This is the official blog of Northern Arizona slam poet Christopher Fox Graham. Begun in 2002, and transferred to blogspot in 2006, FoxTheBlog has recorded more than 670,000 hits since 2009. This blog cover's Graham's poetry, the Arizona poetry slam community and offers tips for slam poets from sources around the Internet. Read CFG's full biography here. Looking for just that one poem? You know the one ... click here to find it.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Math is hard. GumptionFest is easy


While classical mechanics, relativistic mechanics and quantum mechanics describe the motion of bodies and particles, this electromagnetic mechanics of particles proposes a description of their fundamental nature and an explanation to the cause of their motion and the reason why they naturally tend to self-propel at constant velocity and to self-guide in straight line when no external force is acting on them.

That being said, GumptionFest V is this weekend. Take some time off and get out of the house to enjoy local art in Sedona.

GumptionFest V
  • Fifth annual event takes place Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 11 and 12.
  • Activities last all day at several venues along Coffee Pot Drive.
  • Admission is free. All art and music is supplied by donation.
  • All amateur and professional artists are invited to participate.
  • To volunteer, participate or for more information, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com.


To compete in GumptionFest's Poetry Slam or Haiku Death Match, e-mail: foxthepoet@yahoo.com

To participate, volunteer or for more information about GumptionFest V, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com or visit GumptionFest on Facebook.

Finished making your coat hanger gorilla?


Are you finished making your coat hanger gorilla? GumptionFest is tomorrow!


GumptionFest V
  • Fifth annual event takes place Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 11 and 12.
  • Activities last all day at several venues along Coffee Pot Drive.
  • Admission is free. All art and music is supplied by donation.
  • All amateur and professional artists are invited to participate.
  • To volunteer, participate or for more information, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com.


To compete in GumptionFest's Poetry Slam or Haiku Death Match, e-mail: foxthepoet@yahoo.com

To participate, volunteer or for more information about GumptionFest V, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com or visit GumptionFest on Facebook.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

The Poems I Performed for Tonight's FlagSlam feature

Seven Years of Solitude

Seven years of solitude
one-night stands
and last names lost to the wind
I wrote them in chronological order
carved their names in the sand
rewrote our mythologies
into my own fictions
to win 10s from strangers who preferred verses
rather than the cut and dry facts of thrusting hips
and white lies to strip cotton from our skins
before clothing ourselves in dawn-lit shame
of till-we-meet-agains

I found her literally in my own back yard
spreading dandelions along her path
on highways and backcountry roads
from the tundra to Sonora
fallen into disuse by travelers —
save Kerouac scholars

she called herself a hobo,
always homeward bound
but yet to find a doorstep to call her own
she came to kiss the red from the rocks
paint her lips with this Martian dust
swirl pirouettes in the vortices
verify that stars here match home
and chase down crash-landed aliens
looking for a one-way trip home to Perseus

she broke me open like an egg
scrambled my contents with her garlic smile
smothered in maple leaf syrup
and salted to taste

she coaxed herself inside
to better hear the word
by smiths more crafted than me
pressed skin to skin
and melted my insides into cheddar
smothered the sheets
in her unrepentant smiles

she is joy
unpasteurized, caffeine-free, antioxidant-rich
joy
if it could drip from its source
sculpt itself into flesh and skin and bones
camber its soft exterior into curves
tender to trepid fingertips
hesitant to brush capsulated ebullience
lest it evanesce into vapor
like the morning fog
she zipped herself up behind a smile
radiant as auroras
to stay warm in the Yukon

we knew from the first kiss
the impending expiration date
I could only hold her so long
before wanderlust reignited her blood
pumped visions of highway sunsets into her aorta
pulled her sticky sunrise from my bed
I held tightly to dreams
that I would foresee us waking unshared unemptied
in the decades to come
but behind shuttered eyes
one loses the path of footsteps
roads meander as they must
not as we desire
and mountains have yet to yield to men

we were doomed to end
from the first morning we shared
each time we pressed hips and lips
I tried to capture the details
with scientific precision
to reconstruct the crime scene of her illegal emigration
from the homeland I built
she could have packed and parted a thousand times
without a second thought
or smile in a stranger's rearview
after her outstretched thumb purchased passage
yet I found her bedecked in my socks
or shirts or shorts and boxers after a time

I would have shed my skin to keep her warm
if it would have delayed her departure
a few hours more

she left me thrice:
to smell the stories wafting on Dinรฉ desert
see tors resistant to harassing winds —
play in a park where symbols of peace
were even written on the stones —
pioneer the plateau seared asunder
by patient waters that still run wild
too oblivious to laugh at our cages
knowing that they too will one day fall
Ozymandias could not conquer the sands
Hoover cannot break the canyon's will
though the crest once offered us a view
down to the moonlit sea
all endeavors come to an end
despite the glory
of their lofty dedications

each time, the gravity of our weight
pulled orbits back to the same ellipse
we shared atmospheres
and now with her light years across the plain
it's harder to breathe the air
before I knew her grace

in the winter nights
with the rest of the house bursting with life
lovers pressing tender touches
uncaring of audiences
friends rehashing old wounds reopened
musicians repeating tunes remembered by fingertips alone
I long for her pride
I languish for the smell of her with days trapped in hair
I yearn for the exhilaration of her tender brilliance
dropping falling stars into my exosphere
to scar the surface
leaving us again in the naked ecstasy
when the world faded away
leaving us alone with our uninhibited vices

the nights seem colder
and my limbs never warm enough to sleep through the night
awake with dreams unremembered
each one leaves a passport of her absence
the way she alone could seem to fill the bed with her laughter
as I left her in the mornings

our last day
remains wickedly vivid
how I longed to break my fingers and toes
to render my hands unable to labor
feet unable to leave her
knowing that as the door closed
when I next returned
she'd not greet me with outstretched arms
and leopardic leaps to pin me beneath her passions

