the louder you yell...

i am not a fan of spoken poetry. i feel it would be dishonest and deceitful to leave that part out. just once. just ONCE, i would like to go an entire evening without dramatic empty pauses, nonsensical vocab words thrown in for good measure, and some poor girl screaming and crying about how she IS beautiful goddammit and if you don’t like it, well nigga you can kiss her beautiful black ass. that being said, i found myself tonight at the Jazzplex in Macon, Georgia, listening to said poetry. And it wasn’t bad at all. Spitfire, a group from Savannah, came up, and they were not bad at all. This guy named Santiago spit about being in Iraq and sent his poem out to everyone around 9/11 and George Bush and soldiers (because he is one) and it was not bad at all. In fact, it moved me deeply, it was profound, it was exactly what I would expect Spoken Poetry to be about. It’s not a matter of yelling the loudest or screaming the most vulgar or holding your aborted pauses until they die in the air, panting for some fresh idea. It’s about using the art and rhythm to breathe life into your ideas and thoughts and pain and joy and beliefs. I dislike poetry the most because it is the most abused. This cat Bored had one today about hating Poetry. But in the end, he couldn’t leave Her. He used Her to talk about Her. He loved Her.

All of this was observed with my hairsprayed bouffant and my tightrolled jeans and Tea and Crumpets t shirt and flip flops. The only white chick in the crowd. Being called an oppressor and a lyncher and a slave driver and a tainter of ancestral African blood. I felt really uncomfortable at first, but it took me a minute to realize that hopefully, these were not words written about Me. I am not those things, I am not that White Man. These are words of rage, expressing the howls of a culture that has been raped in ways I will never Ever comprehend, and who is Still picking up the pieces, with no help from the other White Men. And then I got hit on by a guy who looked like LL Cool J. It’s an interesting moment to think about.

Earlier this afternoon, My colleague and I went on an ADVENTURE WALK. What, pray tell, is this ADVENTURE WALK? Well, Citizen, so glad you asked. Basically, we walked around, exercise-like, exploring on street-level, the town. It turned out to be a really magical walk. At one point I put a broken Turtle shell at the edge of the wood, since it was lying in grass on the side of the road, and not 5 minutes later was graced to see a Turtle swimming in the river 20 feet below the bridge. Beautiful. We were welcomed by a pair of dogs who just wanted to be played with before returning to their home like friendly children, and we were able to talk and bounce ideas off of each other about life and work and recovery and goofy shit. Applebee’s for dinner and I finally found a meeting. What a good day today.

Check out this Link from Harlan. It’s free books, etc, online.