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courtesy of omni........

rant: why idol worship will ruin poetry

im like, wildly put-off by the celebritizing of poets in my community. while i encourage people and poets to reach out to poets who inspire them and thank them and communicate with them how their work has touched their lives…

i get a really uncomfortable sense of a burdgeoning idol worship developing. as youth slam becomes more wide-spread and those poets come into college and encounter poets who they themsevles watched on youtube or wherever growing up, i see more and more young poets fawning over these “slam celebrities”. While i appreciate the contributions of the “big names”, im fairly repulsed by the attitude that shaking their hands or sharing a car with them is meaningfull or important.

i hope, and encourage my own poets i coach to not look UP to these poets beyond their poems. To not idolize. Dont act like your life is complete because you shared a cab with anis or rachel or buddy or anyone. And if any of those sorts of people treat you like your less than, well…fuck them. fuck them in their asses. roughly.

the community is the most important thing we have, and when our young poets get into this groupie mentality, treating their peers and fellow poets like superstars to whome they can only bow in the glow of their radiant light, we create a shitty, imbalanced community. all those “famous” poets who won alot of stuff. they’re your equals. dont incite this madness. treat them like you would treat your own teammates or classmates. but latching on to a notable slam poet for handshakes and praise is like…gross to me.

im glad youve been inspired, tell them that. but not like youre talking to someone who is half-deity. that shit is stupid. be your own poet. impress yourself. do not judge your life by how many times you can share a car ride with derrick brown.

they are important to our success. but no more than you.

my high school experience.

None of us were creators then
Only destroyers
Leaving empty space in our wake.
Running backwards
Thinking that what we saw
Was us,
Rushing towards oblivion

Ethos pt. 1

There was a café in Richmond,
that force fed starving artists
amazing food and love,
the way we starving artists
feed the world creativity.
Without asking.
Without expecting anything in return.
And with a noble sense of obligation

Jen and Sarah,
were the couple who owned it.
they taught to me what it meant
to be revolutionary.
Some of their proceeds went to programs
for needle exchanges
or helping underage girls
get safe abortions
if they couldn’t tell their parents.

The types of programs
that make conservatives
blow steam out their ears.
and head out on the warpath.

They did it quietly.
Happily.
Not wanting to offend any clientele
that might object
to their patronage
funding such fringe causes.
But someone had to do it they said.
Why not them?

Not to mention,
their coffee was amazing.

It may have been the only place
ever in my life,
where I would strike up
conversations with complete strangers.
And I did every day,
since I was there for hours on end.
A safe haven for vagrant artists,
vagabonds,
and various free thinkers.

Before I went on tour for a month
with Joseph,
Ethos cafe held a fundraiser for us.
It was all their friends
that showed up

Jen and Sarah hadn’t slept yet.
They were up all nite
making T-shirts for us to sell
at shows.

They had us perform
and passed a hat.

People who struggle
to make rent every month
threw money into that hat
after Jen’s speech,
about how people who try
to really follow their dreams
need everyone else around them
to struggle a little more,
voluntarily,
while they wait for
their opportunity
to take the leap.

And whenever they chose
to take that leap,
Ethos would be right there
to pass a hat
and do whatever it took
to see them off right.

All I Know is Humor.

She said it was happening again

My read resting in her lap
as she scratched and massaged
my freshly shaved scalp.

She noticed the other day,
too much long red hair in the drain.
The doctors still seem confused,
but think its a rare form of lupus.
Her body, aimlessly waging war against itself

‘there might be one advantage’
I tell her lazily as the opium of her fingers
work themselves into my system
‘I can finally return all this
head massaging that you give me’

I swear,
I felt her smile through those fingers

Honey Badgers for Anxiety

We were at a Thai restaurant
In Austin, Tx
A few fellow poets
And the girl I was dating
A guitar player

She would open for hard rock bands
Just her,
An acoustic guitar,
And the songs she wrote
Rocking the venue

But this night,
She had one of her anxiety attacks
Right after we ordered.
She was outside,
Sitting balled up
Leaning back against the building
World around her spinning
Breath caught and pressed
By boulders

I sat with her,
Told jokes,
And recounted
Scene for scene
A documentary on my favorite animal,

The honey badger.

Considered the most tenacious
Animal on the planet,
It attacks lions, and poisonous snakes
Without a care.

