{ ... and Sunday's revision}

Marguerite Porete to Hillary Rodham Clinton

“Nature demands nothing which is prohibited.”
from The mirror of simple annihilated souls and those who only remain in will and desire of love

oh lady, I know why you stay with him. any woman
who’d be a saint or president’s got to have a man
to vouch for her, to swear it’s God speaking
and not the devil – and what a woman
he made you. a favor with his pants down,
the best thing that could have happened to you
was his flag-waving infidelity – you went from ice
to just like us in the space of a television minute. me,
I’d rather die a heretic than live under the thumb
of some priest, but that’s a martyr speaking.
and for that, they stripped the name from my book
for three hundred years. but the words, even the fire
couldn’t divorce them from me, from the God-in-me,
the Soul is satisfied by this nothingness which gives
all things. For the one who gives all, possesses all

the temptation to power at any price is nothing new –
France in 1306, America in 2005, neither
a good time to taunt authority, religious or secular
if there’s a difference, neither a good time to stand
without your man, or the best of times, depending
on your endgame, what kind of annihiliation
you’re aiming for, do you know at condemnation
they called me une pseudo-mulier, a fake woman,
in other times I would have been beatified, St. Catherine,
St. Juan de le Cruz, we all preached the same doctrine,
the death of reason, absolute submission to our God,
no wrong possible because all that this Soul wills
is what God wills that she will, and this she wills
in order to accomplish the will of God

what do you will, Hillary? what lays the tracks
you race, for what will you enter
the fire? some things don’t change, Hillary,
so long as you’ve got ovaries and a throat
and choose to use the latter you’re a threat
without need of any other weapon
-- but you know that, don’t you, the stake’s
just the thing for us, you know there’s a bullet
with your name on it or worse, a lover
in Boston, that woman you swear to silence
every visit

your secrets are safe with me, Hillary. Marguerite
of Hainault called La Porete, your sister in tongue,
strongly suspected of heretical depravity, fuck
their oaths. when they haul you before some false
and festering court, remember me. disdaining
to seek absolution, obstinate in these rebellions,
oh they called my book, that divine ink, a pestiferous
lie, I don’t know of what they will accuse you, perhaps
that man will buy you enough time to shift the tide,
to make the bench your own, to alchemize
pain into power or gold, but one hundred years
to the day from my fire came Joan’s, Hillary,
to endure the fire you must become
the fire, become the fire before they turn it
against you, there may be time left for you,
for all of us anonymized and shunned
into dust, the second coming will be a woman,
they burned that book on first reading, be
the third, Hillary, make your body the pyre
in which they, this time, burn.

*

{Saturday's saint}

Marguerite Porete to Hillary Rodham Clinton

“Nature demands nothing which is prohibited.”
from The mirror of simple annihilated souls and those who only remain in will and desire of love

oh lady, I know why you stay with him. any woman
who’d be a saint or president’s got to have a man
to vouch for her, to swear it’s God speaking
and not the devil – and what a woman
he made you. a favor with his pants down,
the best thing that could have happened to you
was his flag-waving infidelity – you went from ice queen
to just like us in the space of a television minute. me,
I’d rather die a heretic than live under the thumb
of some priest, but that’s a martyr speaking.
and for that, they stripped the name from my book
for three hundred years. but the words, even the fire
couldn’t divorce them from me, from the God-in-me,
the Soul is satisfied by this nothingness which gives
all things. For the one who gives all, possesses all,
and not otherwise.

the temptation to power at any price is nothing new –
France in 1306, America in 2005, neither
a good time to taunt authority, religious or secular
if there’s a difference, neither a good time to stand
without your man, or the best of times, depending
on your endgame, what kind of annihiliation
you’re aiming for, do you know at condemnation
they called me une pseudo-mulier, a fake woman,
in other times I would have been beatified, St. Catherine,
St. Juan de le Cruz, we all preached the same doctrine,
the death of reason, absolute submission to our God,
no wrong possible because all that this Soul wills
is what God wills that she will, and this she wills
in order to accomplish the will of God,
who makes her will all that she ought to will

