Love, Not H8

Big things are happening here at Remember When. Thanks to a very dear friend of mine I finally got my act together on this whole embedding videos nonsense. Turns out, its easier than rhyming words with 'our.' I think it dynamically changes the layout and hopefully will make it easier for people to watch the videos of poets featured here.

As for poets featured here, they are mostly from Seattle. I realize that and I am dealing with it. I just have an incredible bias towards the amazing shit that touched stage every Wednesday in oh-so-city-fringe Fremont. The truth is, there are incredible poets all over the country and world. Bringing you one of them in 5,4...

Andrea Gibson. A queer Denver poet who was the first gal ever to win The Women of the World Poetry Slam. She also performed a few times this summer with the Junkyard Ghost Revival, an amazing group of PNW poets. For me, it is always great to see women on the stage and especially one who is so compelling with her words. I saw this piece a long time ago and it ripped me to shreds. The truth is, it's not sad or heart wrenching in the way some other poems are. It's just truth. Plain and simple. As Sharpies bleed from Prop 8 posters and this issue inevitably takes the backburner to other world crisises, I thought it was appropriate to share this poem. As for the bastards who voted for Prop 8, Andrea Gibson totally made me gay, so apparently they do recruit!

The Backup Band of My Soul

There is really no rhythm to this poem or slam-ability, but there is still something I really like about it:

The solo of my soul is provided by the sweet song of some strung out hip hop hippy girl
Her grill gleaming in the green of my emerald heart.
My misguided steps make her voice fall apart

The lesbian twins of my contorted stomach sing backup in melodic circles taking turns with the harmony, always there to catch their twist and drop in rhyme
Their perfect pitch keeps me in line.
My soul delicious
Impossible to define.

Drop beats
Turn this garage band into Prima Donna  
You can do this
Cue the music. 

The mellow undertones of the drums bring the beat back
Put me back on a straight path
And the spotlight drops on a girl.
Young, beautiful, Snow White features.
Arms flailing, fingers barely big enough to grab drumsticks
Licks her lips
Takes a glimpse at the crowd
She knows she can handle this.

She is brave, wise beyond her years
Her eyes swell with tears

This is no longer a dress rehearsal for an audience of two
In the audience is you
You close your eyes
And let the the music wash over your memory.

Arising from the looped chorus of our creation
A voice booming from each speaker
A surround sound sure to make your ear drums swell
Your sickness well
You to hear the music
Stop the nuisance
Become the sound
That is me.

See I can sing the humility out of any man when I’m alone
But I rock worlds to islands
Leave the strongest crying
Make that flutter in your heart turn into convulsions
Bring phat flows of fancy with that drop from percussion

I can make you dance
Put the beauty back into your step, into me, into the world

When the backup band of my soul 

Plays center stage to this girl.

Lauren Welch Knows All My Secrets or My New Favorite Poem: Take 2

My dear friend Lauren gchatted me at work earlier this week to let me know that Danny Sherrard
was reading "my new favorite poem" on a "very Seattle" video on YouTube. Confession: This video is the reason this poem has become my favorite. Confession: Danny Sherrard is the reason I do anything in life. Seattle's own rock star reading the Archipelago:

And if you want to get your world rocked: The Distance.As for my excuses, I promise I will post my own stuff soon. Lots in the head and little time to put it on paper but I will get there. Soon. Promise.

My New Favorite Poem

I hope to one day be as brilliant as the last line of this poem.

The Archipelago of Kisses
By Jeffrey McDaniel
We live in a modern society.
Husbands and wives don'tgrow on trees, like in the old days. So wheredoes one find love?

When you're sixteen it's easy
Like being unleashed with a credit card in a department store of kisses.

There's the first kiss.The sloppy kiss. The peck.The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we shouldn't be doing this kiss. The but your lips taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.The I wish you'd quit smoking kiss.The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad sometimes kiss. The I knowyour tongue like the back of my hand kiss.

As you get older, kisses become scarce.
You'll be driving home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road, with its purple thumb out. If you were younger, you'd pull over
Slide open the mouth's red door just to see how it fits. Oh where does one find love?

If you rub two glances, you get a smile. Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.
Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss. Now what?

Don't invite the kiss over and answer the door in your underwear.
It'll get suspicious and stare at your toes.
Don't water the kiss with whiskey.
It'll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters, but in the morning it'll be ashamed and sneak out ofyour body without saying good-bye, and you'll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left on the inside of your mouth.

You must nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it illuminates the room.
Hold it to your chest and wonder if the sand inside hour glasses comes from a special beach.
Place it on the tongue's pillow, then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia.
Beneath a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.

But one kiss levitates above all the others.
The intersection of function and desire.
The I do kiss.
The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss.
Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil
Just to be next to your bones.

A Horrible Haiku for My (one day) Hipster Husband

penned on the red line. bitches.

scruff, gruff, of the earth
heart worn sleeves, eyes pierce, calming
wake up next to me?

Politics Aside

This is a poem I was asked to write for a celebration of Israel's 60th Birthday in Seattle last Spring. I performed it at the slam that same week and I was oh-so-politely publicly ridiculed on stage by the featured poet, a Jewish girl whose views on Israel were different than mine. She thought. 

