fuck.

tell the earth i'm sorry.
carry my smile with you.
the heart always said we've got more time.

I love car commercials.
They have such sexy cars.

Gliding through the curves of those closed courses,
all varieties of Mercedes sleek and Ford tough,

sexy. Immaculate.
Yours.

But I'm waiting
for the car commercial that displays

the sexiness of a being stuck in rush hour.
Show me the seductive jerking of impatient brakes

at a sultry four miles an hour.
Show me some Ford tough as that truck

is spinning its wheels in the snow-filled ditch,
drunk from the tongue of that damned black ice.

Show me love, after the alcohol wears off.
Take the sunset kiss and bury it in her suitcase.

Show me her underwear after they're nailed to the wall.
'Cause I figured out I don't kiss well on a closed course.

I ain't too tough until the rain gives way to hail,
the hail is too busy to be sexy,

Scraping the paint, cracking the glass,
show me 30 seconds of us kissing in that.

is doing more for me than she ever thought she would.

commercial: "if you think you're psychic...(3rd eye appears)...maybe you are."

When I page through all of your posts here, I mostly see updates and poems from poetry friends, along with some normaal life stuff from a couple friends and a little bit of grad school update, along with some Ren fair stuff from a couple other friends. And I have one other group that's completely different. It's called Pollanesque, this group that talks about organic food and cooking and recipes and such. And it always strikes me as such a random set of entries compared to everything else. And it's also rather refreshing at times. It's something largely unconnected to most of what I do with my life.

Do any of you have something like that here?

so who are some good spoken word agents?

who are some bad ones? (back-channel me about these :)

I've never felt as tired after any performance or slam as I was after finals. I, the dance machine, didn't rise for one song at the after party. I did, however, have the best chili cheese fries I've possibly ever had.

In hindsight, I'm surprised that I almost didn't perform Beneath the Veil (the MLK poem). I just didn't want to repeat a dvd poem from the previous year. But the moment called for it, and it's probably my favorite feeling from the night.

There's a certain calm when you know that after having to perform your hottest poem in the first round that you've basically thrown the slam. And it was indeed time for a woman. Two, in fact. Meant to be. Good on you, Amy. Come back.

Oh Karen Finneyfrock, you will be on that finals stage. By God, you'd better be.

The side events were fun. My favorite might be the one where all I had to say was "mmmmm...."

Survivor told me a story that reminds me why we do this.

Finally got to hang with the Okoawos. What a pair. They could wax brilliant all night.

Sierra. Sierra.

Much respect to Alvin for going out the right way.

The hotel staff were scary nice. I didn't know humans really acted like that. Thank you.

Still not sure about next year. Guess I have a year to consider. Bout managing/MCing could be fun too.

Even though I've been stunned and depressed about the fact that it's literally snowing like Christmas day, I found myself charmed. By the trees. This is the first time I've seen the fall leaves covered in white. And walking underneath them...it got me. I was smiling against my will. F-ing trees.

and still on the road with Cynthia and Jenn on the way to Berkeley. I'll consider my primary birthday gift to be a safe and timely arrival.

i dreamt that i was in a park with a bunch of kids and airplanes flew over us dropping all these bombs that turned out to be water balloons. seemed like some kind of trickster's utopia, except i wasn't in a mood to get wet.

I can be shy in front of a camera.
Never got used to being seen.
So when I first met the work of Jock Sturges,
my next breath was disbelief.

Children, teens, naked, trusting on the sand,
there was no way this kind of gentle was real.
I closed the book. Gasping with guilt
from seeing children so bathed in trust.
Bedrooms free of curtains.
Beaches.

I'd never imagined a trust like this.
These boys and girls giving witness to their changing
bodies and psyches, over the course of years, years,
sometimes even from birth, from belly,
sometimes their parents photographed next to them.

This was a love I'd never seen,
and I'm not surprised torches were raised
against this Unbelievable.

Jock,
when the FBI raided your home,
stole your life's work before your eyes,
I can tell you, I know the feeling.
Children like me know something of being raided.
The torch-bearers were afraid of the matches your work
could light in latent raiders, who would view this with
eyes less refined, those who would
make chains out of our trust, like he chained me in mine.
An artist is most helpless when his work is released,
when his passions spark unintended desires.
You're offering holy candles, while we're still afraid of fire.

Jock,
I will not engage them in torch fight.
I will simply say,
I wish you'd found me before he did.
I wish I could have a portrait
of my stainless body before my curtains were torn down.

I'm too young to not remember what I looked like.

And I've been thinking. If I found someone today,
who knew their way with healing and camera,
would I let myself be captured now?
Year after year could I bare myself,
in languages my words will not bend,
with curtains and without,
outdoors and closed-eyed,
young as I'll ever again dare to be?

And him.
Maybe later, when both our hairs are gray,
I could send these portraits to him,
with a letter, asking:

“What if, that night, you were a photographer,
if we'd pretended my bedroom was an empty beach...
Would your aching eyes love me,
like a June sun that never dreamed of eating?

