this past weekend i attended an event at UW madison called Passing the Mic.  it's a spoken word festival for midwest spoken word programs, and it culminated with our kids performing alongside the UW madison first wave undergrad poets and dennis kim, kevin coval, josh healey, rafael casal, and patricia smith.  there were workshops and lots of free dorm food and a good time seemed to be had by all.  i think it's a really great thing for the kids to spend an extended period of time with brilliant mentors like dennis and patricia.  plus madison is one of my favorite runaway-from-life places.

patricia ran a workshop where the prompt was to write a persona response to the man who yelled "kill him!" at the sarah palin rally in clearwater, florida recently when she invoked barack obama.  i wrote my poem with a real dope first wave kid named mike, and though i don't have his part (told from the perspective of obama's memorial sculptor), i wrote a piece from the perspective of an alaskan moose (which was also mike's idea).  so that part of the duet is below.  i slammed with it at the green mill last night and everything.

Field Dressed for Success: The Moose Speaks

I didn't hear about it from TV -
I've never seen a TV and news
around here comes methodic and
slow satellite super delay on the
wings of terns and geese those
gossipy shit factories.

But since the daughter of my
familiar mud hopped onto the
comet tail campaign trail
I've been just a glob on a log
waiting for the next message
to descend in tern in tern a
wreck of hopeful disgust.
You. Betcha.

At first it seemed like miscommunication
like maybe the gentleman before
sister Sarah had said "thrill him" or
perhaps "krill him" - something not
unheard of around here - what better
way to calm an uppity baleen-feeding
gray or humpback or blue than with
some tasty tasty krill?  And I could
see why some might think "Obama"
was some kind of exotic restless
peace-minded submarine with innards.

Upon further discourse with the turtles -
who are so objective they're practically
objects - it became clear as water the
fellow must have said "kill him" kill
him kill him kill him kill him kill him...

This caused quite an uproar -
the fuming foxes leaping and barking
the spitting elk
the screaming mosquitoes
bears swaying their great neck cranes
from side to side even
the turtles silently shuddered.

I don't see the big deal.
This is his purpose - to
be wanted and hunted
to be killed is the key
to immortality and beauty
I've found my own purpose
is to die I've never been
so popular in my life since
this election began and
it's not a live moose that
made me famous our
death is a disease of
clean our blood is the
lipstick of pitbulls and
everyone knows what
my name means kill
him kill him kill him.

Why should she say anything?
How do you expect to understand we
odd machines if we're not dismantled?