I couldn’t have loved her better
goodbye was always on our lips
but when the last one came
it broke me down the middle

in the center of my city
tourists who came for millennial stones unbroken
saw us cleave together our last moments
and for the first time, she shed tears
broke open her dam
to cleave the street beneath us in two
in a way only the canyons know
the red rocks above trembled in dread
conjuring that winds and creeks had taken their toll
but she, unleashed, could finally break them into red sand
washing them like blood into the seas

there, at a crossroads I could recreate from memory
she said I would not cross the road with her
I was unable to follow
could not take her trek homeward bound
because I had never been
she carried my heart across the asphalt lanes
tied up in her pack
beneath snacks for the road
betwixt books and rolled socks
she carried it in secret
which I knew as she walked away from me
along a stretch of road
that seemed to widen for miles
until I lost her behind what could have been her next ride
or mere passersby
stained with her goodbyes
I watched until she was vapor and wind
red hat and pack
and then a mirage
as if she never was
but the hollow in my chest
beat her empty echoes with thumps in rhythm to her wandering footsteps
I send out platoons of foxes to find her
seek her out even in cities unknown to their habits
hoping their spying slyness
can catch her eye

now I seek out hitchhikers
the way addicts itch for a fix
I want to ask if they've seen her
if I can glean some knowledge of her whereabouts
and if they haven't yet
if they would pass on a message in my absence:
when the first winter breeze
blows in from the north
I will strip naked wherever I am
in the midst of Times Square,
the hollow of empty woods
or in my own living room
let her cold kisses caress all my sharp curves
feel her twirl around all my edges
inhale her joy so deeply
the atmosphere in my lungs turn to ice
all my pores will rise into goosebumps
to return her ten-thousand kisses
send all my silent words northward to find her
along whatever road she finds herself
wrap the embrace of breath around her
so she feels my arms again
even if just once more
even if just in dreams
even if she never knows


An Open Letter to Dave Matthews
aka
Fuck You, Dave Matthews

This is an open letter to Dave Matthews,


for those of you expecting the typical "ode to a musician" slam poem
this would be the point
where I would insert biographical references
of the Johannesburg-born guitarist,
raised in New York
who finally left South Africa to avoid military conscription

or obscure clues to his professional history,
like his honorary doctorate from Haverford College
or the anti-Apartheid theme of “Don’t Drink the Water”

this is the point where you’d expect me
to weave the names of his albums into the poem
as if I was “Under the Table and Dreaming”
just about to “Stand Up” “Before These Crowded Streets”
like I do “Everyday” before I “Crash” into “Busted Stuff”
but “Remember Two Things,”
and no they’re not “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King”
one:
this is not one of those poems
and two:
fuck you, Dave Matthews
and not for the same reason we all hate
Hootie & the Blowfish,
no, this is personal

Dave,
the month I turned 18
I heard “Crash Into Me” for the first time
with lyrics so sharp they stung

for those of us
too shy to talk to girls
all tied up and twisted,
it was our ballad,
our song,
it gave boys like me hope
that even awkward outsiders
could find the right girl
even if we felt too creepy
to stand the sight of ourselves

Dave,
you expressed our dream
asked on our behalf
in way only you could
that they forgive us in our haste
yes, we were peeping toms
watching through the window
asking them to overlook our failures
and for both our sakes, to just
crash into us
just hike up their skirts a little more
and show the world to us

you said what we couldn’t:
“I’m lost for you;
I'm so lost for you
Touch your lips
just so I know
In your eyes, love, it glows so
I'm bareboned and crazy for you
When you come crash into me”
we felt creepy,  
but you made it sound sweet

Dave, you were king of the castle
we were the dirty rascals
and that song was our secret
I knew what the words meant
while everyone else just heard the melody

and then I met her
she loved that song, too,
and I don’t know if she felt like the girl inside
winking at us in the bushes
or she was outside with the rest of us
feeling awkward, too,
but she hiked up her skirt
and showed her world to me
and while that song played
she wanted to crash into me
wanted me to come into her in a boy’s dream

she was sweet like candy to my soul
sweet she rock
And sweet she roll
she wore nothing at all
but she wore it so well
we were tied up and twisted
they way we ought to be
I was her Dixie chicken
she was my Tennessee lamb
and we walked together
down in Dixieland
just like you said we would

but Dave,
fuck you,
that song only lasts 5 minutes 16 seconds
the longest bootleg I can find
is 8 minutes 23 seconds
and that’s not enough time to love her
she’s worth decades
but no one makes CDs that long
and I can’t put it on repeat ...

she’s too smart for that

if you had written the song to last a day
I might have held her longer than a year,
she’s tied me up tight
tied me up again
she’s got her claws into me, my friend
I’ve got my ball
I’ve got my chain
her wave crashed into me
and I’ve gone overboard

I’ve lived that boy’s dream,
I made it real and now she’s gone
you gave me hope,
but fuck you, Dave,
you never said what happens when the song ends
Just that into my heart she'll beat again
now whenever I hear those opening chords,
the song just crashes into me
knocks me overboard
leaves me drowning
in a girl’s dream

Love Like A Scar: Part II
or
She Bit Me In the Face
or
When She Says, "Don't Move, Trust Me," Don't Fucking Move


she cut me above right eyebrow
scar shimmers still fresh red
she is always with me
below the surface

in decades hence
when the biographer asks, tape rolling,
who marred my brow,
I plan to lean back and with straight face
declare the flesh wound
a sniper bullet
from the Euro-American War of 2035
as I dashed from demolished home
to cinderblock shelter
carrying Mighty Mike McGee B-side bootlegs

or maybe Battle of Satin Hill shrapnel
during the Second American Civil War
dodging landmines on the eastern front near Kansas City
rescuing a microphone once used by Derrick Brown
molecules of his saliva clinging to the mesh
long after he is but two stars left of the North American moon

