This is the official blog of Northern Arizona slam poet Christopher Fox Graham. Begun in 2002, and transferred to blogspot in 2006, FoxTheBlog has recorded more than 670,000 hits since 2009. This blog cover's Graham's poetry, the Arizona poetry slam community and offers tips for slam poets from sources around the Internet. Read CFG's full biography here. Looking for just that one poem? You know the one ... click here to find it.

Saturday, October 7, 2006

These night with wide-open eyes

these night with wide-open eyes
beers poured straight from the tap cold on barren lips
while warm memories of days past
hang in the air
swirling with cigarettes and stories

they laugh in the moments
faces illuminated by the fire
telling the same stories nightly
with new characters, new names

while indoors, through the glass
the musicians try to reinvent the wheels of chords
drummers play new beats
guitarists verse new instruments
poets pen new lines
and explode from the doom of days

we are heading daily toward death
trying to forget our inborn destiny
with swift fingers, kisses and pretty words

"if only we could drink them away"
the poets and musicians say between the lines
hoping that riff, that lyric will make it so
begging the drum beats to shake loose our age
and return us to youth and oblivion

but we wake in dawn's light
to the same fate day after day
knowing the course hasn't changed:

our hair will gray
drop to the floor
and remind us in the echoes
that lover's kisses are fleeting remembrances
forgotten with too much time or distance to part us

we will spill our incoherence from lips
dream of days past
press memories into photo albums
to remind our older selves
that we lived once
when the Golden World still held its glimmer with sheen
and we will sigh at all the appropriate times
when reminded and cued

"remember when?"
"yes, drunken poet, those were the days"
we raged against the dark loneliness of life
sweating in the arms of someone young
and gloriously beautiful
we dropped synonyms
and danced with our long hair swishing about hips rocking
to the beat
loosened our fingers as through
they were broken free from hands except for skin and intention
we shook arms and legs with reckless abandon
and tipped the barkeeps
too much for their troubles

but tonight
raise your fists
beat against the blind sky
and scream out in drunken ecstasy:
"tonight with not be the last!
we have more days to forget our names!"
more minutes to press lips to microphones
and believe in our own desperate words

we are dust and echoes in the pageantry of dying skins
renaming ourselves when the dialects change
live fast, die young at heart
and leave a poem, a song, a story for those who bury you

all that matters is the moment
the musicians, the poets, the lovers and the dancers
scream into the night
forget all that doesn..t matter
which is all of the human drama

we waking shadows
we walking dreams
we face the inevitable echo
that haunts all our days
that one morning will be silent and sober
when we are forgotten

on that morning,
the songs will change
and the band will play on

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