Flagstaff poets feature at Sedona Poetry Slam on July 30

Photos courtesy of Tara Graeber

The Flagstaff National Poetry Slam Team, Taylor Marie

Kayonnie-Ehrlich, from left, nodalone, Valence and Maple

Dewleaf, will perform at the Sedona Poetry Slam on

Saturday, July 30.

Flagstaff poets feature at Sedona Poetry Slam on July 30

Sedona’s Studio Live hosts a poetry slam Saturday, July 30, starting at 7:30 p.m. featuring the four members of the Flagstaff National Poetry Slam Team.

The slam follows on the heels of the recent premiere of the documentary poetry film “Louder Than a Bomb,” offering Sedona audiences a live poetry slam to watch, judge or even compete in.

The four-poet team will share the stage with some of the Southwest's top poets pouring out their words in an explosion of expression.

All poets are welcome to compete for the $50 grand prize.

----- The poets of the Flagstaff National Poetry Slam Team -----

nodalone

Originally from East Lansing, Mich., Shaun Srivastava, aka nodalone, moved to Flagstaff in 2008 to attend Northern Arizona University.

While quietly writing poetry for many years, nodalone has only recently begun performing his spoken word at slams and various events throughout Arizona.

Preferring to use his platform to address current political, cultural, and social issues, the poet gives a performance that captures the power of the issue in a personal and passionate style.

He will complete degrees in both exercise science and psychology in 2012, with plans to pursue a master’s degree in psychology.

Maple Dewleaf

Born of the smoggy heart of Texas the youngest brother of five to a single mother, Maple Dewleaf was brought into this world a free spirit. As a child he would spend most of his time barefoot and in the forests of Northern Arizona. To this day Huckleberry Finn remains his biggest hero.

He became a significant member of Flagstaff’s poetry slam at the age of 16 while experiencing a slight case of house arrest fever. Having first hitched a ride at the age of 13, swears to this day the best way to catch a ride is to look very undetermined but still focused on something just over the horizon of view.

Dewleaf has worked as a grocery bagger, fence painter, fast-food cook, fry-cook, door installer, the wise hippie janitor of a truck stop, and various street side attractions including musician with classically trained vocals, alleyway poet, psychedelic amusement and $5 dare-taker extraordinaire.

At the ripe old age of almost 20 years, he was given the greatest gift he ever received: Wildflower Clementine, his beautiful daughter. Most days Maple can be found meditating with his gorgeous wife, whom he would crawl hands and knees through barrel cactuses for: Patches Dewleaf and little baby Wildflower, in the hidden woods of Anywhere, America.

Taylor Marie Kayonnie-Ehrlich

Taylor Marie Kayonnie-Ehrlich was born and raised in Flagstaff, Arizona. Fifteen years later she started spitting poems at Flagslam.

The first time she slammed, she shook like a leaf, but now she commands the audience.

Now at 18, she is staring into a world of open doors, not sure of which ones to walk through.

She believes that life is all about fun and happiness, and we must learn to make it just that.

Like a child, she’s constantly curious and eager to see what life’s all about, and eager to find out.

Writing is one of the many ways she expresses her audacity for life. Performing her poetry for three years now, she believes that slam poetry isn’t just a competition, but a tool, one to be heard.

Valence

Tyler Sirvinskas, aka Valence, is a poet among other things.
Valence has been a slam poet since 2010 and new to the format of slam, but not to the art of writing.

After living 14 years in Chicago, he has spent six years and counting in Arizona.

----- To slam -----

To compete in the slam, poets need at least three original poems, each three minutes long or shorter. No props, costumes or musical accompaniment are permitted. All types of poetry are welcome.

The slam will be hosted by Sedona poet Christopher Fox Graham, who represented Northern Arizona on the Flagstaff team at five National Poetry Slams between 2001 and 2010.

Founded in Chicago in 1984, poetry slam is a competitive artistic sport. Poetry slams are judged by five randomly chosen members of the audience who assign numerical value to individual poets’ contents and performances.

The Flagstaff National Poetry Slam Team, Taylor
Marie Kayonnie-Ehrlich, from left, nodalone, Maple
Dewleaf and Valence, will perform at the Sedona
Poetry Slam on Saturday, July 30.

Poetry slam has become an international artistic sport, with more than 100 major poetry slams in the United States, Canada, Australia and Western Europe.

Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 the day of the event, available at Golden Word Books and Music, 3150 W. SR 89A, and online at studiolivesedona.com.

The team will also have its new 28-page chapbook "Gossamer Outrage" available. All proceeds from ticket and chapbook sales help the 2011 team - Northern Arizona's 10th – fund its trip to Boston to represent our region of the state against 71 other teams at the National Poetry Slam in August.