I saw draftee boys drop like flies
to restore the Republic
while I was on a mission to clone the lost poets
into Founding Fathers and Mothers
so they could draft a new Constitution
that could be read in 3:10
and yet bring a tear to the eye

the biographer will write down “madman”
because fiction will have overtaken me by then

the truth of this scar
is hard to explain
but humorous to declare:
“my girlfriend
bit me in the face”

it was no unrestrained passion
nor a tryst turned to domestic violence
but rather innocent:
she, perched above me
on a Saturday afternoon,
so eager to cuddle
she could not wait to hold me
she told me not to move
as she collapsed wrestling match-style

of course,
I moved

and tooth struck brow
tearing open skin

she cut me
leaving a mark of her inhabitance
proof she reached deeper than touch
left residue no shower could flush away

if lightning strikes me dead
between back door and laundry room —
or Babel reprises
and one Tuesday morning
we forget the sounds of English —
or poems worldwide
so intensely hold human passion they spontaneously ignite
explode all the words they’re unable to speak
burn notebooks and shoeboxes to cinders —
if memory just ... evaporates —
I’ll still have the scar
evidence for the Grand Jury
that I was guilty of loving her
my carefully constructed alibi evaporates in the face of habeas cicatrices

more than poems or photographs
the scar of her marks me
in mirrors,
in the reflection of car windows
the snap of portraits
the mark a centimeter wide
that could tear open like a zipper
on a beaten-up, used childhood toy
and spill out my stuffing

I am unable to amnesia her away
when Alzheimer’s settles in to play a hand of bridge
nurses and other patients will quietly ask
“Mr. Graham, how did you earn that scar?”
and I’ll repeat the details as best I know them
a thousand times,
each one again anew

no matter how misanthropic I may become
as these hands wrinkle in the coming decades
this mark whispers witness
that I was touched once —
let a lover past my front stoop
through my bedroom doorway
where she evaded resistant arms
wrapped her Canadian limbs
around my torso
and got so close
that she even tried to eat me
swallow me into her — right eyebrow first

even rendered mute by death
my corpse will speak to strangers
that she visited this skin
touched this household of dust and ash
saw the mask that I hid in
tried to open me like a can of soup
to spill out my brain and ego

she wanted nothing
but for me to hold fast and trust her
and I could not
this mark proves my doubts manifest
leaves me to forever contemplate
my near-impossibility to love someone else selflessly
the cut a battle wound
no less serious than seppuku across the belly
a shotgun blast to the ribcage
I failed in a split second
and the path of blood from bed to sink
still stains the tile grout
reiterating every morning to my toes
the eschatology of our love affair

these arms still reach out to empty air
still beg the dawn that her absence is conjectural
I haven’t washed my sheets since she left
in hopes that the smell of her in the bed
will bring her back like a bloodhound
searching the crime scene for the victims

I’ll go mad some morning
and take chisel to the tile
attempt to chip out each cell of hemoglobin
force them back into the wound
pick out all the solitary strands of her hair
embedded in the carpet
and glue them back together
use all the collected powers
of every clairvoyant and bullshit psychic in this city
to pull me back through time
return to that moment
and tell that son-of-bitch in the bed
that "when she says 'don’t move'
"you don’t fucking move
"you let her collapse into your arms like she meant to
"you hold her so tight, it hurts to exhale
"because you're pushing her heart millimeters away from yours
"you stop thinking about whether she might hurt you
"because even if she does,
"she's still here"

and as the future-me
begins to back away into the shadows
he fades away into nothing as they taught us
in all proper science-fictions,
the past-me and she
will swing arms wide into ocean waves
wash over and crash into each other
until the sheets are drenched in salt and seawater

this tiny cut
this scar to remember her by
will be last thing to fade
supernova-ing into the ash of angels
disappearing in a twinkle like forgotten star
without even a single pair of lovers on summer grass
somewhere in the galaxy
to note its passing
and wonder, “what was that?”

Fire dancers? Yeah, GumptionFest V has 'em

Members of PyroKlectic are expected perform their fire-spinning performance art after the sun sets.





The Prescott fire troupe was featured at Prescott’s annual Tsunami on the Square festival and was a member of the Fire Conclave at Burning Man 2010.






GumptionFest V
  • Fifth annual event takes place Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 11 and 12.





  • Activities last all day at several venues along Coffee Pot Drive.



  • Admission is free. All art and music is supplied by donation.





  • All amateur and professional artists are invited to participate.





  • To volunteer, participate or for more information, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com.


To compete in GumptionFest's Poetry Slam or Haiku Death Match, e-mail: foxthepoet@yahoo.com

To participate, volunteer or for more information about GumptionFest V, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com or visit GumptionFest on Facebook.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Poetry at GumptionFest V

Poetry feature slots will be between acts. If you get a slot after a band, go to the host before the band ends its set and tell them who you are.

You get a few minutes to perform. Be quick. Be awesome.

The band will be breaking down behind you and the next band will be setting up. Ignore them and rock the mic.

Make sure to mention the slam and the Haiku Death Match if you are competing it them later.

GumptionFest Poetry Slam

Sign-up for the GumptionFest Poetry Slam will be Saturday, Sept. 11, at 4 p.m. at Studio Live, located at 215 Coffee Pot Drive, on the north end of the festival.

