Monthly Archives: February 2008
Score one for Australia
http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-02-13-voa8.cfm
I find it ironic that this is on Voice of America.
I’ll be interested to see if the US is remotely interested in doing the same thing, considering the Australians got the idea from the US.
My dad is a member of this country’s own Stolen Generations, and seeing this makes me think, HARD, about the situation in ways too disturbing to state here.
Gotpoetry Live tonight
Small but enthusiastic crowd, including happinesstogo all the way from AZ!!!!!
truthbealiar did a great set. Most of you missed it. Not that I blame you tonight, since it took me almost two solid hours to drive home from Providence, including the moments required to inch my way around a jackknifed trailer truck on 146. (This is usually a forty-five minute drive for me.) NO FUN. No fun at all. The roads are awful and getting worse.
Still…I do wish more folks would come out for the reading. It’s fun. It’s eclectic. And we miss you.
Poets For Human Rights
Just recently joined this community, owned and operated by the tireless Larry Jaffe:
View my page on Poets for Human Rights
Come check us out.
After
Once they strap you in the electric chair
it’s only a matter of time
before the lightning becomes your advisor,
telling you this storm is of no consequence
as you go into the Light.
On the other side, you find
no one. No God, no Devil,
no deity wild or tame, no resting place,
neither cloud nor flame. All there is
is a droning in the dark, a song that keeps you guessing
for hours, perhaps days or decades —
who is that chanting for?
Is it your dirge, or perhaps your accusation come to haunt you
for eternity? Or are the angels simply telling you
that murder is murder, no matter how many laws
are made to explain it away? You will sit there
wondering for what back home you’d have called “forever”
before you meet the reason you’re here. When he comes up to you,
whole again as he was not when you left him
on the street back in the life before,
you are briefly terrified until you recall that nothing more
can happen to either of you. He sits beside you,
and that singing envelopes you, you join in,
but these are not your voices!
What is left inside you after death cannot sing the way you sang in life…
here, you are brothers. You killed him, he died, and all
is forgotten as you sit together waiting for the ones
who sent you here to join the chorus. It is not
for you to understand how you came to be here.
All you can do now is sit, sing, listen, and wait.
Spectator
I picked up my laptop and threw it at the dark TV first thing this morning. Neither shattered; the computer splashed into the the tube of the Zenith and vanished. Surprised by the lack of noise, I got up close and saw it in there, hanging in space, spinning slowly.
It will get bored without me, I told myself. It will become tired. So I threw the recliner after it and soon the laptop was sitting in the recliner. Since there was no way for it to watch TV inside the TV, I threw a copy of Berryman’s “The Dream Songs” in there and soon there was a nice tableau of the silver Mac and the black book in the green chair — hard to see unless you are right on top of the set, but it is unmistakable, and so handsome in there.
But what do I do now that everything is inside the TV? (Turning it on is out of the question — who knows what that might do to them? I may be impulsive, but I am not cruel.) You may say I should go after them, but then who would be out here to toss in things they, or we, might need? I do not know if it works both ways, or if they’re trapped.
I’ll toss in a cell phone and wait for a call. But what shall I do while I am waiting? One can only take so many showers before one begins to wash away. One can only write so many poems before one longs to see them made into movies. One can only hope for so long before falling through the black screen.
Shit Epiphany
What joy to finally understand
that someday
we’ll have flowers growing
out of us, that
whether we become
ash or meat
it will happen one day that
we’ll all be green and happy
fodder, entering
mouths and departing through lower
intestines once
the blooms have dropped away,
and that means
we’re shit already even as we’re imagining
ourselves as future fragrance and
metaphor, even though we’re fated to be just
waste! It’s too good to be true,
we tell ourselves, that we will have such
a humble purpose.
We’ve wasted so much time and prayer
thinking we’ll be gods someday,
or hired hands of the gods, that when we finally see
that we’re individually of little value it’s as if
Jesus rose from the tomb and didn’t recognize us.
How comforting
to be at last forgotten and anonymous!
