Poetry slam

[Metric Pringle]

It's been 2 days since smoking in public spaces has been banned in Spain, one of the last countries to have it brought into law in Europe. Having been here during the shift, i remembered how it was to hold that cigarette and stare behind the bar, i'd take a drag sometimes, but leave to burn down if in thought. Going outside to smoke turns it into the need for a fix rather than the company of the burning stick. Spain, this is for you!


Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker

Whene'er I take my pipe and stuff it
And smoke to pass the time away
My thoughts, as I sit there and puff it,
Dwell on a picture sad and grey:
It teaches me that very like
Am I myself unto my pipe.

Like me this pipe, so fragrant burning,
Is made of naught but earthen clay;
To earth I too shall be returning,
And cannot halt my slow decay.
My well used pipe, now cracked and broken,
Of mortal life is but a token.

No stain, the pipe's hue yet doth darken;
It remains white. Thus do I know
That when to death's call I must harken
My body, too, all pale will grow.
To black beneath the sod 'twill turn,
Likewise the pipe, if oft it burn.

Or when the pipe is fairly glowing,
Behold then instantaneously,
The smoke off into thin air going,
'Til naught but ash is left to see.
Man's fame likewise away will burn
And unto dust his body turn.

How oft it happens when one's smoking,
The tamper's missing from it's shelf,
And one goes with one's finger poking
Into the bowl and burns oneself.
If in the pipe such pain doth dwell
How hot must be the pains of Hell!

Thus o'er my pipe in contemplation
Of such things - I can constantly
Indulge in fruitful meditation,
And so, puffing contentedly,
On land, at sea, at home, abroad,
I smoke my pipe and worship God.

Johann Sebastian Bach - 1725 (1685-1750)

[Alaya]

"Why Is This Century Worse..."
1919
Why is this century worse than those others?
Maybe, because, in sadness and alarm,
It only touched the blackest of the ulcers,
But couldn't heal it in its span of time.

Else, in the West, the earthly sun endows
The roofs of cities with the morning light,
But, here, the White already marks a house,
And calls for crows, and the crows fly.

~ Anna Akhmatova


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2000
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, February, 2001


Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[Alaya]

I Fail as a Dharma Teacher

I don't imagine I'll manage to express Sunyata
in a way that all my students will know & love
or present the 4 Noble Truths so they look delicious
& tempting as Easter candy. My skillful means
is more like a two by four banging on the head
of a reluctant diver
I then go in and save --
what pyrotechnics!

Alas this life I can't be kind and persuasive
slip the Twelve-part Chain off hundreds of shackled
housewives
present at the Eight-fold Path like the ultimate roadmap
at all the gas stations in samsara

But oh, my lamas, I want to
how I want to!
Just to see your old eyes shine on this Kaliyuga
stars going out around us like birthday candles
Your Empty Clear Luminous and Unobstructed
Rainbow Bodies
swimming in and through us like transparent fish.

~ Diane di Prima

[Allegro]

.

Germany, A Winter's Tale

She sang of love and the pain of love,
Of sacrifice on earth,
And meetings in that better world
Where sorrows change to mirth.

She sang of this earthly vale of tears,
Of pleasures that soon run dry;
How the soul will feast on eternal joy
—Transfigured in the sky.

She sang a heavenly lullaby,
The song of renunciation
By which the people, that giant clown,
Is lulled from its lamentation.

I know the authors, I know the tune,
I know it line for line—
In public, water is all they preach;
While in secret they guzzle wine.

from The Poetry and Prose of Heinrich Heine.
Ed. by Frederic Ewen. Citadel, 1948, p. 181-182

Refer.