I'm only making the slot like this in case I get people who bail or who want to sign up last minute.

Anyone who has contacted me by around midnight Saturday, Sept. 10, before GumptionFest day one starts will have preferential treatment for a slam slot.

The prize will be around $50-$100, depending on my whims, because it's coming out of my pocket. *

Haiku Death Match

Sign-up for the Haiku Death Match will be Sunday at 3:30 p.m. at the outdoor Art Stage, located at 2020 Contractors Road, due north of the GumptionFest art gallery.

I'm only making the slot like this in case I get people who bail or who want to sign up last minute.

Anyone who has contacted me by around midnight Saturday, Sept. 11, after the first day of GumptionFest but before the second, will have preferential treatment for a Haiku Death Match slot.

The prize will be around $50, depending on my whims, because it's coming out of my pocket. *



* As it's my cash and my stage to host, be nice or GFY. Don't cause drama with me day-of, I have no patience. I love you all. But I seriously have no mercy for drama-bombs during GumptionFest.

Don't mess with Emily Dickinson

Don't mess with Emily Dickinson. She will fuck you up.
This has been a public service announcement.


So is this:
GumptionFest V
  • Fifth annual event takes place Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 11 and 12.
  • Activities last all day at several venues along Coffee Pot Drive.
  • Admission is free. All art and music is supplied by donation.
  • All amateur and professional artists are invited to participate.
  • To volunteer, participate or for more information, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com.
To compete in GumptionFest's Poetry Slam or Haiku Death Match, e-mail: foxthepoet@yahoo.com

To participate, volunteer or for more information about GumptionFest V, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com or visit GumptionFest on Facebook.

Haiku Death Match is four days away

GumptionFest V's Haiku Death Match on Sunday, Sept. 12

When GumptionFest, Sedona's annual grassroots arts festival returns for its fifth year, one of the poetic elements for the festival will be a Haiku Death Match, returning again from last year.

The festival organizers need Haiku Death Match competitors, or “haikusters” to start writing now and have roughly 20-30 haiku each by the time of GumptionFest, Saturday Sunday, Sept. 11 to 12.

There will be a cash prize for the winning Haikusters.

GumptionFest’s Haiku Death Match rules:

Haikusters can read their haiku’s titles before they read the haiku. This technically gives the haikusters more syllables to put the haiku in context, but the haiku itself must still be only 17 syllables.

Poets must be the sole authors of the haiku they use in competition. Poets can read from the page, book, journal, notepad, etc. Poets can have haiku written beforehand or write them in their head while at the microphone. As long as the haiku are 17 syllables, we don’t care how, when or from where the haiku originates.

Rounds will be determined by the number of haikusters who sign up to compete. Thirty haiku will likely be enough for poets to compete in all the rounds. More haiku is always better.

Be flexible and include a mixture of serious and funny haiku. Adult themes and language are acceptable.

The Haiku Death Match will take place at GumptionFest V in the early evening on Sunday, Sept. 12.

For Haiku Death Match tips and haiku examples, visit foxthepoet.blogspot.com.

To register or for more information, e-mail host Haiku Death Match host Christopher Fox Graham at foxthepoet@yahoo.

For more information about GumptionFest IV, e-mail to GumptionFest@gmail.com.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Reading poetry to Azami, in Berkeley

Just spent an hour and a half on the phone with Azami - our first contact after she departed from Burning Man. She called me from this payphone in Berkeley, Calif., at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Allston Way. I was in my home.
I read her poetry. Some swooning occurred.

GumptionFest is like a live action anime

GumptionFest is like a live-action anime.

Figure out how this weekend Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 11 and 12, at four stages along Coffee Pot Drive in West Sedona.

GumptionFest V
  • Fifth annual event takes place Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 11 and 12.
  • Activities last all day at several venues along Coffee Pot Drive.
  • Admission is free. All art and music is supplied by donation.
  • All amateur and professional artists are invited to participate.
  • To volunteer, participate or for more information, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com.


To compete in GumptionFest's Poetry Slam or Haiku Death Match, e-mail: foxthepoet@yahoo.com

To participate, volunteer or for more information about GumptionFest V, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com or visit GumptionFest on Facebook.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Lindsay Lohan is a train wreck. GumptionFest is not.

Lindsay Lohan is a train wreck.
GumptionFest is not.

Get some rehab this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 11 and 12, with the fifth annual GumptionFest, Sedona's grassroots arts festival, taking place at venues along Coffee Pot Drive, West Sedona.


GumptionFest V
  • Fifth annual event takes place Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 11 and 12.
  • Activities last all day at several venues along Coffee Pot Drive.
  • Admission is free. All art and music is supplied by donation.
  • All amateur and professional artists are invited to participate.
  • To volunteer, participate or for more information, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com.


To compete in GumptionFest's Poetry Slam or Haiku Death Match, e-mail: foxthepoet@yahoo.com

To participate, volunteer or for more information about GumptionFest V, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com or visit GumptionFest on Facebook.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

It's not Shark Week - it's GumptionFest

The Great White Shark is nature's most perfect killer. GumptionFest is a grassroots arts festival in Sedona.

What's their relationship? Find out at GumptionFest V, being held from 10 a.m. to well after midnight on both Friday and Saturday, Sept. 11 and 12.

"Live every week like Shark Week. Live every weekend like it's GumptionFest."
- Jacques Cousteau

GumptionFest V
  • Fifth annual event takes place Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 11 and 12.
  • Activities last all day at several venues along Coffee Pot Drive.
  • Admission is free. All art and music is supplied by donation.
  • All amateur and professional artists are invited to participate.
  • To volunteer, participate or for more information, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com.

