Archive for March 2010
Ode to morning time in PDX
Poetry? Mostly boring if you ask me.
But there it is standing with you most every day. From the moment you wake up and strap shoes to your feet— coffee, bus stop, bus ride, familiar faces, sometimes conversation, sometimes not. Your iPod delivers a beat that shakes you out of your sleepy funk. Down Lombard, right on Greeley, picking up the last of the great minds that make this city tic, toc. Past the Adidas campus, Interstate. Condo skyline. Rose Quarter. Steel Bridge. Train tracks. Ocean bound freighter. Down past the shelter where humbled beings drift awake after a night of torture. Excuse me, this is my stop. Thank the bus driver. Into the crisp morning you go. The neighborhood. Alive.
Past the China shops to the Moroccan coffee house for Italian espresso, Illy’s. Small talk, walk, past more familiar faces. Business suits. Cherry blossoms. Junkies. Elderly tenants smoking in front of single room occupancies. Humans rise from doorways. “Hello.” “Are the streets hot this morning, George?” “Yes.” “No.” “Have a good day. Be safe.”
The smell of human odor and cigarette smoke greet me at the front door. Street Roots. My morning work begins.
Posted by Israel Bayer
What It Was
It was desire that brought her
to the river
the first time-
tired of her first floor
fishbowl apartment.
As she stood there watching beaver
layering debris to build his home,
eagle skimming rivers edge,
she knew
she could call this place
Home.
It was necessity that brought her
to bathe those months in the icy, glacial flow-
freezing the dirt from her skin-
thick with woodchips
and sweat
and scars from the hearth stones.
It was strength that gave her
the seven hundred eighty-four steps
from the river to her tent-
a five-gallon pail grasped in each hand.
Gravity and symmetry
pulled her closer to the earth.
Her mind focused
to keep the precious drops from
spilling over.
It was a deep sadness that called her
that day to carry the
tattered memories of two years:
sprouted lentil seeds and guitar picks-
dropping, then sliding into the water.
She stood on the bank and waited for the
river current to pull those memories
the eight miles out to sea.
It was outrage that brought her
to watch as cranes and dump trucks
pushed the
sand,
willows,
lupine,
red alder saplings,
silt and river rock
in on themselves,
in on the changing bank.
The cranes moved the river
first closer, then away.
It was fear that took her
to watch the rising river each hour that night.
To watch the driving rain.
To watch the river growing to encapsulate
the bank that had held it in for many years.
Two hundred foot spruce trees whizzed past her
like toothpicks- logs screaming past her on the highway.
Her truck parked at the top of the hill-
A last ditch escape.
It was faith that brought her
to lay her naked body
across the river stones.
Her ankles locked in the root of a fallen tree-
her body taught, then loosening-
rippling
above the glacial water
below the summer heat.
Lying there,
she came to realize how
the river would meter her life.
each ripple,
every meander,
the gravelly silt,
crisp green liquid
translucent and frigid
moving through a land that could never
hold her in.
Posted and read by Sue Zalokar
This poem was originally printed in Tidepools- a literary magazine produced by Peninsula College students. Read about Tidepools 2010.
Tweet your verse
National Poetry Month is right around the corner. In honor of such an enormous event (chuckle) — the Seattle Times is hosting a poetry contest through Twitter. You can tweet rhymes, verses, musings, haiku or, my personal favorite, “what-have-you that is 140 characters or less.” Lets see, “On the bus, on the train, on the avenue, my uptick is faster than the speed of light. Try to keep up. Try, try, try. I bet you can’t.”
In other news, the head of the European Union is publishing a book of poetry. From the Wall Street Journal, “Herman Van Rompuy’s haiku poetry is already as much a part of inside-the-Brussels-beltway lore as endless summits, crooked cabbies and the question of whether the European Union will ever have a proper foreign policy.” Let’s hope Rompuy’s poetry is more of a reflection of what is happening inside-the-Brusells beltway, wild (I do mean wild) late-nights after those endless summits and something interesting about crooked cabbies— otherwise, snooze fest. Come on Herman, you’ve got it in you. Although this website does have Herman looking a little freakish. Maybe there’s hope yet.
