April 26, 2009

Marc Kelly Smith

I WANTED TO BE

I wanted to be so many things.
Bigger than I was.
A tall tower of building blocks.
A shoelace tied so fast.
Jelly spread smoothly
to the corners of the bread.

I wanted to be so good.
A smile on everyone’s face.
Folded hands. A clean desk.
All the numbers added up
digit under digit
perfectly clear.

I wanted to stand between the bully
and the frail kid.
Ready to take it. Ready to give it back.
I wanted to do the right things.
Pull the spit back into my mouth.
Scrape the gum-chewed secrets
off the bottoms of the chairs.
Drag the dumb, go-along laughs
out of the air.

I wanted to stand on an asteroid
whirling a mighty chain above my head,
flinging an outer space hook probe
into the heart of the Universe.
And by loving …
Whatever I wanted to love.
When I wanted to love.
How I wanted to love …
I wanted to grapple the Ultimate Connection.

So what happened?
What happened during that great revolution?
After we pinned our daddies to the floor?
After we made our mothers eat shame?
After we rolled all antiquity and tradition
into cigar size joints,
sucking in whole rooms of humanity,
hoping to assimilate all the differences
and heat the world
with our spontaneous combustion?

What happened
when the chain on the asteroid
slipped out of our hands?
When the ones we loved
loved others?
When our laugh became the dumb laugh?
When the spit shot quick and hard
from our teeth?
When we gave the kids the beatings?
What happened to our dreams?
What happened to me?

I wanted to read all the books
of unerring truth.
I wanted to tie my shoelace fast.
Spread jelly smoothly to the corners of the bread.
Build a tower, a tall tower.
Spell everybody’s name
top to bottom,
bottom to top
all four sides,
in and out.
I wanted so bad, so bad
to be so many things,
without the whole thing
falling down.

from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
Tribute to Slam Poetry

__________

Marc Kelly Smith: “When people ask me, ‘Well what makes Chicago style different?’ I say, ‘It’s genuine.’ Because, like the show, your bullshit gets you just so far and then somebody’s going to call you on it in Chicago. It’s always been that way.” (web)

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April 24, 2009

Thadra Sheridan

AFTER THE BOWLING STOPPED

Last night,
this guy played guitar on stage,
and it made me think of you, because
you play guitar on stage.
So I spent the next fifteen minutes
running a mental slide show.

LOS ANGLES:
You gave me half of your egg salad sandwich.
INDIANAPOLIS:
You grab me, because
the smell of gasoline on my fingers
turns you on.
CHICAGO:
We play Ferris Bueller and
follow a kids’ tour group
at the Institute of Arts.
ASHLAND:
You bowl five strikes in a row.

Etcetera, etcetera …
I find this still happens a lot.
Someone’s wearing shoes, so
I think of you, because
you wear shoes.
You drink beverages.
YOU BREATHE AIR!
You can see how this might be a problem.
Sometimes I just
blurt your name out loud in my apartment
for no reason
like a Tourette’s outburst,
and I’m supposed to write this
poem about you,
because I keep saying I’m a poet.
And I’ve been trying
for the three years since you stopped
bowling in my presence, but it keeps coming out like,

I hate you, I hate you
I wish I’d never agreed to
date you.
or
The day you left,
the sun set for the last time,
the trees wilted,
and happy little creatures ceased to scurry.
or
My heart
is a block of frozen, solid, petrified, cold, really hard ice
without you.
or
I don’t need you.
Never did.
I CAN OPEN MY OWN PICKLE JARS
MOTHERFUCKER!!!