[vanlose kid]

Marianne Moore


M in a vicious world-to love virtue
A in a craven world-to have courage
R in a treacherous world-to prove loyal
I in a wavering world-to stand firm

A in a cruel world-to show mercy
N in a biased world-to act justly
N in a shameless world-to live nobly
E in a hateful world-to forgive

M in a venal world-to be honest
O in a heartless world-to be human
O in a killing world-to create
R in a sick world-to be whole

E in an epoch of UNself-to be ONEself

*

kumrads die because they're told)


kumrads die because they're told)
kumrads die before they're old
(kumrads aren't afraid to die
kumrads don't
and kumrads won't
believe in life)and death knows whie

(all good kumrads you can tell
by their altruistic smell
moscow pipes good kumrads dance)
kumrads enjoy
s.freud knows whoy
the hope that you may mess your pance

every kumrad is a bit
of quite unmitigated hate
(travelling in a futile groove
god knows why)
and so do i
(because they are afraid to love

*

when serpents bargain for the right to squirm...

when serpents bargain for the right to squirm
and the sun strikes to gain a living wage-
when thorns regard their roses with alarm
and rainbows are insured against old age

when every thrush may sing no new moon in
if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice
-and any wave signs on the dotted line
or else an ocean is compelled to close

when the oak begs permission of the birch
to make an acorn-valleys accuse their
mountains of having altitude-and march
denounces april as a saboteur

then we'll believe in that incredible
unanimal mankind(and not until)

*

seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here

*

– e.e. cummings.

*

[Jeff]

[Joe Hillshoist]

[vanlose kid]

*



Sobre la piedra
deja de ser mariposa
la mariposa.




on the stone
through with being a butterfly
a butterfly





-- Umberto Senegal, unpublished.


*

[norton ash]

Plutonian Ode

Allen Ginsberg

I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
ous hand, named for Death's planet through the
sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of
Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
King worshipped once
with black sheep throats cut, priests's face averted from
underground mysteries in single temple at Eleusis,
Spring-green Persephone nuptialed to his inevitable
Shade, Demeter mother of asphodel weeping dew,
her daughter stored in salty caverns under white snow,
black hail, grey winter rain or Polar ice, immemor-
able seasons before
Fish flew in Heaven, before a Ram died by the starry
bush, before the Bull stamped sky and earth
or Twins inscribed their memories in clay or Crab'd
flood
washed memory from the skull, or Lion sniffed the
lilac breeze in Eden--
Before the Great Year began turning its twelve signs,
ere constellations wheeled for twenty-four thousand
sunny years
slowly round their axis in Sagittarius, one hundred
sixty-seven thousand times returning to this night

