I was hibernating so I didn’t post before this event, but I read in it (first time as a “civilian”). It was really wonderful to be able to participate virtually in this organizational triumph - great to hear friends perform and so many new-to-me people, which is part of the spirit of the ritual. The Project is posting some of the videos with permission on their Youtube channel so eventually maybe my crappy phone recording of my short poem will be there. It’s called “I WORK ALL DAY” and it’s after a poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
I WORK ALL DAY
I work all day like a cool priest
and at night I wander the house on the slats
that don’t creak reading the tea leaves
at the back of my skull
frequency of rose bouquets
hung stalk-first to dry
mark every sill as if to say
someone with a heart still lives here
the sound of street racing mobs come down on my calm courage
they want us to be like scientists this the rational
outcome of their experiment but I when I watch myself
with camera-eye
being massacred
my ancestral blood flies
a flock of crows upon the etched faces
of the treacherous
it is not my job to study their political violence
of which we are always before
but to write all day
with painstaking attention to each line
and how I love
the people I love
and how I hate
the revving newborn fascist
how I celebrate by releasing unforgiving word bundles
that rise into the civic sky
Photo by Ted Roeder, The Poetry Project’s New Year’s Day Marathon, 2015 (I think).