To compete in GumptionFest's Poetry Slam or Haiku Death Match, e-mail: foxthepoet@yahoo.com

To participate, volunteer or for more information about GumptionFest V, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com or visit GumptionFest on Facebook.

Christopher Fox Graham features at the FlagSlam Poetry Slam on Sept. 9

To kick off the 2010-11 slam season in Northern Arizona, Christopher Fox Graham will feature at the FlagSlam Poetry Slam at 8 p.m., on Sept. 9, at Tacos Locos, 21 Beaver St., Flagstaff.

Graham is the longest serving slam poet in Northern Arizona.

Graham was one of the first slam poets in Flagstaff in 2001 and represented Northern Arizona on the Flagstaff team at five National Poetry Slams in 2001, 2004, 2005 and 2006 and 2010. He has hosted and competed in poetry slams and open mics in Sedona since 2004.

Graham was one of six co-organizers of Sedona's annual GumptionFest and has served as poetry coordinator for all five festivals since 2006.

Graham has performed in 40 states, Toronto, Dublin, Ireland, and London, and wrote the now infamous “Peach” poem. He has performed poetry at slam stages, high schools, colleges and universities throughout Northern Arizona.

Poets who compete will win points toward qualification for the 2011 FlagSlam Grand Slam, and a chance to compete at the 22nd National Poetry Slam, held this year in Boston in August 2011.

Founded in Chicago by construction worker and poet Marc “So What?” Smith in 1984, poetry slam is a competitive artistic sport. Poetry slam has become an international artistic sport, with more than 100 major poetry slams in the United States, Canada, Australia and Western Europe.

FlagSlam Poetry Slam
Sept. 9 at 8 p.m.
Tacos Locos
21 Beaver St.
Flagstaff, AZ
foxthepoet@yahoo.com

I should have spun counterclockwise for Azami

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Love Like A Scar, Part II

Love Like A Scar: Part II
or
She Bit Me In the Face
or
When She Says, "Don't Move, Trust Me," Don't Fucking Move

and now the poem:

she cut me above right eyebrow
scar shimmers still fresh red
she is always with me
below the surface

in decades hence
when the biographer asks, tape rolling,
who marred my brow,
I plan to lean back and with straight face
declare the flesh wound
a sniper bullet
from the Euro-American War of 2035
as I dashed from demolished home
to cinderblock shelter
carrying Mighty Mike McGee B-side bootlegs

or maybe Battle of Satin Hill shrapnel
during the Second American Civil War
dodging landmines on the eastern front near Kansas City
rescuing a microphone once used by Derrick Brown
molecules of his saliva clinging to the mesh
long after he is but two stars left of the North American moon

I saw draftee boys drop like flies
to restore the Republic
while I was on a mission to clone the lost poets
into Founding Fathers and Mothers
so they could draft a new Constitution
that could be read in 3:10
and yet bring a tear to the eye

the biographer will write down “madman”
because fiction will have overtaken me by then

the truth of this scar
is hard to explain
but humorous to declare:
“my girlfriend
bit me in the face”

it was no unrestrained passion
nor a tryst turned to domestic violence
but rather innocent:
she, perched above me
on a Saturday afternoon,
so eager to cuddle
she could not wait to hold me
she told me not to move
as she collapsed wrestling match-style

of course,
I moved

and tooth struck brow
tearing open skin

she cut me
leaving a mark of her inhabitance
proof she reached deeper than touch
left residue no shower could flush away

if lightning strikes me dead
between back door and laundry room —
or Babel reprises
and one Tuesday morning
we forget the sounds of English —
or poems worldwide
so intensely hold human passion they spontaneously ignite
explode all the words they’re unable to speak
burn notebooks and shoeboxes to cinders —
if memory just ... evaporates —
I’ll still have the scar
evidence for the Grand Jury
that I was guilty of loving her
my carefully constructed alibi evaporates in the face of habeas cicatrices

more than poems or photographs
the scar of her marks me
in mirrors,
in the reflection of car windows
the snap of portraits
the mark a centimeter wide
that could tear open like a zipper
on a beaten-up, used childhood toy
and spill out my stuffing

I am unable to amnesia her away
when Alzheimer’s settles in to play a hand of bridge
nurses and other patients will quietly ask
“Mr. Graham, how did you earn that scar?”
and I’ll repeat the details as best I know them
a thousand times,
each one again anew

no matter how misanthropic I may become
as these hands wrinkle in the coming decades
this mark whispers witness
that I was touched once —
let a lover past my front stoop
through my bedroom doorway
where she evaded resistant arms
wrapped her Canadian limbs
around my torso
and got so close
that she even tried to eat me
swallow me into her — right eyebrow first

even rendered mute by death
my corpse will speak to strangers
that she visited this skin
touched this household of dust and ash
saw the mask that I hid in
tried to open me like a can of soup
to spill out my brain and ego

she wanted nothing
but for me to hold fast and trust her
and I could not
this mark proves my doubts manifest
leaves me to forever contemplate
my near-impossibility to love someone else selflessly
the cut a battle wound
no less serious than seppuku across the belly
a shotgun blast to the ribcage
I failed in a split second
and the path of blood from bed to sink
still stains the tile grout
reiterating every morning to my toes
the eschatology of our love affair

these arms still reach out to empty air
still beg the dawn that her absence is conjectural
I haven’t washed my sheets since she left
in hopes that the smell of her in the bed
will bring her back like a bloodhound
searching the crime scene for the victims

I’ll go mad some morning
and take chisel to the tile
attempt to chip out each cell of hemoglobin
force them back into the wound
pick out all the solitary strands of her hair
embedded in the carpet
and glue them back together
use all the collected powers
of every clairvoyant and bullshit psychic in this city
to pull me back through time
return to that moment
and tell that son-of-bitch in the bed
that "when she says 'don’t move'
"you don’t fucking move
"you let her collapse into your arms like she meant to
"you hold her so tight, it hurts to exhale
"because you're pushing her heart millimeters away from yours
"you stop thinking about whether she might hurt you
"because even if she does,
"she's still here"

and as the future-me
begins to back away into the shadows
he fades away into nothing as they taught us
in all proper science-fictions,
the past-me and she
will swing arms wide into ocean waves
wash over and crash into each other
until the sheets are drenched in salt and seawater

this tiny cut
this scar to remember her by
will be last thing to fade
supernova-ing into the ash of angelsdisappearing in a twinkle like forgotten star
without even a single pair of lovers on summer grass
somewhere in the galaxy
to note its passing
and wonder, “what was that?”




