Apparently there's an MTV filming crew doing some sort of docu on poetry ---don't know what they're working on, but they were there for the early part of tonight & will be back again next week.
Oh, and are the next two weeks ever full.Rock Camp planning, rehearsals, Cliterati, two poets out of pocket,then next week is actual camp & then the Blood Bath Slam, ATL teams versus Charlotte.Woooooskippy. Better rest up!Easier with the sounds of rain & cats puring at the sides.
- Mood:
cheerful
--one for each ear
in off rhythm
1.
It's the absurdity
fisting you in the gut
like her legs on the plastic
red
of the eat-in booth seat
maniacal yellow happy M
rising outside the window
and french fry stuffed kid faces
hanging upside down on monkey bars
while she is very definitely
having a heart attack
you hold her stranger hand
for an hour
wait and wait and wait for relatives to show up
because she's less worried about dying
than an ambulance ride and the trip to the hospital
she can't afford, doesn't have insurance
and she's embarassed about it
like it's her fault
a flaw
sticky
like the countertops
minimum wages don't encourage
to clean.
2.
we have no fucking right
we have no fucking rights
even when we pay for our walls
they can come and handcuff you
they can come and handcuff you before
you reach for your ID
shackled wrists make it harder to grab your identity
shackled wrists make it harder to grab for your identity
or the grip on your heart
pounded guilty before proven innocent
lumps to swallow
lumps to swallow like shame
as though they weren't adding to the fear
with behavior more like perpetrators
traitors
traitors to our senses of safety
3.
we come in to this world
with an oceanic squall in our throats
gummy
all small and imprinted
mucked with hopes and dreams
and we go out with muffled throats,
paper flesh, thinness like the beginning
but drained
along the way
suffering indignities of body fluids leaving,
sores and tempers deserving of respect
and dignity most under undignified conditions
weaknesses make us human
more than bags of bones
with jellyfish guts of fear
in the darkness
---be a lighthouse
see yourself there
in the rheumy eyes of the war veteran
begging for change at the gas station
the story of the man plugging away after a life of service
then let go
and the grandmother whose schizophrenic child
has stage four lung cancer
and babies.
4.
if you can't
ask yourself
who the fuck are you
how much do you really fucking need
at the expense of someone else's
safe sleeping spot
plate of food
medical attention
5.
one heart clangs in my chest
and the other is hers
traveling with witness eyes
relaying stories from the road
because we are open
blood sisters to vulnerabilities
we swap our testimonies
and wonder
where the hell is this place
we call our country
and what can we salvage?
- Mood:
discontent
- Mood:
awake - Music:wheel in the sky
on a ticket the knoxville slam team paid for, familial style.mad. deep. love.
amy held me up that day.lindsay,too.we can't do this life alone and some graces you'll never forget.
we sang journey at the top of our lungs with windows rolled down.
it was a beautiful day.
today is the birthday of three marvelous humans in our slamily
kat sanford, chris august & copperhead red.happy birthdays!!with sparklers and danceypants!
my heart has many arms today
full of love and flowerfaces
- Mood:
loving - Music:don't stop believin'
Aries Horoscope for week of July 9, 2009
Miracle of miracles: A pointless pain in the butt will soon stop bugging you. Meanwhile, an annoying itch in your heart is subsiding, and may even disappear. As a result of these happy developments, you will be able to concentrate on a much more interesting and provocative torment that has been waiting impatiently for your loving attention. Actually, it's an ancient torment dressed up in a new package. But as before, it's a torment you've never had the right name for. That's about to change, however. You're finally ready to find the right name for it, and when you do, you'll be halfway toward a permanent cure.
- Mood: cheerful
Sometimes when I'm concerned for someone, I want to express it, but my tongue gets tied up,
especially toward the cause for concern.Anyway, I got caught up in my morning and kind of back-burnered my thoughts for a pause.
I had a specific person to address the concern with--and blam! that person called me and right out of the gate
expressed the same feelings I'd had earlier.Good lookin' out!
I love some of the people I know so fricken sweetly it hurts my teeth.
And man, I know some righteous, tender dudes.
~
Work was a slog, but evaporated quickly into Rock Camp meeting! I am so excited that I'll get to be there for more of it this time.Well, just present in it.Last year, it was this happy, ebullient, shiny, glinting thing on the other side of incredibly fucked up.I remember it was a good thread that kept me hanging on last June, but whatever came out of my mouth was a burble.I know one director didn't really know what to say, while the other made up for it in tears with me and I just felt out of it.I moved around in numbness and shock.
