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.
Showing posts with label Detroit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Detroit. Show all posts

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Sending David Blair to Burning Man

While I normally find burning poetry a sacrilege, I am sending a copy of “Detroit (while I was away)” by David Blair with Azami for her to burn at the Temple of Juno when she leaves for Burning Man in about an hour.

Fly high above Black Rock City, Blair. May the ashes reach Detroit, your beloved city.

Fa una canzone senza note nere
se mai bramasti la mia grazia havere.
Falla d'un tuonó ch'invita al dormire,
dolcemente, dolcemente facendo la finire



Blair performs "Detroit"
Producer: Connie Mangilin, Philip Lauri
Camera: Sean Redenz
Editor: Steven Oliver


David Blair
Photo by David Lewinski Photography
“Detroit (while I was away)”
By David Blair


Even though I know the air hangs
like a dead dog’s ass over River Rouge,
I still miss you. Your fenced in gardens
filled with sustenance and Saturday

evening draped over a back alley porch.
The September stench that creeps
slow as a Woodward bus on Sunday.
Black tires crawling in summer heat.

Your acoustic guitars and amplified hair.
Your rows of long thin buildings,
arranged on a young man’s head.
Last time I saw you, a woman stood

on a corner conducting traffic.
Her own sunken opera.
A crack pipe baton. Car horns joined
in like a bad man cruising a dream.
She stood on the stage of Cass and Mack

dying to reach Joy Rd. The moon left
its spotlight on a backdrop of burnt buildings.
Yellow police tape posed like velvet rope.
Do Not Cross.

A picket line of teens careened down Cass
past broken glass that spread
like urban sprawl, a Diego Rivera mural
painted across the DIA wall.

Another time I saw you,
steam barreled out of your manhole covers
like you were about to explode. A soul imbibed
forty ounces of courage so it could head back to the axle plant

on Lynch Road, Jefferson or some other
conveyor belt street that gets everyone moving
in step like a Temptation line dance.
22 ounces of sweat and iron hidden in a bathroom stall.

Away from the plant tours and fat cats,
shop stewards and snitches. I remember you
old friend. I’m in another city now.
But Martin Luther King St. always looks the same.

It just doesn’t intersect with Rosa Parks,
12th Street where ‘67 fires started,
named for a woman who chose you beyond
a boycott in Montgomery, then rode

the front of that big old dog
straight home to you Detroit, I love you...

from your basketball sun, that hangs in the sky
then falls, only to bounce back up tomorrow. Down
to your alligator shoes. I’ll kiss you on the river.
Meet you in the middle of a suitcase and wonder

do you think of me this way...?
Do you even know I’ve gone? Say my name, Detroit.
I pray you claim me. A small town boy.
Born in New Jersey, but made in Detroit.
My heart beats like tool and die for you.
like horse power and pistons for you,
while mechanized, lumpenized robot
zombies haunt Mack Avenue.

Here they come, a gang of buildings in tank tops,
Mack Trucks in do rags, marching
down to Hastings Street.
Though I never knew you back when
you wore your onyx necklace
like a tire around your neck, I witness

the aftermath. Dipping your blue black hands
in electric currents of music and art. The circumference
of Outer Drive. Moross and Joy.
Paris of the Midwest they called you.

And every time ‘67 fires or Halloween came around,
you lived up to it. The year I was born, you blew up.
I heard it. I came when I could. I’ve never left.
I stay, even when I go. Chosen heart.
Adopted town. From Belle Isle to Eight Mile.

Chocolate city where the mothership landed.
Late night downtown and the peacocks are out
on Fourth Street, calling to billboards
that hover over highways, telling stories to streetlamps.
The moon is a plate full of soul food, Mexican food.
Pierogies and paczkis. Kafta and curry
We mix and separate, mix and separate.

Each Prentis stoop is a garage rock chord
strummed and banged, like a car mechanics sledge.
A man screams beneath the Ambassador bridge.
Another drums on plastic tubs for tourists.
“Will work for food” is a piece of poetry
scribbled on an art house wall.

Festival wizards, Saunderson, Atkins and May.
The Big Three. De trois, of three.
Black panthers, white panthers and Lions, oh my.
Tight boys in rock pants, the hustlers in Palmer Park.
Lovers, thugs and blues men with axes
sharp enough to cut down another forced overtime shift.
The sun dresses flowing like the Detroit River. Supremely
turning, bending with the weight of the city. Detroit,

your beautiful hair woven women, putting on gloves
and grabbing tools next to me on the assembly line,
teaching me what perseverance and being a brother is
all about. Overtime fists clocking. These are the hands
that braid hair and lock dread, cook meat that falls
right off the bone into fat, black pots of collards working harder
and harder...
and harder still...

...so step on, Detroit,
dribble and shoot,
pass and play,
struggle and fight,
darken and light,
drive and impel,
riot and quell, pick the steel burrs
off the cross members at the front of the Jeep Cherokee.
Look what we have made you. Steam and steel.
Still, that’s how hard I love you.


David Blair
Sept. 19, 1967 -- July 23, 2011
David Alan Blair “Blair”, age 43, born Sept. 19, 1967, passed away Saturday, July 23, 2011. David grew up in Newton, N.J., but came to call Detroit his adopted home. He is the son of Hildegard Blair and Herbert Blair.