It wasn't until after I had written this poem and went back to read it how the ending of this poem, while initially unintentionally, is heavily influenced thematically by Derrick Brown's "A Finger, Two Dots, Then Me," which is both one of mine and Azami's favorite poems.

(For "Love Like A Scar: Part I")

GumptionFest V packed with artists

GumptionFest V
  • Fifth annual event takes place Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 11 and 12.
  • Activities last all day at several venues along Coffee Pot Drive.
  • Admission is free. All art and music is supplied by donation.
  • All amateur and professional artists are invited to participate.
  • To volunteer, participate or for more information, e-mail GumptionFest@gmail.com.
GumptionFest V packed with artists

GumptionFest V: Raiders of the Lost Art takes place along Coffee Pot Drive in West Sedona on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 11 and 12.

Events begin at 10 a.m. both days and end after midnight. GumptionFest V will feature an art gallery displaying local art, a kids zone with children’s activities and a bouncing castle, vendors, information kiosks, and entertainment at four stages:
  • Oak Creek Brewing Co.
  • the outdoor stage behind Creative Flooring, hosted by Dave Harvey
  • The Best of Show stage hosted by Kathy Perry of Best of Show; and
  • Sedona Performers Guild’s Studio Live.

The festival features some of the most well-known names in the Sedona and Verde Valley art scene, from singer-songwriters, performance poets, rock bands, painters, sculptors and fire-spinning performance artists.

However, what makes GumptionFest unique among Arizona arts festivals is that anyone who wants to play music, perform poetry, display art or dance is eagerly invited to participate.

Talent levels are not important: participants should range from full-time professional artists and musicians and published poets to recreational artists, part-time photographers and those who pen poems in private journals.

Youth and teen artists are strongly encouraged to participate whether they aim to become professional artists as adults or just create art, write poetry or play music to pass the time.

Kick-Off Party
  • The GumptionFest V kickoff party begins Friday, Sept. 10, the night before the festival, at Oak Creek Brewing Co.

  • Dirty Lingo has been playing music in Sedona, the Verde Valley and the Phoenix area for several years. Influenced by The Beatles, guitarists Mike Chapman and John Hayden form the core duo.

  • Captain Squeegee, from Tempe, is a seven-member progressive blend of multi-instrumentation and conceptualized orchestrations. The Phoenix New Times described the band as “‘Fantasia’ music, with lead singer Danny Torgersen making like Mickey in a swirling maelstrom of flying horns, dancing guitars, broken melodies, and mad-prophet vocalizing.”
    The band was awarded “Best Album of 2008” and “Best Hope of 2009” by webzine Progressia.


Musical Acts
  • Eccentric world beat music group Amitahba includes Sedona musicians Vusi Shibambo, Andre Fearonce, formerly of The Beatnigs with Michael Franti, bassist Lindsay Buckingham, drummer Alex Ogburn, guitarist Keith Kavisic, vocalist Terry Bryant, Leah Lamat and guitarist Michael Casella.

    The band has a full sound made of percussion, marimba, vocals, guitar, didgeridoo, bass, drums and vocals.

  • Da Ominators is led by frontman, guitarist and vocalist Dom Giazzon, a veteran of popular local bands Radio Dogma and Liquid Theory.

  • Singer and songwriter Brandon Decker, musically known only as Decker, writes songs that delve into the human heart and the human condition. Not quite rock, not quite folk, his acoustic-based music draws upon a variety of influences, from Leonard Cohen to Tom Waits, from Cat Power to PJ Harvey.

    Decker has toured the West Coast promoting his debut album “Long Days” and is soon to release his second, full-length album.

  • Hip-hop duo Double Vision is comprised of twin brothers Jonathan and Jarred Lindsay. They masterfully fuse hip-hop, rock and ska over cleverly worded, uplifting lyrics. The result is something truly distinctive.

  • Born in Venice, Calif., they moved throughout the Midwest and the South as kids. Products of the hip-hop generation, they started rhyming before they were out of their Underoos. In high school, they hooked with producer Bill Blast and formed Double Vision. In 2008, they recorded their first EP, “No Explanation.” Their debut album, “Bifocal,” is reminiscent of Pharcyde and Outkast mixed with Gym Class Heroes.

  • Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Ralf Illenberger started performing in 1977. His first album “Waves” was released in 1978 and nominated for the German Record Awards.

    Illenberger released seven European recordings during the next nine years, exploring styles that ranged from new-classical to avant-garde to progressive jazz. Through Germany’s Goethe Institute, Illenberger and guitar partner Martin Kolbe played more than 1,000 concerts during the 1980s in 40 countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

    Since 1995, Illenberger has been writing and recording in Sedona releasing several more albums which garnered critical acclaim.

  • Jake Payne is a singer and songwriter who plays solo acoustic folk music, as well as fronting an electric rock band. He presents a diverse repertoire of poetic and dynamic songs ranging from soft moody lullabies to all-out rock.