I'm glad to have another chance.
I like the ideas we're having around zine making this time around with more of us working on it.I hope my writing prompts & some adapted ideas from Theresa create sparks.
~
I have reached a conclusion that I just can't keep up with FB.It's crack.I need to limit my use of it.On some days, the being tapped and compulsive checking---ugh, it's just a drain.
This is much more my environment.
One cool thing, though--reconnecting with high school folks thanking me for being a friend in rough patches.I really felt so invisible back then, like I didn't have an impact on anyone or anything.It's somehow humbling to get these echo locations.
~
Lightning rules.No big heavy rumbles or intense showers, but this wild, expansive flickering.Shuttering sky.
- Mood: cheerful
Poet’s Recession Road Trip
‘Cause sometimes you just got to get out of the house and see what’s going on. Plus just wanting to tap into that great tradition of poets and road trips. If you have any suggestions for roadtrip inspired reading, tunage, and other inspiration let me know. A 17-day road trip from Atlanta to LA then back through Chicago to NYC, then touching base with the home place in NC, then back to Atlanta to read at Java Monkey, July 26th.
I’ll be talking to people about the recession and how it’s affecting them, talking to poets writing on it, songwriters singing on it, and generally trying to get a pulse for the mood out there. It will also be an exercising in video journaling, blogging, twittering, facebooking, and just seeing how networked I can get out by myself on the open road. I’ll be posting as I go and hopefully have something at the end that would make a cool video.
I look forward to getting out of town, some of my best thinking and writing has always been done behind the wheel.
I NEED GUIDES!!!
Someone in each city, someone who can hook me. Do you have:
1) Friends and relatives that have been laid off or impacted by the recession, that would like to be interviewed.
2) A local poet that can read a piece on camera on the recession. Doesn’t have to be literally about the recession, but can be about local industry, aspects of local character, issues of self-worth, contemporary poems about working and making a living. I’d like to talk to anyone, but particular people in creative industries.
3) A good place to eat featuring local cuisine. Nothing fancy, I love Bar-B-Que and ethic foods. Please note, being unemployed myself something cheap, around $10.
4) A place to sleep, couches are fine. I can sleep anywhere, but I do snore.
5) Some local color, unique places to your city. Beautiful views, parks, hangouts. Particular places that reflect America’s poetry heritage, poet birthplaces, famous bookstores, reading venues, etc. On average I’ll have 8-12 hours in any city to spend.
6) If I happen to be in your city on a night there’s a reading, would love to sign up for the open mic, or just do a reading with friends in your living room.
Schedule:
Fri, July 10 Atlanta-New Orleans
Sat , J 11 NO-Austin
Sun, J 12 Austin-El Paso
Mon, J 13 El Paso - Arcosanti
Tues, J 14 Arcosanti - Los Angeles
Wed, J 15 LA-San Francisco
Thur, J 16 San Fran-Reno
Fri, J 17 Reno-Salt Lake City
Sat, J 18 SLC-Denver
Sun, J19 Denver-Topeka
Mon, J 20 Topeka-St. Louis
Tues, J 21 St. Louis-Chicago
Wed, J 22 Chicago-Cincinnati
Thur, J 23 Cincinnati-New York City
Fri, J 24 NYC-DC
Sat, J 25 DC-Kenly
Sun, J 26 Kenly-Atlanta
creech444@comcast.net
- Mood:
busy
- Mood: amused
Nothing really new except that the time frame puts us on the tightrope for about another two months, with layoffs starting
around Sept.1.Some depts. hadn't heard what we did, so the numbers of something like 20% of staff & librarian figure and the quote of "a dozen if we're lucky, but probably more like two or three dozen is our reality" came as quite a whiplash to some.
One new tidbit is that it severance and notification will be based on classification (read: if you're at the bottom, you'll get the least notice & the least severance, joy for me).Another is that it's not last hired, first fired, good news for me.The layoffs will not be evenly distributed through teams & departments and team leaders are not exempt from layoffs.
This really bespeaks to me that our department could be eliminated and absorbed and our division could be really thinned, since it's the materials/books budget that's going to get really whacked.
