My poems from the Sedona Slam Jan 30th, 2004

creative

"Election Year Mudslinging"

Christopher Lane
claims he’s right for America,
but what is he really hiding?

do you think you know
the real Christopher Lane?
since Mr. Lane moved to Arizona
republicans retook the white house
and both houses of congress
since Mr. Lane moved to Arizona
3 million Americans have lost their jobs
the economy has faltered
and we went to war in Iraq
where are the weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Lane?

Christopher Lane won’t tell you
about his connections to Enron
the dot-com bubble
the space shuttle Columbia disaster
the earthquake in Iran
or the breakup of Ben Affleck and J-Lo
what are you hiding, Christopher Lane?

Christopher Lane went to china last year
he claims it as a vacation
was it really?
or is Mr. Lane a dirty red communist?
what is he really hiding?

Christopher Lane seems to ask a lot of questions
he has a poem called “how many more?”
and one called “can you spare some change?”
and his first book was called,
“who is your god now?”
Lots of questions, Mr. Lane
but I think the American people
deserve some answers
why won’t you answer the questions, Mr. Lane?

lets look at some comparisons:
both Mr. Lane and George W Bush are from Texas,
both Mr. Lane and Jeffrey Dahmer wore tennis shoes
both Mr. Lane and Unabomber Ted Kazinski
lived in a trailer in the woods
both Mr. Lane and Napoleon stood 5 foot 7 inches tall
both Mr. Lane and Adolf Hitler had facial hair

so why would you trust Mr. Lane?

what are you hiding Mr. Lane?
why won’t you answer, Mr. Lane?
it’s time to get tough, Mr. Lane
and answer the real questions of America:
who is really financing the NORAZ Poets, Mr. Lane?
where is osama bin laden, Mr. Lane?
how did you vote in the 2000 election, Mr. Lane?
will the Mars Rover discover water and the evidence of life, Mr. Lane?
did you put the Bop in the Bop-Shu-Bop, Mr. Lane?
do you “got milk”, Mr. Lane?
what was Willis talkin’ ‘bout, Mr. Lane?
where were you on the night of November 31st, Mr. Lane?
what is the square root of
twelve-thousand-nine-hundred-eight-three, Mr. Lane?
why won’t a woman sleep with me, Mr. Lane?

until Christopher Lane answers these questions,
America can’t trust you –

but who can they trust?
who should win this slam?

Christopher Fox Graham
he’s good for America,
he’s good for Arizona,
and he deserves at least a 9.7


“Hi, I’m Christopher Fox Graham,
and I approve this message.”

"Spinal Language"

For Christmas
give me a tattoo
deeper than skin
on the bones of my spine
onto the surface of every vertebrae
in every human tongue
tattoo their word for “poetry”
so that no language feels foreign anymore;
so that each human voice
can speak a word in me

let Arabic and Hebrew
sit side by side without throwing stones
let Cantonese and Hindi characters
link hands to hold Swahili and Hutu in a hammock
let Basque and Zulu finally touch lips Vietnamese
while Navajo rests it’s head on the shoulder of Malay

we speak six thousand tongues
but i’ll endure the pain and the time
so no human voice can speak to me
without being felt
down to the bone

let African syllables
share space with European articulations,
Asian morphemes,
and Aboriginal pronunciations,

line them up and engrave them
like an organic barcode written in Braille
readable by the worms that will one day convert me back
to the religion of dust and ash
that we believed in once
before this cult of flesh and blood
brought us out from clay
to play brief characters in the rain

let them taste the flavor of our words
let them consume poetry
and give it back to the soil
so the earth can feel the weight of our words
and not forget us
when we extinct ourselves
like the species before us

carve the last word
in morse code
at the base of my spine
so that I can hear the rhythm of the word
in my hips when i sleep
.--. --- . - .-. -.--
let dots and dashes spread
across all my bones in a virus of comprehension
so if i lose my voice
I can still speak a word
by tapping my fingers,
pounding a drum
or changing the rhythm of my heartbeat
to speak with my blood

imagine

six thousand tongues
playing my spine
in 33-part harmony
making a symphony of me
with a melody that reverberates
up my spinal cord
echoing louder and louder in the tunnel
amplifying the compounding music
all the way to the base of my brain
where it detonates
and resonates inside my skull
ricocheting
six thousand new expressions
for the same word
with the voices of six billion singers
into my six trillion thoughts
until I can take no more chaos
and their song explodes from my lips

offering the world
a moment of synchronized understanding
of one song
of one voice
of one man
for one instant

before the world blinks
loses focus
and listens to the echo
slowly fade away

"Hit Me Running"

don’t sell me funeral plots
on late night television
if the end is already in sight

am I supposed to pull the sheets up to my neck,
count to zero,
smile, and cease?

no

keep your pills, in all their pretty colors:
celebrex, propecia, allegra, lipitor, zanex, viagra
keep them for scrabble
keep your rogaine, your facelifts
keep your death insurance
keep your graveyard reservations

hit me running.

let me go down swinging

make it a sport:

give me a ten-minute head start
and an obstacle course.

