Anybody want me short term for an East Coast gig?
I’m trying not to establish full scale tours until I know more about my schedule for the summer, but am game for about 8 hours drive time from here.
I’m a little broke and jonesing to get out there.
ALSO: I posted a revised and expanded version of my comments about the Providence Poetry Slam on http://www.gotpoetry.com . Feel free to direct anyone who needs to see it there.
My guess is Providence won’t be booking me anytime soon.
Our local alternative rag features comments about Worcester made on various blogs they seek out.
Your comments about the Java Hut show were in Wednesday’s edition!
I went to the Providence Poetry Slam tonight.
Some thoughts:
1. If you say you’re going to start at 7, start at 7. Don’t be knocking around with your thumbs up your asses at 8:05.
2. If you advertise Corbet Dean as a feature online, and then advertise C.R. Avery as a feature on your flyer, and THEN have neither of them for a feature and in fact have no feature, try to let people know at some point.
3. If your official slam flyer contains a ratio of 10% information about the slam and 90% information about the May 1 general strike (like, 1 column of slam info and the remaining two sides of the flyer devoted to the strike), be prepared to have someone suspect that your reading is less about the free expression of poetry and more about pursuing a specific political agenda.
4. If that someone — namely, me — is completely down with your political agenda and STILL finds the pervasiveness of said agenda obnoxious, be prepared to consider that you may not even being reaching the converted.
I scratched my name off the list and left at 8:05. I won’t be back.
I may regret this in the AM, but I doubt it.
ETA on Tuesday May 2 @ 5:30 AM: The anonymous comments here were by Bernard Dolan. I answered them all a day or two ago on the Gotpoetry.com site and didn’t reproduce the answers here, as I didn’t see and unscreen these comments till just now.
ETA on Thursday May 4 @ 4:00 PM: It’s been brought to my attention that the flyer I saw was not the official slam flyer. Apologies to all who were confused by this. Should have checked my facts better.
But thought I’d pass along one moment of Ick.
At a gas station today, saw an 18 wheeler with a sleeper cab.
On the cab was painted, “If it’s rockin’ don’t bother knockin’.”
The name on the side of the truck?
Earl Spanos and Daughter Trucking.
Ick. Ewwwww.
As of tonight, I’ve removed myself as the host of SPEAK…although it will continue on the same schedule, 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of each month, in the same place.
I’ve just decided that my schedule and my current life issues/job issues make it too difficult for me to hang on to the sole responsibility for that reading.
Cathy Taylor, one of our regulars, is taking over as the “door-opener.” I think the reading will likely host itself after that.
I’ll be focusing my non-Asylum poetry efforts on Gotpoetry Live from now on.
The appointment of Tony Snow as White House Press Lackey got me thinking.
I need a spokespoet. Someone to read my poems for me and then answer criticism. I’m tired of doing it myself.
I need a loyal minion with no ambitions of their own who really, REALLY hates other poets.
Any thoughts?
barking crazy
he is, wrangling a snootful
of wasps, spilling his
wrong-showing guts
all over the linoleum,
showing his ass
to the children
of the local baboon
and scaring them,
barking crazy gut showing
ass showing man,
all of him hanging out
the window trying to reach
the flowers below,
the bees snarling up onto him,
welts popping up everywhere
there’s a bare inch of skin and
there’s so much skin showing,
even with his guts and ass showing he’s
half noble in his undignified reach
toward the flowers, the tulips and
lilacs, the weeds attempting
to become our joy, and the man,
the barking crazy man with visible stains
and sore hands, the naked dear man falling
just now from the window, he is pointing
at the dandelions and crying as he falls
toward them — not from fear for himself,
but for fear
of crushing them
before we understand.
A great night at Gotpoetry Live. Karen and Teresa were wonderful and the open was pretty scrumptious (love the dildo poem, Sasha).
I think this one’s gonna take off — some tweaks to timing and structure are in order, but overall, pretty pleased with it.
Tomorrow: SPEAK. And that’s going to be very different, I think…
Y’all write a lot.
Come to Providence tonight, see nerak_g and sistaseuss (aka Karen Garrabrant and Teresa Davis of Atlanta) rip up our stage. If you saw the Sunday night performance at the Asylum, you know you’re in for sharp and smart political poetry (with the emphasis on poetry). 3.00 cover, good coffee and food, great room. Please come or I will be sad.
In a dark room a poet
stands at a microphone
and pins a melody
onto the front end of a slogan.
We all know the tune.
We stir vaguely at the sound.
We remember being told
that this was the sound
of the door slamming shut on this side
of the Middle Passage. We remember
being told to care.
We know we should want
to cross over Jordan, long for the chariot,
strain to hear Gabriel’s horn.
We feel embarrassed
that we don’t,
so we applaud to cover it up.
Far away in a South Carolina swamp
a ghost joins in on the song
and hums the North Star
into the sky.
The ghost knows
we do not understand how that happens —
oh, believe me, he has always known —
and he sings it with or without us.
You do not know
what will stir
when you take a spiritual
for your own.
If you sing one, if you
hear one, be prepared
to greet the ghost.
God, I love Curtis Mayfield. Somewhere in storage I have his Greatest Hits — gotta dig it out.
By the way — giving away at the Asylum tonight:
bigass rainstick
Also: oni_express, I have a special present for you…
I picked up a cheap compilation of soul tracks from the early/mid 70s today.
I really think there’s been no better time and genre for socially conscious music than that period. And that includes the punk era.
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.
Dark Matter 