Studio Live is located at 215 Coffee Pot Drive, West Sedona.

For more information, call (928) 282-2688 or visit http://studiolivesedona.com.

I Can't Find Home

searching for home
somewhere at the end of this road
past the pulloffs
where asphalt turns to gravel
it's waiting
an open door
breezes through the windows

she's waiting on the sofa
reading leather-bound brilliance
heavy in weighty words
naked phrases stripped of pretensions
Aristophanes or Twain
Chomsky or Churchill
penciling notes in the margins
waiting for me to arrive
so we can discuss their meanings
over sandwiches or leftovers

but this road curves onward
I've misplaced the address
forgotten the landmarks
in my absence, she built a new mailbox
and forgot to inform me
so I keep moving,
shifting gears from second to third to fourth
take a wayward left at the pine trees
U-turn out of cul-de-sacs
drive slow past open windows
wondering if she'll wander past,
peeling the day's clothes over sore shoulders
aching for my warm hands

palms hollowed, craving her soles
pressing thumbs into toepads
circling, circling, circling the day away
while she reads me her favorite passages
something disproving omnipotence
the fragility of governments
the empires of men fading into dust
as though they never saw the end coming
thought how of all the civilizations
rising, conquering, declining, collapsing
they would somehow survive
the march of time

this road may be the one
I remember willow trees, somehow
the drops of leftover rain from leafy fingertips
the splash on windshield glass
wet fireworks beckoning my arrival
like a king come home from crusade
but none of the houses look familiar
the breeze smells unfamiliar
we've never walked these sidewalks after sunset
that, that I would remember

she makes a cup of tea
empties the French press
puts away my cup
I'll be too late
for caffeine tonight
she checks the kitchen clock
gazes once more out the window
for a pair of pickup truck headlights pulling in
walks barefoot down the hall
strips shirt from torso
jeans from hips,
and for a moment,
as left-hand heel brushes thigh,
imagines it's mine
removing the denim husk from her skin

night falls and shapes lose their structure
windows and open doors glimmer with
other people's dreams
found homes
lovers encased in embraces
like hers I once remembered
or have yet to feel
keep moving and if I can't find her
if no door looks like home
head back to the rented bedroom
where all my books wait undressed
naked to her gazes
tomorrow I'll try to find home again

"Staring at the Milky Way With One Eye Closed" anew

I'm working on two new chapbooks. Took some self-portraits last night for one poem with I really liked. The new photos and the old poem:

Staring at the Milky Way With One Eye Closed

26 Sept. 2006-15 May 2007

Staring at the Milky Way with one eye closed
details in the clouds of shapes elude pinpointing
the brightest ones egotistically outshine their humble siblings
burning their age-old sociology over distance and time
only now reaching my half-blind awareness

if I lay still for an hour
the whole sky rotates enough for me to feel
the morning hours away
but for now, the night holds sway
that dark Earth below holds its secrets
coyotes yelp in their hide-and-seeks between the lights
marking the miles between irrelevant cities

I haven’t seen shooting stars in months
and the eager sky readily supplies signal flares on the periphery
as if they lamented my absence too

but in the tender brilliance of falling stars
sending goodbyes to satellites
stereoscopic disability flattens everything into two dimensions

denied depth, the hazy constellations stand near enough
to reach out and reorder as if i spilled them on velvet
i reached up with both hands
and gazed at each one through my fingers
and pretended for a moment i was god,
and I remember feeling this childlike before ...

although the days tick by in perfect chronological sequence
the specks above tonight measure the same distance apart as always
and the constellations remain impervious
to our rearrangements, reinterpretations and renamings

you see, I learned all their names once
at the same time I was structuring the proper order of the alphabet
my father, raised in a family too poor to afford telescopes,
would relate the stories of each one as we lay on the roof
cheaper than television
we shared the stars

he explained how geometric shape of hunter, virgin and beast
came to rise from earthly mothers
into Greek mythology
and into the heavenly bodies
we still use to find our way home

what stories he had heard at the same age I was
and remembered until he had a son
and which ones he manufactured at the moment
to keep my childish attention skyward
I’m still uncertain because I lost him years ago

but taken from this soil
and raised into the cosmos for a night
I sailed on the satellite of his voice into the exosphere
as he surreptitiously showed me
how all science fiction writers
came to dream their space opera epics

you see, their fathers instilled in them
the dream of sailing between

the Dark Side

and the Light

but the distance between stars is not measured in parsecs
but in the imagination of a boy thinking his father is godlike
because if you tilt your head ... just so
and remember that even angels
paint connect-the-dots pictures
the clump to the right in the shape of an arrow
with the semi-circle that arcs out from the side
really does look like a hunter
if you believe the man who tells you it does
and when he asks
if you can see it
for the first time in your young life
the way you see the world actually matters to someone
because it means he’s doing the right thing