what do you will, Hillary? what hauls you so inevitably
on? what lays the tracks you race, for what will you enter
the fire? the liberated soul no longer seeks God
through penitence, nor through any sacrament
of Holy Church; some things don’t change, Hillary,
you don’t have to make a mistake for them to claim
your every syllable's an error not through thoughts,
nor through words, nor through works; not through
creature here below, nor through creature above;
so long as you’ve got ovaries and a throat
and choose to use the latter you’re a threat
without need of any other weapon
not through justice, nor through mercy,
nor through glory of glory; but you know that
don’t you, the stake’s just the thing for us,
you know there’s a bullet with your name on it
or worse, a lover in Boston, that woman
you swear to silence every visit, not through
divine understanding, nor through divine love,
nor through divine praise

your secrets are safe with me, Hillary. Marguerite
of Hainault called La Porete, your sister in tongue,
strongly suspected of heretical depravity, fuck
their oaths. when they haul you before some false
and festering court, remember me. disdaining
to seek absolution, obstinate in these rebellions,
oh they called my book, that divine ink, a pestiferous
lie, I don’t know of what they will accuse you, perhaps
that man will buy you enough time to shift the tide,
to make the bench your own, to alchemize
pain into power or gold, but one hundred years
to the day from my fire came Joan’s, Hillary,
to endure the fire you must become
the fire, become the fire before they turn it
against you, there may be time left for you,
for all of us anonymized and shunned
into dust, the second coming will be a woman,
they burned that book on first reading, be
the third, Hillary, make your body the pyre
in which they, this time, burn.

*

{currently writing...}

a proposal to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Knowledge Dissemination Conference Grants

woooooooooooooooooooooohoo. heady stuff. is it November yet?

{upcoming shows & stuff}

Thursday, November 3

live show WITH A BAND!

John Condron & The Benefit, a fantastic rock n roll trio, bookend a full feature set by Marty McConnell – backed by the band – with their own brand of Chicago rock.

10 p.m.
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery
www.bowerypoetry.com

***

Thursday, November 10

Roger Bonair-Agard and Marty McConnell
at Columbia College
Chicago, Illinois

8:30 p.m.

***

Saturday, November 19

Benefit for A Gathering of the Tribes gallery and magazine

featuring Marty McConnell and Edwin Torres (6-7:30 p.m.)
+ Evie Ivy and her belly dancers (7:30-9 p.m.)

Tribes Gallery285 East Third St., between C & D

{revision revision re-vision}

if this series continues, I'm going to start getting gigs at Christian colleges. really. up next: Marguerite Porete to Hillary Rodham Clinton. or maybe Oprah.

Saint Catherine of Siena to Mary-Kate Olsen

what god stole your hunger? who demands this reduction
to vertebrae? it’s a specific treason, a case worth losing,
nobody can hear you with fingers or sticks between your lips,
nobody loves you in the bathroom, everyone’s in the kitchen
again, this is my body, broken for you, take and eat

the appearance of bones is not a miracle of the flesh
(take and eat) what do your visions say? who
marries you in the dream, Christ slipping a ring
on my thin second finger, my shorn hair all over
the floor, gold for gold, I was six when he first
came for me, who insists on this full-body stigmata,

how long have you been paying this penance? are you ready
to die for this? martyrdom’s a pretty notion until you’re nose
to nose with it and nothing to be done, the body rejecting water,
salt, fish, when you realize the devil’s the one who wants
you small, who told you the pus of a cancer was wine, said

sip, swallow, this is my blood, transubstantiation in three
degrees, when you have given your good body to a lie
Mary, when your bones turn to whispers they will bury you
under a stone that did not ask to be a stone, we do not ask
to be but we are and to live, Mary, to swear
on everything holy that these bodies are not vessels

but gifts, that’s the trick, to be an altar and not
another sacrifice, for what are you atoning? who is your
eucharist? I made men believe. brought a condemned man
to faith and caught his severed head in my hands, beguine
or not you have hands, a throat, the world doesn’t need

another dead-thin girl, your suffering is not special, offered up
to magazine covers and lip gloss endorsements, thousands
flocked to confession after I preached in public squares, what
are you winning? my mistake was believing the body
meant nothing, yours the opposite – Mary meaning bitter,
Katherine meaning pure, Christ and I died at 33, anvils

for the world’s beatings, vessels of the world’s sins, glue
your brittled bones into the face of a god who bids you
eat, our bodies broken into bread at your feet, chicory,
water lily, do this for you, rosemary, asphodel, do this
in remembrance of me.