What this means for me is that when I return from Nats, I'll be looking for a part-time job. Tending bar or being a barrista (although the latter is really hard on night owly types like me unless I could be a late shifter), pet sitting, landscaping, whatever.An odd job while I get the rest in order, figure out next moves.
It also means I'll be concentrating less on being a poetry organizer, looking and establishing a new venue, etc. (unless I can tie that to sustainability).May mean I concentrate more on being a poet, not a bad thing.
At rehearsal last night, T and I talked about how you know at different turns what you need to be doing with your life, even if it's not the thing that's economically wise, but how you avoid those different turns because they are many and complicated and uncertain.Then times change and the boot in the rear almost makes the turn finally, at last, unavoidable.We both feel like we're there anyway, it's just a matter of figuring out the sustainable parts.
I feel more matter of fact than panicky.But that's a pendulum swing.
After this, stayed up way too late with Radar, but it was really good to see her anyway.
- Mood:
exanimate
Cool idea & some great shots.
It would be cool to do some such poetry thing.Poets' lives,
spontaneous words,
poems on the spot in pictorial.
(more of a document that the simultaneous 24hr challenge?).
I'd have to think on the shape of it.
- Mood: inspired
&
caramel macchiato ice cream
You can only breathe your way through, drink tea,
massage, chiro and herb your way so far before
the homemade bandage starts to unravel.
Baby elephants in the middle of living room parlors only remain babies
for so long before they grow
especially if you're feeding them straws of denial
when others leave the room.
Empty lofts for months and months on end
testify to how our culture is programed this way,
no way to escape without getting
some of it on you
or in your consciousness.
This goes for a lot of things in life, in general.
Being honest sometimes means admitting
you don't have the answers
self medications aren't working, friends
can only advise so much before you make the change yourself
or seek specialized help.
You can't control this life
as much as how you meet it.
~~~~
A colleague of mine said she was thinking of me over the weekend.
Things I said were "on her heart" as she described it.She said I have
a good energy and spirit, that I light up when I talk about poetry. From our conversation
she said she really saw me working poetry with kids "because they can still be
so open." Kids. Huh.
~~
One colleague is retiring before the axes start to fall.
One from my department just got her MLS
and she's out of here.We've seen that coming.
She found a job in Kentucky. Hmmmm...she's a go-to person in our department
and we know already that vacancies won't be filled.But maybe these are jobs saved?
It's getting vampiric around here.
- Location:work
- Mood:
contemplative - Music:colleague talking about her new job
Catch and release.
Watery dreams last night, tossing. Lots of tossing.
My arms felt numb & then on fire, burning, my body a saw played by memory.
Somewhere, a harmonica rode lips through the darkness like railway car.
The traffic sounded an ocean, the trees swayed by breeze swayed me.
Descriptions from Michigan & comparisons of night skies
kept me tethered, connected to a one.
Lit candles everywhere, smell of wax mixed with wood house.
Scribbled for awhile until insomnia set in.
Finally, I think the cat nudged me over.
There's still a swirl, I just don't have the focus to put it down.
Distracted.
Woke up to another lovely morning, picked tomatoes, watered plants.
I feel dichotomous, full and empty, alone and connected.Oddness.
Open.
It's been so gorgeous yesterday & today.
A cooling off, like last year.
"Don't you
forget about me"
comes up in shuffle.
Oh, I won't, not ever.
- Location:work
- Mood: contemplative
- Music:dover, amy ray, coldplay, tori, bopping my head to shazza,green day, etc.
they look like they're having a blast doing it, too and i bet from time to time, they drop the stick on each other
on purpose.
i have something brewing, steeping about the last days,
the weirdness of celebrity deaths & then those that are
celebrities to us personally.
right now, it's just stream of consciousness,
a bit of random and nonsense.
in an aside, radar, poet from Van-Edmonton
landed unexpectedly for an overnight layover.
she called me right as i was reading a poem about vancouver
by logan phillips in a synchronicity i love
& so we had a few extra hours other than the night
we figured for a few weeks from now. it was good to hear her
& hang out on the java patio. she said something about retiring
hip-hop poems, and i smiled, reminiscent of another pretty throated
girl who said the same thing.
see, this is how it is now.this, paired with dreams of crime scenes & mysteries,
insomnia, reminders, days tagged by i-pod random shuffle,
sensations of lovely, sea & winged creatures purchasing attention.
missing.still feeling,
anyway.movement & shift.
