Dark Matter

it was good to see you again. You rocked the house and did it with style and substance that I hope worked for you as well as it did for us.

Not to mention the bull session after…

Thanks.
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Again, with the no sleepiness without drugs. Crap.

I’m sure it’s got something to do with the vat of coffee I drank tonight.

Seroquel’s kicking in, though, so no worries.

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And before I pass out: upcoming features!

NEXT WEEK at the old homestead, the Java Hut, 11/21. BOOK RELEASE PART-AY!!!!!

Dec. 12: Washington DC at Teaism.

January 17: Westfield MA at Jester’s Cafe (aka the little reading that could).

More on the way.

Night night…

Doing my part to subvert the right wing Christian paradigm:

I’m assuming that in many parts of the country, there are houses that have these wooden signs out front on sturdy posts that display a rotating menu of Bible quotes. All the ones I’ve seen around here are stained dark, with the sign itself painted in dark green and gold. Know the ones I mean?

They always have some cheery quote on them like “The wages of sin is death” or “Tremble before Him, o ye wicked!” with chapter and verse citation right below. Really dresses up a neighborhood.

I’m thinking of getting one for my house, except the signs would say things like “And Bingo was his name-o,” “Oops, I did it again,” or perhaps even just a simple, pious “w00t!”

This could be huge.

Maybe, more seriously, we could do quotes from great spiritual traditions that AREN’T Christianity (they do exist). Or from great secular thinkers. It’ll look like a UU revival meeting out there.

Then again, I could be even more American and patriotic than that.

I could just sell the ad space.

The new Zero Point Zero is up.

It’s an expansion of the discussion here earlier this week about allowing “space” in a poem. I’ll be interested to see how that goes over with the Gotpoetry crowd…

In a mean (but honest) experiment I’ve repeated several times over the two years, I mentioned in the lead paragraph that I was (and it was true) listening to Public Enemy while I worked on the column.

Mentioning hiphop in a title or a lead paragraph seems to increase readership. Can’t imagine why…

Only five more to go, I believe…

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Please, PLEASE let me know as you learn if you or any other people you know are coming to iWPS…I really need to start getting a sense of this for the CD project.

Right now, I’ve got a handful of y’all, and I heard that Corbet Dean is the competitor from Mesa.

Anybody post the original post on the slamlist? As I said, feel free…

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Busy day ahead. Many chores, errands, and stuff — dinner with old friends tonight; more of the same tomorrow PM, followed by (YAY!) aurorabell at the Asylum tomorrow night.

Have a good one…

I put two fingers
under her chin
and kissed her in
a Chicago garage,
just out of range of the
sodium lights, just once,
the only time
it ever happened, and
I still remember it, not because
it was unsatisfying,
lust unslaked
or love unrequited,
but because it was
the right thing at the right moment
and it doesn’t happen often
that slices of spark and dark
meet that tightly and well.

I hope she’s somewhere now
with that moment still suspended
between her
and someone else.
I hope it stayed with her. I can’t find it,
and it can’t be
lost forever.

Didja notice than no one’s asking tough, impolite questions?

Only ted_badger pointed that out, and suggested a couple.

What do we keep to ourselves? What do we want others to keep to themselves?

I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about.

Ask away. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don’t know about you.

I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about.

Ask away. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don’t know about you.

when
can
I kill
myself

when can I let myself off a hook
as sharp as this one’s been
and hold
my dead head high

when can I be unreasonable
slip stupid thoughts over my eyes
like treacherous hoods and buy into
whatever I tell myself

damned if I know if I’ll ever be able to
seems I’ve got a plainclothes conscience
that sneaks up on me
I want to claim entrapment

give me a handcuff key
and let me go
the will to live isn’t all it’s
cracked up to be

word on the street is
I’ll never get my chance
word on the street says
I snitched and death

is too good for me

NOTE WELL!!!!!!!

I’m fine, ok? It’s a poem based in reflection on past feelings — not distant past, I admit, but past nonetheless.

Again: with my work and of course others, to assume the voice of the poem is automatically the voice of the poet can get you in trouble. I can see why folks might think that here; but really, I’m fine.

I really need to know, guys — who’s coming to iWPS?

You can tell me about other people you know are coming, too, if you know.

EDIT: Don’t care if you’re spectating, volunteering, or competing. I just want to get a sense of who’s out there as potential performers for the CD.

For a project at iWPS:

I’m trying to get a sense of who’s coming to the Worcester iWPS this year. We’re thinking of doing a studio recording of a variety of poets for a CD to be distributed in conjunction with the Worcester Review’s slam issue, and want to get a sense of who’s going to be in town.

PLEASE NOTE:

— this is NOT a promise that you’ll be recorded;
— this is NOT an invitation for you to explain WHY you should be recorded.

In conjunction with the other editor, I’ll make the decision of who should be on the recording — and we are the law! I just want to get a sense of who the available poets might be.

So — if you’re coming, let me know; if you know who else is coming, let me know; as competitors are chosen, LET ME KNOW.