Everyone who knows me well knows that I have a special place for Israel in my heart and have spent many of my summers in recent memory in the Middle East. While I've wrestled with religion over the past few years (story, poem, novel for another time) I still hold a strong affinity for the culture, people and distinct 'ness' that is Israel. At the same time, I do see clear human rights and democratic issues in that land and am always looking for discourse on this issue (I mean, I work for the New Israel Fund!) I felt very polarized by the poet's comments that night, feeling nervous about performing this poem to a sea of liberals who cringe at the "I' word without really listening to the common thread of the poem.

On a happier note, it is worth noting that Buddy Wakefield came up to me that night to tell me how great he thought the poem was (and to ask what "goy" meant...!). My Israel poem (in a safe space..):

A few summers ago I took a group of college students on a tour through Israel

On our fifth day

We found ourselves in Yitzhak Rabin square

The vacant quad that echoes songs turned to screams from the day
That day
When history defied itself to bring Jew against Jew

 An event so rare, yet so poignant, in our lineage

The Israeli soldier accompanying our trip recounted the events of that day to the sea of co-ed ears

Exchanging suntan lotion and invisible notes about how cute he was

I stood in the back so they could listen better

But his story eyes pierced me to the front of the class
This soldier was staring right into me as he told his story
Because he was certain that my 22 year old

Self-proclaiming Zionist heart had a clue what it was like to be him
What it was like to be Israeli
On that day

Because I was 11 when it happened,
And these students were barely 7
So sliding across the top of their sunburnt scalps 

Comes this look
This understanding he thinks I have
This call looking for a response

Only I don’t know what to tell him

His country crumbled that day
And even the forced picture of peace shattered 

Like light bulbs on wedding days

The image of our presidents hands playing tug of war with the hands of their two leaders
Was nothing more than a Superman boy hoping to get his parents to sleep in the same bed again.

I went to bed that night

My 6th grade mind filling with more questions than answers

Felt my moms tears when my Dad said “hug your mother,"

And promised myself I’d learn all the words to Hatikvah in the morning. 

Promises empty like regret
Like threats
Like bomb threats that ended an Israel event I went to that year
Like the bomb shelter this soldier would later write me emails from
when fighting escalated in the North
While I was back safely in Seattle throwing lassos around stars
Hoping to pluck luck out of the sky for him

He’s spit dirt for his country and never asked questions

I can’t conceive what its like to be born fighting
To be conceieved a pre-meditated soldier
To modern history’s seemingly endless war
To stand on not-quite firm

Not quite solid

Not quite anyone’s soil

See I've never questioned the certainty of my own backyard

So this look he’s giving me
Can be repaid with nothing but an awkward glance
With hopes of peace measured in more than months between fighting
And maybe we connect on that basic level

But his eyes reflect the blue of the Kinneret

The ribbon tied around our fingers reminding us “never forget” 

The flag shrouded over his friends buried on Har Herzl 

Eyes blinding me with the 112 degree shade of this Tel Aviv afternoon
Begging me to remember why I love his land
This land

Yes We Effing Did: A Remember When Feature

When I turned to my friends at 11:04pm on Tuesday to say "let's take to the streets," all I meant was "let's pop champagne on your stoop before I pass out on your Mt. Pleasant couch." My only regret from the night is not joining them on their adventure to U Street, White House and essentially every other block that seemed to be flooded with people. However, the energy in DC right now continues to be palpable. You cannot ask someone simply how their day is going without a large grin and exuberant response (of course, I work for a human rights foundation, so this may be a bias..).

So in honor of Tuesday night's events, I couldn't think of a better feature than Barry himself. He wrote these poem's while on a brief tenure at Occidental College (can't keep up with dude's geography). There is so much I to want to say right now but I think I'm just coming down from it all and need some more time to process. For now, our feature for this week, Mr. President Elect (baller), Barack Obama:

Pop

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken

In, sprinkled with ashes

Pop switches channels, takes another

Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks

What to do with me, a green young man

Who fails to consider the

Flim and flam of the world, since

Things have been easy for me;

I stare hard at his face, a stare

That deflects off his brow;

I’m sure he’s unaware of his

Dark, watery eyes, that

Glance in different directions,

And his slow, unwelcome twitches,

Fail to pass.

I listen, nod,

Listen, open, till I cling to his pale,

Beige T-shirt, yelling,

Yelling in his ears, that hang

With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling

His joke, so I ask why

He’s so unhappy, to which he replies...

But I don’t care anymore, cause

He took too damn long, and from

Under my seat, I pull out the

Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing,

Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face

To mine, as he grows small,

A spot in my brain, something

That may be squeezed out, like a

Watermelon seed between

Two fingers.

Pop takes another shot, neat,

Points out the same amber

Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and

Makes me smell his smell, coming

From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem

He wrote before his mother died,

Stands, shouts, and asks

For a hug, as I shrink, my

Arms barely reaching around

His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ’cause

I see my face, framed within

Pop’s black-framed glasses

And know he’s laughing too.

Underground

Under water grottos, caverns

Filled with apes

That eat figs.

Stepping on the figs

That the apes

Eat, they crunch.

The apes howl, bare

Their fangs, dance,

Tumble in the

Rushing water,

Musty, wet pelts

Glistening in the blue.

I Have No Idea What It Is, But I Want It

Ryler Dustin is an amazing, Seattle (shocking) poet who regularly ripped it up at the Seattle slam and was on the Seattle National Slam Team in 2007. This poem is nothing short of genius although if you are left at the end wondering what the heck it is all about, you're not alone. The thing that I love most about this poem is that you are just along for the amazing ride and usage of words, whether the context is clear or not. The killer line for me is "not like suicide but like setting himself free/ when the nurses fell back like you did from me." Just. Genius.