Why is it that the commercials on TV for those body sprays (Axe, Tag, whatever) never show the guy being attacked by horny men in addition to horny women?
(Of course, I know the answer is institutional homophobia. I’m looking for funnier, more ridiculous stuff.)
It’s his second cigarette of the day
and the man is thinking of how his body’s flaws
are starting to link up — the strep swollen throat
aggravating the apnea and disturbing sleep enough
to make him fearful of a depressive outbreak to follow —
watching the kids out of school strut the street
hand in hand saying fuck this and fuck that
every three steps and he’s thinking now of how green
the new leaves are and saying to himself that
fuck this ought to be his new motto:
his body is falling apart slowly, gracelessly, while his center
firms up sweetly into melon balls, cantaloupe, honeydew;
why tell the world there’s a pain in you when there’s so much more to see
of the good? These kids don’t know shit, he decides;
only an old man can say fuck this with the proper inflection.
So he does — whispering it into the twin ribbon that rises
from the end of the cigarette. He practices with a smile on his face.
He says it out loud a dozen times, and his eyes become wet from the pleasure,
he can taste how sweet with defiance he has become, and the kids don’t come
to mind at all as he scrubs out the butt and goes smiling back to work.
close to feeling back to normal.
What’s up? Plenty.
1. Patricia Smith KILLED last night at the Cantab. Killed. Highlights — the Katrina poem, the Lysol poem…damnation and hell fire!
2. I’m in final negotiations to join the faculty at the Online School of Poetry ( http://www.onlineschoolofpoetry.com ), teaching a workshop I’m calling “To Voice Through Craft.” The class will be focused on moving from straight, raw emotion on the page — be it personal or political — to a more skilled and ultimately more powerful expression of voice. I’m actively soliciting 6-8 students at 200 dollars for a six week session. (Yes, that means you.)
3. Still working on a couple of major breakthroughs on the consulting front. There’s a great opportunity to join a consulting practice of executive coaches; that may go down sometime over the next two weeks or so, which is very exciting.
4. Gotpoetry Live in Providence continues to do well. The feature this past Tuesday, Teresa Noelle Roberts, was quiet and intensely imagist. I really enjoyed her set. I do wish more people would come out for features they don’t know…
5. Ken Hunt Prize news to follow shortly.
6. New poems a-brewin’ which is nice indeed.
How are you all?
Patricia Smith.
Wow. Again, as always. But double wow tonight.
Welcome back to the Cantab, Ms. P.
up — pretty decent gotpoetry feature tonight
down — lightish attendance
up — i’m feeling better
down — not yet feeling well
up — i’m going to go to bed and get up in the AM and get organized
down — i’ve got so much to do to get organized i know i’ll have trouble sleeping
up — i’m not dead
down —
my grandmother taught me how to do it:
to see the headache
as a ball of blue light
to see a needle and slim
but strong thread
to thread the needle and begin to stitch
around the edge of the pain
to draw the string tight until
the pain shrinks and then
to take the ball and throw it away
and that’s what it took to get rid of hurt, she said back then,
and sometimes it works, i say now
i don’t know how well it works for other things —
history, accumulation, regret — my grandmother
hated my father for example
and he never disappeared —
but she made the most elegant lace
and her pillowcases were beyond compare
so something besides the headache indeed yielded to her needle
i am trying to forget that now
sitting here holding my head to one side
and thinking of the last conversation i had with you
the father i would never have had if it had been up to her
the redskin who soiled her baby girl
i was always her perplexing favorite
“i don’t like the indian peoples why you dress up like
the indian peoples”
i couldn’t tell her why it felt more right and i still don’t really know
but i never got any closer with you either, dad
and you’d drop gems like “this headache
would kill a white man” and you’d brush me off
when i tried to teach you how to stitch it away
i wish we’d had a sensible story
i wish we’d had a stitchable life
and we don’t talk much anymore, i know
when we do i end up with a headache, don’t you
but i’m not stitching you away
i cannot do that
there’s been too much of that here already
and we need each other undiminished
by embroidery
and remote viewing
well, I’m killing my last hour or two here before hitting the airport for home.
this was my first time in austin. i like it here. even bought myself a “keep austin weird” hat because the concept appeals to me.
food discoveries: ruta maya coffee. the black bean / cornbread pancake combo at magnolia cafe. the sublime ‘cue of the whoopiecat.
i wish i’d felt well enough to prowl the city more, but i’ll save that till august.
slammasters’ meeting: was pretty much a carbon copy of all non-profit organizational meetings i’ve been in. anyone who thinks slammasters, psi, ec, etc. are especially dysfunctional hasn’t been in enough non-profit arts organizations. certainly we have our quirks and stuff, but it wasn’t that out of the norm.
that said, the organizational development consultant in me was screaming for release at various points. and that’s all i’m gonna say; decisions and meeting details aren’t mine to divulge, as i’m not a slammaster and was a barely conscious attendee for a lot of it.
the ken hunt prize is a go for nps 2006. i’ll be tweaking a couple of logistical points in the next week or so, getting the info to the slammasters, and then all will become public. i’m pumped.
i realized i’ve been slam-groupie lately, boy; ABQ/Charlotte/Austin and Austin again real soon. i think that’s the most intense slam travel itinerary i’ve ever pursued in all my years of this.
time to shower and saddle up. i’m sure i’ll have more from the airport, and certainly more tomorrow.
be well, and be safe.