Oh, I can write volumes
about every little
one-night-stand-pointless-encounter-waste-of-saliva
I’ve tried to replace you, but
you?
You’re drying up the ink in
all my favorite pens.
You’re hiding all my journals and
shorting out my keyboard.
You are the quintessential cock block,
if I had a cock.
You are the ultimate writer’s block, if …
No, wait, that one works.
The point is,
I know you can eat a whole egg salad sandwich,
but I appreciate the gesture.
And that stretch of 90/94
from Chicago to Rockford has
never been the same
since I drove it home from the end of time.
And when you stayed over this past spring,
you slept on the couch,
took a shower,
and left.
But it took me three days
to take your towel out of the bathroom
and five more to wash it.
I find I can’t really write about something
until I have a little
distance perspective, but you’re still
mashed up against me like a Siamese twin.
And the kicker is
I can’t even say I want you back.
You were all shades of fiasco.
I was only on your mind if I was
waving my arms in front of you.
And having sex with you?!?
I suspect you wouldn’t have known the difference
if I had been inflatable.
And you only gave me the sandwich because you were
BEING SUCH AN ASSHOLE
So if you asked,
would I take you back?
Yeah I totally would.
And that pisses me off.
But if I was with you right now, I’d be
sitting in some hotel in New York,
getting my ass kicked at Scrabble, or
pitching a makeshift baseball game in
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
And my debt would be twice as ridiculous.
And I’d weigh a hundred pounds, because
you supplement eating and sleeping and
not in any good way.
But I wouldn’t be here.
I wouldn’t be
running my stupid life.
You are the rockstar me I’m
too impatient to wait for.
And you’ve got nothing to do with anything.
Most of my friends don’t even know what you look like.
So you’re all mine.
And a terrible kisser
and a really sore loser.
And I suspect you’ll
litter my life with
unfinished pages about the
empty spaces you
left in my apartment
for years to come.
And tonight,
when someone asks to borrow a guitar pick,
or uses the words,
and
or
the
I’ll think of you;
snapshot something somewhere
away from here and today.
Not much I can really do about that, just
thought I’d mention it, because
it was on my mind.

from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
Tribute to Slam Poetry

__________

Thadra Sheridan: “I have written poetry since I was eight years old. It rhymed back then. As I moved into adolescence it got really sappy and boy-centric. In college I saw a folk singer at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. His lyrics were funny and blunt and so brutally honest, I was amazed that he said such things out loud. The impression he made on me was incredibly strong. I thought, I could be that honest. I want to affect people that deeply. I write because I believe none of us are alone or all that different. And when we see ourselves in the thoughts and experiences of others, we realize that. So I tell my story.” (web)

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April 14, 2009

Jack McCarthy

THE WHOLE CHALUPA

There’s an educational controversy raging in Massachusetts over the “MCAS” tests, a series of standardized tests that students have to pass before they can get a high school diploma.

So I’m on my way to work, jumping around the AM dial,
trying to get last night’s Red Sox score from the west coast
and I hear these two guys talking about
the Drop the Chalupa commercial,

and I stop and listen because I think
it’s one of the funniest commercials I’ve ever seen,
but that’s not what these hockeypucks are saying,
no, they’re complaining about that commercial,

because they don’t get it;
and even before I can hit the scan button again,
Beavis and Buttahan are on to capital punishment,
and why am I not surprised that they’re in favor of it?

But I am surprised that they have the cojones
to express an opinion on it
right after they’ve just admitted
they don’t get Drop the Chalupa.

But isn’t that typical of us right now?
We live in the Golden Age of the Opinion:
no knowledge, no education, no qualification,
just give us your opinion, like …

like a judge in a poetry slam.
And even though I like that commercial,
don’t get the idea that I’m in favor of advertising:
the other day I was waiting for the subway

and there’s this kid on the platform next to me
wearing a GAP sweatshirt, and I said,
“How much you get for that?” and he said, “What?”
I said, “I’m not proud, money’s a little tight right now,

paying off all those college loans and such,
we could use a few extra bucks;
so how much do you charge the GAP
for wearing their advertising like that?”

And he started to move away from me
down the platform. I yelled, “I got
just one word for you, kid: MCAS,”
and he started to run, and all the kids on the platform

started to run away from me as I stood there
shouting “MCAS! MCAS.” Which set me thinking
that if I’d stayed with the Drop the Chalupa guys
five more minutes they probably would have been

ranting and raving about the schools and the
teachers and Why can’t kids pass the MCAS?
Maybe they can’t, you Twin Peaks of Nincompoop,
but I guarantee you, they get Drop the Chalupa.

So why can’t kids pass the MCAS?
Because they don’t do any homework.
Why? Because they’re all out working at
Taco Bell. Why? Because they’ve become

the hottest market for all the advertisers;
because they have to shell out
forty-eight bucks for a GAP sweatshirt,
eighteen ninety-eight for the new Britney Spears CD.

