Guerrilla Poetry Performances in Las Vegas

The poems performed were most of them picked from the ongoing communal MARGENTO grapHpoem we are working on together with Iulia Militaru, Jerome Rothenberg, David Baker, Charles Wright, Ovidiu Nimigean, GC Waldrep, Dana Levin, Martin Woodside, Felix Nicolau, Gerður Kristný, Radu Andriescu, Page Hill Starzinger, Radu Vancu, a number of SE Asian poets soon to be presented on this blog, and many more.

 

Intro @ Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas

Chris Tanasescu

Tongue Place

Back to the airport? Oh, of course

we got a great deal on this flight (low cost),

and now we’re slowly drifting through the bars

just eying in amazement each displayed price –

so that’s the alphabet that anyone can read...

the new Esperanto? I belieeeeve, the restroom trumpet sounds.

Yeah, yeah, we are by nature conquerors

of airs… – “But will we go gently through the heavens’ customs?

you bantered, even Guillaume le Conquerant

ended up both blistering, coruscant, flowing out of his casket.”

Sure, although we’ll only be taken to the second

heaven, the one where they don’t serve any complimentary food:

and then, all clean on the inside, getting off the flying can-

ton, we’ll fill out the place with our tongue.

Chris Tanasescu

A Madrone in La Jolla

Se me confunden los ojos y las hojas…

amo el mundo del viento y del follaje,

no distingo entre labios y raices.

                                Pablo Neruda, “Primer viaje”

A poet’s occupation

is to compose poetry

The writing of it

is everywhere

                Ed Dorn, “Hello La Jolla”

There is no rain            but the breeze that brings the brine

which freshens up my bristle leaves      the berries’

glisten slowly pushing                 the sun                     into the ocean

            through reflection       towards      refraction  -- we breathe in           earth

listen!              the moon started         to rustle           under

            the wheezing night        traffic                        I’ll soon                       dissolve

                        in         the descending               dark  and slowly spread around       my own sea

in the moonlight we watch the madrone’s berries quiver:

reddish, yellow – like Russian candies in a Romanian Christmas

tree – candies all turned small monitors, last

Vegas lucky sevens winning paid outs, Paz’s

árbol mental – for man is a tree of images, woodcutter

Cut my shadows from me       Why was I born among Lorca’s mirrors?

the night copies me in all its stars. Unforgotten, shadowed

            by a one-star Non-com, a deranged Berenger in a beastly play I sing:

There are so many sides to reality Choose the one that’s best / for you… I just can’t get used to life The vast / similitude that hangs us all from this ramose / life tree truly hypnotized by the deep of clear light / makes me so thirsty for some native stories All words / are Indian (says Hugo). Love is Indian

for water, and madness

means, to Redmen, I am going home.                        Home

I stick my fresh roots in this earth now                I touch

the native skulls          its ovaries

it makes me     bear fruit              Mexican berries      Euro sy l

l able       I stutter:       this earth loves it so much       she’ll never let me go

the sun             moon              world                   will pass

but I will still make love to her and  even when         I die (O love

solve all) she’ll hold me in      digest me                     slowly

                          and be forever                  pregnant