“Yes, dad, I see the hunter,
he chases through the clouds and gases hiding in the shadows and staying downwind of his prey.
You can tell by the way the Milky Way is drifting to the Southwest tonight”

and in the stars I had my father
he told me the stories of the placement
and calculated the precise mathematics:
“These two stars will always be the distance between two fingers.”
“That constellation is always the breadth of one palm,
if you stretch out your thumb to touch that star first.”

the measurements in the heavens never change
because they give us a path home
despite the distance we grow from it
I wish I had known that then,
because I would have told that boy
to place his father somewhere in the heavens
so that he would forever know
the number of steps it takes to find him
but this rotating world
hides the stars behind the sun for half a day
and in the daylight
my father found a place to hide from me
so now I can’t even find him in the night

I still have the stars and the stories
but the man who taught them to me
disappeared into them both
so never ask me again why I don’t believe in God
look to the stars,
find him,
sketch out what points define his shape
and point him out to a boy still on a rooftop
tell him you can see god
in the geometry of random placement
because to me, today
those shape are just specks
I know anyone can rename the constellations
the measurements above never change
but we don’t learn from their loyalty
how to live
so if you find a man who looks like me
with twenty more revolutions on his face
lying on a rooftop, measuring the distance between stars with his fingers
tell him to stop counting
because the mathematics of the constellations never change
no matter how many satellites we send up to double-check
it’s the people down below who grow apart
and most never find a way back home

but sometimes there are boys
who remember they way fathers could be godlike
when they were too young
and too stupid to know any better

but on some nights like these,
when that boy,
now this poet
gazes skyward with one eye open
he imagines that his father is alongside him
and for a while,
before his vision gets hazy
a certain mass of glowing dots
really does look like a hunter
heading back across the heavens
to teach his son
everything he knows
about hunting stars

The Phoenix Haboob of July 5th, 2011

The Phoenix Haboob of July 5th, 2011 from
A haboob — هبوب in Arabic — is an intense sandstorm commonly observed in arid regions throughout the world.
During thunderstorm formation, winds move in a direction opposite to the storm’s travel, and they will move from all directions into the thunderstorm.
When the storm collapses and begins to release precipitation, wind directions reverse, gusting outward from the storm and generally gusting the strongest in the direction of the storm’s travel.
They have been observed in the Sahara, as well as across the Arabian Peninsula, throughout Kuwait, and in the most arid regions of Iraq.
African haboobs result from the northward summer shift of the inter-tropical front into North Africa, bringing moisture from the Gulf of Guinea. Haboob winds in the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Kuwait are frequently created by the collapse of a thunderstorm.

Mike Olbinski on Vimeo.

Best Birthday Ever

I spent two hours on Skype video chat with Azami last night, me in Arizona, she in British Columbia, at the beginning of her 25th birthday. Best birthday present I've ever been able to give. And I love this photo, a screen shot of her mid-laugh.

My Hands are in the Mail

a postal carrier whose name I can never know
carries in a package bound for your doorstep:
my paired hands
ten digits linked across two palms
tied with the ribbon of wrists
holding in blood and sinew

I mailed them to you
they became yours when they brushed your skin
held your jaw steady for these lips --
which I can’t remove
lest I lose the last means to whisper your name –
to first fall into your kiss

swallowed by your hair
they’ve never felt home affixed to my radius and ulna
since they caressed your humerus, femur, metatarsus
they’ve longed to be held aside your sternum
cradle your zygomatic bone as you slumber
massage the day’s strains from muscles held tight
between scapula and clavicle

if you want to commit a felony
use these hands to stain the evidence
wrap them around the murder weapon
the poisoned tumbler
the rifle stock
the claw hammer
as you leave the scene
and they will suffer imprisonment
so you may walk free and unburdened

if you don't want them,
pass them onto a stranger
so wherever he or she may wander
there’s a warm hand on the shoulder
assuring in lonely nights
that someone watches over
come foreclosure, homelessness or widowing
lithe fingertips to soothe weary muscles
a palm in which to place dreams and regrets
when the cancer beats the heart into submission
in the sterility of hospital bedrooms
facing the reaper
every man, woman and child
wants to know they left a final handshake behind
a lasting adieu to the pulse of human history

