My poem “Hips For The Hops” was recently published in “Learn Then Burn: a Modern Poetry Anthology for the Classroom.” The book includes some of my favorite performance poets and is edited by my homies Tim Stafford & Derrick Brown. You can find it on amazon or straight from the publisher at www.WriteBloody.com.

Hey folks,
I’m participating in the National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) challenge. 30 poems in 30 days. I’m not going to post all the poems here as many of them will probably be, well, shitty. If you’d like to check out the poems I’m doing this month go here: http://thecureforyourales.blogspot.com.

I’m sure I’ll post a few here too. Probably second or third drafts. You guys here at TCFYA get the good stuff. If you’d like to learn more about NaPoWriMo go to http://readwritepoem.org. If you are taking the challenge please send me a link to your work!

A short movie about Slam Poetry, Street Poetry, and Protest Poetry. There’s footage of poets on the streets of Chicago, at war protests in Washington D.C., and at the Green Mill where Slam Poetry started. Poets are some of the most passionate, corny, funny, serious, smart, philosophical, sad, and above all dedicated people you will ever meet. — Wes Heine (director)

I make a quick cameo at 1:15 right after Nina Corwin and Tim Cook. Enjoy!

The Bartender Dreams of White Moths by Karen Weyant

Of flutters pounding in her ears, tissue wings
snagging on loose wires of screen doors, burnt
crisp on streetlights, bent backwards around
the antennae of a car. She wakes up sweating,
thinking of bar napkins tearing on cans of beer,
bar stools, the heels of work boots heavy
with dust. One regular always sports jeans
stained with white paint, another wears
the wings of sweat stains under his arms.
Smoke rests in her mouth, coats her throat,
splits her skin. The jukebox echoes, Garth Brooks
scraping her hips, pinching her thighs.
She remembers all the last calls slipping
through the back door, hoping the night
insects grasping the screen will fly away.
They only cling tighter.

In 8th grade my homie Carl Z & I were listening to NWA. During the song “I Ain’t the One” Ice Cube spits:

Cause I’m gamin on a female that’s gamin on me/
You know I spell girl with a b

I heard Carl mumble under his breath, “Birl.”

According to Carl Ice Cube isn’t misogynistic…he is just terrible at spelling.

— — -

My homie Jarrett once said to me,

“Did you ever get home while your mom was baking bread & the whole house smelled so good the aroma took over everywhere & everything? It’d make you so incredibly hungry. You couldn’t wait to eat some of that delicious fresh baked loaf. When it was finally done you would come down from your room, cut a fresh slice while it’s still warm, and then when you finally put it in your mouth you realize IT’S BREAD. THAT’S ALL. IT TASTES LIKE BREAD. LIKE BREAD TASTES.”

— — -

One of my students didn’t turn in her work today. I called her and she said, “I’ll e-mail it to you when I get home. Can you text me your e-mail address?” I sent her the text message & a few minutes later I received a response I assume was intended for someone else…

“You a snotty nose hood rat n’dats
why I scribbled all over yo book bag ho.”

I replied:
“Did you just call me a snotty nose hood rat?
-Mr. Sullivan”

I never heard back. I assume she’s terrified.

My good friend Lindsey Mineff and I gave each other an artistic prompt recently. Here’s the dirt: We each made a playlist of songs we like on youtube for each other. We then needed to create a piece of art inspired by or while listening to each other’s respective playlists.

The playlist she made can be found here.
The poem I wrote as a result of listening is here.

The line that most directly relates to her playlist is “a song in the shape of a rabbit” and if you notice, the third video on her list is “Who Can Win a Rabbit” by Animal Collective. Mostly, I attempted to capture the mood and movement of her selections while borrowing a few lines from bits and pieces of some of my unfinished poems. I find it interesting that Lindsey and I both decided to revisit unfinished projects for this prompt rather than start from scratch.

The playlist I created for Lindsey is here.
Lindsey is a photographer by trade (Check out her amazing photos) but while listening to my compilation she decided to paint. She painted a piece that pays homage to Dr. Suess’ famous piece “Fooling Nobody.” She entitled her Suess-inspired painting “Fooling Everybody.”

Lindsey had this to say:
I originally started in early July and when I did I was trying to replicate Suess’ original exactly. I got very frustrated because he painted his ink on paint and I was painting well, paint on paint…I stopped working on it for over a month. When I decided I was going to finish it no matter what…I worked on it while I played your playlist. I don’t know if I can say at exactly which song it all started to come together but I realized I was better off making it more my own. That’s when I started to make it more of a ‘pop art’ version of the original.

Lindsey and I would like to challenge you to find someone to do this exercise with and share your playlists and artistic results here. Or, create a playlist, leave it as a comment, and maybe someone will use it as a prompt. I might just post the results! Good luck!

1.
i have always been a man on boats
unsure of footing on shore
a man of hats
of cover
a song in the shape of a rabbit.

I have always wanted
to be like smoke rings, clap-hands,
quick step, able to hold on
swishing rent week behind wrinkles
speech loud bounced off curtains
vulnerable reaching and tough.

when i speak of love
i tend to talk about myself.
these are my skeletons in the piano.
they swallow whole notes
and spit them back
like ghost fountains.

2.
under an angry moon
hairs on my neck,
like second hands,
stand at attention
a poor man’s werewolf.
I don’t offer up my scars.
All I said was.
the moment was small enough
to fit inside her palm.

we have lifted ourselves
across this dead city.
smiling street lamps
tear down the day.
we are creatures with fists
through our last defense.
i’ve said a militia of sorries;
the kind of apologies
that sink through wind like grenades
blow pieces of myself
into a thousand search warrants
wanting easy answers.
our stories are not crafted from stone.

we block out names in tree bark—
dogs at a stump.