Next time I’m in Austin (which willl be in August), I need to hang out more with ohiojake. Especially since I’ll be able to speak coherently by then.
I’ll do a full SlamMasters’ social roundup (not the decisions, of course; not mine to comment) sometime tomorrow while I’m at the airport somewhere, k? For now, it’s nighty night from Austin.
if someone should ask me now
why i am so quiet i would tell them
that i am stitching the headache — doing what
my grandmother taught me to do:
to see the blue
amorphous pain in my head, to imagine myself drawing
a silver needle and silver thread around and through its edges,
pulling them tight so i could describe exactly where the pain was,
how large it was — and then to slowly stitch it down, smaller, smaller,
until at last it disappeared, and the headache always did too. and it does.
tonight i’m stitching down a headache
and wondering how well the technique might work with other things:
bad history, unwelcome accumulations, the way i get scared when one thing
leads to another and a cold becomes a rupture becomes a surgery
becomes another reason to remember my age. i mean,
my grandmother
hated my father. i wonder if she ever
stitched him down? did she see him
diminished — the bad indian
who stole her little girl? did she
tie him into a bag and drop him
into some hole in her own mind?
soon enough
i close my eyes and must pull the needle and thread out again,
look for the edges of the new pain, begin to sew. my grandmother, my mother,
my father, my wife, my aging body: i can’t fit everything in there.
i will capture what i can.
It is possible that the reason I’m having trouble breathing since my plane trip is that I was bitten by a snake, and did not realize it.
Motherfucker.
i’m really ill again. I think the plane reaggravated everything.
perfect storm: severe strep related swollen throat lining meets already severe chronic obstructive apnea.
can’t breathe. haven’t eaten. keep choking/coughing. can’t speak, really, without strangling on my words.
only thing working is to put on the CPAP device and let it keep my throat open. I’ve taken all my pills, gonna give it a bit and try to eat something, and hope it clears up by tomorrow.
Can I be honest? I’m a little scared. The fact that I can only breathe without coughing by using a machine right now is a little overwhelming.
Fingers crossed, k? And y’know…a prayer wouldn’t hurt.
to austin.
it’s warm. it’s pretty. there are very many bars and clubs.
my first order of business is to sleep.
i think i’m doing something tonight, but still a toss up.
there’s a 35″ flat panel TV in this room. i missed the sopranos. nighty night.
more later.
Here’s the day so far as of 9 AM EDT:
3:15 AM — Catch limo ride to Logan.
4:30 AM — Arrive at Logan after picking up other passengers. Smoke last cigarette before flight.
5:15 AM — Get through security with the usual hassle: extra explosive screening, swabbing of laptop and case, being asked to turn it on, and second x-ray of case. No one will ever convince me this stuff is random.
5:45 AM — Airborne. Full flight, but I lucked out and pulled an aisle seat on the bulkhead. Joy. Ear and throat down to a moderate murmur of pain, and flight was uneventful from a physical standpoint.
8:20 AM — Arrive in Atlanta, Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, home of the Escalators from Hell. I swear the person who designed the perspective you can see from these escalators was named Escher. (Or Lovecraft. “Fly the friendly skies of Cthulu…”)
We are early — almost half an hour early. Which means that my slightly longer than two hour layover has stretched miraculously into nearly 3. Yay.
And of course, I CAN NEVER CONNECT TO FREE WIRELESS IN ANY FUCKING AIRPORT I ever fly into. So I’m writing this in Journler and will post it when I get into Austin in a little over 5 hours. (You’d think that if every little coffeehouse in the world can do this, the big airports here can do it. Or maybe I’m just missing something. I know Logan has a limited access, but it only lets you into proprietary sites. And I’m showing 4 bars for Atlanta WiFi, but can’t connect to anything. Balls. )
I’m in a better mood than it sounds, by the way.
I’ll spiff this up in Austin and post it when I get in.
EDIT: Ah. Found a spot I can use. Lucky folks…you get it now. (cough, cough) More when I get to TX.
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Feeling better…
Sitting on the porch, smoking a cigarette (believe it or not, it makes my throat drier and thus a little better as long as I don’t overdo it), and working on a project for a potential job opportunity…there are times when this self-employed thing feels more like self-employed and less like unemployed.
Just checked the weather for Austin — 80s and 90s all thru the weekend. Mmmmmm…
Since no one offered me a room, I’m booking myself in at the Austin Motel for Thursday night.
Can’t wait to see everyone.
Hey, the new Zero Point Zero is up at http://www.gotpoetry.com .
I’m cancelling SPEAK tonight — there’s a big poetry festival in Worcester and a lot of the regulars won’t be there, plus I want at least some of another night to rest before getting in the limo to the airport at 3:30 in the morning to catch my 5:45 flight. (the only way I could afford it)
I think we’re going to have to talk about the future of that reading now that I’m in Worcester. A four year run seems pretty good, I think.
Ah well, back to work.
Dark Matter 