*

{another in the series -- or yes, I had to look online to find out which twin is anorexic}

Saint Catherine of Siena to Mary-Kate Olsen

what god stole your hunger? who demands this martyrdom
of the throat? it’s a specific treason, a case worth losing,
nobody can hear you with fingers or sticks between your lips,
nobody loves you in the bathroom, everyone’s in the kitchen
again, this is my body, broken for you, take and eat

the appearance of bones is not a miracle of the flesh
(take and eat) do as I say, not as I did, what do your
visions say? who marries you in the dream, Christ
slipping a ring on my thin second finger, my shorn hair
all over the floor, gold for gold, I was six when he first
came for me, who insists on this full-body stigmata,

how long have you been paying this penance? are you ready
to die for this? martyrdom’s a pretty notion until you’re nose
to nose with it and nothing to be done, the body rejecting water,
salt, fish, when you realize the devil’s the one who wants
you small, who told you the pus of a cancer was wine, said

sip, swallow, this is my blood, transubstantiation in three
degrees, when you have given your good body to a lie
-- nobody’s going to beatify you, Mary, when your bones
turn to whispers they will bury you under a stone
that did not ask to be a stone, we do not ask to be but we are
and to live, Mary, to swear on everything holy that these bodies

are not vessels but gifts, that’s the trick, to be an altar
and not the sacrifice, for what are you atoning? who
is your eucharist? I made men believe. brought a condemned
man to faith and caught his severed head in my hands, beguine
or not you have hands, a throat, the world doesn’t need

another dead-thin girl, your suffering is not special, offered up
to magazine covers and lip gloss endorsements, thousands
flocked to confession after I preached in public squares, my
starvation earned me the Pope’s ear, what are you winning?
my mistake was believing the body meant nothing, yours
the opposite – Mary meaning bitter, Katherine meaning pure,

Christ and I died at 33, anvils for the world’s beatings, vessels
of the world’s sins, glue your brittled bones into the face
of a god who bids you eat, our bodies broken into bread
at your feet, chicory, water lily, do this for you, rosemary,
asphodel, do this in remembrance of me.


*

violent blue

“History is not finished yet.” – Hugo Chavez

says that the kingdom of Heaven was declared not to be of this earth means not that it is an afterlife but a time later on a time which has come, says it is time that this is that time and as he says it I nearly believe, believe history indeed is as Utah Phillips says, he says the past didn’t go anywhere, time is an enormous long river and you’re standing in at just as I’m standing in it and believe that may be why we dream, why time seems in minutes to pucker like ribbon so now kisses 1975 and you are seven and I am two and nothing has happened yet, we are collapsed and not yet a catastrophe in blessing’s clothing or vice versa. So forward and dream because what’s the alternative, can’t make time into sauce and freeze it for later can’t can it like tomatoes and if history is unfinished as I as we hope it is as we hope President Chavez is right in saying is right in believing, this that he says with the authority of an elected socialist with his flicker-eyed security detail with assassination a constant potential both whispered and overt – if it is unfinished as he says then we have work to do. And hope, which is the same as dreaming, the same as the kingdoms of heaven we invent, the same as our alphabet and the meanings we assign it, it is all chosen it is all invented as we are in the end, as we are in the beginning, an invention of genetics and will, being is a miracle, the miracle really. So we are and be and were, all simultaneously and miraculously and isn’t the sky a violent blue today? Something in its unmitigated cloudlessness physically literally breathtaking, a breath - taking blue, stringing the self the be - ing from the body toward something higher more expansive, the heart lurches to the left the ribs spread like fingers just looking at it and isn’t that hope. Dream of a blue sky that is not new, has been blue always lidded behind whatever we invent across it whatever crosses we lean against it however we place our and other bodies on them, dying and we pretend the resurrection is literal we fake our own rising our own belief in something after this that is not time that is not more this Chalk figures on the sidewalk. Brick edging out from the wall. Spilt tea rivering, here where we stand.

*

{laughing out loud at inappropriate moments in the office}

I was going over a contract for a show Roger and I are doing in November at a university that shall remain nameless, and came to this:

Hospitality

Purchaser will provide the following at no cost to Artist
* Private backstage area
* On-campus promotion
* Green Room Hostility

Wow! Green Room Hostility, for FREE! You can't make this stuff up. Well, you could, but then it wouldn't be very funny. And this, my friends, is funny.

what would happen if one woman told the truth
about her life? the world would split open.

