So many days gone and so much I still don't know. I've been listening to The Essential Ma Rainey over and over. I listen to a lot over and over, it's hard to shift gears when you are deep in something good. I love Gertrude Malissa Nix Rainey Pridgitt, Mother of the Blues, part of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and the Assassinators of the Blues. There is one track I have been fascinated with, Shave 'Em Dry. A slightly different version of this song was made famous by Lucille Bogan. However, if you actually listen to Rainey's lyrics, you find it is a song about getting back at a cheating man by shaving him dry. But what does that mean? Not that I really need to know in order to enjoy it … but still, it would be nice to know.
Tincture of opium haze; I never
got that line, “If you meet your man and he
tells you a lie, just pull out your razor
and shave him dry!” Shave what dry? A skanky
mustache? Mutton-chop sideburns? Ma Rainey,
help me! For years I burned incense at your
house of prayer. Shave what dry? A sweet jelly
roll? I love a good jelly roll, the lure
of box lunch; but I don't think that's the case.
Can you shave a roll? I'd never say no
to a nibble, though, jelly down my face,
fingers sticky, sugar making day-glo
blood-haze. I say, where's that razor? I need
you to shave me, lover, until I bleed.
In Armenian the word for people is “zhoghovu'rth.” I am not Armenian, but I still use the word.
Move. Blur. Echo. Even monstrosities
must dance on their monkey legs. Form that word
meaning the people – “zhoghovu'rth.” All these
things need to matter; that lost ark anchored
on Mt. Ararat; that passion to save
something; this grotesque need to turn homeward.
Home? I carry Her everywhere. I crave
so much and spend hours gagging on curd
and crust and ill whey. Love can be grotesque
but so can rhyme. Turn and grind, all viral.
All ill. A house in motion. Drop-top desk
binding down the sky. I have no people.
No myth. Just movement. Just a blur, lover.
I am all streak, no pause. All smudge. All blur.
I recently attended a poetry slam at Michigan State University (hurrah for Logic for winning! You were amazing, once again!) but what I took away from it was the realization that, once again, most people are rather limited when it comes to conceiving of their own erotic worlds, if they think about them at all. This is doubly disappointing since it was a group of poets who were spitting out clichés, and if anyone is going to have fun with language and break some boundaries, I'd hope it would be poets. I don't think that is expecting too much, after all, a delight in language is why we became poets in the first place. And yet calling the embodiment of the erotic up (whatever that happens to be) and claiming it as your own feels a bit … fake. Call me old-fashioned but I want to know that poets earned the right to call upon the Goddess. Show me the scars. I want to know the story of what you gave up that allowed you to know Venus' first name.
Pity poor Venus; wet and nude, again;
who can't still call her? Even our sorry
poets strip her bare. Our erotic, then,
is all bankrupt. There's a price, a very
large price, elsewhere, where the deep erotic
lives. Walk down Rio's Rua Maria
Quitéria, where the saint with the flesh-thick bunda is worshiped. But don't say bunda;
you have not earned the right. Fork over your
tongue and your right hand. The sacred always
demands flesh. Then you can talk of amour;
how you've never betrayed Venus' gaze
or name, her wit or flame; all her spirit.
How you, who've tasted love, honored it.
Note on the etymology of Bunda:
There is some debate over whether words like bunda, from Brazilian Portuguese, and bounda, from Haitian Creole, are in fact related to contemporary American slang's use of the word booty. As a translator, both bunda and bounda clearly mean "buttocks" or "rear." They are words that originated from the slave diaspora of West Africa (though my knowledge of Yoruba is vague so I will not try to say which language branch they come from) and yet almost all on-line dictionaries I've consulted claim the word "booty" as a U.S. Southern corruption of the word "body." I don't know whether this is true or not. I just find the whole thing curious.
Don't miss the Poetry Slam this Wednesday, Nov. 12, at 7 PM on the MSU campus ‹ in the RCAH auditorium in Snyder Hall, see directions below. It will be an evening to remember! And it's free of charge.
Hosted by the Old Town Poets and the new MSU Center for Poetry, this will be an opportunity for poets to step forward and reclaim the airwaves from the pundits and the pontificators.
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The Poetry Slam (another name for a poetry competition for those of you who haven't attended one before) will be very user friendly!
1st, there will be an Open Mike from 7-7:30 PM ‹ This is open to any poet (1 poem only, w/ a max. of 25 lines‹we want to keep things moving.)
2nd, there will be the 1st round of the Slam. Open to the first 15 poets who sign up. Poets will read one poem (4 minute maximum.)
Then, a break w/ free refreshments.
The Final round will be for the finalists, who will read 1 poem each (the same as in the previous round or a new poem).
PRIZES! PRIZES! PRIZES! To tempt you further, let me mention that the 1st prize is $60, the 2nd prize is $30, the 3rd prize is $20. Plus, prizes for Honorable Mentions. And. . . a prize for ALL PARTICIPANTS in the Slam!!!
This is a gentle slam. No dissing of poets who have the guts to get up before an audience and perform. Judges will be chosen from among the audience.
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