{resurrecting the concept of heroes}

Bill Moyers is my new hero. I heard him speak last night at a benefit dinner for People for the American Way, and he was simply enthralling. A perfect blend of candor, humor, riveting honesty, warning without doomsaying, inspiring without seeming to try to inspire. I now want to be a speechwriter again. Going to email Norman about that today -- the president of PFAW needs one badly. A perfectly fine speaker, but oh the text was dry as Jared Paul's Chicago falafel. When you're preaching to the choir, there's no excuse NOT to get a standing ovation. They have to stand up to sing anyway.

OK, I'm leavin' on jet plane. Soon. Time to go, again.

{God is watching us... from a distance...}

learned at the church where we performed this morning:

having premarital sex is the same as raping one's sister. now stay with me here: it is rape because the holy spirit is a person within each of us, and that person (the holy spirit) says No, Stop, and when we don't stop, it is rape.

specifically it is the same as raping one's sister because of the story of David, where his son rapes his daughter, and he chooses his son over God and doesn't kill him, which is like when you know someone's a liar and don't call them out on their sin, or when you steal office supplies from work. I am not making this up.

oh, and you should tithe to the church, especially while you're pregnant, because then God will allow your fruit to ripen on the vine and not take it before its time.

this is the point at which I go into deep meditation and attempt not to hear anymore.

I can't even get this into poetry. I'm only glad that the bulk of my poem in the 5-minute piece is dedicated to pushing the necessity of dissent.

oh, and there was a gigundous BILLY GRAHAM banner behind us. I have to go read something subversive now and try to recover.

{linking the disparate dots}

day 12 with no meat (though I did eat cheese & bread yesterday; what do you want from me, I was starving and in a mall-type situation and pizza was the best of a series of bad options.)

also very little poetry. hm, poetry... protein... connection?

the strange thing is, I don't miss meat at all, except as a convenience. if there were drive-throughs offering brown rice and steamed broccoli, I'd be set.

anyway,

For the Fog Horn When There Is No Fog

by Sarah Hannah

Still sounding in full sun past the jetty,
While low tide waves lap trinkets at your feet,

And you skip across dried trident trails,
Fling weeds, and do not think of worry.

For the horn that blares although you call it stubborn,
In error, out of place. For the ridicule endured,

And the continuance.
You can count out your beloved—crustaceans—

Winking in spray, still breathing in the wake,
Beneath the hooking flights of gulls,

Through the horn's threnody.
Count them now among the moving. They are.

For weathervane and almanac, ephemeris and augur,
Blameless seer versed in bones, entrails, landed shells.

For everything that tries to counsel vigilance:
The surly sullen bell, before the going,

The warning that reiterates across
The water: there might someday be fog

(They will be lost), there might very well
Be fog someday, and you will have nothing

But remembrance, and you will have to learn
To be grateful.

(from "Longing Distance," Tupelo Press 2004)

{christmas in September}

so for all of you who have some disposable income and love good art, let me recommend the following:

Heather Shayne Blakeslee's fantastic folk album "Treon's Cut Rate" -- if you don't know Blakeslee's music, you should! and check it out -- she's got a great deal going on at CD Baby.com where you'll get a free bonus CD. just because she moved away and doesn't play at Bar 13 anymore doesn't mean you can't adore her! details below.

AND for those on the poetry side of things: my favorite reading out here in LALA land, the Ugly Mug, what I consider our sister series on the wrong coast, has a new compilation CD out, called (appropriately enough) Live at the Ugly Mug. it's fan-bloody-tastic, I am not kidding. It has poems by Rachel McKibbens, Mindy Netifee, Buddy Wakefield, your own Marty McConnell, Brendan Constantine, June Melby, Derrick Brown, Jeff McDaniel, Jack McCarthy, and more. 20 tracks! details below.

*** BUY THIS STUFF! SUPPORT ART! ***

FREE CD OFFER from Heather Shayne Blakeslee:

CD Baby is having another contest for top-sellers this month, and so I'm offering an incentive to by a CD from them by the 25th of September: A FREE CD OF NEW MUSIC, SIGNED AND ALL. I'm recording two new songs and re-recording a song from Bones next week, for a short recording called Mercy Mountain. It's yours for free if you help me out this month by buying a record by the 25th, and giving me a chance to be on the CD Baby Top Sellers Sampler CD (again!). Just go to http://www.cdbaby.com/blakeslee2 to buy Treon's Cut Rate, and the new music is yours!

LIVE AT THE UGLY MUG:

should be available soon online -- for now, go to www.poetryidiots.com and email the good folks there at host@poetryidiots.com and they'll get it to you!

***

yay! go consumerism!