I bought Don’t Be Cruel for eighty-nine cents;
Hallelujah I Love Her So, Ray Charles,
changed my life, eighty-nine cents;
Mack the Knife, the Louis Armstrong version—

I laid a crumpled dollar down, they gave me back
a penny and a dime (and they didn’t need a calculator
to do it). These kids have to buy the whole CD,
and they have to work half a day for that.

Studying pays nada, and they’re consumers now.
They know it; we’re the ones who haven’t
gotten around to admitting it yet. Now
you’re going to tell me they don’t have to

listen to the ads, and you’re right, except for
one thing: advertising works. Every so often
the stakes get high enough to compel us
to acknowledge that it works; we took

liquor commercials off TV, and cigarettes;
we force them to put in disclaimers: “Please
chugalug responsibly;” “May cause drowsiness,
anal leakage, and agonizing death;”

“Erections lasting more than four hours, though rare,
require immediate medical attention.” I wish
somebody had told me that a long time ago.
It would have explained so much.

What we really need is a disclaimer that says,
“I got paid big bucks to tell you that about Doritos.
If you believe one word I said, you’d be safer going to
Hannibal Lecter’s for an intimate dinner than you are

watching TV, because the advertisers will eat you
alive.” Even that might not be enough; we’ve made
TV the babysitter for two generations of our kids;
now we find out that was like putting Dubya

in charge of the evidence in a coke bust.
And no one understands the power of advertising
better than the politicians, who gave away the airwaves
in the first place; now it’s poetic justice that they have to

sell their soul every few years to buy their office back.
Campaign finance reform? Why don’t we just say,
“Political ads are free”? Can’t we do that?
Don’t the airwaves belong to the people?

I’ll have to call Beavis and Buttahan
and see if they have an opinion about that.
But of course they’ll have an opinion about it;
as soon as they hear it, they’ll have an opinion.

Because you see this bone here? Note how it goes
directly from the ear to the jaw. This is the
Opinion Bone. An idea enters at the ear,
and this bone carries it straight to the mouth,

where it exits matched randomly with one of three
opinions: It’s Cool; It Sucks; or, for anything
that’s less than instantaneously clear, It
Doesn’t Suck. The brain never has to be

engaged. In the wrong hands, this bone is
still the most dangerous weapon in the world:
the jawbone of an ass. And the Philistines
have turned it against us.

Of course,
that’s only
my
opinion.

from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
Tribute to Slam Poetry

__________

Jack McCarthy: “I write poetry because in 1964 I heard ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales.’ I perform my poetry because in 1993-94 I found out that there was an audience for what I was writing, and that I loved being in front of that audience. (And I really love it when the people who introduce me use the word ‘legend.’) I compete in slams because it’s a chance to do two or three poems instead of just one; and because whenever someone tells me they liked my poem, I burn to ask, ‘How much did you like it? On a scale of one to ten???’” (web)

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April 13, 2009

Taylor Mali

WHAT TEACHERS MAKE

(Or, If Things Don’t Work Out You Can Always Go to Law School)

He says the problem with teachers is
What’s a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life
was to become a teacher?
He reminds the other dinner guests that it’s true
what they say about teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.

I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the dinner guests
that it’s also true what they say about lawyers.

Because we’re eating, after all, and this is polite company.

I mean, you’re a teacher, Taylor.
Be honest. What do you make?

And I wish he hadn’t done that
(asked me to be honest)
because, you see, I have a policy in my classroom
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, then I have to let you have it.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time
with anything less than your very best.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question, so put your hand down.
Why won’t I let you go to the bathroom?
Because you’re bored.
And you don’t really have to go to the bathroom, do you?

I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
Hi. This is Mr. Mali. I hope I haven’t called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something your son said today.
To the biggest bully in the class, he said,
“Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don’t you?”
And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.

I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids wonder,
I make them question,
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful
over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math
and hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand if you’ve got this [brains],
then you follow this [heart],
and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this [the finger].

Here, let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
Teachers make a goddamn difference! Now what about you?

from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
Tribute to Slam Poetry

__________

Taylor Mali: “I was a teacher for nine years, until 2000, when I decided to quit my job to see if I could make a living as a poet. Miraculously, I have managed to do so through the college lecture circuit and international teaching conferences. Even bought a house in the Berkshires with my wife where I am sitting now on a cold day in January watching the birds come one by one to the feeder which I filled yesterday.” (web)

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April 9, 2009

Alvin Lau

TO MY HAIR

i.