place Suzy la Follette on the far side of a mine field
and whisper, “she wants to kiss you”

target me on my feet
dodging doomsday’s in slow-mo bullet time

let me duel the grim reaper in a poetry slam

but let me lay where i fall
let the buzzards and coyotes
pick apart my bones
don’t stuff me and sew me up
waste my estate on alcohol for my wake
not formaldehyde
instead of wood for a coffin,
build me a funeral pyre
and set me ablaze like a pagan-warrior-king
sing songs,
roast marshmallows,
get drunk,
and recite your poetry
by the time we’re done
the grim reaper will beg for a vacation

i don’t have to win,
but let me believe I have a chance at immortality
even if the probability is one a billion.
those are good odds
if I’m the one

those who believe in death will die first

if I believe I’m going to live forever,
if I believe I can fly
I just might

so from the chickens before me,
sucking in their pot-bellies,
grooming their comb-overs,
I’ll craft wings from their plucked feathers
reach cruising altitude alongside Icarus
but outrace the sun

light doesn’t have the speed to catch me

these lungs won’t stop breathing,
these cells will break open replacements
this heart will beat out of sheer will
to last longer than timex or twinkies
and endure eternity
just to see how this story ends
and whether
the hero gets the girl
or a bullet to the brain

I will hold onto immortality
by my fingernails and the skin of my teeth
past the all epochs and ages and armageddons
so I can see if the end
begins the beginning all over again
or does the whole thing backwards
or upside down with inverted colors
or just stops
like in the Twilight Zone,
one second before the apocalypse

but my bet is that i
will finally sober up
take my medication
set the alarm
roll over
and turn the television off

All poems
Copyright © 2004
Christopher Fox Graham

Michelle Branch doesn't trust Mr. Lane. But she wants to lick my spine. Then nail me running

I've been guilty of this before

for Tarah Leija

some dreams taste better on paper
sketched sideways on a bedroom wall
beneath a poster of rock stars you’ll never be,
and the action-adventure flick you’ll never live,
lives lived like airbrushing on a pin-up,
displacing the dips in hips,
misplaced moles,
and a 9-year-old’s asphalt elbow scar
the toys changed in relation to height
from lego blocks to lovers lips
I’ve been guilty of this before
painting feminine heartbeats into the bedsheets
so I don’t have to sleep alone

some dreams are the unique conversation
between a freight train and puppy
that’s how I imagine she kisses
the tossing hips of a hundred latin generations
condensed into the pursing press
an oral tsunami surfing her tongue
looking for a seaside village to annihilate

the army should draft her kiss
have it lead a tank brigade
it should require a full biohazard suit
to avoid complete loss of strength in the knees
or special training to endure it
without getting lost in the middle
it should bear the same warning label
one sees on the side of an hydrogen bomb:
“if you can read this
abandon all hope”

the training manual suggests
that I should lean backwards and brace for impact,
bend as a buddhist and let her wash over me
but I want to resist,
push back enough so she feels my ricochet
send the lip-tip poetry of a hundred million boys
deep beneath the sheets of her skin
to nestle up on a pillow and whisper her to sleep
I want her grandchildren to feel
the swirling tremor of my tongue
in their whirling twirl of their fingerprints
her bone marrow should carve my name in memorial of the subatomic quake
her dna should add a third helix
so that future cells born after it can pass on the memory
whole new mythologies should articulate our tactile conversation
so that when this world implodes beneath itself
the next will speak that “in the beginning was the kiss
and it was good”

but sometimes
my dreams get the best of me
and I lose my now in the what-ifs
of kisses and heartbeats and poster pin-ups
I’ve been guilty of this before

somehow leftward

it still clings to these fingers
hangs on the strands of my hair
sleeps in the crevasses of my ear
like a drunk who wandered in to a pillow factory
every place in me is soft to the touch
the day after I saw her
in a split second glance leftward as cars passed.
a pocket of air surfs my veins
as a subway car carrying the memory
of the moment when my heart stopped
just long enough for every cell to stop thinking,
glance left too,
and watch her pass

decades from now
when the next filmmaker directs the story of my life
that moment will be the crux of the story,
a slow-mo scene lasting at least 7.5 minutes
a montage flashback of all her kisses
and the naked touch beneath bedsheets
interspersed with the glint of her windshield,
the shine of the black chassis,
her hair moving in the wind from her A/C,
and the bum-da-bum-bum of a stereo song
you can’t quite hear enough to repeat
but enough to know you know the tune
somehow

she was a somehow
a collection of what-ifs and maybes
and should-have-beens
that’s not how we should have lived our touches
and measured our accomplishments

again,
in the future feature film,
those unfortunate missed opportunities
will be reworked by the screenwriters
so that the moments that should have been
were
and the footsteps of her passing
turn to the left, stop, and smile
and welcome me back

my character,
tough as nails,
tall,
strong-jawed,
bigger than life,
and getting paid a cool 7 million for the role
will swing the car into traffic
maneuver the 15 wide lanes,
dodge a bus of ninja nuns throwing grenades
and fly down the freeway shoulder to catch her
flag her down
kiss away every extra in the scene
then propose, wed, and make love
on the hood of the car
(convenient,
that bus of nuns were passing
with a priest aboard)
while the score soars
the trumpets and violins crescendo
and the credits roll
pending the sequel

