Book Release and Reading - Jennifer Barone - Bird and Beckett Books @ 2788 Diamond St., Glen Park

Props GIRL!

If you don't know who this pleasant and ambitious young lady is - from her creation of thewordparty.com (linked on this blog), or from co-hosting Club Deluxe's Tuesday night Poetry & Jazz on Haight/Ashbury, or from her eastcoast counterpart thewordparty in Brooklyn - well, you should. And buy her fucking book titled: secret city!!! Ten dollars!

Buy it at: thewordparty.com

"i demand softer voices to counter
the piercing screech of breaks"

"you are a used world
your clowns are drunk and lazy
like wafting air of hot dog grease
and french-fried meat"

"letting crumbs fall on your chest
the pigeons eat them
and are uplifted"

Reading - Cafe Prague @ 485 Pacific Ave. (where it meets Columbus) @ 4 pm every Sunday

Cafe Prague has been kicking for a long time thanks to Mark Schwartz. But last Sunday was a real bummer. The poets were all ready to read but the host couldn't keep quiet during the performances. Overall, the distraction made for a poor time and I know for a fact that it intimidated new readers enough that they did not read. Poetry isn't about egos, it's about grabbing tiny bits of terror and beauty as they flow through and around us and grabbing hold of them. The shadows that we ink on paper are proof of such electrical currents or muses and are, perhaps, the only way two seperate people can share such things. But such delicate substances need a safe environment in which they can be developed and then released again, back into the wild. That is what makes a poetry reading a space of clarity.

Reading - Dalva @ 3121 16th St. - Featuring Monique Marquisa de Magdalena - WARNING: NUDITY

The Dalva poetry reading (7-9:00 every 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month) has been one of my favorites; the tiny wooden room with a low ceiling is tucked in back, past the bar, and the space feels like an illegal gambling room or a meeting place for anarchists, or even, scatological poets. Thursday the 11th: stepping through the unmarked door into the suffocating air we barely found standing room in the antearior. Every seat was taken and the staircase in the corner was filled all the way up to the second floor. The 1st poet was followed by a gush of applause. The room was crowded for a reason.

Up came Ozzy with a poem that veered toward madness; and yet, it was about searching for books at the public library . He pronounced words with a brutal Rhode Island accent where "R"'s are "ahh"'s while referencing old Bezerker mythology as well as the giants from Beauwolf in a way that made the room shake. Somehow we were in a tangle with all of written history while searching the card catalogue. At one point he says: "KEYWORD / spelt B / E / R (AHH) / S / E / R (AHH) / K / I am not crazy!" Include lunge toward audience and wide unseeing stare. Always a pleasure.

The featured poet, Monique Marquisa de Magdalena, I'd seen at many readings but I'd never see her do anything like she did this evening. I'm not certain of the particulars but she was channeling Anita Berber, an intriguing German exotic dancer in the 1920's who is "probably the first person to dance naked" and who pioneered modern dance itself. She lived wild and died at the age of 29 after 3 marriages and many drug and orgy filled nights. She wrote a book of poetry with a husband titled: Die Tänze des Lasters, des Grauens und der Ekstase (Dances of Vice, Horror, and Ecstasy).

Monique Marquisa de Magdalena turned down the lights and put in a CD - two drummers and guitarist began playing Natural Born Killers-style country - then she began a gothic reading about stripping, drugs, and touring the world: "they called me / the ice queen / the little devil goddess! / I was banned from Berlin / I played Baghdad / I played Beruit / in all the dirtiest clubs / I was banned from Europe". Everything felt punk rock and her music and dancing was hypnotizing. She passed out a bottle filled with Cognac and "pretened" to blow cocaine. Soon her clothes began to come off and a Anita Berber-mantra began. You never know what you'll find at Dalva.



(Pictures Top to Bottom: Hosts Adam Wolf and Elz Cuya, Ozzy, 3 pictures of Monique Marquisa de Magdalena, Jesse reading, myself with Cognac)

Christmas Bloody Christmas

finger queen
sounds enough like
fingering
the noose tightens
around her throat
and an orgasm bangs against
the universe’s outer walls
hmmm…
how was that, babe?
a potter knows pottery
and tea. some cocktails
make themselves before
the garnish even begins to
get questioned, sorta like
“fast wars” and premature
ejaculations of media versions
but I’m not a political poet
in any way shape or form. Female
form, then. Two breasts and
a machine gun fire blasts through
sexual moans in Cambodia, a
taste of sea creatures, the measure
of salt and constant coverings:
panties, undies, kelp, or other
seaweeds - today I’m reading and
the writing is the same
sort of Beckman
only without all his
“fucks” and “tennis socks” or
“white tennis socks” or whatever
I don’t really need to quote him
for the whole poem, do I?
Her chest, then. Sex best bent
over something, don’t care what
but her head banging something too,
her hair in a fist and drilling like
Alaskan oil fields from behind - that is
not a
metaphor. A blue, red, and white
flag covers a pile of half-burned bodies while
you open up each one of your Christmas
presents.
Or are you Jewish? Fucking happy
holidays. Did you receive money or a money shot
in the head this year? If violence weren’t
so easy, then she wouldn’t be pregnant would
she? I’d really like to stay out of
this poem but now it’s too late, let’s
send more troops (poets)!
Blah-betty blah-betty blah ha ha -
The bonanza returns to it’s origin of
man: finger-queen, goddess of the
morning’s coffee and blue pajamas or
maybe my parents have just entered this
holiday poem through the living
room door
exploding mortar
I lay dripping cold blood
between her legs.
(what a copout)

12/24/06
Christmas Eve
10:43am