- Mood:
weird - Music:messiaen, amy ray
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
brags2bitches it also anticipates and folds.it knows best, sometimes,
and remains mysterious at others.the shell isn't above betrayal
or remorse.the muscles have memories, as athletes know.
why wouldn't the muscle of heart also remember and put those memories
in our very veins? why wouldn't the nerves, connected to our brain
of snapshot, scrapbook archives and creative non-fictions
also recall from a shelf a volume? we touch. we hold with arms and hands
why wouldn't our skin, when taking in, hold that there to nerve, to muscle?
i feel you, sister, especially now, at this winding down
of june.
- Mood: sympathetic
- Mood:
curious - Music:danced so hard it fell off
There's an area station playing anything Jackson, which began last night and continues today.Whatever happened with him in the later years,before that, he meant a lot to many people, especially people of color (and people who danced bridges over racial gaps, as so much art can do).
Even if he wasn't a personal favorite or the saturdation of the airwaves of Thriller (I know someone gave me the cassette as a present) made you change over to Alt stations, it's like the rock radio station DJ said yesterday "just because he's not in our genre doesn't mean we won't notice what's going on and the influence he had~gigantic, with nobody quite comparable at this moment." I recognize & I can respect the mourning of others or the disbelief.
Even if he wasn't a personal favorite or the saturdation of the airwaves of Thriller (I know someone gave me the cassette as a present) made you change over to Alt stations, it's like the rock radio station DJ said yesterday "just because he's not in our genre doesn't mean we won't notice what's going on and the influence he had~gigantic, with nobody quite comparable at this moment." I recognize & I can respect the mourning of others or the disbelief.
I know everyone has theories, especially about MJ's turn for the weird.I think Andrew Sullivan posted one ( Read more... )
I also think his sister Janet, in a way, is probably more of what he wanted to be, even if he was the big brother.
His features, surgeries, etc, feminized him.I kind of think he was a queering of queer, maybe even wanting to be trans and not permitted, and so he became a really other-other.I don't think he was ever really allowed to be a kid and regressed, but also, couldn't be the adult he may have wanted to be either.
So many of his friends are inspirations to drag queens everywhere, for example.He was already performing a not-masculine-not-feminine dance routine, crotch grab.His voice went soft, he went soft, and I think part of the derision around him came from that place---that same place where homos are charged with being pedophiliac. On those charges, I don't think we'll ever truly know.People make up their own minds about that.But it's something to think about, how attacks on his character are so similar to those attacks made on other kinds of queers.
I remember asking after one interview with Barbara Walters "what if he really is just something else?"
Like the Garbage song, I think MJ was, in later life, certainly, the queerest of the queer.
One of my favorite videos is Scream.There's something telling going on in it, in relation to the media, certainly, but also this more raw, edgyness, along witht he mirroring of his sister, and her of him.Besides, they're in space, aliens in their own little craft, allowed to be more rock than pop, more adrog (maybe janet has the boobs MJ could never have?) and twins.
He's moonwalking or never having to do it again wherever he is
and there's a peace in that.
- Mood: pensive
- Music:scream
It all began with Farrah, and then, Cheryl Ladd. I was 6. Bicentennial 1976.
Charlie's Angels were my stand-ins for those other dolls. Jumpsuited, booted,
they rode fast and solved shit.Oh, sure, they were all model-y and poster pretty.
But they drove sports cars (the one above, actually)
and looked good conquering whatever the B-grade mystery of the hour was
from their secret assignment man.Okay, so he was The Man, but still, they were a triumvirate of gals.
What could be cooler to a 6 year old tomboyish girl who also had matchbox cars?
I just had a memory triggered, that I had the dolls, and the model car* to match!
(I can't remember if I ever put it together. I think I did, but didn't paint it).
Which was a Mustang. Ohman, it really could have started there, couldn't it? My love of muscle cars.
My American attachment to gas guzzling Mustang.My guilty attraction.
And not men driving them, but booted, jumpsuit wearing gals. Maybe even in gangs.
Even if the gang was only
really a triumvirate.
Thanks, Farrah.I think I wanted you to be more than a pretty face
and sometimes,
you were.
(*I also had Charlie's Angel's baseball-sized trading cards, packed with gum).
- Mood: contemplative
- Music:the effing CA theme, of course
a diversion away from neko case...
bryan adams...i think the last time i held you...it was my 1st gfriend's cd case...
- Location:collosally unhip
- Mood: ditzy
- Music:bryan adams
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