but reality
is more cost effective
and I kept driving
waiting for that pocket of air in my veins
to dissipate into my blood
or reach my heart and kill me

in the should-be
maybe of us
she’ll be back
but my feet carve the absence between us
she’ll never fill or follow;
the handprints in the air,
moments before she touched me,
won’t be crossed anytime soon
and my cells shed away the memory of her
with every brush of skin against my clothes
how long until they are wiped clean of her lips
and brushed away or painted over
by a new inhabitant of my poetry

life should not last this long

it should stop just short of the moment
when regrets can coalesce
or ferment into a marketable vintage
before we can make sense of the absence within us
somewhere far beyond the reach of our voice
or too fine to be seen with the naked eye
it should stop there
or reset
or pause until the past before it is forgotten
or made unimportant by some other factor
yet here spill nuanced moments of bodies in motion
passing ships in the broad daylight of a suburban thoroughfare
hanging on the lips of lover
who clings still to the echoed skin
of her neck, the dip behind her ears,
the space along her collarbone
and ridge of invisible hairs along her belly
arching into the whirlpool navel I used to sail whispers toward
watch them drop over the edge
while sailors aboard cried out to widowed wives ashore
and pale exaltations for salvation from their gods

dreams deserve to suffer for all the crimes they commit
they should be strung up alongside murderers
thieves and rapists
and be forced to live through what they do to us
eye for a hope, tooth for a faith
lose a limb or pay restitution
we should offer insurance for the cost of the actions
we commit under their spell
like the time we lose thinking
of the should-bes
what-ifs and maybes
and all the wasted poems
on all the wasted paper
wasting away the time of boys that would be better spent
manufacturing automobiles
or growing cotton
or teaching economics
to bright-eyed children who should learn that love
was endangered and went extinct decades ago
due to destruction of their natural environment
and over-hunting by man
and while some lived a while in zoos,
they refused to breed
and disappeared one-by-one-by-one
until they exist now only in museums, books, and memories
of those who saw them once
in a leftward glance

Potential Stage Names

Long Schlong McDong
Chastitti (with that spelling)
iambic
eGO
Gentleye or Jentleye
Gubernatorial
That-Guy
lyrico
eRECTshun
bestpoetinthehistoryoftheuniverse
Mr. Excellent
Sony McNike
G.I.C.U.2.
Rogaine Revenge
Minoxodytoxicital
Betterthanchristopherlane
Snickerdoodle
Corporate Sellout
Ka (short, unique, memorable)
WhiSomePeopleShouldnotBreed (WSPSB for short)
Brent Heffron 2
Mr. Michelle Branch
& (just the symbol)
The Last Jesus
Cunniling Gus
Shakespeare Reborn
Itoldyou Danger Wasmymiddlename
Tobias Sebastian McLancastershirebergstein IV
Mahatma Gandhi
s p a c e (you have to breathe between the letters)
iamArt
Kooch Jr.
Poster Boy
Al Koholic
Ninja Monkey
Reincarnate This
Kwizzle
Juniper Earthlover Mulberry
www.iamawebsite.com
Fullocrap
mankind's last hope
ð (pronounced as a hard ''th'' as in ''Thee'')
Phil
Imbored @ Work

Mad Mahatma Drinks Me Under the Table

i knew Gandhi back when he was a fighter
throwing fists in dark, low bars
with bikers and brits alike
no one called him "the short guy"
without getting a knuckle across the jaw
he was fun in those days
a raging booze hound, his drink of choice
was a screwdriver, straight up
no waitress could pass by
without him grabbing a feel
ah - what a hell raiser
we called him the Mad Mahatma
he could run a pool table blindfolded,
while reciting the Bhagavah Gita
backwards
they said he was the toughest tiger
this side of the Ganges
and he was

i remember the time we got loaded
and drove halfway to Bombay
in a stolen car with a bottle of SoCo
and three six-packs of Natty Ice in the front seat
there was that brief car chase with the cops
in some nameless suburb
after we ran a stop light
sideswiped a rickshaw
and didn't stop to swap information
if it wasn't for his aim with a .38
into the left front tire of the lead cruiser
we might have served some time
instead of waking up hours later
in the shadow of an elephant herd
eyeing us with contempt
we ate well that night

ah, Mad Mahatma,
the man who mixed raw eggs with his
long island iced teas
claiming it cured hangovers
Mad Mahatma
who busted down a bookie's door
for no more than $37 he was owed
Mad Mahatma
who got me drunk and tattooed
"reincarnate this"
across my ass
Mad Mahatma
where have you gone?
Mad Mahatma
where are you now?
Mad Mahatma
i'm tired of drinking alone

Hit Me Running

Don’t sell me funeral plots
on late night television
if the end is already in sight

am I supposed to pull the sheets up to my neck,
count to zero,
smile, and cease?

no

keep your pills, in all their pretty colors:
celebrex, propecia, allegra, lipitor, zanex, viagra
keep them for scrabble
keep your rogaine, your facelifts
keep your death insurance
keep your graveyard reservations

hit me running.

let me go down swinging

make it a sport:

give me a ten-minute head start
and an obstacle course.

