"Another Planet" by B-Jam

B-Jam, aka Benjamin Gardea, performing "Another Planet" at The Rebel Lounge in Phoenix, AZ on May 24, 2022.

Ghost Poetry Show is committed to creating a community of writers from the greater Phoenix area (and beyond) to share their work on stage. We take pride in having poets that have never performed their work in front of anyone, all the way up to poets that have competed at the national level. No matter gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or age anyone can take the stage and compete in the three round poetry slam.

"You common cry of curs," Coriolanus, performed by Paul Mauch

Paul Mauch performs as Coriolanus, in "Coriolanus" Act III, Scene III. 

Gnaeus Marcius is a Roman general who earns the toponymic cognomen "Coriolanus" after his military feats besieging the Volscians at the town of Corioli in 493 BC. Following his success he seeks to be consul in 491 BC, two years after Coriolanus' victory over the Volscians, as Rome was recovering from a grain shortage. A significant quantity of grain was imported from Sicily, and the senate debated the manner in which it should be distributed to the commoners. Coriolanus advocated that the provision of grain should be dependent upon the reversal of the pro-plebeian political reforms arising from the First Secessio Plebis in 494 BC. The populace were incensed at Coriolanus' proposal, and the tribunes put him on trial. The senators argued for the acquittal of Coriolanus, or at the least a merciful sentence. Coriolanus refused to attend on the day of his trial, and he was convicted. 

Coriolanus makes this speech berating the plebians before fleeing to the Volsci in exile. 

There, he was received and treated kindly, and resided with the Volscian leader Attius Tullus Aufidius. Coriolanus and Aufidius led the Volscian army against Roman towns, colonies and allies. Roman colonists were expelled from Circeii. They then retook the formerly Volscian towns of Satricum, Longula, Pollusca and Corioli. Then the Volscian army took the Roman towns of Lavinium, Corbio, Vitellia, Trebia, Lavici and Pedum.

Coriolanus's mother Volumniam Coriolanus's wife Virgilia and their child, dissuade him from destroying Rome, urging him instead to clear his name and he signs a peace treaty on behalf of the Volscians. When he returns to the Volscian capital of Antium (Anzio), conspirators, organised by Aufidius, kill him for his betrayal.

"The Other Solos" are a series of Shakespeare monologues that deal with issues of identity, migration, power and exile, performed by actors whose mother tongue is not English. This project was developed in response to recent world events and the increasing sentiment against migration in the media and Western society.

from "Coriolanus," spoken by exiled Roman General Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate

As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize

As the dead carcasses of unburied men

That do corrupt my air, I banish you;

And here remain with your uncertainty!

Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!

Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,

Fan you into despair! Have the power still

To banish your defenders; till at length

Your ignorance, which finds not till it feels,

Making not reservation of yourselves,

Still your own foes, deliver you as most

Abated captives to some nation

That won you without blows! Despising,

For you, the city, thus I turn my back:

There is a world elsewhere.

"If," by Rudyard Kipling, read by Sir Michael Caine

"If"

By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! 

"To Be or Not to Be," performed by Adrian Lester

Adrian Lester speaks Hamlet’s soliloquy from "Hamlet" Act III, scene 1, in which Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, reflects on mortality and considers taking his own life.

from "Hamlet," spoken by Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

Where to find Sedona's four vortices/vortexes

 Being Sedona residents, we get asked about where the vortices / vortexes are all the time.

Here are the four. Some folks who will swindle tourists out of money will claim there are more only they know about but none of them are universally recognized as these four are. That said, they're pretty and offer nice vistas, but there is nothing inherently special about any of them other that what people claim without evidence that they feel.

Sedona Airport Vortex (on the outcroping to the northeast)

Bell Rock Vortex, the exact location is -- unsurprisingly -- unclear.

Boynton Canyon Vortex, overlooks Enchantment Resort

Cathedral Rock Vortex, like the Bell Rock Vortex, the exact location is unsurprisingly unclear.

"These are the forgeries of jealous" performed by Ayesha Dharker

 

Ayesha Dharker plays Titania, the queen of the fairies in "A Midsummer Night’s Dream." Titania has quarrelled with Oberon, king of the fairies. As the pair have control over the weather, their argument leads to a vision of nature’s chaos.

from "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," spoken by Titania, Queen of the Fairies

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

These are the forgeries of jealousy:

And never, since the middle summer's spring,

Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,

By paved fountain or by rushy brook,

Or in the beached margent of the sea,

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea

Contagious fogs; which falling in the land

Have every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents:

The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;

The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green

For lack of tread are undistinguishable:

The human mortals want their winter here;

No night is now with hymn or carol blest:

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

That rheumatic diseases do abound:

And thorough this distemperature we see

The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,

And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown

An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,

By their increase, now knows not which is which:

And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissension;

We are their parents and original.