  • Guitarist Dave Harvey and cellist Courtney Yeates will perform together.

  • Self-taught singer and songwriter Adam Smith was born in Virginia, raised in Kentucky and discovered on the streets of Nashville, Tenn. He discovered the piano on his own as a 7-year-old and picked up guitar, teaching himself to play around the age of 18.

    Smith eventually began performing regularly at open mic nights. His visual approach to music carries through to the guitar, but with a twist.

  • An improvisational music collective, Vamp Syllabus combine elements of post-rock, ambient, experimental, funk, and jazz to create a unique experience of musical exploration and discovery.

    There is no rehearsed material - everything is created live and on the spot. Each performance is one-of-a-kind and never repeated.

    The collective is led by guitarist Matthew Barlow with bassist Dylan Jung, drummer Michael Leibowitz, saxaphonist Gabriel Masterson and vocalist Kelly Cole.

  • Singer and songwriter Jay Fout’s style is a combination of folk, funk, reggae, blues and jazz with a rock twist.

  • Yin Yang & Zen Some, Sedona’s costume party rock band, will perform its distinctive show as a headlining act.


  • Other groups include The Mods, from Cottonwood, Nรคthan Saith Gangadean, duo Nathan Trujillo and Jason Kevin, Alex Ogburn, the Gospel Fire All Stars and Poem from Phoenix.


Slam Poetry
  • A series of head-to-head poetry slam competitions will be hosted by five-time National Poetry Slam competitor Christopher Fox Graham.

    Judges will be randomly selected from the crowd.

    Tucson slam poets David Rogers Luben, Mickey Randleman and Laura Lacanette, and Phoenix poets Lauren Perry and Bernard “The Klute” Schober will challenge local poets for the cash prize. To register or for more information, e-mail foxthepoet@yahoo.com.

  • A Haiku Death Match takes place on Sunday, Sept. 12. A Haiku Death Match is a competitive head-to-head poetry duel. Death matches have been a prominent feature at the annual National Poetry Slam since the mid 1990s.

    Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry consisting of 17 syllables in three metrical lines of five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables. Slam haiku need only 17 syllables; lines are unimportant.

    Death match competitors, or “haikusters,” need 20 to 30 haiku to compete. Poets must be the sole authors and can read from the page. Poets can have haiku written beforehand or write them in their head while at the microphone.

    There will be a cash prize for the winning haikusters.
Performance Art
  • Abandoned Minds improve comedy troupe has been performing shows in the Verde Valley with a revolving membership for the past few years. The group brings their on-the-fly performance to entertain the crowds.

  • Members of Pyroclectic will perform their fire-spinning performance art after the sun sets. The Prescott fire troupe was featured at Prescott’s annual Tsunami on the Square festival and was a member of the Fire Conclave at Burning Man 2010.
To Participate

Volunteers are also needed this year, so even those who don’t play an instrument, paint, sculpt or write poems can help and be a part of one of the largest free arts festival in Sedona.

Organizers for GumptionFest V: Raiders of the Lost Art are still looking for more visual artists, photographers, dancers and dance troupes, musicians, bands, theater groups and poets who want to be a part of the festival for either one or two days.

To participate, volunteer or contribute as a sponsor, contact GumptionFest@gmail.com or visit GumptionFest on Facebook.

Open letter to Dave Matthews

This is an open letter to Dave Matthews,

for those of you expecting the typical "ode to a musician" slam poem
this would be the point
where I would insert biographical references
of the Johannesburg-born guitarist,
raised in New York
who finally left South Africa to avoid military conscription

or obscure clues to his professional history,
like his honorary doctorate from Haverford College
or the anti-Apartheid theme of “Don’t Drink the Water”

this is the point where you’d expect me
to weave the names of his albums into the poem
as if I was “Under the Table and Dreaming”
just about to “Stand Up” “Before These Crowded Streets”
like I do “Everyday” before I “Crash” into “Busted Stuff”
but “Remember Two Things,”
and no they’re not “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King”
one:
this is not one of those poems
and two:
fuck you, Dave Matthews
and not for the same reason we all hate
Hootie & the Blowfish,
no, this is personal

Dave,
the month I turned 18
I heard “Crash Into Me” for the first time
with lyrics so sharp they stung

for those of us
too shy to talk to girls
all tied up and twisted,
it was our ballad,
our song,
it gave boys like me hope
that even awkward outsiders
could find the right girl
even if we felt too creepy
to stand the sight of ourselves

Dave,
you expressed our dream
asked on our behalf
in way only you could
that they forgive us in our haste
yes, we were peeping toms
watching through the window
asking them to overlook our failures
and for both our sakes, to just
crash into us
just hike up their skirts a little more
and show the world to us

you said what we couldn’t:
“I’m lost for you;
I'm so lost for you
Touch your lips
just so I know
In your eyes, love, it glows so
I'm bareboned and crazy for you
When you come crash into me”
we felt creepy,  
but you made it sound sweet

Dave, you were king of the castle
we were the dirty rascals
and that song was our secret
I knew what the words meant
while everyone else just heard the melody

and then I met her
she loved that song, too,
and I don’t know if she felt like the girl inside
winking at us in the bushes
or she was outside with the rest of us
feeling awkward, too,
but she hiked up her skirt
and showed her world to me
and while that song played
she wanted to crash into me
wanted me to come into her in a boy’s dream

she was sweet like candy to my soul
sweet she rock
And sweet she roll
she wore nothing at all
but she wore it so well
we were tied up and twisted
they way we ought to be
I was her Dixie chicken
she was my Tennessee lamb
and we walked together
down in Dixieland
just like you said we would

but Dave,
fuck you,
that song only lasts 5 minutes 16 seconds
the longest bootleg I can find
is 8 minutes 23 seconds
and that’s not enough time to love her
she’s worth decades
but no one makes CDs that long
and I can’t put it on repeat ...