place a beautiful girl on the far side of a mine field
and whisper, “she wants to kiss you”

target me on my feet
dodging doomsday’s in slow-mo bullet time

let me duel the grim reaper in a poetry slam

but let me lay where i fall
let the buzzards and coyotes
pick apart my bones
don’t stuff me and sew me up
waste my estate on alcohol for my wake
not formaldehyde
instead of wood for a coffin,
build me a funeral pyre
and set me ablaze like a pagan-warrior-king
sing songs,
roast marshmallows,
get drunk,
and recite your poetry
by the time we’re done
the grim reaper will beg for a vacation

i don’t have to win,
but let me believe I have a chance at immortality
even if the probability is one a billion.
those are good odds
if I’m the one

those who believe in death will die first

if I believe I’m going to live forever,
if I believe I can fly
I just might

so from the chickens before me,
sucking in their pot-bellies,
grooming their comb-overs,
I’ll craft wings from their plucked feathers
reach cruising altitude alongside Icarus
but outrace the sun

light doesn’t have the speed to catch me

these lungs won’t stop breathing,
these cells will break open replacements
this heart will beat out of sheer will
to last longer than timex or twinkies
and endure eternity
just to see how this story ends
and whether
the hero gets the girl
or a bullet to the brain

I will hold onto immortality
by my fingernails and the skin of my teeth
past the all epochs and ages and armageddons
so I can see if the end
begins the beginning all over again
or does the whole thing backwards
or upside down with inverted colors
or just stops
like in the Twilight Zone,
one second before the apocalypse

but my bet is that i
will finally sober up
take my medication
set the alarm
roll over
and turn the television off

Spinal Language

SPINAL LANGUAGE
(For Christmas)
give me a tattoo
deeper than skin
on the bones of my spine
onto the surface of every vertebrae
in every human tongue
tattoo their word for “poetry”
so that no language feels foreign anymore;
so that each human voice
can speak a word in me

let Arabic and Hebrew
sit side by side without throwing stones
let Cantonese and Hindi characters
link hands to hold Swahili and Hutu in a hammock
let Basque and Zulu finally touch lips Vietnamese
while Navajo rests it’s head on the shoulder of Malay

we speak six thousand tongues
but i’ll endure the pain and the time
so no human voice can speak to me
without being felt
down to the bone

let African syllables
share space with European articulations,
Asian morphemes,
and Aboriginal pronunciations,

line them up and engrave them
like an organic barcode written in Braille
readable by the worms that will one day convert me back
to the religion of dust and ash
that we believed in once
before this cult of flesh and blood
brought us out from clay
to play brief characters in the rain

let them taste the flavor of our words
let them consume poetry
and give it back to the soil
so the earth can feel the weight of our words
and not forget us
when we extinct ourselves
like the species before us

carve the last word
in morse code
at the base of my spine
so that I can hear the rhythm of the word
in my hips when i sleep
.--. --- . - .-. -.--
let dots and dashes spread
across all my bones in a virus of comprehension
so if i lose my voice
I can still speak a word
by tapping my fingers,
pounding a drum
or changing the rhythm of my heartbeat
to speak with my blood

imagine

six thousand tongues
playing my spine
in 33-part harmony
making a symphony of me
with a melody that reverberates
up my spinal cord
echoing louder and louder in the tunnel
amplifying the compounding music
all the way to the base of my brain
where it detonates
and resonates inside my skull
ricocheting
six thousand new expressions
for the same word
with the voices of six billion singers
into my six trillion thoughts
until I can take no more chaos
and their song explodes from my lips

offering the world
a moment of synchronized understanding
of one song
of one voice
of one man
for one instant

before the world blinks
loses focus
and listens to the echo
slowly fade away

Ex-Girlfriend Haiku #31

all I really want
from you is a reason to
be nice for a change

Election Year Mudslinging

Must be read in the voice of a political attack ad.

Christopher Lane
claims he’s right for America,
but what is he really hiding?

do you think you know
the real Christopher Lane?
since Mr. Lane moved to Arizona
republicans retook the white house
and both houses of congress
since Mr. Lane moved to Arizona
3 million Americans have lost their jobs
the economy has faltered
and we went to war in Iraq
where are the weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Lane?

Christopher Lane won’t tell you
about his connections to Enron
the dot-com bubble
the space shuttle Columbia disaster
the earthquake in Iran
or the breakup of Ben Affleck and J-Lo
what are you hiding, Christopher Lane?

Christopher Lane went to china last year
he claims it as a vacation
was it really?
or is Mr. Lane a dirty red communist?
what is he really hiding?

