i’m going ahead with this thing.

i’m going to limit it strictly to poems used in the competition, with a deliberate aim of encouraging good writing in the slam.

gonna divorce it from the anthology.

i’m going to own this one,as much as humanly possible.

it’s officially going to be the Ken Hunt Prize. maybe even create a medal or something.

other than that, no details firm yet. (meanwhile, I’m still thinking…)

i have to make this happen. money where the mouth is, and all that.

Struck me a few minutes ago.

I’ve been talking for a while about wanting PSI to fund a prize for good writing.

I just realized that I should just do it myself. Plunk down 500 bucks and get a couple of judges to read poems.

Get a structure and a process to get poems mailed to me that were used in competition at the NPS. Have house managers sign off on them or something.

Award one serious prize of 500 bucks to the best poem submitted.

Do it piggybacked onto the PSI structure without going through the PSI process. Control the whole thing myself.

And call it “The Ken Hunt Prize,” given each year for exemplary writing within the slam community.

The last conversation I ever had with Ken involved the disappointment both of us were feeling with slam. The last book he ever gave me of his was signed, “Thanks for helping me keep my faith in poetry alive.”

I think I have my marching orders.

was made up of two things:

1. remembrances of Ken Hunt;
2. completely inappropriate humor about a whole raft of things.

Exactly what was needed.

I read “Savanna,” the long version from his chapbook*; ocvictor did “Ditto Tavern, Seattle;” myainsel did “Wanderlust Prayer.” I wanted to do “By The Time I Get to Wyoming” but decided three was enough. penny_player did a poem inspired by Ken, as did Lea later in the night. It was good.

The inappropriate humor came after, needs no repeating, and felt great.

*For the record, I didn’t choke up on “I refuse to become one of those friends you have to bury.”

Instead, I almost lost it on the lines about the Violent Femmes.

SPEAK tonight…the theme is corridor.

As in, a long passage between places.

As in, exactly, as always, what the universe presents at this moment.

I’ll have at least one of Ken’s books with me to read from.

Bring your best selves, please.

died today.

I have no real words for this. Not coherent ones.

We had known each other for years, but I lost touch with him after the 2003 NPS.

We had dinner together one night at Earwax and I broke the news to him of Chris Branch’s death. He broke down and sobbed. I broke down again.

He e-mailed me at the start of the war with Iraq to tell me that he’d heard someone read my poem from 100 Poets at a rally.

I saw Sleater-Kinney and the White Stripes for the first time with Bill, Sou, and Ken, where we stood eating hot sticky pizza in a line outside Avalon in Boston. It was right after Pat Storm died.

We were part of the greatest pick up slam team I was ever on: me, Ken, Richard Cambridge, and Sean Shea. We named ourselves “Church of the Big Stone Jesus” and whipped all comers.

We were guitar talking buddies on the SlamAmerica tour.

We sat in the basement of the Chopin Theatre in 1999 and talked for fucking hours.

I fell apart the first time I ever saw him read “OKC.” I’ve got his book, “This Carcass Is A Road Map,” beside me as I speak.

I refuse to become one of those friends you have to bury.

Why did I always know he wouldn’t be able to keep that promise?

I think I’ll send him an e-mail, just to say I don’t hold it against him.

The Ultimate Slam Poem

I
I am
Po-am
I
I am prophet
non-Profit
the eye of the storm
the way past the norm
into the heart of
AmeriKKKa
Words never fail me
Words alone cannot jail me
You cannot see the way I am

Po-Am

Words that slide long liquid light across
the cosmos
Words that probe like the hard dick of Father Time
into the moist center of this our
Mother
Our mother
violated by the cock of the spirit of Man
as so many have been violated by the men themselves
a woman washes down a Prozac with Sunny D
every thirty seconds in America
unable to shake the depression
caused by repression
and the shackles of oppression
enforced by aggression
and this is not who I choose to be
I am you and you are me
and the woman in you makes me ashamed of the man in me