And if I smiled at you,
with all the nakedness of fire,
could you be warmed by the distance, those sacred inches,
for one night, could a candle ever be enough?”

but all of you should take a peek. brilliant.

http://jeftoonportfolio.blogspot.com/2009/02/twisted-princess.html

#1: Polar Bear

There's a Polar Bear
in our Frigidaire--
he says his name is Health Care.
He's hiding here
because he trembles with fear
when they call for him Out There.
The voices are hard
and carry far
when folks in charge don't dare
to make sure unneeded funerals
are avoided everywhere.
So close the door
and say no more
about his snow white hair.
And if still they come
like a setting sun
kindly toss your Frigidaire and Bear
down the stairs.

#2: Mister Brown

I'll tell you the story of Mister Brown
who worked in a school in the center of town.
He had a smooth face, not too short or tall,
but he just wasn't, just wasn't hetero at all.
He could do many things with balloons,
he lovingly sent his kids to recess 3 minutes too soon.
He even let them draw Spongebob figures on the wall,
but he just wasn't, just wasn't hetero at all.
They lost interest in their games
when the strange rumors came,
that he lived with a loved one whose parts were the same.
The oddness of this news seemed to make their skins crawl,
as they wondered, was he hetero at all?
They knew that he was married
and that his spouse's name was Terry,
and when they spoke about their weekends
he always said things were a little hairy.
But the twinkle in his eye when his phone buzzed a call,
his attempts not to sigh as he returned from the hall,
slowly the second graders' curtains began to fall,
as they learned he just wasn't, just wasn't hetero at all.
Someone's mom called someone's dad,
they argued that such silly lifestyles were probably bad,
they demanded that justice must be had,
they hired a new teacher named Mister Paul.
He looked to be ten feet tall.
They swore his left pinkie could palm a basketball.
He made them sob
if they asked to draw Spongebob.
He threatened mortal doom
if they asked for balloons.
One day the boys and girls each wrote on their bathroom stalls:
"it seems like grown-ups are nicer when they're just not,
just not hetero at all."

The myth has overcome you. Jefferson never freed
you, and neither have we. Our fascination never
wanes; few tortures taste sweeter

than unanswered obsession.
It is written that you were nearly white,
with long straight hair down your smoothing back.

Was there any guilt in this, the ease with which your children
would be freed, one by one, into a river of milk,
free to blend in, effortless and thick,

was there fury wafting from your pistol eyes,
with every moment he failed to release you,
was it love? A twisting simmer of a heart that preferred to remain?

The myth has overcome you. The slave has swallowed the woman.
It is more scintillating to view him as master, rather than man, to imagine
the textures of Monticello beds writhing under your tumbling bodies, frolicking,

crashing,

I want to ask if you loved him. If he ever gazed into your
pistol eyes and forgot who he was, if you ever tongued his name
with freedom's affection, if in a time when masters

opened thighs by birthright
you felt liberated in his request
for permission, if he ever lay

upon you exhausted, tears slipping onto your right shoulder, stinging, sugar,
ocean salt, if he ever felt shackled in dreams of a Middle Passage undone,
those ships only carrying his loving body to you, in dreams where even servitude was myth,

where your only binding was “yes”, did he ever cry out in these dreams,
your earthly hands wiping his panicked sweat, compassion carving your face
into calm, kissing the same hands that left you out of that storied Declaration,

as if this bed of twisted sheets had become the surrogate for his pen.
Even more than this, I ask of the beginning, the moment your heart
redeemed his invasion, allowed your body to warm on its own,

praying,

with all the power granted to a woman of gods,
to make ashes of the roles both of you were given,
to diamond polish this moment of bodies and secrets,

with the words that today still evade our tongues, slipping past
as tears down splitting shoulders, chain links from souls and wrists,
as baptismal heads, steaming rivers, the sweetest words, whispered,

“Yes. Forgiven.”

that was pretty cool.

Dear Mr. Madoff,

Despite the smoke and mirrors
we know very well: you were a distraction.
A symbol, a symptom of a cancer we'd like to think is in remission.
We gave you 150 years for your deceptions,
yet ignored the system that not only bred you but fed from you,
like burying you in jail would give us back our jobs,
but don't we love when justice comes easy,
like a woman could mascara her black eye and forget who she married,
like removing the n-word from the dictionary could protect us from tasers,
like prosecuting an eighty-year-old Nazi could cleanse us of the Holocaust.
Thank you Bernie, for giving us an excuse for our conscience to rest easy.
Lord knows what questions we'd have to face if you'd never been caught.

She was our last poet in semis, and how cool it was that Jared Paul was there to hear it. He may have been the only one to really get the connections to the RNC.

Young poet: choose your mentor wisely.
His charisma was never meant to be blinding sun.
Pay attention to his hands,
when one is guiding you through the woods, watch where
the other is placed, there is no lesson plan located at the small of your back.
He may choose to ensnare you with time,
enough years passing by for you to forget the specifics
of your boundaries, wrapping you in promises of a newer education,
the late night calls should be a sign,
the proximity of his breath should be a sign,
in sweating frenzy he may moan that your brilliance only matches the speed of his sighs.
When you outgrow him,
watch if his eyes begin to paint you as less gardenia than weed,
you may remember that your body is not the blackboard he cherished.
The moment will come, in that horrid bedroom quiet,
when your stolen land and crackled pride finally sink,
when your wisdom, in mercy, finally speaks:
he is not
your teacher.

http://sjsandteam.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/jordan-chandler-admits-he-lied-about-michael-jackson/

The accuser finally admits the truth. Michael did not do it. They wanted his money. I knew it even then.