or give them to a child
so a father figure is never too far
a pair of masculine hands to shoo away boogiemen
applaud even if they miss all the play’s lines
cheer on the winning goal
and should war or workplace strife rob them
of a bearded grandfather to play peek-a-boo
with their own children
these hands I give you
to give them
to hold them tight in their grieving
sit silent shiv’ah in the candlelight
wipe tears from unwashed cheeks

these hands are yours
as they’ve always been
do with them what you will

I hope you keep them in your pack
beneath canteen and Swiss Army knife
folded gently in a journal
and when you find yourself
alone alongside a darkened road
under quiet stars shining as nightlights
for your ease into slumber
I hope you pull them out
feel the warmth I imbued into them
like a pagan incantation
and as crickets wonder from where
the second interloper in their living room
suddenly came from
hold them close like a blanket
let the unselfishness of fingertips
soothe away all your daily aches
let them shelter your weary limbs
keep you warm through the night
the parcel postage finally paid
as you permit me to hold you one last time

When graffiti is OK

Graffiti in Paul & Jerry's bar, Jerome, Arizona.

Azami, if she were an animated girlfriend

What was it like to date Azami?

Kind of like this, in a totally fun way. I'm actually more surprised more people didn't have a crush on that girl squirrel growing up, but not in a cross-species bestiality way, but in an if-I-were-a-squirrel-I-would-want-a-squirrel-girlfriend-like-that kind of way.

Utah Arts Festival afterparty cypher

A cypher in poetry slam is the name given to a circle of poets who take turns reciting poems, usually occurring at an afterparty.

The ground rules are usually once one gets started, the audience remains quiet and attentive, although drinking and imbibing are by all means not discouraged.

Sometimes if the cypher is chaotic, there is an MC of sorts who picks the next poet, other times (usually at calmer events or those with seasoned slam poets) the poet performing chooses the next poet. It's usually a profoundly democratic system even when the room is bordering on a collective 0.12 blood alcohol content.

If you get chosen, you perform one poem. It's generally good form to perform a "new" poem the room did not hear earlier in the slam, unless it's specifically requested by the crowd. When complete, it's good etiquette to chose a poet you haven't heard, don't know, or who isn't from your home venue or home city. This serves to emphasize the camaraderie of the Slam Family, or "Slamily," because even though we are cutthroats with strategy when on stage, we are really artists off stage who just want to share our words.

Those poets and non who think slam is too competitive an art form or full of unyielding egos (ex-girlfriends, I'm winking at you) need to stick around and witness the community support and bohemian beauty what happens at a cypher. Deep down, afterparties and cyphers are the root of why we slam poets continually experience profound moments after slams and at regional and national bouts. This one (and the amazing slam) certainly made the nine-hour car trip from Sedona to Salt Lake City worth every mile.

Before the afterparty began, DeAnn Emett led Aaron Johnson and me on three block trek to buy alcohol from the state-owned liquor store, which closes at 10 p.m. The line is out the door. Anyone over 21 who enjoys alcohol in Utah should become a registered voter if they ever have to wait in a line like this. It felt like the last day before Prohibition.

Janelle Wilson from Boise, Idaho, "planking" on Lauren Perry from Phoenix

Cody Winger from Salt Lake City, left as Janelle Wilson, Tara Brenner and Cheryl Maddalena from Boise, Idaho, chat with The Klute from Phoenix.

Cheryl Maddalena, left, Cody Winger, (girl in a headscarf whose name I didn't get), Dominique Christina Ashaheed, Mikena Richardson, Levi Rogers (seated) and Lauren Perry (on the bed), listen to Jesse Parent perform at the start of the night's cypher.

Jesse Parent emotes

Dominique Christina Ashaheed performs

Lauren Perry performs

Aaron Johnson from Phoenix performs

Ayinde Russell performs

Ayinde Russell performs while Gray Brian looks off, contemplating the awesomeness of that belt buckle. My foot is bedecked in the Chuck Taylor at right.

The Klute, with his Cthulu T-shirt, performs

Tara Brenner performs

Cheryl Maddalena from Team Boise. Note the aforementioned "beautiful" tattoo in 200pt Times New Roman on her left arm.

Lauren Perry performs in her zombie tanktop.

Brian Franden

Adorable Rebeca Mae, Gray Brian's girlfriend, performs.

Leah Cronen from Bosie performs. Note to viewers: the city is pronounced "Boy-See," not "Boy-Zee"

Levi Rogers performs

The Klute with his "O" face, performing

Gray Brian performs

Josh McGillis performs via SmartPhone

And I passed out around 4 a.m., fully dressed.