An Exquisite Corpse

 

This is a night for the other side of love

Remembering mornings that come after nights

Reminisce on all that used to be all that was

Feeling melancholy at your memory.

Watching the sunset in your eyes

Fleckering like rays from a television. Nobodies watch

all alone.  Curse the sunlight

welcome the night for it's a chance

to sex your memory free & return to me.

I feel a burning ease/tonight as

Memories flee of you without me

How sweet can enemies be?

I accept this road I'm on.

Peace is all about no sadness of sin.

No regret in my surrender.

Love for all the wisdom of experience of and for

The peace of emptiness.

Yes, you have to die, you have to die

You have to learn to die if you want to  truly

Be alive!

So fly on to love commute, be my myspace

Sweetheart.  Be the one to slice my life

Into decadent abandon, mend me free.

 

Exquisite Corpse

What does this President's Day mean to me?

How do I even approach the absurd

between the hours of 4-6pm. You should undress

your inhibitions with gin and cranberry juice

rewind and reflect o n what was to apply

to what will be.

But was I born to be 3/5... how do

you define me... Mr. President throw

away your weapons of mess destruction...

Free your mind to the point that you're free from

to free political prisoners who's crimes are vindiction fiction!

Dreams of a new way, imprisoned held back, viewed by

desensitived Americans broadcast for shock value.

Decolonized short man, I'm making a spicey

brew-haha for ya sista.  This Bush is about to Pop!

Pop open what was hidden, its real that we're given originality

in now what needs to be hiring Freedom was what it meant to me.

 

Buddha in Guantanamo

by Toni Asante Lightfoot

 

Your ignorance is the cause of my pain.

You interrogate me

because I present with

          Muslim name

          transformed spirit.

Yours is incapable of understanding

          the secrets I divulge.

 

I want to thank you for enlightening me to the limited minds

of those driven insane by a lack

of compassion, wisdom, and joy shared.

It is why you cannot demonstrate the language

of the humane.

 

You cannot fight for freedom as a jailer     

grunt of those who despise your despicable stupidity,

you classless bore.

 

Would you like for me to strap you to a board

and submerge you for not telling me

25 ways to love a man so weak as to turn

his ignorance into the screams of another

 

Would you set my body to a free only known by my soul

if I could show you the your God finds you wicked

for blindly following selfish barons 

of your miserable inhumane country,

state, neighborhood, home.

 

This compassion I show rolls down your sweaty face

          pools on the concrete floor.

I am growing from this.

You are diminishing

By the time you make it back to your country,

          state, neighborhood, home

          you will be less than I was in my fourth life.

 

I dream I am a morsel of pollen on the leg of a bumbling honey bee.

You wake up sweating with the fear that you are me.

 

   

In the Velvet Lounge

For Carter Jefferson

 

And over there sits Jazz

smelling of grease and smokes

watchin a dreaded saxophonist

play soundtracks to the horror

movie of our existence in babylon.

All of us too scared to exscape

back to the land that sold us

sniff struggle's blood

on the upper of lip of his range.

 

Sharing stage left

a brother trumpets an instrument

as detached from him as Africa

muting the pains of weary warriors.

His notes clearer than his eyes

force us to see through our ears.

 

Between the brass

stands a man with a bow

signaling his mothership

to beam him up.

She doesn't so his bass cries

for a solace only found in a full glass

of empty hearts.

 

Jazz gets his nod here everynight

in this place more real to us

than auction blocks

where a woman finds a place to testify

and man swears into the bottom

of his last drink.

 

 

This is for the first Velvet Loung in Chicago.  It closed and then reopened close by.  Come on in the characters may have changed but the music is always there.

..> ..>

Summer dons its radiant heat like all we have to do is sweat. Like teaching poetry to teenagers should be thought by all a travesty. Today we offered recording opportunity to show them the work it takes to perfect. Instead, they dreamed themselves dreamgirls and digital underground. How do I teach them the roteness of excellence as a habit when their first tries are terrific to them.

All posted Monday Muse Mash-up poems are created at Muse Cafe 817 N. Milwaukee 8-11pm Monday nights at our All Arts Open Mic.  Come on out.

This one was co-written by Elizabeth, Crazy Lombardo, Deena, Dave M., Dave, Emily, Krista, Joel, and me.