Christopher Lane seems to ask a lot of questions
he has a poem called “how many more?”
and one called “can you spare some change?”
and his first book was called,
“who is your god now?”
Lots of questions, Mr. Lane
but I think the American people
deserve some answers
why won’t you answer the questions, Mr. Lane?

lets look at some comparisons:
both Mr. Lane and George W Bush are from Texas,
both Mr. Lane and Jeffrey Dahmer wore tennis shoes
both Mr. Lane and Unabomber Ted Kazinski
lived in a trailer in the woods
both Mr. Lane and Napoleon stood 5 foot 7 inches tall
both Mr. Lane and Adolf Hitler ... had facial hair

so why would you trust Mr. Lane?

what are you hiding Mr. Lane?
why won’t you answer, Mr. Lane?
it’s time to get tough, Mr. Lane
and answer the real questions of America:
who is really financing the NORAZ Poets, Mr. Lane?
where is Osama bin Laden, Mr. Lane?
how did you vote in the 2000 election, Mr. Lane?
will the Mars Rover discover water and the evidence of life, Mr. Lane?
did you put the "Bop" in the "Bop-Shu-Bop," Mr. Lane?
do you “got milk”, Mr. Lane?
what was Willis talkin’ ‘bout, Mr. Lane?
where were you on the night of November 31st, Mr. Lane?
what is the square root of
twelve-thousand-nine-hundred-eight-three,

Mr. Lane?
why won’t a woman sleep with me, Mr. Lane?

until Christopher Lane answers these questions,
America can’t trust you –

but who can they trust?
who should win this slam?

Christopher Fox Graham
he’s good for America,
he’s good for Arizona,
and he deserves at least a 9.7


“Hi, I’m Christopher Fox Graham,
and I approve this message.

The Peach is a Damn Sexy Fruit

the Peach is a damn sexy fruit
if I could love a fruit like a woman
I would love a Peach
strong but soft
sweet but tart
the fuzz tickles my nose
and the sticky dewiness
is finger-licking good

you can keep your apples
Mr. Johnny Appleseed
that turn brown in minutes

you can have your bitter grapefruit
the blinder of eyes at breakfast

tempt me not tomátoes or tomătoes!
cucumbers and zucchinis
those transvestite fruit
masquerading as vegetables!
for shame!
be true to yourselves!
do not deny that you were born as
and will always be fruit!

Coconuts require hammers, screwdrivers, or stones
and I am not into fetishes

Raspberries are too fragile
and can not love my volatility

Strawberries went corporate and sold out
now just fruits of the Man

Bananas are too exotic, too high maintenance
I have no patience for their ego

Cherries are but pop culture prostitutes
in everything from couch syrup to antacids to condoms

give me truth!
give me tenderness!
give me consistency!
give me a Peach!
give me Peaches!
give me millions of Peaches
Peaches for me
millions of Peaches
Peaches for free

you can eat a Peach voraciously
diving into juicy goodness
dribbling down your chin,

or eat it slowly in slices – one by one
you can nip off the skin
bit by tender bit
in a slow seduction
and tongue and suck it to the end

or you can rub that Peach into your face
eating it like a drunk starving monkey
and leave the orgasmic dew
on your cheeks and lips for hours

when complete,
no matter how consumed
you have the core
as a reminder that we are all the same
beneath it all
when our flesh, youth, and vitality are gone

yet...

you can bury the Peach core
to be born again
because the Peach embodies hope
because the Peach embodies life
the Peach is a message
the Peach is sensual
the Peach is you and me
the Peach is a damn sexy fruit

Copyright 2003 © Christopher Fox Graham

Letter to my tribe

You never know
what may happen
how fate plays games with our lives
rolls the dice
cut chords or ties them
speed bumps, heart attacks, or heart breaks
the way the words and worlds
shake this fragile etch-a-sketch existence

sixty years is nothing
in the blink of the eye of the earth
cities gone in minutes
remember Pompeii?
and yet we have trouble
with 4-letter words
like miss, love,
and hope
it takes holidays, accidents, and funerals,
to bring souls together
like we were meant to be,
to say what we should have said
when we had the chance
before we stand at graves
or on seashores
or staring out into open skies
with wrinkled eyes,
whispering, "remember when?"

in days before chat-room romances
Technicolor campfires
depressed fireside chats,
before the pomp-and-circumstance of the parliaments,
royal courts, basilicas, cathedrals
before churches
before warrior houses
before town halls,
kin gatherings,
and the great rituals

before it all
the family,
the campfire,
the speaker
was the word,

the thought beneath all our skins,
that although we could never conquer it all,
or understand it all
or even see it all
we could know each other's words,
know their kiss, touch, and caress
and enjoy the birth
dancing, loving, living, dying, and death
like we were meant to be
a tiny tribe
on a tiny world
where we all share a common name
and the word

Cut out my heart and leave it in a gin and tonic on top of a Dave Matthews Band cd

This is beauty,
the way skin bounces off clouds
shouted to a thickened sky
of a heaven too tired to listen
and I feel a step closer to god
when i contemplate our creation

you know we were made in the image
of a drunk deity
who didn't know her/is right from her/is left
tried to shorten our days with death and plague
but we kept coming back
till s/he woke in a hangover
and realized what s/he'd done
was a little, um, crazy at the time
a little short on the why’s and how’s
of how we came to be
left us between two dead soldiers of Sam Adams light
on her/is best friend's neighbor's kitchen counter
'cause s/he was watching her/is figure
tries to hide her/is face in the bar
when we come staggering through,
asking to use the phone.
and begging the bartender to serve us the wine
of the vine that softened judas' loyalty
then asking the gravedigger to bury us
close enough to count raindrops
of the days till judgment
when pulled from the soil like treasure
we can recall our days before it all went downhill
and convince the final judge
that we're worth sparing
worth including in the finality
then sing a song
soft enough to make the towers crumbles,
tarnish those pearly gates
and force the whole mess
to come crashing down
when heaven falls
the boom will resound through history
in our heartbeats,
and the echoes will come 72 per minute
there,
put your hand on your sternum
can you feel the echo in your chest?
the end has already happened
now we're just words arching toward that final
"the end"
before the acknowledgements,
index,
and afterward from the publisher,
characters on a page.
and tonight,
I glimpse the reader's eyes

