Dark Matter

From everything I’ve heard, the other two poets on this bill are kickass. And there’s an open soyou’ll get a chance to spit, or maybe even do a poem.

And maybe a drink after? Or something to eat?

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 @ 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 Street and Grand Concourse. Proceed to 165th Street and Grand
Concourse.

FOR MORE INFO
http://www.bronxmuseum.org

there are people who explain feelings so well
we no longer need to feel at all

so we imagine that feelings
are larger in us than if we felt them

they say they’re as strong as earthquake rumors
we feel ripples the size of mountains running through us

but nothing is truly felt except for the small trigger of the word
“tsunami” whispering inside us

it is not the same word as “dehydration”
or “vegetative state” but the same thing happens

we feel at a remove
as they make the words do what we want

yet another human becomes a news story
or a fat billboard for change

either way we do not see or feel
the stone wall of water smoothing the town like a still rumpled quilt

the people who stand and watch
and let the water come

or the warm dead hand becoming a cold dead hand
clutching the puzzle of morphine given to a woman who can’t feel

you’d never know we once were happy to be sentient
the way that now we render flesh to posterboard

I’ve got to figure out whether I’ve got time between work and school to get a proposal for the Ken Hunt Prize together by then.

I spent a lot of time today at the Cape, working on research for my paper on Anthony Braxton, one of my favorite saxophonists/composers (and someone I had the pleasure of playing with under bizarre circumstances about twelve years ago). Got my brain working on some poems, lemme tell you…

I’m going to have to post some of what I read regarding cultural biases toward reading music and not reading music, because I think it has some bearing on the poetry page/stage debate.

In a nutshell (and I’ll do a better job with this later) Braxton talks about a prejudice many jazz critics have against African American creative musicians who read music, write music with some degree of attention to European-derived musical theory, and yet maintain the spirit of jazz improv in their work; it’s complicated and I’m not doing it justice, but an example would someone saying that Braxton’s music is “too cerebral to be jazz.” Judging all jazz against a standard of it needing to come from some deep emotional core, spontaneously generated. primitively originated (yeah, that directly stated — there were plenty of examples given).

Interestingly, one of the critics most taken to task is Amiri Baraka, who has attacked Braxton’s music as not being “black enough” because Braxton identifies the composer Webern as an influence and has played with Warne Marsh and Paul Desmond.

Anyway, the poetry angle…

Braxton makes an interesting point about the idea that the score for a piece of music is, in Western tradition, seen as a text to be followed and reproduced; this is what leads people to believe that written music that represents intelligent, pre-planned creation of the work is the antithesis of jazz.

Braxton points out that his view and the view of many other creative musicians is that the notation provides the basic framework, the trellis upon which the music can grow — it offers ideas, suggestions, etc; but that it is written does not extinguish the necessity for spontaneous creation during the performance.

This seems obvious to me — my poem onstage is rarely an exact duplicate of the one on the page, certainly isn’t a duplicate of the last time I performed it. I’m assuming that’s true of others…

I wonder, though, how much of that spontaneous creation sometimes vanishes during the runup to a slam, as poems are honed to milliseconds of perfection?

Not really arguing anything here; just musing on a stimulating essay. Any thoughts?

I have been one lazy fucking lump today. I took a vacation day from work and did damn near nothing, which is exactly what I needed to do.

Now, I’m going to go to bed and do damn near nothing for several hours, and then I’m gonna get up and do damn near nothing for several more, except I’m gonna do it at a friend’s house on the Cape.

Sunday, of course, I’m gonna eat a bunch of stuff and then pass out and do nothing. Unless I decide to do some school stuff. Then again, doing nothing could be construed as a way of preparing for the strenuous thinking school requires. So maybe I’ll do nothing instead.

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