Poetry slam

[Alaya]

Anecdote of the Jar
Wallace Stevens

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

[AmyRose]

Sunni Patterson - a visionary poet, singer, and activist:

[barracuda]

Myrtle Beach Before and After the Storm





wW wW wW wW wW


wW wW wW wW wW


wW wW wW wW wW


wW wW wW wW wW





mM mM mM mM mM


mM mM mM mM mM


mM mM mM mM mM


mM mM mM mM mM



-Bern Porter

[barracuda]

-Bern Porter



-Bern Porter



-Bern Porter

[norton ash]

Wasp Honey

We joke about the vile new order now
Thieves, frauds, pimps, butt boys, button men.
The incredible whore’s addicted cells metastasize,
Creeping through the city towers, make the black wasp honey of
Rendered fat, plutonium, mercury, lye. We pay the rent.

The world-eater alone breathes oil. All other life it throttles
Silent screams, distant, choked, unheard, drowned out by traffic
Air conditioner drone, ear buds slowly launch the needle probes
Creeping through the drying brain, make the black wasp honey of
800 BPM, coltan, astroglide, meth, alien corn. We spread it for our kids.

Waking in the hills, the old one in the desert spray of stars
Planets risen, air pulled taut, the magma warming
Whispers the prayer, spits, recalls its thousand names
Creeping through the dead valley, collects the black wasp honey,
Soaks the roller. Holds it to the turning world. Like obsidian, we shine.

[Alaya]

Bravo.

[Alaya]

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Margaret Atwood

[Perelandra]

unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

— Charles Bukowski

[Jeff]

The Montreal Fan

When Les Habitants glide onto the ice
A great bird out of time unruffles wings.
Every throat there is possessed by a spirit
So greetings arise from an angelic chorus.
Less a team itself than a living spirit
I'm told and want to believe
That, on a sheet of clear ice, each man
Can skate his name, cleanly as by hand.
Dashes represent the years when they don't own the cup.

I've seen with these two eyes, one second fractioned
By three cracking passes - the fourth shot a goal.
What would you call this but a miracle?
Popular thunder swells impatient.
The lions have arrived! Where are the Christians?

- Milton Acorn

[Perelandra]

This is a gathering of Lovers.
In this gathering
there is no high, no low,
no smart, no ignorant,
no special assembly,
no grand discourse,
no proper schooling required.
There is no master,
no disciple.
This gathering is more like a drunken party,
full of tricksters, fools,
mad men and mad women.
This is a gathering of Lovers.

Rumi

[Allegro]

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Alan Rickman | recites Marcel Proust

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Alan Rickman | recitations

[Allegro]

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Alan Rickman | Shakespeare | Sonnet 130


music Andante Cantabile
composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (b 1840)

[Allegro]

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Metronome Beating


It’ll be a long time before I see my old metronome as only a doohickey for strapping certain phrases during piano practices to a certain unvarying rhythm before feelingly freeing those phrases, again, by turning off the innocuous but annoying mechanical device.

The video is just a rough draft; even so, the filmmaker blends in poetry Kantian philosophy with western Christianity with Convulsionism, and blends other familiar philosophies with others that should be but aren’t readily identifiable by me—all wrapped by music and allegory depicting centuries of endlessly metronomic sensualities of our species. Original link.

IanEye’s avatar of the metronome with the eye pinned to the pendulum has been a motivation for searching around for ideas that were creative and relevant enough to put at RI.

[Allegro]

.
Sometimes, I return to read something I wrote, and find myself asking, ‘What was I thinking when I should have clarified this or that?’ IanEye has posted thoughts, videos, images, many of which I really identify, and, with all due respect to him, the last paragraph I wrote in the above post should have been more correctly written like this.

IanEye’s avatar of the metronome with the eye pinned to the pendulum has been a motivation for searching around for ideas about the metronome that were creative and relevant enough to put at RI.

Thanks to the RI imaginers and writers who daily enliven my imagination!

[elfismiles]

Saul Williams blew my mind many years ago with this one...

DJ Krust & Saul Williams - Coded Language

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HerpGwbLSM8

Def Poetry Jam - Saul Williams (Coded Language)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzY2-GRDiPM

. . .

This guy (Gemineye) was born 1 day shy of 5 years to the day of my b-day...

"Poetic Bloodline" Gemineye (Def Poetry)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BshWdO5AlmE

“What Are You Fighting For?” Gemineye

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYQ2k1mp0Qc

Gemineye

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yfc-46PPFI

( not to be confused with the "anti-illuminati" Gemineye )