:30 and you’re all too tired to open champagne at midnight, so you have a contest to see who can “pop” a finger in their mouth like a cork loud enough to make us feel festive while playing Chinese checkers.

I lost at both, although I did put away a half-bottle of Six Grapes tawny port by myself.

Woo.

More later.