I am now the proud parent of a myspace page. She is about a week old, and so the soft spot is still open, the bones still forming, and the reflex to suckle is still new. She is very cute and her mood changes drastically, her cries are always different. If you'd like to meet her please visit her at:
http://www.myspace.com/slampoetsam
or click on Link below.

Poets Who Blog: Ride the Poetry Wave

Poets Who Blog: Ride the Poetry Wave

Poetry Slam Winners 2007!
So it has taken me this long to acknowledge last week's Poetry Slam at Langdon Street Cafe (Wednesday, Nov. 21) because directly after the Slam I flew out to San Diego for Thanksgiving. Anyway, the Slam was awesome, lots of great talent, the Cafe was packed, and, can you believe it, I won first place! Hooray (and finally, I've slammed enough to land a win!). Thanks to Geof Hewitt for acting as Slam Master, one of his many talents. A good time was had by all. Here are my poems I read that night:

The Affair

It's not the pure, gold baby of hate
We relate to, but the wire mother,
The one void of softness in her cage.
It's the metaphysical, terrycloth other

We crave. We dig into each other's flesh
Hungrily, though our lips never meet.
You think it will lift your depressing crash,
I use your body to fill my sexual need.

I'm aware of this, our using, our skin
The hard grab of your hands, first on my feet
Then up to my calves. Here is where desire begins.
It knows nothing of wives, nor can it see

Our crimes. We close our eyes to this, but we know.
It's why we don't kiss. Oh sure,
You kiss my hipbone, you bite it on the way down to where I want you to go
To kiss the dark, wet part of me so pure.

Pure as that gold baby, or the Macaque
Tested and tested for its warm longing.
The same longing that gives you back.
The same longing that keeps you here 'til morning.


Golden Spiral
The toil of its symmetry and complicated simplicity haunts me
the learning of it's so daunting, the form and curvature
of each fraction's metamorphosis into the Divine, that 1.618 and so on
translation of perfection
to say you are Golden is just an expression of mathematics
the Sacred Geometry matches the birth of the seashell, the wave, the unfurling of a fern in the dampening of spring, and any rectangle my eyes desire.

They are all one, the one true form of beauty
the one the Universe handed down to us as she kissed the moon's forehead goodnight,
and turned on the stars, a night-light reminder of who we are, and of who we will still be when the sun awakens.

Let us not forget, we did not invent ourselves
a Universal language, it was already here. No amount of adding or subtracting
will ruin it, no matter how divided we become.

Well, someone was depressed. Now someone has flower essences in her water.

I just realized that the word poetry has the word try in it, and sometimes I feel like I don't live up to it. I don't try to poe it. And lately the force that wills me to is gone. I lost my try in poetry and now all I have is bad poems.

Though My Seals Don't Require Tools

A life half-packed
in closets
and storage units
my friends' garage
mom's basement

a box older than my son
labelled Sam's Bedroom
has been picked up and moved
to each of my bedrooms
year after year
yet never unpacked

it could be said
that Sam's Bedroom
is that old Organic Grapes box
with four air holes in each side

it has gone so far as
to have its top folded open
a few things
are visible
a black velvet pouch
wads of white tissue paper
something precious, perhaps, inside
a strand of garnet stones
meant for jewelery

I had another garnet piece
an engagement ring he stole back
so I wouldn't flush it away in anger

As if I let anything go
insignificant things
packed away
a trick chamber
in a tomb.

A few fall Haiku...

My window a door
to that green and windy world
of air.

Sunshine gone
grey does not complement green
or make me smile.

Do pens
cry joy at the sight of
the page?

It's funny how
a heart can weep and laugh
at the same time.

There's a rhythm to that one that is so crucial
he says
and goes off to the bathroom, where,
if you listen hard enough
you could hear his pee stream
in a tinkling rhythm
similar to the one in my pantoum
Jewel Tones
the one he refers to
a handful of Goldfish in his hand
sits on a creaky couch
in my living room
what could be more perfect than this
old friends
crunching on junk food
new friends reading poems
I got it right there

Apple

Red, round, and for all we know
you could be a womb, for contained
inside your sweet flesh
are seeds to bear more

fruit.

It's no coincidence
the phallus-ness of your ways
the penetrating pollination and
theft of your babes
by cold ground or hungry mouths.

