Busy weekend.

Friday night: 

frequegrl

   got free tickets to the Pats/Eagles pre-season game.  This was a disaster:  an accident or something on the Pike led to us eventually taking a grand total of 3.5 hours to get there from Worcester. It’s usually a 50 minute drive, tops.  We caught the third quarter and left about halfway through the fourth, as the Pats were getting their asses handed to them anyway.

Saturday: attended Schemitzun, the big pow-wow/rodeo down at the Foxwoods casino.  I needed that, I learned; it had been a long time since I last attended a pow-wow.  Good times.  I got a T-shirt that has a picture of Geronimo, Victorio, and other fun folks on the front with the caption: “Homeland Security: Defending Against Terrorism Since 1492.” Heh.

Sunday:  Flew to Atlanta for work; met up with

nerak_g

   and we went to the Java Monkey for the reading, which was great and a fun time with some really excellent work in the open and a feature by Yolo.  It rained like a sumbitch, and the poetry continued anyway…can’t beat that. 

Monday:  Trained all day; last session of the August marathon.  After flight delays, got home around 1:30 Tuesday AM.

Tuesday:  Billing, invoices, went out and bought a new washing machine to replace the one that quit for good during pre-trip laundry on Sunday AM (grr), writing, cooking, hanging out, TV, sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As for the shows:  Where, you say?

September 7: Nantucket, Massachusetts; Duende co-features with Melissa Guillet at the Nantucket Poetry Slam.

September 30: Solo feature at the Newark Arts Alliance, Newark, Delaware.

November 2: One of an amazing list of folks at the Bowery Poetry Club, NYC, to celebrate the continuing success of the online journal of literary political writing, The November 3rd Club.

The list: readers include Patricia Smith, Alicia Ostriker, Marty McConnell, Tara Betts, Kirpal Gordon, Tony Brown, Skip Shea, Madeline Artenberg, Iris Schwartz, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Michael Cirelli and Lea Deschenes…

To quote Victor, the organizer and editor: “Seriously. That’s not a reading. That’s a god-damned revolution.”

November 12: Kafe Kerouac, Columbus, OH…solo show

Details for all of these events at http://www.myspace.com/poetrybytonybrown

And more in the works…stay tuned.

Starting tomorrow, I’m staying away from LJ for a few days. I’m way, way too angry, evidently more than I should be, and it’s a little scary.

Went to a pow wow today. It helped.

Is the poetry scene at the Apache Cafe on Sunday night worth checking out? I’ll be in Atlanta Sunday night and it’s around the corner from my hotel.

ETA: So based on this, looks like I’ll be visiting Java Monkey on Sunday night in Atlanta. Hope to see y’all in the neighborhood there!

and I’m voting Green again.

A pretty decent take on a lot of my feelings is here.

Put simply, Biden rubs me all kinds of raw and has for years. The choice is just offensive. The “I have a long way to go, and look how I’ve learned to adapt” argument described in the article doesn’t wash for me, and the choice stinks of caving to conventional wisdom.

If someone had said something like that about me, he’d never have been on the list to be considered.

The illusion was nice while it lasted.

I’d like to introduce you to something I hope you’ll find interesting:

apoemintheether

I recommend you read it a couple of times as is before you explore it in depth.

Really, really interested in seeing what you think. Let me know, and feel free to friend “him” if you want.

This is just a starting point, and I can’t wait to see what develops.

Many of you have contacted me about my post of a couple of days ago that looked like a private post. The one that said, more or less:

If you can read this,
you’re the only one
who can read this.

As you may have guessed, that was a post to my entire friends’ list. Anyone on my friends’ list could read it.

A little sneaky, but I did it as a sort of opening shot on a project I’m thinking about.

Specifically, I’m thinking of creating a poem or series of poems that take advantage of the unique structure of LJ — that would contain links, LJ cut text, filtered links leading to sections of the poem locked to some folks and not to others, sections of the poem in comments fields, etc. I’m not sure yet exactly how to do it, how to begin, or anything more than that broad concept, really; I’m just thinking at this point about using the functionality of the site to create an unusual art project that stretches and challenges how we think about blogging, the tension between public and private thought, the use of hyperlinking, whatever. I figure it will evolve with time, and I may not start it for a week or two simply because I’ve got limited time to work on it till then and I want to “storyboard” the initial sections, so to speak, before I begin.

If you were fooled by this and are offended, I’m sorry; call it a little experiment that went a little astray in the execution. But I’m definitely moving forward with this — maybe even to the point of creating a new username to put it under.

Any thoughts? Who would be interested in being a party to this if I move forward with it?

It doesn’t matter
what you’re thinking.

You’re too small to think.
You’re too small to bother with.

One bad experience doesn’t make up
for a lifetime of ease.

You don’t get to say otherwise.
You don’t have a right to feel persecuted.

Still — you wanna be haunted? Looking for
an exorcism, but want it done by a spoiled priest

to make it feel slightly dirty
but still a bit legit,

strong enough for to claim absolution
but not strong enough to require penance?

You aren’t worth a ghost’s bother —
certainly, you’re not worth mine.

Keep looking.
And cross the street

if you see me coming —
I’m not your kind of confessor.

And my AM shuttle to the airport comes at 5 AM.

So therefore…off to bed…

More tomorrow.

Boring, eh?

ANNND, now, posting from my least favorite place on earth: O’Hare Airport. At least, stuck until the flight leaves at 1:30. I got here at 9:30 AM.

I’m bored.

A couple of Tecate beers are helping with that, at least for the moment.

I do usually run into some one I know, or at least some kind of minor celebrity, at O’Hare. No sightings yet.

Austin, it’ll be good to see you.

ALSO: new spoken word streaming station is up! Some Duende this week, as well as a couple of other folks you may know:

http://vocalizedink.ning.com/xn/detail/2034477:BlogPost:19481

Off to Austin. Later, gators.

I am going to Austin for work on Sunday. (Sorry, Austin crew — no real time to socialize; the last two trips have been whirlwinds so I’m not even going to try and make plans…they inevitably go awry.)

Which means I don’t have to choose between two killer events on Sunday night in Worcester:

One — the mighty MOLLY MEACHAM will be at the Poets’ Asylum at Jumpin’ Juice and Java, 335 Chandler St, at 6:00 PM;

Two — the equally mighty YOMO TORO and FRANKIE MORALES are playing for free at the Latin Festival on the Common, 7:30-9:00.

I adore Yomo Toro, sometimes called the “Jimi Hendrix of the cuatro,” an instrument I’ve been fascinated with for more years than I can recall. And to see him with Morales and crew would be wonderful.

Here’s a clip from YouTube:

Ain’t he the coolest cat since sliced bread?