I am

Po-am

Running the ragged raped street
Rolling the the way we roll because
there’s no choice because
in this country it’s illegal to be cause
for alarm

Po-Am

It’s possible to be a rapist
and get away with it
It’s possible to be a killer and
get away with it if you are
standing with your pants full of money
somewhere on a golf course playing in a

Pro-Am

and the Indians are dying
and the children are dying
and the ghetto is still here
and the war still goes on
the way the poem still goes on
how long must this poem go on
before we see it end

I
I am
Poem
I Am
Po-Am

I can stand here all night if need be
I can keep reading all night if need be
And I can tell you’ll be better off if I keep reading all night
because the revolution will not be edited
The revolution will be over there somewhere
just far enough off to keep it in perspective
while I get a new pen

Will the killings at Red Lake end up, a year from now, with similar amounts of air time and column inches as Columbine?

If no, will that be from familiarity and ho-humness?

Will anyone look into the impact of the killings on a 300 person high school and community in a culturally insular place?

I can’t imagine, can you?

With one hand on
the railing and the other
cocked at the brim of his hat
he may look quaint in a
self conscious New York boho way
when you examine the snapshot,

but check the passport for a better view:

the face leveled right at you,
not a point of light in those eyes.

Run as fast
as you can, darling,
the ripper’s here:

creative type extraordinaire,
good with words, easy with
Chomsky or Dylan, knows Coltrane
from Konitz, eats with one taste bud
out-
stretched.

Also, owns a bunch of knives and
can’t make up his mind when he
sharpens them: keep them sharp
for guaranteed results or dull ’em a touch
for a gain in pain?

One step down his hall there’s
a print of something vaguely
Pollockian, two steps down is
a bug-eyed rat in a dressed up street rod,
three steps down’s a long way into
his house. (Don’t bother turning around,
the light’s out behind you.)

You’d like to think he’s redeemable. So would he.

He tries to seem that way,
anyway. Picks up another pencil, starts a sad letter
to all the people he’s ever known. Erases it.
Puts it down, picks up one of his sharper knives,
starts cutting random letters from the daily paper.
You’ll be getting mail soon.

If it scares you enough,
he can always call it art.

Name one CD you think everyone should own. When adding your own, copy those who have gone before you so that a list begins to form.

1. Kind of Blue by Miles Davis
2. The Stone Roses-Stone Roses
3. Dropkick Murphys – Live on St. Patrick’s Day From Boston, MA
4. Refused – The Shape Of Punk To Come
5. Neck & Neck – Chet Atkins/Mark Knopfler
6. Rilo Kiley – The Execution of All Things
7. Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy Conducting: “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff (aka the music from “The Omen”). Heavy Metal Classical.

Also: Trimmed the friends list, mostly inactive accounts. That was helpful, too.

Probably too whiny for some folks. Skip it, then.

First things first: Mike McGee was great. Touring’s really improved his already good showmanship. “Puddin’ ” slew me tonight.

I actively disliked the rest of the reading. But I’m pretty sure it was me, not the show.

And so, the whining begins

i’ve determined that reading literary theory has added nothing to my poetic repertoire — neither skill nor useful knowledge.

i’m a gonna stop.

I’m back in NYC after a long year…

SAMPLE— Film, Music, Word, & Performance
Wednesday, March 30th (6:30 – 8:00pm)

OPEN MIC NIGHT featuring TONY BROWN, KYRA WOLFE, &
ELIEL LUCERO
Hosted by OSCAR BERMEO
FREE!

Bronx Museum of the Arts (1040 Grand Concourse at
165th St. Bronx. NY)

DIRECTIONS
Train- Take the D or B to 167th St/Grand Concourse or
the 4 to 161st/Yankee Stadium.
Bus- Take the Bx1, Bx2, or BxM4 Express to 165th and
Grand Concourse.
Car from Manhattan- Take the FDR Drive to Willis
Avenue Bridge, stay to your left merge onto the Major
Deegan North. Exit at 138th St & Grand Concourse.
Proceed to 165th Str & Grand Concourse.

