ng waves
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My book is now finished and for sale!
Also I recently discovered that singer/songwriter Ani Difranco has a book of poetry. It's called Self-evident: poesie e disegni and is available on her website. Here is a brief description from her website:
self evident: poesie e disegni is Ani's first book of poetry, printed by Italy's independent publisher Minimum Fax. With twenty poems, including 5 never seen in print before, this book is where you'll find every word of the title poem that Ani has performed at many of her shows, while "Parameters" gives you a sneak peek at her 2005 studio album, Knuckle Down. In true righteous style, Ani has also created all of the book's illustrations with her own hand.
135 pages in length and imported from Italy, the book uses the translation-friendly method of placing Ani's original English text on the left, with the Italian version on the facing page, perfect for your bilingual alter ego. Including an interview with our favorite folkpoet, self evident: poesie e disegni answers the question posed by so many of her audience members: where can I get me some of that?
get
self
evident by ani difranco
Freak of the Alchemist
My hands would be stone
if it weren't for the fire that burns in my chest
branding my heart with the spirit
of the one who creates rainbows.
My hands would be butterflies
if it weren't for the fire that burns in my chest
branding my heart with the spirit
of the one who makes war
I'm a army of opposites at war with myself
my gut is a battle ground of duality
I'm a freak of the alchemist
the double edge fire that burns in my chest
is fueled by passion
and horse shit
When Jesse got 99 years
I laughed
I looked in his sons face
and cried
I shouted for women's liberation
but cajoled her to fetch my coffee
Last week I stop a fight
today I'm gonna start one
Some people ask how I got so sensitive
others want to know what makes me so mad
I shake my head at drug users
but make excuses for my gin
Gonna buy my baby a lot of toys
and I don't believe in Christmas.
I'm a freak of the alchemist
My hands are part stone
and part butterfly
I feel at home
with friends on the northshore
and family in the projects
I'm a Ex-Marine
Who feels despair
about hungry Iraqis
A starving artist
with a four bedroom house in the burbs
A poet
who believes in censorship
I want to be liked
and I don't hide my flaws
I celebrate my negritude
and I never had sympathy for OJ
My star is illuminated
by poet
and football
I'm a freak of the Alchemist
my hands are part stone
and part butterfly
-Chuck Perkins
Listen to me read my latest poem
Cabbage Patch!!
cabbage patch
gold in the garden, i pretend
its night-time, common ailments, fingers
pressed into the look of sign language
dead language, latin longing
bull fights, we wish and shift inside
these redlight moments, so soft and
bitten into
quake once
again, these voices that won't
hush or hum or recede, these starfish angels, played in sand
sad in ways you can't just see
in the cringing mornings when
skin is a selfish belonging
and time is staring you
in the face, these bent tree
totems outside the windows
collect tears and tidal waves
swimming with tired roots
and wells sip smoke from
the fires that we burned in the
desert
when the nights turned cold
when the wind grew sharp
and where everything green
gave up.
August 14 2005
You really have to check out
Poet, Musician, Writer, Actor, Philospher...Saul
Williams. He's an amazing poet, I have his book
, said the shotgun to the head which is just a brilliant title.
It's a book-length poem and I love it!
",said the shotgun to the head. is an invitation to live and die in the moment, a confrontation of politics of empire, a dare to transform oneself in the face of fear and a post 9-11 love song all in one" - Zack de la Rocha
Bio
In an age where boundless leaps are being made in communication Saul Williams is
evolutionary proof that age old concepts can be fused with new age precepts and
expressed with mind opening precision.
Never before has the power of word and our ability to dictate our reality been
expressed so clearly and creatively, at once. Saul's poetry represents an
evolution of thought, artistry and spiritual consciousness delivered with the
lyrical fervor of hip hop and the grace and linguistic mastery of Shakespeare.
Saul channels the voice of the New Age, yet, allows a wide ranging stream of
consciousness to distort the melody like some sort of lyrical Hendrix.
~
I spoon powdered drum
beats into plastic bags
sellin' kilos of kente scag
takin' drags off of collards and cornbread
tree-basing through saxophones and flutes like mad
the high notes make me space float
i be exhalin' in rings that circle Saturn
leavin'stains in my veins in astrological patterns
yeah, i'm sirius B
Dogon niggas plotted shit, lovely
but the Feds are also plottin' me
they're tryin' to imprison my astrology
to put my stars behind bars
my stars in stripes
using blood splattered banners
as nationalist kites
but i control the wind
that's why they call it the hawk
i am horus son of isis
son of osiris worshipped as jesus
resurrected like lazarus
but you can call me lazzie
lazy
yeah, i'm lazy
cause i'd rather sit and build
than work and plow a field
worshipping a daily yield of cash green crop
your evolution stopped with the evolution of your technology
a society of automatic tellers and money machines
nigga what?
my culture is lima beans
-saul williams
june21'05
I'm always looking for new poets...and
I recently discovered the works of
Naomi Shihab Nye, Acclaimed Poet, Essayist, and
Teacher.
Here are a few of her poems:
Hidden
If you place a fern
under a stone
the next day it will be
nearly invisible
as if the stone has
swallowed it.
If you tuck the name of a loved one
under your tongue too long
without speaking it
it becomes blood
sigh
the little sucked-in breath of air
hiding everywhere
beneath your words.
No one sees
the fuel that feeds you.
Making a Fist
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
Two Countries
Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.
Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.
she also wrote this which i thought was pretty amazing, even though its not a
poem...
LETTER FROM NAOMI
SHIHAB NYE, ARAB-AMERICAN POET: TO ANY WOULD-BE TERRORISTS
so you should all check her out! :)
6/11/05
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