Tag: spoken word

Poem-A-Day April 23: Things That Don’t Suck

Hello Friends,
A recording of a 2014 draft of this poem is available from spoken word artist and poet Andrea Gibson on Facebook here. The text below is from a more recent poster version available from the merch table at shows.
Enjoy.
<3 Ellen.

Things That Don’t Suck

Salamanders. Rotary phones. Super woman capes. Hopscotch chalk. Unicycles. Hiccups while kissing. Pole Vaults. Gumball machines. Leprechauns. Music Boxes. Welcome Mats. Hand-me-down lockets. Train rides. Carnivals. Record players. Sewing kits. Barbershop chairs. Bubbles. Chestnuts. Barnacle hugs. Door frames. Melted crayons. Soldiers in the airport on their way home. Icicles. Time capsules. Hourglasses. Recess bells. Thrift store coffee mugs. Lost and found boxes. Go-Carts. Tambourines. Fire pits. Paper boats. Snap peas. Snowflakes. Bay windows. Porch swings. Dance routines. Macaroni necklaces. Flying ladybugs. High fives. Ferris wheels. Extra buttons. Crooked teeth. Dust drawings. Bearded women. Fabric stores. Turtle faces. Sleepovers. Mixed Tapes. Grandmothers. Freckles. Lily pads. Farmers’ tans. Windpipes. Accordions. Anyone willing to play the shakers in a band. The day I was so in love I mistook a nuclear power plant for a lighthouse. French kisses. The smell of a dog’s paw. Thumb wars. Letters in the mailbox. The things we never ordered but still arrived. Riding in the back of a pick-up truck beneath a holy New England sky. Banjo strings. Best friends. Tutus on boys. Tutus on girls. Hummingbirds. Whittle sticks. Hail collections. Rocking chairs. Thimbles. Love notes. Cigar boxes. Screen doors. Clawfoot tubs. Hopechests. Skateboard parks. Mismatched socks. Airplane sky-writing proposals. Baby giraffes. Beaver teeth. Porch lights. Tiny houses. Tire swings. Dandelion snow. Drive-in movie dates. Bathrooms without scales. Shitty poems. Chugging calming tea. Sex with the lights on. Sex with the lights off. Basketball hoops in dirt driveways in Iowa. Snort laughs. Sexy librarians. Vegan chocolate chip cookies. Boomboxes in the car when the stereo breaks. Slip N’ Slides. Butterflies that remember being caterpillars. Staying alive.

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Poem-A-Day April 24: That yellow line

Hello Friends —

You can listen to today’s poem-a-day instead of reading it: Andrea Gibson’s “Your Life” is available here.

Watch Andrea Gibson's Your Life on YouTube
Aside from being spoken word, “Your Life” harkens to another literary tradition: the letter to one’s younger self. This piece, particularly the ending lines, are also arguably a nod to Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day.”

Enjoy.
Ellen

Say Yes


Hello Friends,

It's time for another spoken word piece — Please check out Andrea Gibson's "Say Yes" here. This piece also appears in Gibson's 2008 collection Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Say Yes

excerpt

This is for the possibility that guides us
and for the possibilities still waiting to sing
and spread their wings inside us,
'cause tonight Saturn is on his knees
proposing with all of his ten thousand rings
that whatever song we've been singing we sing even more.
Pull all your strings.
Play every chord.

If you're writing letters to prisoners
start tearing down bars.
If you're handing out flashlights in the dark
start handing out stars.

This is only a brief excerpt. Watch the rest of Andrea Gibson's piece here.

Poem-a-Day April 28: Lenore (I Miss You)

Hello Friends —

Today’s poem is a hip-hop interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Lenore” by the nerd rapper (and inspiring young poetry educator) MC Lars.

Click play below to listen. If desired, you can find Lars’ lyrics here, and Poe’s original poem here.

If you have time, also check out the rest of Lars’ Poe album, and this really excellent lecture Lars gave at USC. Then see how you do on this quiz from the Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem-a-Day, April 4: Significadence ain’t random

Las Brujitas

Bubble, bubble toil and double
Double dutch too much
Turning into trouble trouble

Tapping time ’til we just can’t
Take it. Chanting rhymes
when the moments make it.

Blessed/cursed being double
handed. Leaning to the left
strands deftly commanded

Understudies be understanding
as brujitas switch, be turnin’
Dispel, casting, breaking curses

Through portal dimensions
simple phrases making
mischief not to be phased as

bracelets clink in synch
wink: a be mine phrase
invoking through games:

“Tell me the name of your sweetheart”
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G”—”Miss Lucy had a baby
a baby, a baby, Miss Lucy had a baby—

and this is what she said! She said—”
“…went downtown to get a stick a butta…
saw James Brown sittin’ in the gutta…”

Even when Ali needed mo’ machismo,
He put the dopes on a rope, then a butterfly float
flippant wrists let loose the noose’s grip

like we girls did, reworking the kinetics
left turn, right turn, overhand aesthetics
feet thinking double time, meter reason

school’s in season, flipping, flouncing
guild lilies dust cloud breezes.
Ten little drummers summon up

those stories. Speak in tongues
old souls got the blues—and browns
round white fronts, tassles flat down.

Keeping up the chatter from the patter in the ‘pation
vibes ‘verberate teeny-bop intimidation.
Tensile strength makin’ a stand

Not still, we grand!
Significadence ain’t random,
we clasp our hands in tandem.

Hi Friends,

A self-taught poet out of the Nuyorican Poets Café scene, Tracie Morris competed in national slams and toured nationally in the early 1990s. She is now a graduate-level poetry professor and one of the foremost scholars researching and writing on spoken word and performance poetry.

Tracie Morris and the double dutch rhythms of her piece “Las Brujitas” are featured in the anthology Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (2007), edited by Alix Olson with a foreword by Eve Ensler.

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Enjoy.
Ellen