Once that’s over we can diminish ourselves,
cease fantasizing about our own
particularity as we secretly revel in knowing
that we’re just one of the innumerable warm left behinds,
ready at last to join the wide sea of
utility, to at last surrender
the folly of being so lonely, so
singular.
substitute feature in the house for Gotpoetry Live tomorrow!
Due to unforeseen circumstances, Michael Mack has had to cancel his feature with us tomorrow night. Jumping courageously in at the last minute for us is Trevor Byrne-Smith ( truthbealiar ) who’s preparing to move to New Jersey for a few months; we’ll be glad to offer him a farewell feature and offer you his words. C’mon down!
GotPoetry Live at Reflections Cafe, 8 Governor Street, Providence RI — 7:30 PM. Be there or you won’t be there.
On YouTube
My good buddy Skip Shea ( drgeorge ) has been touring and performing his one man show about being a survivor of clerical abuse for some time now. Here’s a Youtube clip of the show for your consideration; worth hearing and seeing.
observation
the dark truth we won’t admit
is that many of us
think the world would be better off
if different people were bleeding
as if putting the pig
in the apple’s mouth
would keep either
from burning
Quick note: I’m having some major problems with my phone — serious battery drain. I need to pick up a battery for it, but this will be the third one I’ve had in it and I think the problem’s with the phone itself; I follow all the charging guidelines so I know it’s not something I’m doing.
I’m only turning it on for short bursts for a couple of hours a day, so if you call and I don’t get back to you, be patient, I shall. Email is probably your best alternative till I figure this out.
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For folks in NYC and connections to same, I would love it if you could read my previous post and if you have any ideas, let me know. Help a brother out…thanks.
http://radioactiveart.livejournal.com/683702.html
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Last night was the Budweiser Shootout, the first race of the NASCAR Cup season. It was good to watch a race again. I think I finally get the excitement that some folks feel for the opening of a sports season, something I’ve never really gotten before.
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Tonight is dkeali_i‘s feature at the Q, where he’ll be releasing his new chapbook AND a CD. You should go. Dave’s become one of the most consistently interesting poets in the Worcester scene, working with stuff most of the rest of us don’t. I recommend the show, which I expect to be excellent.
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More later — I’m headed for bed for a bit (was up early, not all night, but another hour or two of sleep will do me good).
This Just In: Two New Duende Shows!!!! (Edited)
Just confirmed two dates for the future:
— May 6 at the Bowery Poetry Club, NYC, where we’ll be doing the full “Americanized” show**;
— September 7 (tentative, but pretty firm) out on Nantucket Island, in a double feature with Melissa Guillet.
More info to follow!!!
And as always, let me know if you want to bring us in…we’re open to anything. Weddings, ritual scarifications, even movie premieres. Have chops, will travel.
Storytellers tonight with badgary as the feature. Who’s in?
**A note about the BPC show: We’ll be going on in the 7:30-9:30 slot usually reserved for the Urbana Poetry Slam. The slam will have ended their season at that point, and we’ll be looking to pack the club on a night that won’t have its usual crowd. Any of y’all in NYC who can help put with ideas for promotion for that show, or who are willing to spread the word — let me know. We’re definitely looking to impress and make a showing for the work. I don’t normally make a big deal about this kind of plugging, but I’m going to bite the bullet and do it — even flyering and stuff like that. Let me know what I need to do…thanks!
Oh, this makes me…happy???
http://www.newsweek.com/id/73896
There’s an article in the print edition of Newsweek this week that explores the idea that the quest for happiness is overrated. It draws an important distinction between depression and sadness, too…but it speaks to something I’ve felt in my gut for a long time.
This online version isn’t as comprehensive, so I recommend the print version if you want the full story.
Go ahead…flame away.
Heads up — dumping Facebook
After a couple of months of using Facebook, I’ve decided it’s pretty much a timesuck and I’m going to dump it. I’ve already got a Livejournal, a Myspace, and my work at Gotpoetry.com and FB just takes up time without having much appreciable benefit.
At heart, I find I’m just not the pure social networking type, and FB — with its endless spam — is just not for me. I use the other spaces more for blogging and art and promotion; just not finding a useful purpose there.
So…adios to that, gang. I’ll be getting rid of it later tonight after a lot of folks have seen the notice I placed there.
Dark Matter 