Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Folklife 2011 was Contra Dance Heaven


Hands four in rapid motion round a square
I woke with a classic contra dance hangover this morning. While opening my pupils readjusting them to that yellow thing hanging over a cloud in the sky, I was spinning to the merriment beat of fiddles looping back every eight beats.

On Monday, the last day of Folklife, I spent most of it dancing in the YouTube line smiling and waving between allemandes and do-si-dos at gawkers with I-and-Smartphones. I got a kick out of a couple boys who noted my Black Sabbath tee shirt with a thirty-five millimeter camera. I smiled and they gave me the familiar Ronnie James Dio devils horn salute. The day prior I wore an AC/DC shirt, but I wished I had a Slayer, or a Neurosis, or an Evoken shirt to illustrate the true contrarian dancer spirit while lining up in long opposing lines of gender.

Contra dance pictures are blurry by nature
Don’t get me wrong; I am just as impassioned by the musical tools of backwoods and countryside musicians of the seventeen, eighteen hundreds as I am by an amplified wall of sound generated by the post-rock musicians that create metal today.

On Saturday, I heard the best contra band play yet. Their sound was medieval and when they began hammering the strings of the dulcimer and tribbing the bow across the strings of the fiddle and tooting on a reeded horn, I was transported down into the underbelly of Thulsa Doom’s temple. I was right there in the thick of battle between Doom’s goons and Conan the Barbarian. Allemandes became parries, lines forward and back became reprise and retreat, and swings became elegant dagger dances for dominance.

A painted face only cost five bucks
This is music for me. Each style has an embedded narrative woven in the patterns musicians play. During the final hour of the waltzes, the music reminded me of Warner Brothers’ cartoons. This is often the case with ballroom style dances. I’m either in Looney Tune skit or I’m on the decks of the Love Boat chatting it up with a beautiful lady nervously looking over my shoulder in hopes to avoid the captain.





Warren's Road House was chock full of eager dancers. Putting the dance floor away, that I spent 21 hours on over four days, Monday night was a sad way to conclude Folklife 2011. But I couldn't just walk away at nine o'clock. I needed to touch the hallowed floor one last time.


Monday, May 30, 2011

Here's a real good...yea...ahem...bad one from a decade ago

 
She sings without words
echoing into the minds of seafarers
who've wandered close enough to see
above white caps of surf
The siren song wails
Enchantment overwhelms sailors
who sailed too long alone at sea
They jump like sand fleas
eager to see the top of the dune
instead they are pulled under waves
by invisible feminine fingers
Broken and smashed they die
lying upon rocks of the maiden strumpet's pelvis
ecstatic smiles plastered
upon seafarer faces

Music from her soul
seeps out her pores
rhythms and rhymes
pass through and hammer into bone
The roar and crash and roar
has meter all of it own
Riding the wave
through the rolling whore
They feel her music seeping
passing from pore into pores
mingling in and animating droplets
weeping rain falls
ecstasy smiles upon faces
as their boats smash onto jagged rocks
dotting the siren wench's beach



--- March 4, 2001

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Lookie, lookie, lookie it's the second tookie

 
What yonder insight thru self-perceptions break
‘tis the Self and the present moment my Sacred Space
Conceptions’ per subjective to how the Self is conceived

The present moment voids conceptions' expectations, 
self may perceive a sense of presence void of moment
Developing from birth precludes how sacred 
one conceives their space in the present moment

Selflessness accepts the moment as sacred, 
a space to experience insightful self-conception

What yonder insight thru self-perceptions break
‘tis the self and the present moment my sacred space
Conceptions’ perspective actualize interpretations



This piece was sent to my phone a little over a year ago by an Mr. A Browne. Mr. Browne composed it in his telephone. Not a phone like mine where one can get one key per letter, but on an old nokia. Three characters to a key. 

I make no judgments on to the quality of this piece's writing other than that it is rhythmically and intellectually interesting. It also has an average of 13 syllabic counts per line, which would qualify it as a loose Alexandrine. It reminds me of me when I first started out penning lines on pages. And you can view that piece of work too. I think my first book would have been better had I written it in blank verse. Then again that may have made it boring. Perhaps one day, I'll rewrite some of it in iambic pentameter and see.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

So, you’re call screening now...