Please distribute and cross post as you see fit. I’m not on slammasters’ or slam list anymore, so if you want to post it there, give em my e-mail:

chrysler.poet@verizon.net

We now return you to your accustomed angst and memes.

I think my dilemma of the past few years in my own work is very much this: that I want to maintain the “performability” of my work, while increasing the space inside it; increasing the detail and particularity of it without creating work that’s so specific that it can’t be understood by anyone except the “inner circle.”

I want sacred space in poems and readings — space where the intent of the audience and the poet combine and mesh in such a way that the expectation for each — to do their best to connect with the work — is the same, and is honored.

I want to be comfortable trusting the audience to follow the poem, not the poet; to not fret about “Did ya get it?” To trust that when I do my job right, the poem will be heard and absorbed even when the space in it is deep, and not immediately accessible to linear analysis and interpretation.

This is not to say, “to hell with accessibility.” Not at all. It’s a reinterpretation of what accessibility means; it’s not leading the audience by the nose, it’s creating a space for shared discovery.

Maybe I want too much.

I do know I don’t find this in slam, not nowadays; the superheated atmosphere in most of them no longer allows for this. I know I’ve heard “new veterans” telling “real newbies” to make sure they fill the three minutes with words; to use every bit of the space in the poem.

I think it’s sad, and silly, and frankly insecure.

It’s a new world I want — bring the excitement and stage values of slam into a poetic school that demands excellence and impact beyond the literal impact of strong words.

I want — I need — strong silence, too.

A conversation with a friend has just made me realize the single thing I hate most about a lot of poetry nowadays: a lack of space within the poem for the reader/listener to include their own experiences in their understanding of the poem.

We are drowned in the need of the poet to make sure we know exactly what he/she is talking about, no questions asked, every detail provided. Linear space/time is the rule in poems, with no chance of misconstruing the intent allowed.

The hectoring in political writing is one example. The lack of imagery and the prevalence of clumsy metaphor in so many slam poems is another.

There is a lack of generosity of spirit. We don’t trust our audiences to get us.

Add to this a healthy helping of atrocious writing skills (that sometimes make poems seem more difficult than they actually are) and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

Thoughts?

Our second hard frost of this season
has kicked in fall’s teeth. We put on
heavier jackets and dig our scrapers
out of our trunks.

Pulling out of Moody Street
before my back window defrosts,
pulling into this world where
radio stations chatter endlessly
about their politics, where
newspapers draw conclusions
from trivia, where fanatics come and go
splintering Michaelangelo,
where (if I opt for silence)
there are always bumper stickers
to deal with,

I’m starting to think that
we should delete “the”
from our vocabulary.
We’re too frozen.
It’s an icy world out there now.
When I look into its eyes,
my head slows down, my breath
turns sluggish, all I see is
a mass of bergs
with nothing below.

I don’t want things
to be so definite.
I don’t want to know
everything for certain.
I want a world of particulars
where we need to get close enough
to feel each other’s heat so we
can understand ourselves
and keep warm.

But tomorrow is supposed to be
colder, and colder still
next week and next month;
so I guess I’ll just
turn up my collar,
speak only when spoken to,
think for myself
until spring.

Aerial photos of Fallujah, a military map, and current photos from the battlefield of “coalition” and “insurgent” troops in action. (Quotes added to reinforce the difficulty in distinguishing one from the other at times.)

From my favorite wonk website, Cryptome

–You have five minutes on HBO, primetime, audience of millions, to do whatever you would like (song, poem, political rant, original or cover, whatever you say). How do you spend those five minutes?

Performing “DIY”, one of my poems, then walking off the stage.

–Describe a completely satisfying slam experience, as audience.

Watching Bao, from Minneapolis, in 1999 drop his last poem in a semifinal slam in favor of an amazing poem on a crumpled piece of notebook paper that turned into a declaration of love for his girlfriend.

–What’s something you learned from a teacher, however you define that, that has stayed with you?

My high school junior year English teacher, Ralph Hughes, beat into me the importance of editing my work, and took some of the hubris out of me.

–Is there a conviction you once held deeply, but later found to be misguided? What changed your belief?

A fight in that same junior year with a senior bully taught me that violence worked. I later met him in a bar when I was about 22 and he literally ran from me, and it took me a week to figure out why, as I could only dimly recall why I knew him. Taught me the beginnings of a lesson in how scarring this could be for all involved.

–Which is worse: to be inflexibly and mercilessly sure you’re right, or to be open-minded but not very passionate? Elaborate.

I am the latter. I used to be the former. I hold with the belief that neither is particularly useful, but that the former at least stands a chance of being right, while the latter gets nothing done. Ask a Democrat this year.

–What’s the coolest—not the most meaningful or the deepest or the wisest, but the COOLEST—thing you ever did?

Wow.

Smoked a joint with Jerry Garcia in 1979; got drunk with the Replacements more than once; and took the mike from Ian MacKaye once to scream lyrics into at a Fugazi show;

but I gotta go with:

meeting Frank Sinatra, and not asking for his autograph.