"To The Girl Riding Shotgun" Sedona Poetry Slam video

To The Girl Riding Shotgun
For Montana and Sarrah Wile

across this home country of rednecks and ranchers
the pages of my ancestry
turn backward to days
running barefoot over vetch and stones
when i stood much shorter
gracing the sweetgrass with elbows and shoulders
instead of the strained fingertips of today
memories flood back when i least expect them
lessons learned, loves lost,
childhood games and their innocence
before i translated the rules
and learned how to break them

the silhouettes of familiar landscapes
eagerly welcome me back as if they're the tourists
revisiting a boy they knew in their youth

these green wheat fields of farmer tans
these western hats signaling oncoming howdys
these selfless smiles from strangers
this countryside
this is home

a boy i knew once lives here
we shared the same name
wished on the same stars
jumped the same cricks together
and left the other behind
when we cut the cord
leaving him in the Rockies
while i wandered the deserts

we see each other still in dreams
and play tag with fawns, calves and cubs
that have yet to learn
our parents play predator and prey

he still plays on the hillsides i long for,
beneath fir trees overlooking the valley that once held me fast
along the yellowstone artery carving a canyon
our ancestors will see from orbit

his house is over the ridge,
somewhere
down this dusty stretch of gravel,
somewhere
in the shadow of flax and sweetpeas,
somewhere
i know the outline of the farm like a thumbprint
can pick it blindfolded from all the others
simply by the sound of the breeze
but the roads still seems unfamiliar
though the map clearly says it's here

and to the girl riding shotgun
all this land is as new
as it seems to me mostly
as i wait for the memories in bottles
to find me lost in this sea of rolling hills
beneath blue moons rising red in the blood of harvest
sometimes we're both awash anew in these fields
National Geographic anthropologists on assignment
deciphering a dialect with a common vocabulary
in others
she is only a passported traveler while i am timeless
standing swallowed by the sunset of red fields
touching my family's livelihood in the grain
reaching roots down deep into the land
that we love as a mother

bud lights, rodeos and Hank Williams
rise up from the soil
in the aftermath of a solid spring shower
as honky-tonk two-steps,
broad-rimmed stetsons
and a vigorous fiddle
shake free the alfalfa baled back home
and for a moment in the dim lights
old men remember being cowboys
while cowgirls look for old wives they will become

to understand montana
you must travel it by road
knowing that distances are measured in days, not hours
every stop is a must-see
because haybales are the only signs of human habitation
no matter what town you visit,
there's always a drink waiting at The Mint,
where the bartenders call you "hon,"
even if they know your name

lost locals identify themselves
by family name first
in the smallest towns
to which your bloodlines tie you
in Montana,
family comes before the man

here, where death and life are cyclical
we learn young to converse honestly
because each visit
may be the last
until the hereafter
words are ties that bind

that boy i once knew
i see now grown up
behind the wheel of every beat-up Ford
that passes us
the girl riding shotgun learns
that the difference between
redneck and revolutionary
lies in the chance taken
by my parents
before i could even spell "poet"

that boy sees me, too
behind the wheel of every out-of-state plate
knowing that this boy looking for home,
somewhere
is on the interstate,
somewhere
dreaming of catching up,
somewhere
where the beer is cold
the jukebox plays only johnny cash
and on the drive back down country roads
the breezes bring back memories
on the parachutes of roadside dandelions

Slam Tutorial: Before I Start this Poem ... I'll Read You the Title

Before I Start this Poem, I'll Read You the Poem

This "sneaky" tactic takes advantage of the sometimes irritating habit of reading a disclaimer before reading a poem. However, the disclaimer winds up being the poem itself. This is sometimes used very briefly as a hook, as in "Before I start this poem / I'll like to say that the first three lines / you won't think are the poem / but by line four you know I've started"

This strategy has several species:

Before I Start this Poem ... I'll Read You the Title
This poem, inspired by one by former Arizona poet Scott Huntington Gamble, essentially has a romantic and fanciful disclaimer, although masked, which pivots on the hook "that was just the title / this is the poem."