 
This is a premium call. This is an expensive call. You don’t want to miss this call. I want to sell you something. I have something to sell you. I have something to tell you. But I don’t know what it is just yet. Let me think. Let me think. Let me think. What do you want most? The product. What do you like? How will liking what you like make your life better? The product. You will like it. It is a thing. It will make your life better. Do you have the money? An offer? How much money do you want to part with to a stranger, like me, on the other end of this call?



Submitted by Roberto de Range in my call for bad writing.
If you or you know someone who'd like to participate in Pen Head Press's bad writing month(s). Please submit your article, poem, or short fiction to penheadpress@gmail.com. Thanks..

Friday, May 27, 2011

Girl Flowers Love Poem Attempt Number 13



Rebirther-Yards

My favorite places to romance girls are graveyards. Not just any yard, but those soporific lawns where stars like Jimmy Hendrix (a forefather of modern metal) and Bruce Lee were laid.

Last Sabbath day or that last blackened one that didn’t rain, a sexy melancholy metal-head —— adorned like a night crawler with a pit-bull collar, studded leather harness, chrome chains, brandishing long scarlet nails standing on black nine inch elevator podiums laced to the thigh in scarlet —— gave me a hand job near a phallic obelisk ménage a trios-ed between the Denny and the Boren family markers.  This was as fitting a place as any for a catholic boy who celebrates the death of his savior by planting his seed between fresh cut flowers laid on tombstones to wither and rust.

Jesus was planted in the tomb for three days before he rose out of this womb to a new kind of life.  This girl she likes the smell of roses.  I spray rosewater all over my body and she devours me.  Eats my flesh down to the bone, drinks my blood, and uses thin ribs to pick gristle out of her teeth. She gets into me like I get into her by way of the throne room where our two beings flow together like muddy puddles of water on a paved side street rippled and spider-webbed throughout by tree roots straining to redefine their space. My fire burnt through her veil the same way holy water burnt my flesh the first time I touched it to my forehead in Israel. I knelt down in Jesus’ tomb and Mary invited me to enter her womb.

We made love on stones saturated with obsidian knowledge. It was at that special time of day when the sun bends down to romance the western edge of our world. She smells fresh, like a girl flower.  I bathe myself in this scent.


—— March 7, 2010



Also check out my new wordpress website. It's a literary journal called Randomly Accessed Poetics! Submissions are open. I will be publishing literary works, explicit language pieces, and eventually a journal a relative wrote in the late 1800's detailing their journey to Oregon on the Oregon Trail. And when I gather enough submitted works from other people, I will be cobbling together an e-anthology called Randomly Accessed Poetics.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Harvard Exit SIFF Shift "YOU ARE HERE"

 
As I worked my Wednesday evening shift, I accidentally turned the ticket printer off with my foot. Nothing worked as it was supposed to. I wonder if the earlier bomb scare excitement had anything to do with it?

I stayed later and pulled a double as an usher so that I could see the next film called, "You Are Here." This was an interesting brain teaser story that I certainly hope escapes the gravity well of artsy brainiac films and into the mainstream market. Most likely it won't, because of the way the average persons' attention span has been corrupted by mainstream media, movies, video games, and TV. If this were the 1960's instead of the current decade, this film would have had the necessary escape velocity to make it into science fiction sub culture of the 60's, 70's, or 80's in the same manner that 2001 a Space Odyssey, Twilight Zone, Clockwork Orange, THX 1183, or Nightfall did.

Thus far, I have collected 13 vouchers to see SIFF films. After my SIFF shift today at Pacific Place, I should be up to 15. This means that I am bartering my time for approximately $7.22/hr (in monies I can only spend at the company store). A net $7.22 is not bad; hopefully, the films that will be chosen to be replayed throughout the year will be worth seeing down at the SIFF theater on Seattle Centers campus.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Harvard Exit scare that fizzled into thin air

 
Yesterday evening (for now it is the day after), I showed up to my 7:30 SIFF will call shift at the Harvard Exit to the entire theater emptied of its people. It was raining. Everybody was confused standing outside on the street chattering about the police being called. It took me fifteen minutes to understand what was going on other than the excitement and the fear.