Wanderer

Side stepping the truth
The poet kept his feet moving
Across the steel and stone
Wandering the back of the fallen colossus
Searching for words that wouldn’t bite back
Like the mosquitoes of the world he came from
Words that didn’t suck blood from his skin
Words that didn’t drain him
Words that didn't itch when they left him
He walked through open fields of wild sentences
Moving in great herds like buffalo,
And packs of phrases hunting lonely consonants
Down by the water’s edge
Clichés clinging to tree branches
And the skies filled with flocks of vowels
Flying south for the winter
He found only one word that didn’t harm him
One word he could keep as a pet
Hold it close to his chest as he explored
Until it grew and became his lover
One word that asked for nothing but affection
And to be kissed softly by moonlight
He knew one day it would kill him
Slit his throat while he slept
Or drown him down by the river
Where fragments swam alongside words
Of forgotten vocabularies
But he was happy
As long as it loved him

How Do You Feel?

i feel like a skin tree
roots that uproot at a moments notice,
limbs that stretch toward to sun
warmed in the morning kiss of sunrise
fingers entending beyond imagination
and from their tips
ink drips new blood
thoughts falling like acorns
to bury themselves in the minds of man
to sprout new poet trees
new poet-trees
new poetries
new poetry
in the image of me

I Want to Conquer the Sun

these hands stay idle too long in a day
they should be freed from this wage slavery
so they can lewis-and-clark the crevasses of my skull
and pull out the stories hiding in the shadows
but without a reason, why write?
bored soldiers grow bellies without a war
the sound of shrapnel and artillery
keeps the skin thin and trim
just like the art of this poet
gnashing teeth and cutting words
the better to invade minds with,
i'm not content with norman beaches
or the hills of anzio
i want to conquer the sun

dream deferred

i smelled you on my skin today
sugary sweet
as if you had slipped in while I slept
traced footsteps on my eyelids
left before I woke
no notes on the nightstand
no kisses on the cheek
no lipstick “I love you”s
scrawled on the mirror
wandering specter of
the poltergeist of my haunted head
you creak the stairs
flicker the lights
and appear in reflections
an apparition of my past life;
a past wife that mysteriously disappeared
and now haunts the halls
like a Jane Austin novella

your absence is unbearable
so I’m inventing the technology
to clone you from your fingertips
duplicate your smile
from the one tattooed to my lips

but replicating your motion proves a complication
because you are anything but tame
salsa and samba
shake your hips
like a sidewinder
though I never saw you dance
but the venom of that vision
makes my limbs limp
don’t suck the poison out
it hurts
how I love it
it hurts how I
love it
watching you toss those hips
like a South American coup
every other second

Lorca and Neruda
spin in their sonnets
because the were born too late
to know you
Pablo keeps asking for an introduction
and Federico is full of false promises
begging to see your skin

but only I know
how you are three shades more bronze than me
a color that does not exist except on you
so I’m spending way too much time
trying to match your complexion
like they do paint at Home Depot;
soon it will cover every inch
of every room in my house

only I know how to read the cartography of your back like a treasure map
charting a course starting at your neckline
meandering down your spine
to the basin of your back
just above those vicious hips

only I know the imprint of your aroused aroma
and could bottle it as ‘Arizona nights’
but Hilfiger and Klein couldn’t pay me enough
to surrender a drop of your scent
I told them Tommy cologne on day-old skin
and cold tortillas fresh from the fridge
once reminded me of you
the same way warm bread
makes one recall grandmother long gone
or peaches bring back the morning
after you traded your virginity
for whatever this is called …
but their marketing departments
said that analogy wasn’t economically viable

it doesn’t matter
because you never made sense
like freeway speed bumps,
dehydrated water
a Republican with a soul
or martyrs who would rather burn than lie

you’d think a burning saint
would smell like ambrosia or lavender
but they reek like your arm
brushing against the carburetor
indistinguishable from a sinner’s skin

the difference between that scar and a sign
is interpretation compounded by time

which means we’re a circumstance
and a coincidence
closer to god than we thought
which is closer than I’d rather be most days
so close, in fact,
you can almost smell it

Adriatic Haiku

I have never sailed
along the Dalmation coast
do the boats have spots?

CFG loves the Cop who busted him [smile]

Last night I went to hunt down KuK to wish him a happy birthday. Couldn't find the bastard, dagnabit.

En route, I scored a chimichanga at one of the 24-hour Mexican food restaurants that speckle Phoenix.