Posted by Israel Bayer
War
raw foods are best they say. so…
i am eating
carrots and mung sprouts
hoping
for optimum health.
i am listening to the daily reports:
food being dropped on a nation
bombs we are dropping on a Nation.
the radio has become a
cancerous growth.
my eyes are thick with
melanoma of television,
a single vision
like the 4th of July
i am standing in a crowd of People
watching the neon bombs far away.
20. March 2003
Posted by Sue ZalokarArtis the Spoonman teams up w/PoMotion
PoMotions is proud to say out loud that Artis the Spoonman will be joining the blog as a regular contributor. You may know him best from Pike’s Place Market in downtown Seattle, where he has played spoons for years, or possibly from his work with Soundgarden in the 90s.
I first met Artis in 2006 while working with Real Change newspaper in Seattle. Since then, Artis has been known to frequent the Street Roots (where I work now) office when he is Portland. He has volunteered his talents, poetry and most all his love to the street paper movement.
From his bio, “Artis the Spoonman is a living myth. Since 1972 he has created a state-of-the-artcultural legend. From the sidewalks and bars of Seattle, San Francisco, Manhattan, Sidney, London, Dublin, Munich and Singapore, to the theatres of Broadway, the stages of International and National television and the recording studios of Frank Zappa and Soundgarden, his spellbinding, faster-than-the-eye-can-trackspoonplaying has been a passionate rhythm enhancement for Rock, Fusion, Folk, Jazz, Bluegrass, Classical and Uncatagorizable music, virtually everywhere. His avante-garde percussion, coupled with his contagious spirit, will change your life– or at least your ideas on cutlery …”
He has shared the stage with the likes of Jim Page, Frank Zappa, Aerosmith, Steve Goodman, The Flying Karamazov Brothers, David Sanborn, Lacy J. Dalton, Peter Rowan, Jethro Burns, Ramblin Jack Elliot, Utah Phillips, Pete Seeger, k.d.lang, Bob Weir, Avner the Eccentric, Soundgarden, Itzhak Perlman, The Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra, Zakir Hussein, Queen Ida, Ani DiFranco, Phish, Left Over Salmon, The Radiators, String CheeseIncident, Pele Juju and Alice DiMicele.
Here he is playing the spoons with an orchestra. It will blow you away. (Shortcut: You can start @ about 1:50 in the video when Artis begins.)
His first poem for PoMotion, Contemporary Vagabond explores life on the streets, something Artis knows all to well. While it’s true, Artis is a living legend, most of all he is just a common man, and a beautiful poet.
Look for more from Artis, and announcements on new contributors in the coming days and weeks. Welcome aboard brother love.
Posted by Israel Bayer
CONTEMPORARY VAGABOND
by Artis the Spoonman
Ah the sterile scent of dry dust
Under the overpass
The sporadic thump, thump
of the traffic overhead
Sorta lulls me to sleep
In my urban outdoor bed
I feel safe, but vulnerable
I feel alert, but relaxed
I don’t owe anybody
and no one owes me
Don’t want to hurt anybody
Hope no one hurts me
In this world of enchantment
I just want to live free
When it rains I get wet
When it’s hot I just sweat
Like an alarm clock
The thumps are getting closer above
Maybe today all the hate
Will turn to love
Livin outdoors ain’t nearly as hard
As the grief I get for being a bard
All my lovers are sublime
and my children love me true
They are few, and seldom seen
But what’s a vagabond to do?
I feel safe, but vulnerable
I feel alert, but relaxed
I don’t owe anybody
and no one owes me
Don’t want to hurt anybody
Hope no one hurts me
In this world of enchantment
I just want to live free
When it rains I get wet
When it’s hot I just sweat
I’m not guilty of the trespass
I’m so often accused
More the victim
than the instigator of abuse
The drugs, violence & deception
Are just as plentiful
in the banks and mansions
As on the streets
and under these transoms
I feel safe, but vulnerable
I feel alert, but relaxed
I don’t owe anybody
and no one owes me
Don’t want to hurt anybody
Hope no one hurts me
In this world of enchantment
I just want to live free
When it rains I get wet
When it’s hot I just sweat
Posted by Israel Bayer
“Remember to Wave” makes a splash in Portland
Poet Kaia Sand is on a mission. In her most recently published book “Remember to Wave” (TinFish Press, 2010), Sand is bringing political history from the Pacific Northwest to light through poetry.