she’s too smart for that

if you had written the song to last a day
I might have held her longer than a year,
she’s tied me up tight
tied me up again
she’s got her claws into me, my friend
I’ve got my ball
I’ve got my chain
her wave crashed into me
and I’ve gone overboard

I’ve lived that boy’s dream,
I made it real and now she’s gone
you gave me hope,
but fuck you, Dave,
you never said what happens when the song ends
Just that into my heart she'll beat again
now whenever I hear those opening chords,
the song just crashes into me
knocks me overboard
leaves me drowning
in a boy’s dream

Azami at Midnight

I love her most in the midnights
when the world slips into dreamscapes
and she closes her eyes
there, the world becomes conjecture
her breathing exhales stars ... one by one
rising through windows open to the dark
they spell out her name in a language only I know
ancient and beautiful

In the daylight, I remember her skin
the way it soothes like summer rain
washes off all my unholy sins
reminds me I'm worth living for
worth all my failed stories
but, the secrets, I will only whisper when she slumbers
and only my echoes wake her

Friday, September 3, 2010

Her Arms Ancient

She feels remembered
an old trail charted in youth
and revisited in old age
when all life's victories have faded into legend
and all old sins have found their way toward absolution
she makes prayers worth reciting
as each one that spills from lips finds avenues and updrafts
of butterfly wings and hot summer breezes
to rise upward into the sky

with her
the futility of faith becomes irrelevant,
replaced by the blind hope
believed by hundreds of thousands of dead souls long buried

the press of bare skin on bare skin
develops a rhythm rock bands will spend centuries trying to capture,
the way folk tunes and sacred Latin chants did
after they replaced the beats of drums
pounded out by Cro-magnons and hominids for untold millennia before

she tastes of joy poured into skin
Arizona sun tea on a July afternoon

the reason for jaunts to the creek
or midnight hikes beneath moonlight
become understandable in her arms,
pining me whatever gravity she chooses to surrender to in the daylight

I yield my intentions
suspend resistance
become a rock for her waters to cascade over
and dream of being swept away in her currents
to taste the lips of the seas she carries us toward

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

GumptionFest V will hold a Haiku Death Match on Sunday, Sept. 12

GumptionFest V will hold a Haiku Death Match on Sunday, Sept. 12

When GumptionFest, Sedona's annual grassroots arts festival returns for its fifth year, one of the poetic elements for the festival will be a Haiku Death Match, returning again from last year.

The festival organizers need Haiku Death Match competitors, or “haikusters” to start writing now and have roughly 20-30 haiku each by the time of GumptionFest, Saturday Sunday, Sept. 11 to 12.

There will be a cash prize for the winning Haikusters.

A descendant and subgenre of poetry slam, a Haiku Death Match is a competitive head-to-head poetry duel. The Haiku Death Match has been a prominent sideshow feature at the annual National Poetry Slam since in the mid 1990s.

GumptionFest V will hold a Haiku Death Match as similar to the NPS version as possible. Kimonos, katanas, nunchaku and sumo diapers may be included.

The Haiku Death Match debuted at the 2009 GumptionFest and was featured in a documentary on the festival shot by director and producer Gregg Ensminger.

Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry consisting of 17 syllables in three metrical phrases of five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables. Haiku in English usually appear in three lines, to parallel the three metrical phrases of Japanese haiku. Slam haiku used in a Haiku Death Match is far simpler — just 17 syllables.

Slam haiku can be anything from a single 17-syllable line or simply 17 words, such as “Haiku are easy / but sometimes they don't make sense ... / refrigerator,” “Why isn't "phonetic" spelled phonetically? / While you think, let's make out” “America is taxing my dreams / so I'm moving / to Canada.”

The Haiku Death Match ceremony is as much part of the fun as the bout itself. The host randomly draws the names of two poets from the pool of competitors. The haikusters adorn a red or white headbands and bow to each other, the host and the three randomly selected judges.

The red haikuster goes first, and reads his or her haiku twice. The audience does not clap or make noise, and then the white haikuster reads his or her haiku twice.

The host waits for the three judges to make their choice for winner, and then signals them to hold aloft their red or white flag. Simple majority determines the winner. The host asks the audience to demonstrate “the sound of one hand clapping,” then “the sound of two hands clapping,” at which point they can finally applaud. The winning haikuster then goes first.
Depending on the round, the winner will be best five, seven or nine haiku.

GumptionFest’s Haiku Death Match rules:

Haikusters can read their haiku’s titles before they read the haiku. This technically gives the haikusters more syllables to put the haiku in context, but the haiku itself must still be only 17 syllables.

Poets must be the sole authors of the haiku they use in competition. Poets can read from the page, book, journal, notepad, etc. Poets can have haiku written beforehand or write them in their head while at the microphone. As long as the haiku are 17 syllables, we don’t care how, when or from where the haiku originates.

Rounds will be determined by the number of haikusters who sign up to compete. Thirty haiku will likely be enough for poets to compete in all the rounds. More haiku is always better.

Be flexible and include a mixture of serious and funny haiku. Adult themes and language are acceptable.

The Haiku Death Match will take place at GumptionFest V in the early evening on Sunday, Sept. 12.

For Haiku Death Match tips and haiku examples, visit foxthepoet.blogspot.com.

To register or for more information, e-mail host Haiku Death Match host Christopher Fox Graham at foxthepoet@yahoo.

For more information about GumptionFest IV, e-mail to GumptionFest@gmail.com.