 

I never admired how you grew into thick, resilient strands black as India ink: I used to bleach you so frail or shave you clean under the harsh summer sun. Once in high school I didn’t wash you for ten straight weeks because I thought it would’ve been so cool to be the only Chinese kid in Chicago with dreadlocks. When you started to recede, my worries flew up the Lau family history of hair, recalling grandpa’s pattern baldness, how mom’s whole head turned white like a curtain of ivory needles before she was twenty, and how Uncle Etienne nicknamed Dad Silvermane for the bolt of white streaking across the back of his head, which he always boasted was a sign of his brilliance.

 

ii.

 

Though I knew one day I’d have to say goodbye to you, I pictured you slowly retreating over decades like a wounded beach, never thought I’d see you vanish completely in the flashfires of chemotherapy. After the first week, I stood in the bathtub pulling out tiny clumps of you like unraveling the string my head was stitched from. Wiping off half an eyebrow was like holding a handful of bloody teeth, wiping off the other half like looking back at the car crash wondering if I really survived it. It never was the foreshadowing x-rays, or negative blood tests, or sinister words like malignant that broke me. It was when I saw you blanketing my bathroom floor like bodies strewn across a battlefield that I thought If I am to be devoured, then please, God, Night, Mouth in the Darkness, swallow me faster than one hair at a time.

 

iii.

 

I would like you to know that every day, I would still shampoo my naked scalp out of habit in memorial for your shortened life; my fingers would pay respects to a thousand of your gravestones every morning. Maybe this was my ritual to call you back: on my knees, white as the sheet I feared they’d lay over me, an atheist praying for regeneration in cupfuls of hair. How many nights did I run my finger along the rim of my head searching for your return? How many deserts did I cross in my mind?

 

iv.

 

Years after, I still catch myself carelessly running my fingers through your nest to see if you’ve held against the wind, promise to never shave you clean, remembering every comb that resembled a baptism. Your patchwork emergence was a flight of blackbirds returning home in the spring; I tattooed a black star on my wrist to remind myself of the beauty of what was barren and reclaimed. I am sorry for never appreciating how stoically you fit to my scalp or how neatly you’d tuck under a baseball cap. Penance comes with every instance my heart surrenders to the commonplace, like how I imagine every brush as silver-plated, think of donating hair for wigs as acts of extraordinary mercy, fall in love with Rogaine commercials, melt when my girl runs her fingers over your tips like grass, break down when I catch your reflection in the mirror and can’t help but mouth the words Welcome Back.

 

from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
Tribute to Slam Poetry

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April 7, 2009

Carlos Andrés Gómez

“WHAT’S GENOCIDE?”

their high school principal
told me I couldn’t teach
poetry with profanity
so I asked my students,
“Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Holocaust.”
in unison, their arms rose up like poisonous gas
then straightened out like an SS infantry
“Okay. Please put your hands down.
Now raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Rwandan genocide.”
blank stares mixed with curious ignorance
a quivering hand out of the crowd
half-way raised, like a lone survivor
struggling to stand up in Kigali
“Luz, are you sure about that?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”

“Carlos—what’s genocide?”

they won’t let you hear the truth at school
if that person says “fuck”
can’t even talk about “fuck”
even though a third of your senior class
is pregnant.

I can’t teach an 18-year-old girl in a public school
how to use a condom that will save her life
and that of the orphan she will be forced
to give to the foster care system—
“Carlos, how many 13-year-olds do you know that are HIV-positive?”

“Honestly, none. But I do visit a shelter every Monday and talk with
six 12-year-old girls with diagnosed AIDS.”
while 4th graders three blocks away give little boys blowjobs during recess
I met an 11-year-old gang member in the Bronx who carries
a semi-automatic weapon to study hall so he can make it home
and you want me to censor my language

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

your books leave out Emmett Till and Medgar Evers
call themselves “World History” and don’t mention
King Leopold or diamond mines
call themselves “Politics in the Modern World”
and don’t mention Apartheid

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

you wonder why children hide in adult bodies
lie under light-color-eyed contact lenses
learn to fetishize the size of their asses
and simultaneously hate their lips
my students thought Che Guevara was a rapper
from East Harlem
still think my Mumia t-shirt is of Bob Marley
how can literacy not include Phillis Wheatley?
schools were built in the shadows of ghosts
filtered through incest and grinding teeth
molded under veils of extravagant ritual

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

“Roselyn, how old was she? Cuántos años tuvo tu madre cuando se murió?”

