Category: Audio Recordings

9-11 Dreams

Audio Recordings / tagged , , , , / / by

In the dream
I look up from my desk
into the smile on the madman’s face
in that long eternal moment
before he wrecks the plane

In the dream
I am old and frail on a mis stepped step and
I am the young and strong who catch my eye
as pushed and pushing they pass me by
and will live with it till they wake or die

In the dream
I am the man in uniform
climbing endless stairs against a human sea
only to find them endlessly
folding in on me

In the dream
I am the woman in the chair
that two men carried down the stair
gripping the wheels as I hear them say
the lady is still standing in the bay

ELBOW ROOM RAP

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged , , / / by

ELBOW ROOM RAP

Poems know where they come from

My poems grew up in the wide open spaces
soft rolling hills and prairie lakes

You can lay a word down here in places
that no one would step on in ten years

My poems mostly come on gentle
and soft and safe like that

But
when my poems
come to the big cities
and the buildings start leanin in on them
(and now fallin in)
and the air gets thick with cars and people
my poems, I say my poems, start to panic

They start to talk
in short / hard / words
they flail around in all directions
they want to be rap poems
they want to be jackhammers
they want to be machine guns
they want to be big horns

They want to aim their decibels
at all those Jericho walls
and they want them down
they want them down
right now

THEY SAY
Gimme some space
get outta my face

THEY SAY
gimme some space
get outta my face

THEY SAY
I need my place
gotta have someplace
I need my space
gotta have some space

THEY SAY
You can’t see me
gotta turn it up

THEY SAY
you can’t hear me
gotta turn it up

MY POEMS SAY

HELP!

THE SHEEP OF HOLLAND

Audio Recordings, Nature, Travel / tagged , , / / by

THE SHEEP OF HOLLAND

Sheep soft on the soft wet grass
between our house and the old windmill

Sheep running in the distance
a long row of cotton candy
pulled by invisible string

March lambs gambolling
on the sides and tops of dikes

The black cloud of hoof and mouth
gathering over England
strikes as we leave

Watching the news in Atlanta
my farmer fear pulls me back

Memory revises

I stand in the bare fields
look at the bare dikes

Taste the burning wool

IN HAARLAM

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged / / by

IN HAARLAM

In Haarlam
ten streets converge
on the huge Grote Markt

A church with a 130 foot high tower
one of the finest organs in the world
pipes as long as thirty three feet

Played by Handel and by Mozart too
resting place of Hals and de Key

But its always been a market square
old guild houses and fine shops
carved stone in a dozen colours
centuries and centuries old

In the corner, red and white
and as plastic as tomorrow
the twin dikes of McDonalds

HEROES OF HOLLAND

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged , / / by

HEROES OF HOLLAND

“Heroic, Resolute, Compassionate”
After the second world war
added by Queen Wilhelmina to
Amsterdam’s coat of arms

History and one look at their faces
would clearly show
it could have been there
for the whole country and much sooner

Opening the dikes to drown the armies
holding Haarlem against the Spanish
surviving slaughter of the innocents
“February Strike” against the Nazis

The armies may have been defeated
the people never

POETRY AT BERGEN

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Travel / tagged , / / by

POETRY AT BERGEN

If Austin is the Athens of America
Bergen is the Austin of Holland

Sunday afternoon
reading in seven languages

Feeling the difference

Harsh precision of the Dutch
If you could understand the language
you would understand the poem

Russian

The power of
a shot of cold vodka
and survival on the steppes

Afrikaans

Dutch rubbed smooth
by the soft hills of Africa

Latin

Still the mother of language
singing through her children

Spanish

Music of Lorca
moving your body as you listen

French

Dark musings of Rimbaud
a shrug in every verb

English

The fish does not see water
but there was food everywhere