But it gets its name,
From its love of honey.
And the reckless abandon
With which it dives into
Underground hives
Being stung thousands of times
Just to pull out the
Sweet sweet honeycomb


Maybe that is like
Working through an anxiety attack.
Knowing the honeycomb,
The ability to take a
deep, sweet,
Breath of air
Is worth getting stung
By shortness of breath,
And vertigo.
So you don’t ever
give up trying

The whole time I talked,
I kept a hand on her belly,
Made her focus on breathing.
Trying to keep it slow and deliberate
Eventually we stood up
as everyone filed out of the restaurant

We missed dinner.

A couple weeks later
There was a package in the mail
A stuffed animal,
An official honey badger
I had no idea
That they even made those

It must have been much
Harder to obtain
Than my stories were
That eased her anxiety

And receiving it eased mine,
Concerned about
How much I actually helped.

Apparently,
Honey badgers
Work better
Than Effexor or Zoloft

But like all anxiety meds,
The side effects can be brutal.

Biting and clawing,
Resulting in excessive bleeding

Sitting in a metal-smithing studio

Sitting in a metal-smithing studio

Surrounded by a wide array
Of unfamiliar instruments,
Numerous tools with
Slight variations,
Each waiting silently
For their moment
To make a vocal mark
On the world
Through the delicate hands
Of an artist.

It makes me wonder,
How complex is my art?

Substituting a pen
For a pencil,
Paper for a keyboard-
Would that make a
Discernable difference
In the outcome of this poem?

Never will someone say

‘I loved your poem,
Did you usea ballpoint pen?
Or a number 2 pencil?’

Writing and performing poems
Does not hold evidence
Of the medium used
In the precious moments of conception
There is no need to switch between
Lead and ink
mid-poem
In order to fine tune these metaphors
With the proper hue and texture

So how complex
Is this act of expression?

late in high school, and my year off......

......were spent keeping soberness at bay
during daylight hours
And trying to drown it at night
Only to wake the next day
And try again.
i'm still not sure
what my grudge was
with sobriety.
but i'm still
pretty sure
it deserved it.

Daggers

As my fingers caressed the small of her back.
I still remember
not just what she said,
but how she said it.

‘Why are you touching me like this?’

She told me from the get go
that she doesn’t use the word ‘love’
I told her it was overrated anyway

Oxycoton and heroin
Taught her feelings,
And I had become another hangover

She consumed me,
Anytime she felt lonely and bored
a common void bonding us together
But only at the edges
we spent our time fighting or fucking
To grab, poke, stab, bite, yell
At something outside ourselves.

Even our cold shoulders
Were loud, defiant
And jagged

But there were quiet moments,
In bed,
With cigarette smoke and sweat
Her tracing my tattoos
over and over.
My lips,
speaking slow
Gently touching
Old bruises,
More ancient than either of us felt

that was when she got
Demanding.
Each word carefully
Sharpened into a
Barbed and accurate dagger

‘Why do you touch me like that?’
Her voice slicing the space between us
Eyes begging for the answer.
I would smile, confused
And say, because these
are beautiful moments

thinking that
Our violence,
For a moment,
Together……
Could be all love is

Reminding her
softly of this emptiness
The way she reminded me
Through daggers of words
That pierced my insecurity

These serene moments are tiny scars
Wondering if I touched her like that…
With delicate daggers on my fingertips
Just to remind each other of the voids
we were seeking to destroy

Salvation Incorporated. - Eric Victorino

total poet crush on this guy right here.......

"I dont think
people who believe in god
are stupid.
plenty of very
intelligent people
have faith.
some of them
have even read the bible.
i've read it.
and i think its a great story
its a fucking best-seller
for Christ's sake."

excerpt from a great fucking book......

"i hope this book enters into the mix, bringing academics, performers, and all who care about a society in a postmodern, postindustrial world together, dropping some knowledge and breaking down some barriers. i hope, too, that it does something to dispel the pernicious notion that rappers are somehow non- or anti-intellectual, or that in describing the crises facing urban American and the world they are somehow glamorizing or advocating the conditions of which they testify. On the academic side, i hope that no one will any longer be able to think of music or poetry in the late twentieth century without assigning rappers a primary place, both out of an awareness of the urgency of their message, as well as on account of the tremendous poetic power and variety of their expression. and for rappers themselves, and everyone in the vast and growing hip-hop nation, i hope this book will help make evident the mulitiple connections between hip-hop's insurrectionary knowledges and the historical and societal forces against which they are posed, and in so doing expand and strengthen the depth of our determination to 'fight the powers that be'."
-Russell A. Potter
Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism

"I love quantum physics so much.... I just think I'd be calmed by the solar flares."