I

too, am guilty; a whole bag of you
sits in my refrigerator
I even oblingingly nip the skins off
for my own offspring to eat
naked fruit
then fetch from his hand
to eat after he's chewed through with your
waxy persona, skimpy skin of false self
no real protection from our teeth, our

Knives.

Is it no wonder a fantasy of mine
is to live among an apple orchard?
Miles of sweet fertility all around me
screaming Earth Mother! Earth Mother! from early spring
to late fall, the harvesting
a death to you, apple tree, Earth & Mother,
the winter your respite
the spring your great renewal
rise up from the stake
transform to Mother, bear fruit, again and again.

Hey, just got word of this cool poetry thing, unfortunately I can't make it, something called a job...maybe if you don't have one of those interfering with your life, love and writing, you could go and show some support for awesome poet Ruth Stone:
House Chamber of the Statehouse, Montpelier, 4:00 p.m. Celebration for honoring Ruth Stone as Vermont's new State Poet. Open to the public.

Here are some words just to say I am here. Head, neck, butt, aches on this hard chair. Street echoes outside my window. My finger in a partial cast really itches. I am heartbroken and fight the tears. My fiance moved out; yeah, left me. I am trying to be okay. I am trying to be. Be. Just be.

Untitled 2004
(Here is a poem I started three years ago, in the fall of 2004. I just uncovered and revised a bit, and now I feel the need to share)

I slip into a flannel Universe
the multiple moons and stars a warm
lullaby before sleep and dreams.

I try to plan my dreams these days.
At night I play alchemist
cover myself with three blankets and settle in
for the ultimate magic trick.

Lead belly and limbs to gold,
transformation comes in sleep.
The glass beakers we hold metals
turned to jewels.

I dream, dream, dream
into the night, penetrate dark with
multifaceted light and with
slight of hands the beakers smash
and shatter glass fragments to the corners.

What's changed is now what's left to wake:
my warm body
refuses to step out
into the cold reality,
hardwood floors of morning.

I am obsessed with baby names lately. I am not pregnant, yet. But I have names. I feel like I need to share them, get them out of my system so to speak. If I have a boy, his name is already deemed to be Calvin, because Ran3dy (not a typo) has always dreamed of having a boy named Calvin. He's got a tattoo of Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes on his shoulder. I like Calvin. His full name would be Calvin Hunter Kolber Bright.

So he's the easy one. But I have three or so really good girls' names I love. Tell me what you think: Eve Trillium Kolber Bright; Una Harvest Kolber Bright; and Providence Kolber Bright, PK for short.

I am probably more in love with the words. But you gotta admit naming a child is trying, especially when one loves words as much as I. If I were a brave mother, I'd name my daughter Forsythia. That word is poetry to me. It's poetry to see the flowering bush of bright, yellow sprigs reaching up to the sun. It's the first color of spring. Yellow hair of the Earth washed in spring rain, abuzz with fat bees. Forsythia Darling Bright.

Winners of the Bear Pond Books Poetry Slam 2007:

First Place: Danny Dover of Bethel, VT

Second Place: Geof Hewitt of Calais, VT

Third Place: Newton Baker of Montpelier, VT

Poetry Slam in Montpelier hosted by Yours Truly:
Tuesday, April 3 from 7-9pm
at Bear Pond Books
info: 802-229-0774
www.bearpondbooks.com

Youth in black, youth in revolt, in gothic droves of hilarity and self-esteem, the kind that allows them to pretend to be disenfranchised with their cell phone swapping, hair hanging down in eyes, tight, black clothes, swigging from bottles of birch beer, pretend beat group. Oh that youth! The only reason I'm so sour about them is that I am no longer one of them.

A January Poem

As infants wide open
as this winter sky
the sun through a snowy haze
and condensation on the
window panes

as open as death
which is clear but blurry
not even a focal point
like this pale green
dragonfly etched in round glass
elements open
in the wind.

Ok, middle of February and I haven't written since November--call me a slacker with other priorities right now. Baby-making. This is what's on my mind, and you'd think I'd be writing some amazing stuff about it, but not really. I am very uncreative right now, except for some ad and web design I am doing for work. But that's about it. Even the love holiday didn't spark any romantic musings. And I call myself a poet! Maybe I'm hibernating. A bear is still a bear when sleeping off a winter.