Dark Matter

1. It’s a lot of fun seeing everyone again.

2. Nick Fox may be my arch piratical nemesis, but he’s a rockin’ good poet.

3. I entered and won the first slam I’ve been in since 2001: the MC slam against Bob Whoopiecat, Michael Guinn, and Nick Fox. It didn’t feel remotely terrible. At all. Like…maybe I could do it again.

4. MCing three bouts in one day is a bitch.

5. My niece judged a slam tonight! She’d never been to one before; she loved it!!! I’m so psyched!

6. Because of rankings, etc, it wouldn’t be of value to talk of standings just yet. Lots of movement between rounds 1 and 2 in each bout, from what I could see; being ranked 1 in the 4 minute round had absolutely no predictive quality regarding where you’d place in the 1 minute round. So, hard to sort out what it means just yet.

7. Hearing good poetry? Yes. Reductive and unoriginal stuff too? Sure.

8. There’s a poet here named David Morgan from London, England, who will likely not be going to finals…but the dude is a fucking wizard writer of torturous genius. Shit the judges won’t love, but I personally thought was outrageous. Pretty good delivery, too. Older guy; very gentlemanly.

9. I hung out with too many people to name: it was good to see you again.

I’m off to bed, then to work, then to school, then to school again, then to Finals, then to school, then to work…

I wish I was a poet, or something. The work’s dull but the hours are more regular.

I leave you with this:

1. Anyone from iWPS who wants to find a way down to SPEAK tomorrow night, you are welcome. I can’t offer a ride as such as I am going to be coming from another direction, but you are welcome.

2. I have discovered that there’s a bit of controversy concerning the Worcester Review‘s slam issue, which is just hitting the street now. Someone whose work I admire has spoken fairly harshly of the contents and concept of the issue.

I was a co-editor of that issue. And I think the writer of those comments is entitled to her opinion. Parts of her commentary I agree with, much I do not, and that’s fine. I indeed suspect we’re on the same page more than may be immediately apparent.

I don’t intend to engage the discussion regarding the poems or the essays at all. The debate’s important, and I would like it to continue without clouding it by inserting any hint of personal involvement on my part.

The one thing I would like to say, regarding the questioning of the editors’ sanity, is simply this:

For at least one half of the team, you may have something there.

Are you, after all,
comfortable using a knife?

Is there some great love in you
for how that will feel —

like a pillow resisting
until it suddenly surrenders and breaks?

Are you sure you want
to be forever known this way: a man

with more than a plan?
A man with an act at hand?

Are you comfortable there, sitting
in your car’s front seat, sitting

in your empty garage staring down
at your lap? Are you ready to pick it up?

Are you any clearer
as to what it will mean to see it through?

Are you ever going to stop shaking
long enough to make this happen?

Are you ready?
Are you a man or a missed opportunity?

Are you awake anymore?
Are you already done?

Are you already skinned and
dressed? Or —

are we going to have to go through this
again tomorrow night?

Well, then.
We can do this again —

I will be here tomorrow night.
I will be here until I’m not needed anymore —

waiting and honing
my whisper for you,

my boy with a blade;
all for you and your slippery heart.

-I-

There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who kept several snakes in a bucket.
Said he with a smirk,
“A cage didn’t work.
After several escapes, I said, ‘Fuck it.'”

-II-

There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who reviled football player Jim Plunkett.
The guy said, “That bum
Just sat on his thumbs.
And now these Pats are champs — who’d a thunk it?”

-III-

There once was a man from Nantucket,
Had a pipe that was too clogged to suck it.
Said he with a giggle
Giving the stem a wiggle,
“Dude, there’s so much resin in there…wow…somebody gimme a paper I can wipe it on, this stuff is sweet…no, no, roll one anyway, this’ll take some time…and put on that Phish tape from the Maine shows…”

I still love
every lover I’ve had
I swear

but a fog settles
on my blood
thinking of all of you

at this point you are
mostly mist
to me

I wish I still knew all your names
I wish I still recalled more than a moment
of what we were like together

I claimed to love you all
I claim to love you still
I can’t even see you well

there’s a shadow growing around me
as if a dam that holds back horror
has started to leak

can I truly be a man
if I never remember every one of you?
or I am just playing myself

like an old actor at career’s end
with too many speeches delivered
to recall any one in detail

I pray it’s true that actors are not
responsible
for their characters’ deeds

for if so then
I may be absolved —
and yet, there’s this:

who, exactly, am I then, this hack actor
without portfolio
standing here dreading night?

and who was that who was saying
he loved you? who was that holding you?
who was that man I was pretending to be?

Beat to hell, but happy.

I sat down with my advisor and discovered after going through the transcripts of my previous checkered and too often interrupted college career that if I complete all my courses in the major, I’ll still need to take enough courses to make up…

15 credits.

Two sciences, two arts, and inexplicably a intro psych course…because every psych course I’ve taken has been high level on an instructor’s permission. Those count as electives, but they still want the introductory stuff in place.

I mean, hell: I took a course at Harvard on moral development and the linkage between psych and religion that was taught in part by Joan Erikson, and our last class was at her house with her and Erik Erikson too…but I need an Intro Psych course. (Psych majors, commence drooling.)

