T-Storms & Jelloslave

this Spring has already pushed out the first thunderstorm and with that came some hard rain...we had to put Early to sleep about three weeks ago. i feel like his ghost is following me everywhere in the house. i've never held a living creature in my hand as it bowed down in death. i feel he is curled into a ball, tucked under my rib cage..snoring his liquid lungs out in peace. in the pic above he's chillin like he did through so many rehearsals.

"A good-bye generates a moment of chaos in the immediate enviornment.."
-Fanny Howe
finally finished her memoir/essays...was exactly what i needed this past month

on a lighter note i took my mother to see Jelloslave this weekend! am currently digging their album "Touch It"- such a brilliant title to an album/project
also have been listening to Kill the Vultures, K'Naan, and Romantica

reading" "The Omnivore's Dilemma" - along with everyone else i guess. also just watched "King Korn" and "Jesus Camp"....that is all i will say.

finally drafted "Blue-Glass Prairie Grafitti" and "Dynamo" and am working to revise a series piece I have in rough form right now titled "Naturalization"

drinking: too much red wine. i feel like if i were to write about something happy right now my tongue would fall out of my mouth.

grateful. i feel grateful as all get out.

home is where the heart is

I see this house on my bike ride home everyday....34th & Oakland....Bloomington Ave. is also boarded up from about 24th to Lake St.

reading

Carolina Chocolate Drops at the Cedar 3-29-09

this pic is from a slower song...the rest of the evening we danced our feet into the ground. they even played "Hit em' up style!"

here they are playing "Hit' em up style" on the Blue Plate Special in Knoxville,TN:



crazy to see that they played the Blue Plate Special as Chas plays there everytime she goes home to Knoxville!

*******************************************

am thinking i'll read these on friday at the variety house show:
Two Hues
Soo Dhawow
Starting Point
Believe It

listening: to Early breathe syrup-lunged on the couch.
drinking: chamomile baby...cause i am bad ass like that.

knee deep in:

"It is snowing outside the cafe. It falls on the waves and foam and on the cars and leaves. It looks the way music arrives in the brain and lights up a different cell until the brain is flooded with its sound or its silence."

"Can dreams support the whole weight of the material world?"

from Fanny Howe's The Winter Sun, Notes on a Vocation

troppo serio

have 8 out of the 10 books i ordered! everytime one came in the mail i was like, "ooooh what's this?!?!?" -kinda like ordering yourself flowers.

Chas is up north gigging in grand marais and duluth so i've got ALL DAY to myself. helps me to reflect on what's going on in my life and around me....when i don't get time to write or reflect i start trippin on the smallest things.

still thinking about this article in the city pages about racism in the gay community (i would also add classism) http://www.citypages.com/2009-03-18/news/jamez-smith-a-gay-black-man-says-racism-is-alive-in-the-twin-cities-gay-community

on a lighter note, am loving my friend's blog: http://www.effingdykes.blogspot.com/ the girl can write, this is for sure. for anyone with lingering lesbian questions, read it.

have been thinking i am a bit too serious at times...and at the same time, too whacky...spring and winter tug-o-warring my tudes. aint no in-between.

thought it'd be fun to start a "fav poem of the week," so this weeks is...drum roll....symbol smash smash: Terrance Haye's "At Pegasus"

reading: started Fanny Howe's The Winter Sun, Notes on A Vocation

reading Fanny Howe always reminds of the importance of disobedience and resistance...i think this is why she is one of my favorite writers. i strive to not seek approval in my daily life, but seem to continuously fail at this and have to remind myself daily to be concsious in my interactions, yet not tweak them towards obedience. something in my blood has always drawn me to flip things...turn something into the exact opposite of what a person wants or expects from me...makes for interesting times when two people in a relationship have this same urge.

also still reading Nuruddin Farah's essays and at times have to take breaks to fully digest it all. for me, these essays are important reading and intense reading. i work with refugees and asylees (majority are from East Africa) by helping them manuver through the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) system in order to get permanent resdience (green card) and to naturalize (obtain citizenship). i have been working in this field for almost 3 years and i never researched the history of Somalia, Mogadishu in particular, and what led up to the war...has me thinking about national identity in ways i never have before...what does it mean to be born in the nation you are born in?

listening: to Hyder Ali a million times over. dude's got fab rhythm. makes me think about fanny howe's poem "Victory"

looking forward to the Equilibrium Spoken Word event at the Loft Literary Center/Open Book tonight with Giles Li & Bassey Ikpe—with special guest El Guante tonight!

i'll be giving a reading! Friday April 3 at Jackie's Garfield House Variety Show!, Chas will also be performing....what to read...what to read..

sad note: Early barfed flourecent yellow twice this weekend. the old man is slowing down and it's ripping at me from the inside out. this morning on our walk he shuffled along as i told him, "you the man Earles, you the man" he seemed to like this. encouraging tones are all i need sometimes too.

and finally... i've got the travel blues...am trying to find cheap tix for this summer to visit Chas' family in Manhattan and in New Hampshire!

rain ghost

putting my foot down, flamingo growl

just made ginger-garlic lemonade! goes down hot like whiskey, swirls you the same, but doesn't give you the knocked-out-fermented-blues.

also just pulled the tube out of my girl's bike tire. swore forty some times in the alley. scared the neighbors.

{flashbacked to last night's fire twilight. didn't have my camera. swore again forty odd times. scared chastity, she almost fell off her bike.}

feet are feeling flamingo-like, itchy for flight, shuffle-ballchanges, falap toe-heels and such.

hands are newspaper black. happy sunday.

*******
listening: Justin Vernon's self record
reading: "But if refugees are a challenge as well as a reproach to our humanity, if refugees are a lament raised, a cry spoken, if refugees are the bastards of the idea of empire, then how can one blame this highly disenfranchised, displaced humanity for all Europe's ills?"
-Nuruddin Farah


*******
am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the ten books i ordered last week. in the meantime...drafting, workshopping online, and re-seeing some old poems with hopefully a new set of eyes, a new fire in the belly approach.