FOR MORE INFO

Home

Sometime in the last hour
she typed
“the joys of a fresh blade”
into the subject field
before posting a message.
Then, she posted three collages
she’d obviously made after settling a new
Xacto blade into
its handle.

So: it is not about
what I first thought it was about.
I think about it anyway
while flicking one of my own knives
open, shut, open, then shut.
When this one’s locked
the blade does not shake
and the joint will never break
when stressed. That’s the sound of security, I say out loud,
that whisper-snick of the lock engaging
when the blade reaches its proper place,
and I shave a short stripe
off my forearm
to test the edge.

But we’re so different, I think.
Cutting is cutting
and craft is craft.
Collage rejoins severed things;
but then again, things do have to be severed first
before you pick up the pieces to begin.

I set the knife down for a moment.
There are three pictures on the screen. I have no idea
how long it takes to make such things.
There was never a chance or a choice
to learn it before now.

So I’ll email her and ask one thing:
How strong and sharp does the edge have to be?

The most recent poem I posted is, I think, pretty different from what I’ve been posting.

It was a piece I had been working on, had abandoned, and decided to revisit after the “ghostly” comments of yesterday (thanks, upendedurn and anselm23). I figure if an image is in the air enough to make a couple of people look for it, and to make me use the same image in a different poem, it’s time to go back and look at it again.

I put finishing touches to it, at least for this draft, and posted it. I felt like I needed to get back in the saddle fast after yesterday’s locked, whiny post.

I looked it over and realized how different it was structurally, and it struck me that a major difference was that it was written in Word instead of directly in the LJ posting space. That seems to make me more willing to stretch out and play with longer lines, more extended narrative structures, etc.

The tools, I think, make a difference.

I long ago stopped writing in longhand, not finding it especially well adapted to the way I write (with lots of editing as I go, cut and paste, etc.) Word works well enough for me.

I may go back, now, and see if there is a difference in the way I write a longhand poem as well; something I’ve missed there that I need to recapture — something in kinesthetic learning, etc.

Does anyone else have anything to say on their experience with this?

Ghost, you call me. Not the ghost, but
Ghost, making that my proper name, not (of course)
my Christian name, but the older kind: the one
that means something and tells something about you
that remains true. There’s nothing new
about me being a ghost, only that I’m called
by that name now, and I’m finally comfortable with it.

Back when I was just a guy, long before I leaped off
that bridge to get here, I used to daydream about flying
and walking through walls. I used to wish for the power
to blow through a window so everyone knows you’re there
and you don’t even have to show up.
I never had impact, and didn’t want risk,
so my fantasy became impact without risk: that would be the life, I thought.
A good joke: I’ve got the life I wanted, now that I don’t have a life.

I used to cringe when they told scary stories at camp.
I remember that later I laughed at horror films, pretending bravery.
Once you’re here, you find it’s nothing like those things. It’s all so – routine.
You show up at regular times, whistle a little in a dark hallway,
provide a moment of clarity to someone who’s used to being safe and warm.
You become a lesson no one believes in until it’s learned.

But it’s not all bad.
It’s a beautiful world when you can’t really feel it.
It takes your breath away sometimes to see the way it moves.
I spend years just standing in front of the strangest things:
not sunsets, not rainbows, but garbage trucks and fires
and drive-by victims. It’s all so beautiful, the way
disposal has become an art form. (It was my art, after all.)

So, Ghost is what you call me, and I’ll take it, the way
I always took it: with a bowed head. Before, I would always
come when called because I had no place to be
other than the place I was called to. Nothing’s really changed:
I blow through, bother you, maybe I’ll be remembered in your children’s stories.
Maybe we’ll see each other one night on the landing, where
you might call me Ghost,
or you might call me imaginary.
No matter.
I’ve always answered to either one.