Inside, I found Sergeant Rameriz, the Tempe Police Dept desk sergeant who was on duty when I got arrested last year. I smiled, he smiled, I asked if he remembered me. He said he did, "you were the drunk kid who was giving astrology advice." I had been giving advice to the officers on duty about when they should have kids compatible to the personalities of them and their wives. He asked if I'd been in trouble since and I told him no. Sgt. Rameriz told the officer he was sitting with that I was "some wild entertainment" that night.

Guess that even drunk and belligerent, Christopher Fox Graham is charmingly entertaining. Yay me.

My First of Many Kat Sanford Love Ballads

Sedona was great. I rolled up north with my ever-present hetro-companion KuK and his friend Kevin. Now Kevin and I have had a unique relationship. He and KuK were friends long before I met the boy and on the first night I met Kevin, we got incredibly drunk at a bar and I hit on his wife. With good reason, he wanted to kick my ass, but as time passed, he came to realize that I'm just a drunken moron, not a moral-less pervert.

In any case, we rolled up to Humbolt, Arizona, just outside Dewey, Arizona, which is outside of Middle-of-fucking-nowhere to visit KuK's mom. She is delightfully crazy and no longer on her meds. Crazy, but in a fun way.

We went to the swimming hole on Oak Creek.

Karega from Houston, Texas was the feature. His performance was off, and he had to restart a few times, but his material was good. The audience adored him.

The slam was long but good. By pure fate, three of the four weakest poets went first and were cut after round one. Scores were all over the place. In round one, some scores were as low as 4.5 but there were some 10s. Craziness.

Rounds 1 and 2 were cumulative; round 3 was a fresh slate.

There is an Honour mystique I try to live by. There are 3 types of slam poets:
Virgins (i.e., "I've just written my first poem, now I must slam it. I say 'goddess' 'thee' 'thou' 'faith' and 'love' 90 times." Often these poets don’t come back because they’re blown their life’s load in a single shot.)
Regulars (i.e., "I slam on occasion because it’s Tuesday and I’m here. I write a little. They often do well in a single venue, rarely venture out, and sometimes get features here and there.”) Regulars have a job and write poetry on the side.
Stars (i.e., Member of National Team, tour regularly, travel to other venues, sometimes states away. Can feature anywhere, have big repertoires, chapbooks, and network on the national level.) Conversely, all stars write poetry and have a job on the side.
All poets started at the bottom and all have the potential to rise, if they work hard. In a perfect world, all Stars have an equal shot to beat each other in a fair slam, and all Stars beat all Regulars, etc.

David Luben from Prescott had told me before the slam (quote), "I can't believe I'm on the same stage as Christopher Fox Graham. I'm honored. I've be listening to your CD for months." Now that threw me. A compliment that also doubled as veiled self-doubt about his work, which is great, by the way. His humility was honest, but now I was bound by my Honour to beat him.

Additionally, from Flagstaff was Aaron Johnson, whom I had judged in a Speech and Debate tournament in Glendale. I introduced myself to him erroneously thinking we’d never met, then he told me I gave him a low score in his S&D round, but my comments were good. He’s buddies with Tony D, and has a performance style reminiscent of Tony D and Nick Fox, though not as good as either. Many Speech and Debate poets are comfortable with the highly stylized performance style they’re taught. Once they break from that, like Josh Fleming and David f. Escobedo have, and as Tony D is beginning to, they become comfortable in their own skin, they seem more natural and most honest. Their writing becomes more natural and most honest too. So both these boys put me in a position of 'slam authority' in one fashion or another. So this wasn’t just a fun “let’s do whatever” slam. My reputation as a good slam poet was on the line. You can't get beat by a protégé on your first battle. It ruins the Honour mystique.

I had eight pieces I was fiddling with through the whole first round, planning my strategy. Humor was doing okay, but then one poet's humor poem about a family reunion tanked and threw me off. Jessica XXX from Prescott/Arcosanti did a serious poem and scored high, and young David Luben from Prescott did a humorously ironic piece about not wanting to sleep with fat women, instead preferring anorexic model types. Being a bigger guy, the piece was powerfully ironic, then got serious at the end. He scored a well-deserved 29.0 and was in first.

So I had to meet or beat his 29.0. I was lucky enough to go last so I had 13 poet performances before me to base my choice on. At that point, I had whittled my eight poems down to five to select. In the end, I went serious with a poem I’ve never slammed north of Anthem. I picked it because of the four, it had the most ‘you-must-pay-attention-to-this-line’ lines. One of those pieces where every line is interesting and poetic and has no fluff or filler building to some great final line or idea. I too scored a 29.0 and tied for first.

I shook hands and made pleasantries with all the poets whose work I liked, which was almost everyone on stage. David Luben and I, now broken-in congratulated each other. We both knew that we were the top gunners in the round and the battle was between us. Like two equal champions of rival armies, and both aware of the Honour code. No holds barred in round two.

Because round two technically didn’t matter at this point, because the dramatic variation in scores meant I could score as low as a 25 and if everyone else pulled a 30, I’d still make round 3. So I could afford some risk.

Ten minutes before the slam, I wrote perhaps the silliest, stupidest, funniest poem. This was my round two piece. Scores were higher and the mood was tenser. So I pulled out this poem and scored a 30.0 Perfect score on a ten-minute-old poem giving me the top score in round two. Jesus H. Christ.