Radioactive Nemesis were you there at the beginning
black dumb tongueless unsmelling blast of Disil-
lusion?
I manifest your Baptismal Word after four billion years
I guess your birthday in Earthling Night, I salute your
dreadful presence last majestic as the Gods,
Sabaot, Jehova, Astapheus, Adonaeus, Elohim, Iao,
Ialdabaoth, Aeon from Aeon born ignorant in an
Abyss of Light,
Sophia's reflections glittering thoughtful galaxies, whirl-
pools of starspume silver-thin as hairs of Einstein!
Father Whitman I celebrate a matter that renders Self
oblivion!
Grand Subject that annihilates inky hands & pages'
prayers, old orators' inspired Immortalities,
I begin your chant, openmouthed exhaling into spacious
sky over silent mills at Hanford, Savannah River,
Rocky Flats, Pantex, Burlington, Albuquerque
I yell thru Washington, South Carolina, Colorado,
Texas, Iowa, New Mexico,
Where nuclear reactors creat a new Thing under the
Sun, where Rockwell war-plants fabricate this death
stuff trigger in nitrogen baths,
Hanger-Silas Mason assembles the terrified weapon
secret by ten thousands, & where Manzano Moun-
tain boasts to store
its dreadful decay through two hundred forty millenia
while our Galaxy spirals around its nebulous core.
I enter your secret places with my mind, I speak with
your presence, I roar your Lion Roar with mortal
mouth.
One microgram inspired to one lung, ten pounds of
heavy metal dust adrift slow motion over grey
Alps
the breadth of the planet, how long before your radiance
speeds blight and death to sentient beings?
Enter my body or not I carol my spirit inside you,
Unnaproachable Weight,
O heavy heavy Element awakened I vocalize your con-
sciousness to six worlds
I chant your absolute Vanity. Yeah monster of Anger
birthed in fear O most
Ignorant matter ever created unnatural to Earth! Delusion
of metal empires!
Destroyer of lying Scientists! Devourer of covetous
Generals, Incinerator of Armies & Melter of Wars!
Judgement of judgements, Divine Wind over vengeful
nations, Molester of Presidents, Death-Scandal of
Capital politics! Ah civilizations stupidly indus-
trious!
Canker-Hex on multitudes learned or illiterate! Manu-
factured Spectre of human reason! O solidified
imago of practicioner in Black Arts
I dare your reality, I challenge your very being! I
publish your cause and effect!
I turn the wheel of Mind on your three hundred tons!
Your name enters mankind's ear! I embody your
ultimate powers!
My oratory advances on your vaunted Mystery! This
breath dispels your braggart fears! I sing your
form at last
behind your concrete & iron walls inside your fortress
of rubber & translucent silicon shields in filtered
cabinets and baths of lathe oil,
My voice resounds through robot glove boxes & ignot
cans and echoes in electric vaults inert of atmo-
sphere,
I enter with spirit out loud into your fuel rod drums
underground on soundless thrones and beds of
lead
O density! This weightless anthem trumpets transcendent
through hidden chambers and breaks through
iron doors into the Infernal Room!
Over your dreadful vibration this measured harmony
floats audible, these jubilant tones are honey and
milk and wine-sweet water
Poured on the stone black floor, these syllables are
barley groats I scatter on the Reactor's core,
I call your name with hollow vowels, I psalm your Fate
close by, my breath near deathless ever at your
side
to Spell your destiny, I set this verse prophetic on your
mausoleum walls to seal you up Eternally with
Diamond Truth! O doomed Plutonium.

II

The Bar surveys Plutonian history from midnight
lit with Mercury Vapor streetlamps till in dawn's
early light
he contemplates a tranquil politic spaced out between
Nations' thought-forms proliferating bureaucratic
& horrific arm'd, Satanic industries projected sudden
with Five Hundred Billion Dollar Strength
around the world same time this text is set in Boulder,
Colorado before front range of Rocky Mountains
twelve miles north of Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility in
United States of North America, Western Hemi-
sphere
of planet Earth six months and fourteen days around
our Solar System in a Spiral Galaxy
the local year after Dominion of the last God nineteen
hundred seventy eight
Completed as yellow hazed dawn clouds brighten East,
Denver city white below
Blue sky transparent rising empty deep & spacious to a
morning star high over the balcony
above some autos sat with wheels to curb downhill
from Flatiron's jagged pine ridge,
sunlit mountain meadows sloped to rust-red sandstone
cliffs above brick townhouse roofs
as sparrows waked whistling through Marine Street's
summer green leafed trees.

III

This ode to you O Poets and Orators to come, you
father Whitman as I join your side, you Congress
and American people,
you present meditators, spiritual friends & teachers,
you O Master of the Diamond Arts,
Take this wheel of syllables in hand, these vowels and
consonants to breath's end
take this inhalation of black poison to your heart, breath
out this blessing from your breast on our creation
forests cities oceans deserts rocky flats and mountains
in the Ten Directions pacify with exhalation,
enrich this Plutonian Ode to explode its empty thunder
through earthen thought-worlds
Magnetize this howl with heartless compassion, destroy
this mountain of Plutonium with ordinary mind
and body speech,
thus empower this Mind-guard spirit gone out, gone
out, gone beyond, gone beyond me, Wake space,
so Ah!

July 14, 1978

[Alaya]

Break the Mirror

In the morning
After taking cold shower
—–what a mistake—–
I look at the mirror.

There, a funny guy,
Grey hair, white beard, wrinkled skin,
—–what a pity—–
Poor, dirty, old man!
He is not me, absolutely not.

