Tag Archives: poetry

will there be LED sheep after the apocalypse?

you know what’s coming up, right? the first tuesday of may is coming up, which means we’ll be flooding the basement at sycamore with words and chords! come listen and/or sign up to read! festivities start promptly at 9 (which means if you show up around 10 you won’t have missed very much, but try showing up before 10, arright?). take that Q to Courtelyou! we’ll see you there. we’re the ones with the bells on and the beers in our hands and the chapbooks for sale.

if you need some extra encouragement, check these words from the latest chapbook by miz kate conte, primo poetess and all around cool gal:

No Sugar

Mother’s music is March rain
street crosser, dish washer
grocery grip strips
fingers bloodless
ankles ache from overweight
bills, put-down Picasso’s &
late they-trieds—
she treads walnut hard wood
with 5th cup tea
no sugar, just milk
her nest, empty.

It was snowing,
when a home quieted
It was snowing,
when daughter said
soon.

post-apocalyptics OUT.

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Best Cheap Haircuts

here’s hoping spring morning birds for all your new days. love, will machi and margie sarsfield. 

Best Cheap Haircuts

It was the homeowning age;
                   having one foot
                  out the door and remembering
                   forgetting the coat, the hat
           and/or the shoes (either/or)
           one can say I am
                   missing these
                    and my foot

            is unfondleable. Would a stranger
            fuck you, buy you a house, expect you
                   to keep a track?
                                        Take the loan. Buy the
                     penny, luckless
          growing with each new discovery
          like one keeps bumping into

dinosaur bones. Brushed dainty and swift
copper – rushed back the chopper
                    exalting
                    exultant
                    no more mire

             conspiracy theory, the kind
                      gone deeper into anyone could
                      have imagined it is no longer
               a conspiracy theory
                              it is a sincerity theory.
                It’s an earnestness epidemic.
                      Out coatless in the leaping North
                           tunnels under Buffalo

a shitty place to vacation.
                   A marrying age;
                   a bird
                   and a bird and a bird and 
                   many others like it,
                   that we resemble

in our birdhomes. seeds out.
                     feed me feed him feed
                     us, sounded out
                                                     in mouths on and on.
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SUBMITTED FOR YOUR APPROVAL.

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1. soon it will be April 2nd, the first Tuesday of April, and we will be gathered in the basement at Sycamore Bar and Flower Shop to read poetry, sing musics, and have drinking. The new chapbook will be out for your eyes to digest into brain-nutrients, and as always, it only costs your silly broke butt a one dollar bill. so c’mon down! we’ll be there at 9 , we’ll be there til whenever we feel like it, it’s all open mic all  night. please give us all your friendship.

 

2. it is our honor to tell you about You Should be Here, a new monthly femme-based zine put together by the ferociously talented Hannah Clayman.  

Check out the blog: ysbhthezine.tumblr.com.
Like the facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/You-Should-Be-Here/348457118588384.
And if you’re a writer/artist and a lady, submit your glorious works to: youshould.submit@gmail.com

because fuck yeah, yeah? yeah!

3. in the spirit of women being goddamn awesome at all things poetic, here’s something for your day:

CAREENING – by Leah Umansky

Was a worse-now torture.  I will break this network and it is too, too hot. There  are two splendid littles, but it is hardly worthwhile. The three hunters were too many. A thousand plans now, but stay there. All words and motions are disagreeable.

I shall always be a balm. I shall continue on without being. Without being able to explain to myself, but to know the whole life will happen.

Will be, not meaningless / will be, not before/ will be, full of the deep and fuller / and I will impress it.

That is intentional – the marked . Re-think, and it feels like a truth.

The big hot end of a day is great/ is greater/ is greater even grated whole.

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FEBRUARY CHAPBOOK

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Happy new year you everybody. We obviously didn’t do January 1st at Sycamore, because. But we hope you all had a great holidays! But now is the time for February submissions for the sixth post apocalyptic chapbook! Get your 2013 boots on and get submitting! DEADLINE: January 18th, and we mean it. If you DO NOT submit we’ll hang you by your toenails. No seriously, submit.

Our next reading at Sycamore will be February 5th, 2013. Everything will be Fantastic.

Welcome, we are now living in the Post Apocalypse,

Will, Charly, Margie
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3 Days. Go Into the Woods.

a Mayan poem. for your apocalypse. 

FLOWER SONG

The most alluring moon
has risen over the forest;
it is going to burn
suspended in the center
of the sky to lighten
all the earth, all the woods,
shining its light on all.
Sweetly comes the air and the perfume.
Happiness permeates all good men.

We have arrived inside the woods
where no one will see what we have
come here to do.

We have brought plumeria flowers,
chucum blossoms, dog jasmines;
we have the copal,
the low cane vine,
the land tortoise shell,
new quartz, chalk and cotton thread;
the new chocolate cup,
the large fine flint,
the new weight,
the new needle work,
gifts of turkeys, new leather,
all new, even our hair bands,
they touch us with nectar
of the roaring conch shell
of the ancients.

Already, already
we are in the heart of the woods,
at the edge of the pool in the stone
to await the rising
of the lovely smoking star
over the forest.
Take off your clothes,
let down your hair,
become as you were
when you arrived here on earth,
virgins, maidens.

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People, Places, Things

Because it is now the holiday season and important to be a little cheesy but not so very much cheesy, and because there are poetry-like things in things that aren’t really poems, and because a lot of us have been in other places these days, some thoughts from a guy named William Saroyan: 

Places make us—let’s not imagine that once we’re here anything else does. First genes, then places—after that it’s every man for himself, god help us, and good luck to one and all.

The fascinating thing most likely though is how the same place—a miserable school, for instance, with rotten teachers—bores one man into art, and drives another into crime—the only two arenas we really have: art, making: crime, taking. (The genes, the genes, cries the man who believes inheritance, not environment, does it. But does it? Alone? I have never seen poor people in the slums who were not equal to being instantly clean and refined in a mansion with a million dollars. And take away the millionaire’s money and put him in the slums and how elegant will he be fighting mice and cockroaches?

Yes all well and good perhaps you are saying, but doesn’t that mean that people make me? Of course, but people are places.

(P.S. If you’re looking for a good place to be, one thought: Sycamore.)

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Like Free Bloody Birds

just a little something for today and tomorrow maybe.

High Windows by Philip Larkin

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That’ll be the life;

No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide   
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
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with love,
nora curry/will machi/ryan skrabalak/margie sarsfield/charly himmel

we wrote this for you.

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We Were On the Radio and Right Now For Sale.

Her name is not Nora Jones, it is Nora Curry, and here you can listen to her voice and some others:

The Poets of the Apocalypse Ride Again, Plus Nora Jones.

also, Ryan Skrabalak, America’s favorite wacky neighbor, is selling editions of his first chapbook, “sz,” each with a different (unique! collectible!) cover. and it is full of beautiful words that will make you feel too many things. it’s a meager 6 dollars, payable by paypal/check/$order. to get on that, message him here, or at his personal blog (thecloudmerchant.wordpress.com/) where you will find other writings and things of interest about ryan. or, you may order via e-mail at rskrab@gmail.com. don’t be a shameful chance-waster.

and in the meantime,

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