Blair was an award-winning, multi-faceted artist: poet, singer-songwriter, writer, performer, musician, community activist and teacher. In the words of Metro Times journalist Melissa Giannini, “Blair focused his work on the hope that rises from the ashes of despair.”

A 2010 Callaloo Fellow and a National Poetry Slam Champion, his first book of poetry, Moonwalking, was recently released by Penmanship Books. Blair, as a solo artist, and with The Urban Folk Collective, self-released more than seven records in the last ten years. His most recent album, The Line, with his band The Boyfriends, was released in 2010 on Repeatable Silence Records.

Throughout his life, Blair performed at venues, large and small, across the nation and around the world. He was nominated for seven Detroit Music Awards, including a 2007 nod for Outstanding Acoustic Artist. He was named Real Detroit Weekly Readers Poll’s Best Solo Artist and The Metro Times Best Urban Folk Poet. In 2007, he won the Seattle-based BENT Writing Institute Mentor Award.

As well as being the recipient of numerous awards, he taught classes and lectured on poetry and music in Detroit Public Schools, The Ruth Ellis Center, Hannan House Senior Center, the YMCA of Detroit, and at various universities, colleges and high schools across the country.

Blair has friends and fans on almost every continent. He will be greatly missed by the loved ones he left all too early. He is preceded in death by his father, Herbert Blair. He is survived by his mother, Hildegard (Smith), siblings Herbert Blair (who resides in Pennsylvania), Tony Blair (New Jersey), Walter Blair (Florida), Joy Blair Swinson (New Hampshire) and many nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles.


And every raindrop falling from the sky
is like a tribute to the blue skies following behind,
And every raindrop falling to the sea
is like a testament to a new life that will come to be.
~Blair

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

poets mourn the loss of beautiful David Alan Blair


Blair performs "Behind the Garage" at TEDxDetroit

David Blair
Sept. 19, 1967 -- July 23, 2011
David Alan Blair “Blair”, age 43, born Sept. 19, 1967, passed away Saturday, July 23. David grew up in Newton, N.J., but came to call Detroit his adopted home. He is the son of Hildegard Blair and Herbert Blair.

Blair was an award-winning, multi-faceted artist: poet, singer-songwriter, writer, performer, musician, community activist and teacher. In the words of Metro Times journalist Melissa Giannini, “Blair focused his work on the hope that rises from the ashes of despair.”

A 2010 Callaloo Fellow and a National Poetry Slam Champion, his first book of poetry, Moonwalking, was recently released by Penmanship Books. Blair, as a solo artist, and with The Urban Folk Collective, self-released more than seven records in the last ten years. His most recent album, The Line, with his band The Boyfriends, was released in 2010 on Repeatable Silence Records.

Throughout his life, Blair performed at venues, large and small, across the nation and around the world. He was nominated for seven Detroit Music Awards, including a 2007 nod for Outstanding Acoustic Artist. He was named Real Detroit Weekly Readers Poll’s Best Solo Artist and The Metro Times Best Urban Folk Poet. In 2007, he won the Seattle-based BENT Writing Institute Mentor Award.


Blair performing "Little Richard Penniman Tells It Like It T-I-S" on the steps of the Motown Museum - Detroit Shot By Matt Wisotsky Edited By Jeff Cenkner

As well as being the recipient of numerous awards, he taught classes and lectured on poetry and music in Detroit Public Schools, The Ruth Ellis Center, Hannan House Senior Center, the YMCA of Detroit, and at various universities, colleges and high schools across the country.

Blair has friends and fans on almost every continent. He will be greatly missed by the loved ones he left all too early. He is preceded in death by his father, Herbert Blair. He is survived by his mother, Hildegard (Smith), siblings Herbert Blair (who resides in Pennsylvania), Tony Blair (New Jersey), Walter Blair (Florida), Joy Blair Swinson (New Hampshire) and many nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles.

And every raindrop falling from the sky
is like a tribute to the blue skies following behind,
And every raindrop falling to the sea
is like a testament to a new life that will come to be.
~Blair

(from the song “Every Raindrop”)

The David Blair Memorial Fund has been set up to help defray the costs of his memorial service. Donate here. Any funds raised beyond these immediate expenses will be used to create a fund in his honor for Detroit artists in need of healthcare. More information on David Blair’s memorial can be found at www.dblair.org.


Blair performs "My name is Karl" at Seattle Poetry Slam

I met Blair in Detroit when I, Josh Fleming, david f. escobedo, and Keith Bruecker were on the Save the Male Tour in 2001. He was awesome host, a sweetheart, and an all-around good man. To me, Detroit has always felt like a warm city due to Blair and his crew.

I returned his hospitality a few years later when Blair and his band, Blair and the Boyfriends, came through Flagstaff and Sedona in 2009, performing at FlagSlam at The Mad Italian. I can still remember him across the table with me and his band eating pizza at The Hideaway in Sedona. He had a great laugh and such positivity in the air around him.


Blair performs "Detroit"

Do him one last honor and watch him perform one his poems.
He will be missed.

Fa Una Canzone
Fa una canzone senza note nere
se mai bramasti la mia grazia havere.
Falla d'un tuonó ch'invita al dormire,
dolcemente, dolcemente facendo la finire.

(Sing me a Song
Write a song with no black notes
if you ever wanted my favor.
Write it so that it will bring me to sleep,
make it end sweetly, sweetly.)