“My mother had 32 years when she died. Ella era bellísima.”

…what’s genocide?

they’ve moved from sterilizing “Boriqua” women
injecting indigenous sisters with Hepatitis B,
now they just kill mothers with silent poison
stain their loyalty and love into veins and suffocate them

…what’s genocide?

Ridwan’s father hung himself
in the box because he thought his son
was ashamed of him

…what’s genocide?

Maureen’s mother gave her
skin lightening cream
the day before she started the 6th grade

…what’s genocide?

she carves straight lines into her
beautiful brown thighs so she can remember
what it feels like to heal

…what’s genocide?
…what’s genocide?

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

“Luz, this…
this right here…

is genocide.”

from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
Tribute to Slam Poetry

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April 4, 2009

Regie Gibson

EULOGY OF JIMI CHRIST

look at the sky
turn a hell fire red lawd
somebodies house is burnin down down down

look at the sky turn a hell fire red lawd
somebodies house is burin down down down down…
—Jimi Hendrix

I.

burn it down

you burned it all the way down jimi

made us burn
in the flame
that became yo sound jimi

grabbed ol legba
by his neck
made him
show you yo respect

hoochieman
coochie man
stranglin him
hoochie coochie hoodooman
wrangled him voodoo chile

made
his
steel
strings sing
ache
bend
break

sin
capitulate
give in
to the will
of yo beautifully
blessed fingers

bewitchinly
bleedin
bittersweet
south paw
serendipitous
sighs

and strained
stratacaster tears

soothin burnin
twistin turnin
into steam
as they fell

no

careened
toward all hellbound souls

only to
roll

back into yo
gypsied eyes

to fornicate
copulate
be sodomized
by penetration beautiful
of sweatband born acid rain

II.

a purple haze runnin through
yo brain drained into the veins
of daytrippers turned acid angel
by yo gift of little wings

which with the aid
of yo mary cryin winds soared
not merely above
around and through
crosstown traffic

but along/well beyond
watchtowers to realm
where gods made love
to little miss strange
foxy ladies in little red houses
over yonder

and on rainy days
would sit back
shoot craps
with laughin sams dice
while boastin bout who had
the most experience

III.

how that musebruise
of yo sadomasochistic bluesoozed
through floors and l.s.d. doors

left psychedelic relics wrecked
on phosphorescent shores

talkin bout that night
you got right
at yo height

rocked woodstock
played yo remade
american anthem

had all the flowers
in the garden chantin

go head brotha
piss off the power
structure brotha

say fuck ya
to the structure brotha
one mo time one last time
befo its yo last time brotha

stick/move
hit/run
stick/move hit/run
try to get
yo ass beyond
the grip of the grim one

try to get
yo ass out of
the sight line of death

try to get
yo ass past
the reach
the reaper

by dodgin
that sonofabitch
betwixt the expanse
of jangled cacophonous chords
and hidin out in shadows flooded with feedback
jimi         the anointed
jimi         the christ

jimi

you manically depressed
maniacally duressed
manifested messiah

impaled upon the neck
of that thang you loved the best
yo one hearts true burnin desire

jimi christ

forever walkin
on the waters
of a bad trip

turnin all of
them bad trips
into wine

castin yo net
upon the waters
of a bad trip
just to see whats there
for you to find

jimi christ
patron saint
of divine distortion

too soon
did you force
the hand of demise

but i aint pissed
gypsy eyes

cause right now
we diggin on the thought
of you and yo homeboy god

bein somewhere
out there in electric lady land
sippin celestial moonshine

bout to tune axes
cut heads
and go
toe to toe
blow for blow
lick for lick
stick for stick

jimi    christ

too soon did you force
the hand of demise
but i aint pissed
at you gypsy eyes

cause i dig that any mother lover
who lived a life like you led
deserved to die any death desired

to die youngto die
highto die stonedto
die freeto die youngto die high

to die stonedto die
freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

all we wanted was one time
just    one    time
to    stand    next    to    yo    fire

from Rattle #27, Summer 2007
Tribute to Slam Poetry

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