Monday is my day to quicken my world.  It is not the type of day for

Concentration and attempting perfection but one for routines

The cold slows my rotation but the memories burn in my mind.

Remembering like a trip back in the past with all details remembered

the way imagination molds them

to all the same flubber wacha do, wacha don't.  What I see, hear,

them bones creaking as they jiggle in their daily doo-wop dance.

 

Monday night comes with snow & friends falling down round me like sugar.

Did you say yes?  I thought I hear yes, no?

sweltering from the cold heat of a 17degree Chicago whipping up to choke you.

and as you breathe in the Freon made up of artic air and gas fumes,

remember your days ahead.

Into a future where; retrospection and spontaneity nibble on each others earlobes; where retrospection looks and says "its 718 but veritically it's a sailboat on calm ways; where we all long to be within a muse.

The extended outlook for the rest of the week calls for partly cloudy with a chance of pain.

These Muse Mash-up Poems are created line by line by the audience who comes to check out the All Arst Open Mic on Mondays

In June I will be what I've always been

What I've never been.  Then the world will be

What I've never been to myself.

I will rise to the moon, backwards through the night

Coal burn slow poor mother cry silent earth

when inhabitants disregard what is warning sign.

Warning to change warning to to want more.

And on down the winding road where minutes seem like days.

Exhaustion sets in.

I see the destination

only to set off on the next journey.

Bob Marley Mash-up at the Muse

One love for Buffalo Soldiers listening to

Redemption and praise, redemption and praise up

Ever forward in righteousness and livity

Wake up and live.

One love people get ready.

We are all one black and white.  One in all.

In the heart of the Caribbean, peace and one love

Live in harmony.

Bob, please give my Bob music with a price.

A price that's never too high

A price that ignites revolution.

We live life love, live tall, massive like mountain

refugees of God's fullest glory.

 

Monday Muse Mash-up: first exquisite corpse of the year

What is new for this new year of

The same old sound lonely makes moaning me to

Several questions.  All I hear anymore

Walk slowly, really slowly

Strength in each stride take pride with each step

Let the world come to me and eat lots of avocadoes

Proceed with your dreams, and build the results for tomorrow.

Tomorrow comes faster than the first steps of an innocent babe.

I suffocate but do not fade.

Like a body reacts to aerial hyperthermia

Not knowing what hit it; not knowing what to expect

Ready to be formed, remolded, like so many times before

I take flight and hit the ground -   hard

Never look back, you  can never look back

Yet somehow remember your past.

I will live with gilded heart until it all

   comes to a staid halt.

And I will not die with my music still inside me

 

First of all, CONGRATULATIONS RANDALL HORTON!!!!! Randall graced the Muse with the reading of poems from his book "The Definition of Place". A really great crowd showed up. Malika's Kitchen also came to listen and workshop from 6:00-8:00 pm. The Open Mic was out of this galaxy! Krista, Avery,Elizabeth, Yusef, Shanell, Bryant, Deena, Randall read 2 poems from an anthology of writings about AIDS, Faith, Liz, and Dave Marselek (Jungle bop drum king, co-owner, and Coldplay singing sensation) graced us with poems and song. We found out their was already a band named the Aristocats so we went through some changes and we are now choosing between Aristodogs or Arrested Dogs.

Heres the Exquisite Corpse

Tonight I'm all stars but you
are all dirt and worm, root and word.
Working my way into new routes of filthy freedom
across the wild wilderness of an outlaw path.
Even through forceful intimidation and pseudo fear
I last the blast.of the crystal crowned trumpets. It is me.

Class menagerie psyche, time shattered free
take this body and kiss it until dust flows
from this feeble river.

Rock and roll this body until all I am is the beat and the motion and the
music and this free-flowing fluid love
leaving nothing to remember from
yesterday's misery that seemed never ending.
Falling to the ground , meeting my maker
reunited with my mother, I've never felt safer.
I'm not a poetic, just a wife, mother, and friend
I had a good time. I think I'll come again.
These moments of blooming sweeten my days.

To become me. To see what can be.
Hoping to experience unknown. To grow
into aspirations that are yet unspoken
just a token to inspire inspiration in soils
fertile and afar.

Token, roman coin reminted, rededicated
to a new god, demi inspired breath
within- expanding beyond all bounds.
Reading within to find an external
answer but what I will do when i find
the answer, this is still unknown.