-- Muriel Rukeyser


*

{instead of building an arc, I write a poem}

really? did I REQUEST a transfer to Seattle weather? every day I think I will wake up and there will be sun. is this a hex of some sort? anyway, poem. if you don't know who Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is, look him up.

St. Oliver to President Hugo Chavez

in the end, it doesn’t matter how they do it, only
that you are ash and martyrs are easier to dismiss
than bishops or presidents. the drama of drawn
and quartered, of entrails torn out in front
of your about-to-be-severed head versus
the lonely shot from a sniper rifle, the plane crash
on a clear day, et tu Brute, the way it’s always been.
only once did I wish for a small life, a cottage
in Glendalough or An Daingean with sheep
and a daughter with her fine shoulders. but that life
has its own deaths, and we will martyr ourselves
one way or the other, in the field or at the stake,
we burn somehow.

what a glow you set, Hugo. the cross, the microphone,
the vows of cheap oil and literacy, Che’s breath,
Martin’s hands, your bodyguards shine with it
in their beige jackets, their jackal eyes, do you call
one Brutus, one Judas for a laugh? do you know
the translation’s flawed, that Christ was not betrayed
but handed over, that he knew as we know that sooner
or later the only one the people will follow
is immortal and the only road to that title is paved
with your intestines? this is why women
martyr themselves so seldom. to live, they say,
to make life – it is an optimism of the uterus,
which is another kind of spine. I have no advice
for you, Hugo, except that should you visit Drogheda
do not go to see my head, the jeweled reliquary
could not hold me, I envy your light left, it is
creosote black here, I can hear the keeners praying
and if I knew you leaning so close I might have
to borrow back those eyes.

*

{holy poetry, good people}

* MARTÍN ESPADA to read at Acentos Bronx poetry showcase on Thursday, October 13 *

* AMIRI BARAKA to read at louderMONDAYS at Bar 13 on Monday, October 17 *

{note: see the end of this email for details about the Katrina relief donation drive also taking place these nights}

The louderARTS Project is extremely proud to present two of the country's foremost poets, writers who refuse designation or categorization or to keep the politics of this world out of their poems, in October. For more information, please email curator@louderARTS.com or Acentos@louderARTS.com . Admission is first-come, first-served for both shows. www.louderARTS.com

*** Acentos presents MARTÍN ESPADA ***

Acentos / Thursday, October 13 at 7 p.m. / The Bruckner Bar & Grill / 1 Bruckner Boulevard / Uptown's Best Open Mic and featured poet MARTÍN ESPADA / FREE ($5 suggested donation)

Martín Espada is the author of seven books of poetry, including "Alabanza: New and Selected Poems" (1982-2002), which received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was named an American Library Association Notable Book of the year. An earlier collection, "Imagine the Angels of Bread" (Norton, 1996), won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Espada also published a collection of essays, "Zapata's Disciple" (South End, 1998); edited two anthologies, "Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination" (Curbstone Press, 1994) and "El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry" (University of Massachusetts, 1997); and released a CD of poetry called "Now the Dead will Dance the Mambo" (Leapfrog, 2004). He is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he teaches creative writing, Latino poetry, and the work of Pablo Neruda.

This reading is sponsored by Poets & Writers and the Bronx Council on the Arts. Special thanks to Jackie Sheeler ( www.poetz.com) and Ram Devineni of Rattapallax Press.

*** louderMONDAYS presents AMIRI BARAKA ***

louderMONDAYS ~ every Monday at 13 Bar/Lounge ~ 35 E. 13th St., Union Square NYC ~
7 p.m. (doors open at 6:45) ~ open mic + featured poet AMIRI BARAKA ~ $5 ~ note: open mic readers please bring a poem by a writer of the African diaspora to read along with your own

Amiri Baraka, born Leroi Jones, is the author of more than 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism. A seminal member of the Black Arts movement, he is a poet icon and revolutionary political activist who recites poetry and lectures on cultural and political issues extensively in the U.S., the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. In addition to being the former poet laureate of New Jersey, his numerous literary prizes and honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, the Langston Hughes Award from The City College of New York, and a lifetime achievement award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Since 1985 he has been a professor of Africana Studies at the State University of New York in Stony Brook. He is co-director, with his wife, of Kimako's Blues People, a community arts space. Amiri and Amina Baraka live in Newark, New Jersey.