Suzy La Follette cleansed our palate between rounds.

Round three, all guns came out. Jessica XXX went first and pulled a 29.8 with a piece about appearance. Shit, she set the bar. The next three poets didn’t even come close, and David Luben’s poem also scored well beneath this. His piece was good, but he had other works to pull from that could have taken the round. It was a risk that didn’t make it.

I went 5th of 6th and slammed with another new poem, though I had written it two days before. I was still writing parts through rounds one and two. I thought it went too long, but was under the mark, and took a lot out of me. One of those ‘I-will-collapse-when-I-sit-down’ poems. I wasn’t looking too seriously at scores and thought I only scored a 29.7 (10, 10, 10, 9.7, and a 5th score). I felt great about the slam and could tell I touched a lot of people in the audience. I could feel the emotion reverberating back to me during that poem. But I figured I took 2nd, so I listened to the last poet Rebekah Crisp finish the round with all the pressure off. Turns out that 5th score was actually a 9.9 meaning I won by 0.1.

Christopher Lane offered a victory poem, but I couldn’t top my round two and three poems that night, so I offered it to Karega who did his best piece of the night.

After the slam, this irritation a blue beret caught me before I could take to this cute girl I had seen in the back of the audience. I couldn’t break away and watched her pass by three times. By the time I could negotiate a smooth way out of this verbal trap, she was gone and my heart was broken. Dammit!

We headed back to Christopher Lane’s for bonfire and conversation. Almost all the slammers were there, but I ducked out to talk to Akasha, Lane’s amazing fiancé. Eventually Christopher Lane, Suzy La Follette, and Karega were inside the trailer talking poetry, poetic theory, and audience reaction while the other slammers were around the bonfire.

Only Kevin, KuK, Jessica XXX and I spent the night, all curled up the trampoline, so by morning, we had all slid together. Tight quarters.

The four of us went to breakfast (Akasha and Lane went to work at dawn), then went to the swimming hole. Cold as fuck. Back at Lane’s, we went down to the creek, hopped on rocks, crashed and then got thrown out of a wedding reception by the father of the bride. Fun, fun.

I wish Katie Wirsing had been there though.




Yesterday, KuK and I snuck into Harkins and went theater-hopping again.
Once Upon A Time in Mexico. Sucked. They tried too hard to complicate the plot and just seemed like a dry fuck with mariachi music. Just go see Desperado again.
Matchstick Men. Nicholas Cage is fun to watch ‘cause he has the character down. Con movie with a double con that we saw coming about halfway through. Worth the $6.50 (if you pay it).
S.W.A.T. Cop flick. Action flick. Formulaic plot. Character actors:
Young hot shot with chip on his shoulder
Badass, streetwise chick
Family man who gets shot
Greedy cop who turns traitor for the money
Token Black buddy
Go it alone leader who rival his boss but knows his team rocks.
As long as you’re not expecting anything new or innovative, it’s not a bad movie though. Also worth the $6.50 if you pay it.

They Held Hands

On a commonplace Tuesday morning,
not unlike that Sunday morning
60 years before, destined for infamy
they held hands as they fell

It was a working Tuesday
a date on the calendar
a morning like the morning before
but now they found themselves
standing on the window sill
of the 92nd floor
overlooking the city
and they felt weightless

They were not thinking
about the cause-and-effect history
of textbooks and CNN sound bytes
they weren’t debating the geopolitical ramifications leading up to that morning
he had decaf
she had a bearclaw and an espresso
and they talked about Will & Grace

jets impregnated buildings with infernos
and now the fire was burning
and the smoke was rising
and it was getting hard to breathe
even after they smashed the window out
the inferno was swelling
it had reached their floor
their stairwells were gone
and the options now
were to burn
or to fall

when the human animal realizes death is inevitable
psychologists say we want control
over those final moments
choosing suicide over surrender is a healthy reaction
because we choose to accept annihilation
rather than letting it choose us

So on one side
is unbearable heat
roaring flames
acrid smoke
and screams of the suffering
On the other side
fresh air
suicide is the final act of free will
that keeps the consciousness intact
even as it is destroyed

but they were not thinking about psychology
they were not thinking about terrorism
the debate about responsibility,
retalaiation,
wars, flags, and Patriot Acts
can wait until September 12th
this morning belongs to them
because they did not have a tomorrow
the true terror of that morning
is to know what they were thinking
as they decided then whether
to burn
or to fall
now, imagine having that conversation
with the stranger
sitting next to you:
The barricade at the door is on fire
the extinguisher is empty
we are blinded by the smoke
and on the windowsill of the 92nd floor
we wait until flames lick our clothes
before we lean forward
and choose that moment to fall
others who fell were scrambling
or screaming or on fire
but we held hands as we fell

survivors of falls from extreme heights report
that falls are slow-motion transcendence
and the experience is almost “mystical”

I don’t know if they felt “mystical”
I know it takes
1 …
2 …
3 …
4 …
5 …
6 …
7 …
8.54 seconds to fall 1,144 feet

just enough time to say a prayer
or regret a memory
or ask forgiveness
or say goodbye
or wonder how the sky can be so perfectly blue
on such a beautiful morning