invent the sacred dance

SATURDAY NIGHT

Music is most sovereign because more than anything
else, rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost
soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with
them and imparting grace.
—Plato, The Republic

The cranes are flying ...
—Chekhov












And here it comes: around the world,
In Chicago, Petersburg, Tokyo, the dancers
Hit the floor running (the communal dancefloor

Here, there, at intervals, sometimes paved,
Sometimes rotted linoleum awash in beer,
Sometimes a field across which the dancers streak

Like violets across grass, sometimes packed dirt
In a township of corrugated metal roofs)
And what was once prescribed ritual, the profuse

Strains of
premeditated art,
is now
improvisation,
The desperately new,
where to the
sine-curved
Yelps and spasms of
police sirens outside


The club, a spasmodic feedback ululates
The death and cremation of history,
Until a boy whose hair is purple spikes,

And a girl wearing a skull
That wants to say I’m cool but I’m in pain,
Get up and dance together, sort of, age thirteen.

Young
allegorists,
they’ll mime
motions
Of shootouts,
of tortured ones
in basements,
Of cold
insinuations
before sex

Between enemies, the jubilance of the criminal.
The girl tosses her head and dances
The shoplifter’s meanness and self-betrayal

For a pair of stockings, a scarf, a perfume,
The boy dances stealing the truck,
Shooting his father.

The point is to become a flying viper,
A diving vulva, the great point
Is experiment, like pollen flinging itself

Into far other habitats, or seed
That travels a migrant bird’s gut
To be shit overseas.

The creatures gamble on the whirl of life
And every adolescent body hot
Enough to sweat it out on the dance floor

Is a laboratory:
maybe this
lipstick,
these boots,
These jeans,
these earrings,
maybe if I flip
My hair and
vibrate
my pelvis

Exactly synched to the band’s wildfire noise
That imitates history’s catastrophe
Nuke for nuke, maybe I’ll survive,

Maybe we’ll all survive. . . .

At the intersection of poverty and plague
The planet's children—brave, uncontrollable, juiced
Out of their gourds—invent the sacred dance.

Alicia Ostriker

“Saturday Night” from
The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998.
Copyright © 1998 by Alicia Ostriker.
All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, upress.pitt.edu.

do you see yourself here?

SLOWLY: a plainsong from an older woman to a younger woman

am I not....olden olden olden
it is unwanted.

wanting,..wanting
am I not....broken
stolen....common

am I not crinkled cranky poison
am I not glinty-eyed and frozen

am I not....aged
shaky....glazing
am I not....hazy
guarded....craven

am I not....only
stingy....little
am I not....simple
brittle....spitting

was I not....over
over....ridden?

it is a long story
will you be proud to be my version?

it is unwritten.

writing,..writing
am I not....ancient
raging....patient

am I not....able
charming....stable
was I not....building
forming....braving

was I not....ruling
guiding....naming
was I not....brazen
crazy....chosen

even the stones would do my bidding?

it is a long story
am I not proud to be your version?

it is unspoken.

speaking, speaking
am I not....elder
berry
brandy

are you not wine before you find me
in your own beaker?

Judy Grahn

“Slowly: a plainsong from an older woman to a younger woman” from love belongs to those who do the feeling: New & Selected Poems (1966-2006). Copyright © 2008 by Judy Grahn.

when i was a young feminist judy grahn was at every poetry reading reading her common woman poems (see some here). i once painted the text of one onto my kitchen wall.

SAY IT LOUD!

 no I MASTURBATE & I'M PROUD!

(for those of you who do not live in this extremely odd country,you might want to know that the republican nominee for the us senate
for the state of delaware, is, quite vocally,
running on an anti-masturbation platform!
it is time for all self-pleasurers to come to the aid of their party!)

SHE BOPWe-hell-I see them every night in tight blue jeans--
In the pages of a blue boy magazine
Hey I've been thinking of a new sensation
I'm picking up--good vibration--
Oop--she bop--


Do I wanna go out with a lion's roar Huh, yea, I wanna go south n get me some more Hey, they say that a stitch in time saves nine They say I better stop--or I'll go blind

Oop--she bop--she bop

She bop--he bop--a--we bop
I bop--you bop--a--they bop
Be bop--be bop--a--lu--she bop,
I hope He will understand
She bop--he bop--a--we bop
I bop--you bop--a--they bop
Be bop--be bop--a--lu--she bop,
Oo--oo--she--do--she bop--she bop

(whistle along here)...


Hey, hey--they say I better get a chaperone
Because I can't stop messin' with the danger zone
No, I won't worry, and I won't fret--
Ain't no law against it yet--

Oop--she bop--she bop--

She bop--he bop--we bop...