Aw, hell, I don’t really mind. I’ll see if I can CLEP test out of it.

I apologize for all the detail…but you know something? I’m really, really happy to be talking about this stuff again. In fact…I might actually just be happy.

And I’m not even gonna qualify it with a self-defeating remark.

In 40 minutes, I will officially be a college student again.

Are there keggers for weekend intensive older students?

And are the casual sex and stoned all night conversations about Escher prints still standard behavior?

I can’t wait to penny my roommate into the room, or to mark the food in my pint-sized fridge against depredation.

More likely it’ll be like Animal House if the animal was a three-toed sloth.

Wish me luck.

Ossie Davis, dead at 87.

I recently caught a bit of the Kennedy Center honors, where he and Ruby Dee had to stand and acknowledge the crowd acclaim. You could tell that being in the same box with George Bush was painful for them both, but especially for him.

I will miss him.

how difficult it is for me to not be spending much time at iWPS this year.

I’ll be up on Wednesday after SPEAK, taking Thursday off to play with y’all, MCing a bout on Thursday night, and then I’m gone until Finals night — working Friday, class Friday night, class all day Saturday, and I can’t even play much Saturday night because I have class Sunday AM.

I miss you guys, and I know it’s likely that with school becoming a more intensive part of the next couple years, I won’t tour much or get out around here as much, either.

I’ll be 47 when I get my degree. 3 years from 50. Damn.

Well, we’ll always have LJ.

Think any of us will still be in slam in two years? I know I won’t, though I’ll always be a poet, till the day I die.

But I do wonder where the rough beast is headed. It certainly seems to be slouching these days.

Eight years old. There is
a giant moonlit boot outside my window.
I jump down onto
the instep, climb the laces hand over hand
past the ankle onto the silk stocking, then
discover fine hairs to hang onto as I
move up the leg.

At eight I have no idea
why I’m climbing the giant, or
what I’m climbing toward.

At twelve I get a clue
but it weighs me down so much
I keep slipping back to earth and
I have to begin again.

Tonight another boot sits there tapping.
I want to get past the presumed target.
When I reach the chest, I’ll raise a thumb and lunge
through the skin.

I’ll cling for years under the skin.
I’ll forget how to climb.

When (once again)
she cuts me out and
I fall like blood
splashing onto the toe
of her boot,

I’ll be eight years old
before I climb again.

I’ve run into a person here on LJ who’s looking for info, video clips, etc. on women slammers, rappers, and poets for a paper.

Her LJ name is shockfactor and you can respond in my comments section. I’ll have her friend me and contact you through that.

For the record, I’ve sent her already to bullhorn, livepoets, and gotpoetry.

Thanks!

EDIT: Here’s a followup from the aforementioned researcher:

Good deeds rewarded. Thanks, all.

I skipped the State of the Union address tonight.

I did it deliberately, and I don’t care.

In fact, I have decided that I pretty much don’t care at all, anymore.

I surrender.

I’ve got more important things to do than snicker and froth at the Head Pig.

I know already he’ll piss me off, and that I don’t like him and don’t trust him.

When I say I surrender, I mean just this: the battle has to shift elsewhere. If the things I love are going to ultimately survive, they won’t survive because we elect a Democrat, wrest the Congress from the Republicans, defeat the Christian right, or forge a new relationship with the UN.

So, I surrender that formal battle to others. Enjoy, thrive. Play hard.

I do not intend to speak of “politics” here again. Social observations, certainly. But policy discussions? Personality discussions? No.

I do not intend to speak of activism, or of causes, or specific actions.

No more.

My war is elsewhere, these days; and that’s where my energy will be.

1. i’ve been in a meeting all day. didja miss me?

2. i’m home now working on a paper for school.

3. i’ve got a second poem in the giant series cooking. stay tuned.

4. the CD for iWPS is back on. it had been cancelled but new arrangements have been made. details to follow (when they’re finalized).

over and out till later —

T

The Squared Circle

Ladies and gentlemen,
your attention, please.

In this corner, your giant.
And in this corner, the other giant.

It’s one giant in a mirror.
No, it’s not.

It’s a fake giant and a real one.
Or, no giants but in ourselves.

Here are the rules:

When your giant strikes, cringe and shout praise.
When the other giant falls, dance as if you were on fire.

When the other giant strikes, close your eyes.
When your giant falls, it’s your fault.

If you think there’s just one giant,
speak in tongues until the mirror cracks.

If you think one giant is a fraud,
be sure which one it is before you bet.

If there’s no giant, why are you here?
You must have heard something.

Rounds begin and end when a giant’s boot
stomps a referee into the mat.

Knockouts? Don’t be ridiculous.
A decision’s not official until some of you are killed,

and if during the fight someone next to you says
stop, stop the fight, the giants

are the only ones
who aren’t dying,

you are to smite that person
with a rulebook until nothing more is said.

This is the fight that the rules have made,
let us be glad and rejoice in it;

shake hands, come out swinging,
and quickly forget which giant you are,

or whether you’re a giant or a spectator, and
whether that makes any difference at all.