"The Cost of Dynamite"
By Christopher Fox Graham

magic lurks in her shrouded shoulders
that only her few lovers have tasted
although scores claim her lips hold her enchantments
I've been touched by neither,
though her temptations keep me up at night
in the half-conscious imaginings
of our skin dances
her limbs have teased her proximity
and her anticipatory warmth
enlivens our thighs

caged horses feel this way
when they see open fields beyond the fences
but words like these
hungrily dripping ink on untouched pages
are best hidden on the unread bookshelves
lest they betray the thousand sins
we would visit on each other
should the skies ever see them

and to Dante,
who cataloged all our predecessors,
Virgil neglected to reveal the 10th level of Dis
reserved solely for the lustful un-inhibitions
destined to be enumerated in epic detail
by some future poet,
about the nights when she and I
unlock the inevitable collision of hips and skins

evangelical preachers will base sermons on our rhythms
to terrify parishioners toward good behavior
expect presidential campaigns to stump legislation
to combat the passions we would release
and slam poets to spit verses
in pale comparison to the erotic hip-hop hips
of our beat-box breathing

sinners have their new saints
and Screwtape has new letters
to write to Our Father Below

when our moment comes,
expect the fire department
and the local police
to secure the scene
while Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt
thumb wrestle to the death
to secure the rights
prognosticators and prophets will claim
they saw the end coming in our coming
in poetry critics will cite this poem
claiming it a talentless rehash
of all slam poem to have come before

while my reply is simply
that those who must rely on these words
have yet to hear the earthquakes
when she lets loose her inhibitions
to her anticipations
and takes me along for the ride
rocking her hips to the stories
held between her shoulders

dreamers, you have heard us
in all your aimless wanderings
wondering how you could've lived your lives
before you knew of the chemistry
between skins locked
in the exasperated expression
of all that is holy

we are dying, but in our echo
the pageantries of our passions
will spill forth into the divine archetypes
to rebuild a new civilization as yet unimagined

that was just the title,
this is the poem:

in the lonely nights like these,
I wait for a lover I've never kissed
imagining that all these years of waiting for a meaningful lover
aren't in vain
my fear is to look back in old age
knowing that when the time was right
I'd let her slip away into the history and memory
too fearful of giving into the game we played:
always aiming for a checkmate
and afraid to lose I’ll play too harsh
she'll step back from the board
leaving my pieces in forever-stalemate with the absence,
seeking someone less serious and self-absorbed

if one of us can’t win the teasing test
of how far we can push the bounds
then these days and calculations
aren't worth the weight of numbers we measure

and lofty words aside,
I want to drift to sleep alongside her
in awake unashamedly unalone,
the way all great poets seem to do

but I'm too old to write about longing anymore
my poems of unrequited lovers
could kill passersby if dropped from high stories
yearning has its limits
and the ones that should plague my pages
would be best concluded with
“she's come again”

my words and would be better spilled
recounting ways to enumerate nuances
so that thousands could learn them
but so that they wouldn't forget the value of lonely moments
and if some student should find them in years hence
know that longing pains only focus so far
in the prophetic knowledge
that there is a light beaconing the end
I’d rather spend my days penning trivial sonnets at her side
then scribbling the epic of the ages in a studio apartment
made for one

illiteracy is inevitable and in time
all our silly words will become old,
understandable only in classes where academics
teach the ancient tongues of Aristotle and Chaucer

no poem retains its immediacy
when the poet is ash
but descendents can carry the fire
in their blood through the ages
long after the poem is obsolete
and its author is a grad school essay question
in her embrace its locks on
as if to a sinking ship’s life raft,
pen and paper yards away
the greatest poems of my fingers
will dance in her skin
and those that may find their way
through the sheets
to the floor
to the pages
they’ll merely echo those moments
when we erased our knowledge
of spelling and consonants
instead relying on vowels and the language of skins
to speak for us

these verses would I rather have annotate my days
in the press of her breath
and our secret words
would publish the best of me
while all the rest
can take the place when the moment suits
and the critics push aside their trivial jealousies
of not being born poetic
to pencil in a few pages
of their doctoral thesis

for them but me insert bits of profanity
a wayward curse
a gratuitous “fuck”
so they don't choose this piece
for its nonoffensive cleanliness
a well-placed “ass” can ruin a safe poem from publication
pun intended

these poems aren't for them anyway
they're just the thoughts of a boy
close enough to touch her
yet far enough away
to measure her distance from him
in multiples of the length of her shadow
and the geography of heartbeats and unspoken words
erects mountains between us
and the cost of dynamite
is bleeding my pockets dry

Slam Tutorial, Part X, The Future Road

Round Three: Road Trip Poem; The Past Fades, the Future Looms

Part of poetry is a sense of growing up, leaving the past behind and looking toward the future. A poem that takes the audience along a journey, literally on the road or metaphorically on the road of self discovery gives the audience a sense of completing a journey as the slam ends. It can also be used to show that the future is still uncertain. A great ending if the last part of the third round is neither high energy nor low energy.