Cyndi Lauper

connect the dots

how do you choose what to wear? are garments always costumes, assuring that you will be taken by others as the role you wish to fill? there are those who suggest that every single item of clothing is a choice communicated, down to the last nuance, and a statement made, down to the last whisper.

me, i am driven by color. and cotton. and though i believe i have no consciousness of what is fashionable whatsoever, there remains something of great importance about it all.

i can remember the white empire-waisted sheath that i wore for high- school graduation. it had a black cummerbund with white polka dots. i was, and still am, quite delighted that i could find an enameled bracelet that was white with black polka dots to match.

several times here we've discussed the volumes of identity revealed in various cultures by hairdo, or costume, detail, or grand gesture. if it was true then, it must be true now. something as 'simple' as a woman's fingernails might immediately brand her as 'one of us' or not.

do you want it to be true for you? do you communicate through appearances consciously? might you be kidding yourself, telling a different story entirely than the one you believe you're telling? how is your identity spelled out by your clothes?

i have come to believe that identity, appearance, opinion are, for most of us, invisibly malleable -- we think what we think, wear what we wear, even know ourselves to be who we think we are... to fit into the group of our life. it could be dangerous not to.

to be born 'outside the box' changes the perception of this, but does not wholly negate its pull. we like to think we create ourselves out of free will, but if that were true best friends wouldn't dress alike, nobody would call to ask what to wear to the party.

that old song, 'you've got to be taught how to hate,' well, you've got to be taught everything else too. how can something so unimportant be the most important thing of all?

Our Mothers Depart

OUR MOTHERS DEPART











Our mothers depart from us,
gently depart
On tiptoe,
but we sleep soundly,
stuffed with food,
and fail to notice this dread hour.
Our mothers do not leave us suddenly,
no —
it only seems so 'sudden.'

Slowly they depart, and strangely,
with short steps down the stairs of years.
One year, remembering nervously,
we make a fuss to mark their birthday,
but this belated zeal
will save neither their souls
nor ours.

They withdraw ever further,
withdraw even further.
Roused from sleep,
we stretch toward them,
but our hands suddenly beat the air —
a wall of glass has grown up there!
We were too late.
The dread hour had struck,
Suppressing tears, we watch our mothers,
in columns quiet and austere,
departing from us.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko


(my mother died almost two years ago.
i have not cried. we weren't friends.
but how i loved her, as a child.
the more she pulled away from me
the more i craved her.)

why?

WHY DO YOU PAINT?

(a google-found poem)

Why do you paint on stained glass?

Why do You Paint Your Car?

Why do you paint the bottom of a boat?

Why do you paint fantasy?

Why do you paint the bottom part of trees white?

Why do you paint your dead with red ochre?

Why do you paint wood?

Why do you paint contemporary/abstract art?

Why do you paint a canoe black?

Why do you paint naked people?

Why do you paint the barrels?

Why do You Paint Your Car?

Why do you paint?

For exactly the same reason I breathe.

That’s not an answer.

There isn’t any answer.

How long hasn’t there been any answer?

As long as I can remember.

And how long have you written?

As long as I can remember.

I mean poetry.

So do I.

E. E. Cummings

trippy

when i was a young hippy, underground comix were all the rage, but of course we would never say 'all the rage.' we would say, 'far out,' or 'blows my mind,' or 'toooo much,' or maybe even 'outta sight!' but for sure we would say.... 'triiiippy.....'

i am here to remind you that trippy did not begin in 1968 (or even '67).

of so many of the japanese prints we've seen we might ask, 'what were they smoking?!'

the answer could actually be, 'the same thing you were.' not only was weed legal and enjoyed by many, but it's not such a stretch to see its effects in the prints (of yoshitoshi and kunisada especially).

'a fuckin' hole in my reality,' indeed.

however, there was much more to learn about from the prints beyond just the unpredictability of demons. there were all the other things the westerners were learning from the japanese at that time.

the outline. the strong graphic elements. the flat areas of color. the new and unexpected (to western eyes) uses of and juxta- position of pattern, color, and design. that so many of the prints were surreal goes without saying.

now i am not saying that dave sheri- dan (dealer mcdope) had seen jap- anese prints and used them for inspiration -- he may have, or may have not.

but i can suggest that some of their prede- cessors very likely did. artists like winsor mccay and frank king were wor- king at just that same moment where we here at japonisme usually hang out.

they were exposed to lautrec's posters, and the nabis and the printmakers of their times. they may also have been exposed to manga.

a comic book is a comic book, a super-hero knows no country.

the prints' surrealism of melting bodies and emboldened design has become normal to our eyes.

but imagine being
the westerner
seeing them
for the very first time.