{in the continuing attempt to write outside the mirror}


demand statement (a translation)

we slept under the dead so long
their wounds became our mouths

an eye for an eye / no. we are all out
of eyes. too much blood
to call anything even

understand this: once everyone you love
is dead, the gun
grows remarkably light

as if the bullets were bones

Chechnya. the word a hushing
/ my son had eyes
like the poster you show the reporter

my son, my son is in there

this is not retribution. this is a call
to attention, the girl bleeding out
in the bathtub, a success at last

I know the right way to turn a razor, too

the explosives warm my belly like a child
/ I try not to remember / wire fingers
digging, hold on Isa hold

there are no innocents, not anymore. what
are you doing
to stop this / my son
had eyes
like that.

{this entry does not exist}

so I'm not writing much lately, perhaps but or perhaps because I'm reading all this mad modernist poetry, mostly in translation, and it's fascinating but doesn't trigger the writing...

however, I did write this crazy two voice piece that is actually four voices but I'd do three and someone else would do one. I'd post it here, but it wouldn't come through because it requires two columns on one page and I have no idea how to do that. sigh.

anyway, I'm hideously unmotivated to do things because I'm in Los Angeles. isn't that a fantastic excuse? I'm going to bed insanely early and getting up early and not eating meat or dairy or bread or drinking anything but juice and water. but it's been about five days of that and I'm thinking that's nearly enough. Mindy Netiffee is coming to hang out on the beach with me tomorrow and she's a pretty bad influence, so maybe I'll break the diet or something. whatever.

OK, I'm going to stop writing now because this is capital-L lame and I'm clearly spending too much time with Beau Sia.

oh, on the hilarity front: so we performed at this church, I mean Spiritual Center, this morning (oh, the glamour of it all) and during the half hour meditation before the service started, some man fell asleep and started snoring really really loudly. I swear to you that I and one random guy were the only ones looking around to see who it was. everyone there was very nice and I was hugged by many strangers. I tried not to flinch too overtly.

mentioning Beau reminded me of it because he kept whispering snide commentary and making me struggle mightily not to laugh out loud. which is bad because it makes ME come up with snide commentary. for example, when the fourth choir sings "I can feel the spirit moving in me" over and over again as church, I mean spiritual, songs do, and Beau says, "can't you feel the spirit moving in you?" of course I'm going to say "oh, I thought I was just hungry."

see? bad influences all around. plus there was a singer in from someplace South who looked for all the world like Regie Gibson's long-lost twin, and that just struck me as hilarious. plus he sang that "you lift me up" song that's always on the PA in 99-cent stores. he sang well, but I kept looking around for the sample-size shampoo.

but the service was lovely, really. I wrote something smart about it in my notebook, something about wondering if it's possible to disentangle a monotheistic religion from its patriarchal history while maintaining any of its trappings or original good intentions. but I'm not sure where that notebook is at the moment, and I'm going to eat a grapefruit and watch some bad TV now.

{shameless plug}

but it's not for me, except in the sense that the love of my life has a MAJOR show on Saturday -- tomorrow! -- and it's going to be brilliant and wonderful and I will be far far away in Los Angeles.

so please, if you are in the NYC area, and by that I mean within any distance that would allow you to attend an evening show and be home before dawn (if you're into that sort of thing,) go to the Bowery at 7 p.m. tomorrow, grab yourself a seat and hold onto it. I will personally refund your money if you're disappointed by the poetry. (being disappointed that Roger keeps his clothes on doesn't merit a refund; sorry folks.)

here are the details -- oh, and note that the poetry is preceded by this fantastic a capella group, SAHELI. sometimes I can't stand how talented my friends are. for real.

Roger Bonair-Agard presents

MASQUERADE: poems of Calypso and Home

Saturday September 11, 2004
7:30 p.m.
at the Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, between Bleecker and Houston
(6 train to Bleecker, F/V to Broadway/Lafayette)

also featuring the a cappella sounds of SAHELI
$10

Roger Bonair-Agard is a native of Trinidad and Tobago, a national poetry slam champion and a widely anthologized poet. Through poetry and song, MASQUERADE explores the ways in which distance, remembrance, and seventeen years away from home shape a man. MASQUERADE critiques and celebrates the Trinidadian ethos by examining the influence its seminal music -- calypso -- exerts on a poet and the larger world.

{this just in}

the "movement specialist" we've started working with this week is the man who choreographed the dancing in Dirty Dancing.

stories later. now to rehearsal.

{the attempt}

to vision the Book such that = authentic to the what is happening to/by/with the people therein (character) (s)

to free from logic/locked brainview, to view whole-heartedly, Rilke's heart-work yes, to explode the temporal, notions of "temporary" or "here" shown for imposters of the Actual

in words, to un-word with specificity, some pure Experience so re-create = make again = unravel continuum (= trap) i.e., Time (= lie), grammatical conveniences be damned

to release!

{the goal}

expansion not merely of vocabulary (= invention) or syntax but frame, the potential re-emergence of Now at some later instant, tumble out the black hole

to write not Of the body but to Be, re-assemble, make paper -> flesh, etcetera

not to give the appearance of the thing but the thing itself but worded, re-produced as symbol
for transmission, this is necessary