People talked about 9-11. I told a story about my 1995 trip to Israel and being in a town that was suicide bombed the following day. And how the troops, who were relaxed, had their finger on the trigger. Many of the members of Linfield's on site Old Testament class were disturbed. The prime witness to the (Harvard Exit) event said, "reality is too real."

A man wearing green camouflage stormed into the theater with a backpack. The movie, "If a Tree Falls: A Story About ELF," the SIFF staff was seating for was about the Earth Liberation Front or eco terrorism. The man slipped in without paying. He seemed angry. He didn't stay long. One volunteer said, "that as he fled the theater, his backpack was flapping empty." However, no one seemed to notice the state of his backpack upon entry into the theater.

The squad of police arrived around eight o'clock and swept the theater. The lead officer didn't think it was necessary to bring in a bomb sniffing dog. About 8:10ish, a woman was located who know the man.

Apparently, a woman and a male friend had gotten into a fight. The woman wanted to see the film. The in man camo fatigues, wanted to do something else with her. In a jealous rage, he stormed into the film to find the woman in order to give him a piece of his heart. It is not clear as to wither he found her in that particular screen room. The Harvard Exit can show two films at a time. Wednesday they used one screen for SIFF and the other for their own bottom line.

The officers found nothing of danger in the said theater's screening room.

A Cover Letter

 
I am interested in applying for the AmeriCorps GED Instructor at your YMCA facility. Teaching is a hobby or avocation that I’d like to make a more prominent fixture in the present tense of my work-life path here in Seattle.

Currently, I co-instruct a non-credit creative writing workshop at Seattle Central Community College. I have three students. Two of which are ESL students. One is from France and the other is from South Africa. My French student is struggling with the how-to accomplish creative writing (and it pains me that she struggles so). I designed this course with an individual who is currently an AmeriCorps tutor in a North Seattle school district. I also have on a few occasions, in the past nine months, tutored an elderly individual on basic accounting theory and in the use of accounting software.

In the past, however, I accomplished much work in the arena of education and tutoring. I substituted all grade levels in the public school system as an instructional assistant for both special and alternative need students (I myself was a special needs student and have hearing disability called Centralized Audio Processing Disorder). In addition, I tutored mathematics and writing at a middle school afterhour’s program. Also, the year following my college graduation with a BA in Mathematics and a heavy minor in Religious Studies, I facilitated a confirmation course at my hometown Lutheran Church. Lastly, in college I worked for three semesters as a TA for the Physics Department where I tutored conceptual physics and assisted for general physics laboratory class.

I don’t know if I am aptly qualified for GED Instructor position and maybe I shouldn’t be so open and honest with my thoughts, but all I can express to you is of an enduring passion for the acquisition knowledge and excellence which is most likely the result of how I was wounded before I was conceived in the womb and the difficulties I have had throughout this life teaching myself how to learn and being a guide or cheer leader for others to do the same.


Addendum: I didn't send this cover letter. Instead I opted for a much briefer one. Hopefully, it will bear fruit.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Bill's Fiery Vegan Chocolate Balls

 
I made the best candy yet last Thursday. It was a triple chocolate cayenne truffle. The interior was an amalgamation of hemp milk, vegetable oil, organic molasses, dried cherries, dark rum, 62% unsweetened cacao chocolate, and 100% cacao chocolate. The exterior of the candy was coated in a fiery mixture of medium weight cocoa powder, dark brown sugar, and cayenne pepper.  If I were to write a song about the product, it would go something like this:


Hay doll have you seen my balls
they're big, fiery, and black
If you ever need to get out of your hole
just roll one of my balls around your tongue
Oooo Yeah! Suck my fiery, my fiery chocolate balls
pop them into your mouth by the pair
savor the fiery flavor as you swallow choco-juice down
Suck on my fiery, my fiery chocolate balls
they're smack packed full of cayenne, hemp, and rum
They're good for vegans too
no animals to harm in cruel and unusual feedings
Oooo yeah take my balls into your mouth
and feel my heat light a fire in your oooo yeah
eat Bill's fiery vegan chocolate balls

 
 
 

Also check out my new wordpress website. It's a literary journal called Randomly Accessed Poetics! Submissions are open for polished poetry and prose works.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Lookie, lookie, lookie It's a Big Fat Cookie

 
I got my first bad poem taker by a Lucy van Pelt. I'm assuming the anonymous poster is not the Lucy Van Pelt from the Peanuts comic strip, but the Lucy Van Pelt who is the owner of penhead moto foto fanny fare. The artist resume says press button one, pull my finger, and tell me how to construct a scrabble poetic poem. Blogspot talk kind of rhymes with Mr. Spock's cot when he lectured about the woman pictured in a photo from the fifth element, which I happen to have posted (or professed my love for Leeloo) several months below. I think it was November. But here is the story some nice fb friend posted anonymously as an answer to my call for bad poetic submissions.