A friend on wanting to see the Northern Lights

Paroled Fable Thieves Intro piece (TJ & Kristen Tomanocy)

We live in this house of language
This cathedral
of oratory masters.
this castle of tradition
dug with fricatives and dipthongs
poured meaning through these sounds in order to cement stories
My bones never mortared themselves
for Aristotle's corinthian mantle foundation
but they hold up the rafters
while hinged lungs from the past sing back and forth
with every door we open and close in the hallway
my tongue drags along the doorknobs
wanting to taste every story with these words
starving for the ferment of cellared ancestry
I taste the spilled blood like iron in the hinges
my shins hold up the dinner table
plattered with a history of every noble hearts evocation
so listen
when you live in a house created by the
howls of human need, extending the limb of language,
a lost tongue in a shadowed cave of a mouth
you feel the echoes of your next door neighbors
So stop sitting down
stand
Raise a primordial scream like a battering ram
because the labored breath of
these creators is rattling through us.
demanding to be heard
We can own this.
Read this.
Channel this.
Lyric this.
Love this.
The words of our people typewrite themselves
through our toes on this hardwood floor.
write this. write this. write this.
Move like you have been given
the chance to construct stolen sonnets,
we are nothing but thieves in this mountain of crumpled pages
oragami masters
adding new folds from our own experiences
delivered through our breath as a gift
to decorate anothers barren dwellings
Because when you inherit this beautiful, ancient
temple of a house
all you can do
is listen to it.

Un-Friended by my grandfather!!!!!

My grandfather, also a writer, sent me this after i posted the link to the first anthology of the Intangibles "Static: and Other Lungless Things" on his facebook page.



Awesome!
if you want to see what i posted on his page to elicit such a response, visit here http://poetcd.com/index.php?item=285

Upcoming shows........

Tuesday, Dec 8th
Binghamton, NY
the Premier of .........






De Saussure’s concept of ‘Parole’ deals with concrete, actual instances of a language and is not concerned with grammar, syntax, and rule. As torchbearers of the oral tradition, we acknowledge the embodiment of the story in its moment, concerned with being over meaning, making each performance unique. Nothing new can be said, but it can be presented in new ways, and is; Every time something is performed.

Closing Paragraph from my undergrad philosophy thesis on archaeological theory....

My only concern as we set out on our path of self-discovery through the past, inching forwards towards a more comprehensive understanding of our beginnings is that we will exhaust our data, our ability to find and excavate new sites before we can reach a honed and accepted method of archaeological discourse. A place where different fields of thought, theories, and data will all work collectively in critically tying together the threads of our past into a tapestry of learning and achievement. We should view Archaeology as archaeology. Borrowing from other fields as seen fit in the course in inquiry, and acknowledging new methods that can be checked and appropriated in a proper place with regards to our biases will enrich all of our endeavors.

Eros and Arson

I watched her gently pull a camel non-filter out of a half empty pack as if she was an archaeologist, uncovering some ancient relic to be viewed by mankind for the first time in millennia.

Delicately placed it between clenched front teeth and grinned as I leaned forward with my lighter.
She leaned back away from the flame, paused, and said with a gleam in her eye,

“lets just burn the whole fucking thing”, one eyebrow slightly raised in a challenging manner

“what,” I said, “this bar?”

She leaned forward again, kissed her cigarette to the flame I held never breaking eye contact, inhaled, took an infinite second to savor it, and shook her head, wild mane of brunette hair sweeping over her shoulders as she exhaled.

“all of it,” she said, “you, me, us, the system, all of it”

I smiled back slightly, quietly wishing it was the bar she wished to engulf in her fire.
The ease with which all of this alcohol would ignite and spread made it an acceptable thought process, something within my realm of possibility.

We were silent for a few thoughtful drags of our cigarettes, my free hand gently massaging her stocking covered thigh, sliding under the hem of her skirt.

I suppose it was too late to turn back.

Yes, we were already prisoners of this world… but here, with only us in this closed bar, we were defying labels, redefining intimacy, love, passion, and comfort without conscious attention to our actions and repercussions.

But I never thought myself capable of destroying these socially cemented notions that chart our course in the world. I only checked them like a jacket at the door when we stole time alone here, never forgetting to collect them again as I left.

Our cigarettes finished, she stood, stepped over and pressed her body into mine, seeing if the friction of our heat could melt us, could spark raging infernos that would reduce society around us to ash,
and her lips gently caressed my neck as she whispered,

“this is whats real, and it can never be burned or destroyed”

And I watched her saunter out the door, back into the world, no baggage of labels to pick up as she set off to set the world ablaze.

understanding perception and beauty and art

http://bitsofwisdom.org/2009/10/21/interesting/perception/

YOU WANT TO GO TO THERE!!!!