Land and life
Fishing in the ocean
Sleeping in the desert with stars
Building a shelter in the mountains
Farming the ancient way
Singing with coyotes
Singing against nuclear war–
I’ll never be tired of life.
Now I’m seventeen years old,
Very charming young man.

I sit down quietly in lotus position,
Meditating, meditating for nothing.
Suddenly a voice comes to me:
“To stay young,
To save the world,
Break the mirror.”

~ Nanao Sakaki

[compared2what?]

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-- Robert Frost

[Alaya]

As the great old trees
are marked for felling, the birds
build their new spring nests

~ Issa

[Alaya]

ANTIPODAL DWELLING

Crucible in which is born the world hair humus of the first earth
hair first worry stone
when the rain shall be the thread with which bit by bit the world undoes itself
when the sun shall be a spider in which to lose ourselves one by one
when the sea shall be an octopus to spit our hopes at us in our faces
when the moon shall uncoil and will unroll for us its long serpent body
when the volcano shall shake its wrinkled pachyderm body
when the wind shall no longer blow because we have forgotten to strike the wind stones
when the stones shall cease to speak for having preached too much in the desert
(entangling my veins an entire forest down to its lowest branches
entangling my veins completely the water and the regime of faithful fires
entangling that from the bottom shall dash waterlilies in my face and my blood
of redemption and my shoulders slipping better than any knots
entangling
a drop of water in the precious alembic of water tables that shall go to the window and
cry out in Esperanto that the weather is fine poorly heard by the volutes scored by our bitterest spit)
a drop of fire in the throat without risk of wind
firefly and water I shall assemble myself in little drops of water of fire too beautiful for any other architect

dwelling made of water glimpsed upon waking
dwelling made of rumpled perfumes
dwelling made of spangled sleep
dwelling made of swelled chests stretched out of benumbed lizards
strength lines me up on the shadowless meridian

pythons crews of catastrophes unnatural brothers of my longitude
roads raise themselves to the height of green-eyed female gnomes intersected with
prayers taking aim at us on the footbridge of the malfunctioning compass sky

dwelling made of a laying-on of palms of hands
dwelling made of red cheetah eyes
dwelling made of a rain of shells of sand

the revolver shots give me a halo too vast this time for my head which arrives via portage in spare parts

[The Consul]

A Girl Named Vietnam

they stenciled CHE
on the walkway
of every entrance
still clinging to the frayed
knowledge that the only dignity
was in resistence

sprayed in red
powdered by late flakes of snow
lending a quiet despair
yet another impossible dream

the Columbia drop out stopped by
to return my copy of the Grundrisse
& make a quick pitch for hash oil
fresh in from other worlds

he runs his own advertising agency
now but he always did in a way
even when he offered great insight
on Swedenborg, Milton & Blake

I told him I was sick
too sick to smoke my blood
and the door was barely closed
when the new knock came

her eyes were silver pools
hi I'm Trudy Campus Crusade for ....
I put my finger to her lips
we can't talk here I lampooned

she'd be more relaxed in the HUB
where I might penetrate past her faith
& find out where our sense of loss might cross
freeing us from the hell of our judgement

pulling her by the arm out through the door
I dared her to tell me everything she knew
Nothing she answered all I have is faith
but all I understood was her lips

pointing to the stenciled letters she asked
okay smart guy what does that mean?
as she stroked her fingers through her hair
"why of course it means Christ He's Everywhere!"

empty coke bottles in the jungle
hundreds of millions of tee-shirts
smoldering cathedrals and politbureaus in ruin
Jesus & Che drink Schnapps in heaven
having already seduced the burning girl & me

[norton ash]

Rip glissando down my spine
Until I feel it in my cock
Saw down the darkness of the age
Where cello bolded on the page
Might spill the wine or smash the clock
That glowers over Palestine
Like summer dust or humid rage
Or cypress cast in desert rock.