Thanks Mr. Sir for ...
"a man was born. 
he lived 
& died. 
the end."

Sunday, May 15, 2011

More Bad Poems (I Have No Shame)

 
I don't know if I've posted this bad poem yet, but I found it at my folks place the last time I went down for a visit. I also found all the papers I wrote when I studied religion at college and at grad school. I wished, however, that I could have found the mathematical expression I wrote when I was 19. I endeavored to create a formula where one could find the area of a circle with using the constant pie. In the process of thinking it through I taught myself basic calculus, because I needed to use limit theory to accomplish it. The expression didn't do what I intended. Ultimately, the expression focused like a lazer beam on the constant pie. I learned, what the ancients figured out, that one can not approximate the area of a circle without pie.

Well, any way here is another gem of a bad poem that I composed in the process of learning how to write. The poem is dated September 2, 2001. And I must add that I am still driven to conquer the art of poetry. Hopefully, one day, I will achieve this goal.



Six

Marked
Forever
by the number six
Friday
the day
I was made

I tried to engrave the number seven
Saturday, Sabbath, upon my forehead
But by morning it
Faded back
into the number six, 
Friday.

Somehow seven
is denied me
No mater how much
I work
I will never
achieve the distinction of seven
Saturday, 
Sabbath.

I will bear the mark
Six
Six
Six
Forever

 

This is almost like that song from Slipknot called the Heretic.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Monday, May 9, 2011

Verbal Expression Laboratory: Summer Poster (Draft 1)

 
Today I slapped together a poster for Summer where I am hoping to teach it again in the month of July. It will be approximately twelve hours long spread over four nights beginning on Thursday July seventh. The basic areas of your writers voice that we will be covering is writing through other mediums of expression, writing through limited word pools, writing through images & sound (this exercise is very difficult for me anyway), and writing through metered poetic forms. Write me a comment or send me an email if you have any questions.

Any how this post was supposed to be about the first draft of the poster. The final draft will not be as busy as this one is.

the scan of the cutup


the scan embedded in the word document

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Verbal Expression Laboratory: Experiments in Cutting

 
Ahmed's cut-out from the first day of class

A cut out using media I loathed looking at

A cut out using a media item I enjoyed reading

An example of a busy or bad cut up writing


The Spring VEL class has already started. However, if you'd like to get in on the action you can sign up for the Summer VEL workshop. Register at Seattle Central Community College. The price is a steal at $70.00. The college gets most all of your dollar.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Glance Backward into My Head (I liked this one from the Spring of 1997)



Poetry is the language of my life

these thoughts dance through my days like dreams
perhaps dreams are my life
i just don't know sometimes

incense and Indian classical
waft on a breeze
transforming my house into a hut
i sit along the banks of the river Ganges
contemplating the mystery of the Brahma

dreamily, i drift to the desert Sinai
to the dirty stone shack with a grass roof
fire burns in a pit on the floor
sitting on pillows
eating a sinewy old goat

attentiveness lapses
listlessly i wander on
caught between a dream and a thought
the yogi ponders
the mystic wanders
trapped between two worlds East and West
a storm progresses
confusing the soul
catholicity emerges
giving rest to pains of heretical mind

vividly the pen
wiggles
into
my hand

writing...





This piece was written (as one disasterpiece among many for a final project) for REL 520 Spiritual Formation Spring Semester 1997 at GFU

 
 

Also check out my new wordpress website. It's a literary journal called Randomly Accessed Poetics! Submissions are open. I will be publishing literary works, explicit language pieces, and eventually a journal a relative wrote in the late 1800's detailing their journey to Oregon on the Oregon Trail. And when I gather enough submitted works from other people, I will be cobbling together an e-anthology called Randomly Accessed Poetics.