{Other fall highlights: Jan Beatty December 5, Mark Doty December 12}

KATRINA DONATION DRIVE

WHO: Students of Sarah Lawrence College, the louderARTS Project & Friends.

WHAT: "Who's Going to Save the Babies?" donation drive for Katrina victims in Baton Rouge shelters and in New York City hotels.

WHEN/WHERE: Monday, October 10 & Monday, October 17, 2005 from 7 pm-10 pm, right outside Bar 13 @ 35 E. 13th St. in Union Square.

Thursday, October 13, 2005 between 7-10 pm, right outside of Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase featuring Martín Espada at the Bruckner Bar & Grill-- 1 Bruckner Boulevard (Corner of 3rd Ave)

HOW: We are asking that you please bring baby supplies: diapers, bottles, formula, baby food, pacifiers, baby backpacks, etc. Also you can bring canned foods, new underwear and socks for the adults. Do NOT bring clothes. We are also accepting monetary donations to use as gas money for the vans that will be driving down to Baton Rouge and to and from the NYC hotels that are housing people. Just drop off the stuff outside, where the vans will be parked, then walk upstairs to Bar 13 Lounge or into the Acentos reading and enjoy the poetry!

WHY: It simply has to be done.

For more information, please contact Samantha Thornhill at me@samanthaspeaks.com.

{some shots from Ireland or why I haven't been blogging}

In Ireland, they get poems from actual factual excellent poets like Eavan Boland for their memorials, instead of turning to Hallmark. or Maya Angelou. yeah, I said it. :)

holy cow. this is Knowth. 4,000-year-old burial grounds.

this is the head of St. Oliver, martyred in the 1600s. everyone in Drougheda said "you must go see the head! ye must go see St. Oliver's head!" so we did.

We didn't go to Belfast.

{unformattable, that's what you are...}

see the trouble is that these prose poems are supposed to be not only justified, but justified to a specific margin, and I can't seem to do that here. do you see that? it's the world's smallest violin, playing just for me. here's a revision of the bird flu madness from a while back.

re-learning to pray

if panic attacks, which luckily – no – (once I did start to, several times have on the train but said no very firmly very internally, interiorly, and settled into basic agitation, reasonable anxiety,,,) if yes I would today have yes succumbed today on the train sniffling kid harrumphing throat-clearing suit so close the news last night, report on the Flu, not nausea chills week in bed but H5N1 pandemic potential killer avian flu. in-flu-en-za. not even yet at the tipping point, now only now transferable bird to bird or bird to human but deadly settling deep suddenly immediately in the lungs, even in birds the birds they cut open (dead) their lungs filled with fluid and blood. fluid and blood, the virus woman said, the virus man said on the TV. worse than 1918, worse than the Spanish flu, H5N1 waiting for the tipping point Emily says isn’t it amazing. isn’t it phenomenal, for the first time in the history of ever we are preparing for a virus that does not yet exist. waiting for it to evolve. the tipping point, when it makes that hairpin turn onto the evolutionary highway and starts human to human, no bird necessary.

some things they said. her uncle now elderly sat in 1918 in the window of the family’s living room forbidden to leave the house for any reason counting hearses. a tally on a pad in his lap. counting hearses, a special column for his schoolmates. hospital man saying these showers, this emergency room, this is State-of-the-Art, here we could decontaminate 60 people an hour. and in an emergency ( disaster ) we could move faster. but that’s for the Nuclear Detonation In A Major Metropolitan Area portion of our broadcast. now, the man says H5N1 we’d run out of coffins in three days. stadiums full of cots full of the dying. first, Asia. first, countries that can’t afford the vaccine we don’t yet quite have perfected. guy on a plane, the plane, the airport, the city, New York City, the subway train, here, this train car, but not yet, not yet the tipping point. not yet a vaccine, or rather we have a vaccine it has to be made by hand inside eggs. inside eggs! each vaccine. little embryo vaccine for maybe a dozen people. New York City! thirty people this traincar alone. a tally. 1918. makes SARS look like the chicken pox. in case of an earthquake, stand against an interior wall away from windows. in case of a nuclear attack, all not immediately disintegrated strip, scrub down with water and soap, duct tape plastic over the windows, wait. tipping point. Oh lord, my god, I pray that these things never end. The sand and the seed, the rush of the water, the crash of the heavens. The prayer of men.