To The Girl Riding Shotgun
For Montana and Sarrah Wile

across this home country of rednecks and ranchers
the pages of my ancestry
turn backward to days
running barefoot over vetch and stones
when i stood much shorter
gracing the sweetgrass with elbows and shoulders
instead of the strained fingertips of today
memories flood back when i least expect them
lessons learned, loves lost,
childhood games and their innocence
before i translated the rules
and learned how to break them

the silhouettes of familiar landscapes
eagerly welcome me back as if they're the tourists
revisiting a boy they knew in their youth

these green wheat fields of farmer tans
these western hats signaling oncoming howdys
these selfless smiles from strangers
this countryside
this is home

a boy i knew once lives here
we shared the same name
wished on the same stars
jumped the same cricks together
and left the other behind
when we cut the cord
leaving him in the Rockies
while i wandered the deserts

we see each other still in dreams
and play tag with fawns, calves and cubs
that have yet to learn
our parents play predator and prey

he still plays on the hillsides i long for,
beneath fir trees overlooking the valley that once held me fast
along the yellowstone artery carving a canyon
our ancestors will see from orbit

his house is over the ridge,
somewhere
down this dusty stretch of gravel,
somewhere
in the shadow of flax and sweetpeas,
somewhere
i know the outline of the farm like a thumbprint
can pick it blindfolded from all the others
simply by the sound of the breeze
but the roads still seems unfamiliar
though the map clearly says it's here

and to the girl riding shotgun
all this land is as new
as it seems to me mostly
as i wait for the memories in bottles
to find me lost in this sea of rolling hills
beneath blue moons rising red in the blood of harvest
sometimes we're both awash anew in these fields
National Geographic anthropologists on assignment
deciphering a dialect with a common vocabulary
in others
she is only a passported traveler while i am timeless
standing swallowed by the sunset of red fields
touching my family's livelihood in the grain
reaching roots down deep into the land
that we love as a mother

bud lights, rodeos and hank williams
rise up from the soil
in the aftermath of a solid spring shower
as honky-tonk two-steps,
broad-rimmed stetsons
and a vigorous fiddle
shake free the alfalfa baled back home
and for a moment in the dim lights
old men remember being cowboys
while cowgirls look for old wives they will become

to understand montana
you must travel it by road
knowing that distances are measured in days, not hours
every stop is a must-see
because haybales are the only signs of human habitation
no matter what town you visit,
there's always a drink waiting at The Mint,
where the bartenders call you "hon,"
even if they know your name

lost locals identify themselves
by family name first
in the smallest towns
to which your bloodlines tie you
in montana,
family comes before the man

here, where death and life are cyclical
we learn young to converse honestly
because each visit
may be the last
until the hereafter
words are ties that bind

that boy i once knew
i see now grown up
behind the wheel of every beat-up Ford
that passes us
the girl riding shotgun learns
that the difference between
redneck and revolutionary
lies in the chance taken
by my parents
before i could even spell "poet"

that boy sees me, too
behind the wheel of every out-of-state plate
knowing that this boy looking for home,
somewhere
is on the interstate,
somewhere
dreaming of catching up,
somewhere
where the beer is cold
the jukebox plays only johnny cash
and on the drive back down country roads
the breezes bring back memories
on the parachutes of roadside dandelions

Sedona Daily Herald, Sarrah Wile edition Front Page

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Sedona Daily Herald, Sarrah Wile edition Page 8

Sarrah is gone ...

Sarrah at Johnnie's Cafe, 433 1st Ave. S., Glasgow, Mont. Sarrah and I had gone to Fort Peck Dam, a massive which is the largest hydraulically filled dam in the United States.
Authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, construction of Fort Peck Dam employed over 11,000 workers at its peak in 1939, one of whom was my great-grandfather.
The dam, named for a 19th-century trading post, was completed in 1940, and began generating electricity in July 1943. The dam created Fort Peck Lake, the fifth largest lake in the U.S.
Sarrah and I also have an unnatural obsession with dinosaurs. Just down the way from the dam power stations is a dinosaur museum, which we spent hours in. The tour of the dam power stations only happened because a tour guide asked if we wanted to see it.
On our way back to Opheim, we stopped at Johnnie's.