3.
she is an early thigh
more bird than bourbon
flew from rooftop to shoreline
found me aging in oak:
whiskey on a bed of barley.
my nights teemed a frozen red
unable to escape the winter
in my stomach.

even now it keeps me
from remembering her hands.
while she is gone
they mix the pancakes here with milk
fry plantains without cardamom.
there are love letters
wrapped around our throats
but our mouths are missing tongues.

Which one are you? Why?
———————
Two Hangovers by James Wright

Number One

I slouch in bed.
Beyond the streaked trees of my window,
All groves are bare.
Locusts and poplars change to unmarried women
Sorting slate from anthracite
Between railroad ties:
The yellow-bearded winter of the depression
Is still alive somewhere, an old man
Counting his collection of bottle caps
In a tarpaper shack under the cold trees
Of my grave.

I still feel half drunk,
And all those old women beyond my window
Are hunching toward the graveyard.

Drunk, mumbling Hungarian,
The sun staggers in,
And his big stupid face pitches
Into the stove.
For two hours I have been dreaming
Of green butterflies searching for diamonds
In coal seams;
And children chasing each other for a game
Through the hills of fresh graves.
But the sun has come home drunk from the sea,
And a sparrow outside
Sings of the Hanna Coal Co. and the dead moon.
The filaments of cold light bulbs tremble
In music like delicate birds.
Ah, turn it off.

Number Two:
I Try to Waken and Greet the World Once Again

In a pine tree,
A few yards away from my window sill,
A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down,
On a branch.
I laugh, as I see him abandon himself
To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do
That the branch will not break.

as it happens

his raw hand
hot saucepan from stove top

oil splash hard wood
skin, a pink dough on rise

dinner bursts open,
a hot dam -

fire does not wait to be acknowledged
brain is a home pain strolls slowly into

cuts a swath
a building fills with smoke

pain will register
in the morning

white-heat shed kidnaps
the dry of a city-side

a spark barn-storms from chimney
the market turns bright ash

it bellows a flame’s tune

under an angry moon
small hairs on my neck stand at attention

like a second hand
a poor man’s werewolf.

I didn’t offer her my scarf
All I said was.

the moment was small enough
to fit inside her palm.

Recently I was asked to perform at “The Encyclopedia Show” in Chicago. The Encyclopedia Show is a monthly mash-up of performance — stories, poetry, music, comedy, tragedy and all the rest – centered on a topic. Each month’s topic (bears, explosives, the moon) binds together an otherwise eclectic showcase of the city’s sharpest tacks and brightest bulbs. Launched in December by Robbie Q. Telfer and Shanny Jean Maney, a new show premiers each month at the Chopin Theater in Wicker Park.

This month’s topic was Vice Presidents and I was assigned Aaron Burr. For those of you who aren’t familiar Aaron Burr ran against Ben Franklin for President and lost, thus becoming VP. Franklin didn’t include Burr in the Presidency at all. Burr, a Revolutionary War hero, thought it might be worth while to overthrow the government. He was one part hero one part traitor. He killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. He died broke and alone. He was kind of amoral. He’s kind of like Rod Blagojavich…if Rod Blagojavich were a Revolutionary War hero and shot dudes in the face.

Anyway, this was the poem that I wrote for the show:

Eulogy for Theodosia Bartow Prevost
My beloved first wife
by Aaron Burr, 3rd Vice President of The United Sates

My love, my first love, beloved Theodosia,
a love like ours was not made of delicate things.
Even now as memories float back to me
they cut wings off insects mid-flight.
Today the hornets are hiding.

I sing the song of your hair:
almond like beech wood.
Shards of branches swim down the Potomac
brushing stone clean.
This is your baptism—
the flood brushing the pain from your stomach.

I never knew it would build a wall between us
when I shot Alexander Hamilton in his stupid abdomen
but you, as you have so many times,
reached through walls to bring me back.
You always brought me back.

You, at one with stone.
After you left us I saw your face
in our daughter’s— partly angelic, mostly of wind.
She was a dustbowl weathering the earth
protector of dirt
and I loved her for you.

[Until she was killed by pirates
in the Carolinas in the winter of 1812.]

Now I see your face in the crooked teeth
cracks of my apartment walls.
I see you flicker in the din-lit of my den
but mostly, under the stream surface
as if I could cup my hands of water
and dig you from under it.

You have been taken from me
like so many things
and I wonder if the cancer in your gut
I laid there like a poison egg.
The best of me was always for you
but it was me who twisted
these parts of myself like wash-rags
into something ugly.

Theodosia, did I make you ugly?

For you, I have always fought my duality.
I have been a father and a musket.
For you, I wanted to be noble.
For me, I wanted a kingdom.
But for the country, I will be strung
on the end of a gag line.

I have run for president and won wars
for your lips, the salute of generals,
pithy words like justice, for soil and stone,
on seashores, in courtrooms, and unclaimed land

but I have been ignored and cast out
scraped from scabs and boot heals
by history men
the makers of tomorrow
the tellers of no lies.

I have been denied pins on my coat.
The chair pulled from under me
I have suffered heat stroke.
My tongue dry, pockets empty
pride withered to thorns.

I have been forced outside.
Exiled myself
back to the places I fought against:
Europe, my pocketbook, my holster,
the ego that cocoons me.

I have been built up and shut in
buried my family and killed men
fought for and conspired against
I have warped myself ugly in your absence
assembled walls the size of ships
and you are not here.
You are not here to reach through
and bring me back.