From the Oregonian on March 25, “Concerned with displacement, both physical and temporal, Sand focuses on 60 acres along the Columbia River that now hold the Portland Expo Center. In the early 1940s, the area housed more than 3,000 Japanese Americans bound for internment camps; it was later home to Vanport, which flooded out in 1948.
With help from a Regional Arts & Culture Council grant, Sand spent several years walking the site and conducting research. In “Remember to Wave,” she folds her notes, personal essays and lyric lines between photographs and ephemera, essentially mapping the consequences of displacement.”
Read the interview with Sand from the Oregonian.
Sand’s project was also highlighted in Street Roots, a street paper in Portland, Ore., in January in an in-depth article written by Carmel Bentley. In the article Sand says, “I wanted to create a dynamic form for thinking about our local political history and its connections to the present. I wanted to create a participatory experience as well as words on a page.”
Kaia Sand will perform “Remember to Wave: A Poetry Walk” at noon April 10. Hosted by Pacific Northwest College of Art’s Submit Literary Magazine, the walk begins at the Expo Center’s MAX stop (in Portland) and will last about two hours. The walk is free and open to the public. To take part, e-mail sand@thetangentpress.org; for more information, go to pen.org/members/sand
You can purchase a signed first edition of Remember to Wave through Powell’s Books in Portland.
Photo Courtesy of Street Roots/Ken Hawkins.
Posted by Israel Bayer
I just wrote this
Life is very uncertain
I may never finish this poem
But I will finish my life, isn’t that odd?
No Matter what I leave undone, or
un finished
I still finish
Finish
the End
It just sounds soo final.
can it really stop.
Can i write or am i just
finishing somebody else’s work
Am i at home anymore, do i have a home?
what if you’re my home
In Thee I Dwell
In search of heaven i found dogs
She’s 8 pounds long, nosey, and sounds like a battlefield.
She’s stronger than any faith
She’s here, She’s not here
It’s that simple
Sometimes she runs really fast,
and turns into a blur,
But it is still her.
I am not so tangible, i can be here,
and not be here at the same time.
“We got any Tomatoes?” Asks the blonde in the back
Lying is so natural, is there
any way to stop it
Stop it
?
Am I lying to myself
“No” I say in a voice half coroner/ half corpse
“bullshit” She mumbles
She kicks my dog
It bothers me
I smile
Posted by Brian Feist
“I got a message” You should listen.
DeVonte Sanders lays down his story on the block.
And Leo a.k.a Love Line lays down a beautiful freestyle with a message.
Posted by Israel Bayer
The Chaos of Fatwas: Hissa Hilal’s veiled peace protest
Hissa Hilal, a woman poet from Saudi Arabia, criticized Muslim preaches during a poetry recital at The Million's Poet show, broadcast live every week across the Arab
Reading today about Hissa Hilal, I found myself at a loss for words.
Listen to this housewife and mother speak from behind her own veil: The Chaos of Fatwas
Hissa Hilal’s ‘Message in a Bottle’ is heard across the sea
Posted by Sue Zalokar
Down on Davis Street
Around 10:30am down on Davis Street
Where many a poor man rests his missing soul
It was a bittersweet day, survival mode gone wrong
A battle torn man losing the flow
Coming at me live
On a heroin rush, vodka high
Beer drunk, my oh my
Cursing me out in broad day light
Junkie man, please set down
Tell me what your story is?
And like a riot blown in from a wicked past
He told his tale, he hissed, he lashed, out
He told me he’d been to hell and knew what it was all about
Poetry like a flower, or did I say broken glass?
Nothing stops the rats and crows from feeding
‘Are you for real?
Do you want to see something real?’
Showing me the knife scares across his chest
The night she took him out
The night he took her down
20 years in prison…
but oh my friends there’s so much more
He asks me again, “Are you for real, Israel?”
He staggers along
A dream gone wrong
A vision caste out
A reason, I suppose to feel belonged in wetness…
Posted by Israel Bayer
A Little Shel is good for what ails ya
If you ever wandered to the end of the sidewalk you know where this guy is coming from.
Read and learn more about Shel Silverstein here.
Posted by Brian Feist
poMotion poetry 