Collecting my own voices: a performance
I got into poetry writing and performing Slam. And then at a certain point I decided I wanted to write page poems, and then I was convinced I needed to write grounded poems that I the writer am apparent in. Always in process. I want to be able to bring all of my different voices together and attempted to do this for my most recent reading at Underbelly for an AWP offsite event organized by Eric Acosta. I paused a few times in my reading to talk a little bit about context, about what my work is about but other than that I allowed the different pieces to flow together. It was a late-night-drunk crowd so I wrote specifically with the goal of grabbing and holding attention. There is one poem that is an old poem that I threw in the middle to try and anchor the rest of the words which were all collected and arranged the day before and day of the reading.
I am sharing the poem below as I arranged it on my phone. I will continue working on this piece and will try to remember to bring it back into the blog when it has gotten to a different state.
We are on Duwamish land
And this is water’s land
Listen the tide asking
for its shores back
south where princess Angeline lived
boys threw stones
Not knowing respect
I am learning
Here on top
The neck of land
surrounded by water that was
strangled to allow this city
-
This is to those that don’t need convincing
That This city is holier than consumption
This is To those that spend their nights searching for
Side entrance into their own specific hugeness
To Those that have raced first ave
Catching greens to yesler grid shifts
Mens arguments set in Grey
To those that remember the bald drummer that played with the kilted bagpiper under the monorail stop
To those that remember the 55 and the 107 How it used to go
And this is especially to those that bought mixtapes at westlake from Rajni from Kyle from Asun
To those that were heckled at sea skate and found a self that could not be bulldozed
Wrecking balled could not
Be disappeared
To those visiting
to those that are new here welcome
Enjoy
Do not throw stones or do but please pause to hear your echo
There are ghosts behind the names settled on.
Duwamish River turns to Waterway at salmon cove
The city waits,
always full
each of us are necessary specks in its enormity
Becoming, disappearing.
There is no solitude in these
pathless woods.
My body takes me the way it knows
past bent lilac stem, through cut in barbed wire
Clay and silt cling to my feet.
This city takes a river to be.
-
We are here now it rains
the red tailed hawk does not return to the Oak on the third day
searching for rust to see time tangibly marked
Generations having passed
open mouth to the moon
At night write across fence poles
all in process
becoming some kind of wild
Tangled with ivy and thorn
Dug up and paved
Fence stalked edges, spotlit deep shadow
Flowing down the (broken) hill
Nature makes it s own bounds
-
This city
Bone gray
Dancing still
As leafs on willows grow down
long river banks
boys fashion sticks to swords
fir bough territory
Full of property markers
No
No one asks for a poem Here
no path waits for my feet
I find a log to scream from
time my noise with trains passing
wind ambivalent to my sound
Where all this comes from
Calling long why
we cling
how it s been
Ignoring how its been done
Before before
sleep buffering 9 - 5
I forget buzzing light coziness
This city chants me on
Tells me Keep taking
Keep everything my own
Fence lines in the dark open ended)
River to look against
These words take years
let go To distant music
built echo chamber
I Strut my way here
face some light
in commotion
my place disturbed
I collect mud
I walk past
Sprawling rhizome of the curb
I walk
alone dressed in night
Go
find your questions
To ask this hectic silence