This is definitely my favorite photograph of Sarrah. I have an 8x10 print of it up in my room. After two weeks in Montana, we were on our last, long drive home. The drive from Livingston, Mont., through Idaho and into southern Utah we talked a lot about us and our friendship. We had a great time on the drive. We also listened to a biography of Abraham Lincoln on tape.
As we got into southern Utah, I made a detour into a national park, thinking we could cut through and head south to Page, Ariz., rather than drive through Colorado City, Ariz., and the Mormon fundamentalist cult area, but there was a fee at the gate, so we had to turn back. We stopped to shoot the sunset and I shot this of Sarrah. She looks elated.

Sarrah Countdown #14

Sarrah on my uncle's mountain.

We found these horses in a pen just north of Livingston, Mont.

On the shore of Yellowstone Lake, Sarrah collected stones to write "I love you" for a photo for her boyfriend in Arizona, Dylan Jung. She later used the photo in a shadowbox for him.

Sarrah shooting the countryside from my grandmother's barn.

Sarrah's mobile office.

Sarrah in a wheat field on my aunt and uncle's ranch in Paradise Valley. The land they own includes the mountains in the background.

Sarrah Countdown #13

Along our hike on day two, we headed back to the ranch and had to hop a few fences.

At a kid's basketball court in Helena, Mont.

Perfect height.

In my grandmother's barn in Opheim, Mont.
Sarrah caught in the light streaming in the open window.

At my aunt and uncle's ranch in Paradise Valley, Sarrah and I stayed in their bed & breakfast cabin. It had a three-bed bedroom, a small sitting/dining room and a bathroom. Great with no microwave, tv, etc. Just a hotplate and a coffeemaker.

Sarrah Countdown #12

Roosevelt Arch, the main entrance to Yellowstone National Park. It used to be the only entrance to the park, and lies on the Montana side of the border. It's eight miles from my aunt and uncle's ranch in Paradise Valley.

Just inside the park, still in Montana before we reached Mammoth Hot Springs.

Sarrah was leaning over the edge of this cliff to snap a few photos. The wind was fierce, maybe 30-40 mph.

At Mammoth Hot Springs on the north side of Yellowstone National Park.

Sarrah really wanted to see this buffalo up close, so she wandered out to see it. Then it charged the truck. It really just wanted to cross the road and ran right in front of us to the other side.

On the shore of Yellowstone Lake, Sarrah put sunscreen on me. I was already burned by this point.

Sarrah Countdown #11

Sarrah had a thing for climbing silos and grain elevators while in Montana. This was a small silo next to my late grandfather's airplane hanger.

In this part of eastern Montana, it's so perfectly flat that she could likely see 50 miles from this high up.

Sarrah had to jump up and climb the side of the building first, just to get this high. She looks really cute in this photo.

Then she proceeded to climb the ladder, despite my protests. The one cop in Opheim was actually on duty because the Opheim High School was holding a reunion and we were heading into town to the picnic. The entire town plus a few hundred alumni were driving in to. Then I realized that in a town with population 99 - seriously - there isn't much to do, and probably every kid in town ever has climbed this thing.

And Sarrah reached the top, from which she could see the entire town and Canada, 10 miles to the north.

Sarrah Countdown #10

As she made her first steps into Montana, Sarrah and I got out of the truck, wandered into the median and shot photos of each other.

One of the best parts of the trip was spending a full day inside Yellowstone National Park. Buffalo were scattered across this valley.

Sarrah sitting with me on the steps of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, shortly after seeing Sue, the most complete and second-largest Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil ever found.

On the Southwest Chief Amtrak train somewhere between Chicago and Flagstaff.

At lunch on the Southwest Chief Amtrak train somewhere between Chicago and Flagstaff.

Sarrah Countdown #9

Sarrah Wile's graduation from Sedona Red Rock High School.

Sarrah participated in a mock trial as a prosecutor. Here she is speaking to the judge.

And grilling a witness.

Sarrah was also a member of Kiwanis. Notice how she tries to hide. As she got older, she got much more comfortable being in front of the camera.