Gonna rock this poem at Jack of the Wood tonight – 9:30 open mic.
But it really wants a djimbe accompaniment – and so far I only kind-of have one. This guy at THE BLOCK off biltmore Friday night said he would bring his drum, but he’s not too confident of his skill level and I’m not sure he will actuallyshow. I’ll do it without – and will totally blow it out by myself – but without the drum I just can’t take it to the total fever pitch it is trying to reach.
I put out a call to the guy who helped me with the poem at my poetry concert last spring – and that worked real well for both of us. (Him, after: “there was one place where I kinda lost the beat, but then I got it back.” Me: “I never was aware of you losing the beat – you pumped me up just the way I wanted you to.”)
The djimbe part is really easy – see the yellow-highlighted djimbe cues.
Intro
Back in the Spring, Lynn Rosser asked me to write a poem for the Singers spring concert. I was honored – and asked her about the theme. She told me that it was, “Transformation – Awakening to the New Consciousness for Our Time”. I said, “Cool” – then went away and realized that I didn’t have anything to say about transformation, or about consciousness, old or new. So I got back to Lynn and said that, for me, the theme for the concert and the song list were just a little too relentlessly upbeat – and that I would need to contribute something that would be more “grounding”. Lynn had the intuitive wisdom to not immediately warm to this idea: “Uh, OK.” Then I went home and proceeded to completely act out: I wrote the darkest poem I could possibly write – and had a total blast doing so. Needless to say, you did not hear that poem at the concert. I think Lynn might still find it horrifying, but I still kinda like it. It’s called “How Can I Write of Transformation?”
HOW CAN I WRITE OF TRANSFORMATION? (Majo, 4/28/09)
How can I write of transformation
When I am so angry?
How can I speak of
My better angels
When today the demons run the show?
(Djimbe enter, softly)
Life,
By beating me into submission
By a thousand humiliations
Has lowered the bar for me
So many times
And I still can’t help but to
Keep going under
How can I speak of expansion,
Of transcendence
When I am so contracted,
So depressed?
I want to expand within, not without
To go to the dark heart
Of that black hole within
Which is not just mine
But a human thing
How can I speak of my higher self
When I have just screwed up again
And hurt you as I did?
And then you told me how that still somehow worked for you
The sweet thing that for you happened next
(Djimbe picks up pace and volume through whole rest of poem, until right at the end.)
May I screw up in all the just-right ways
If I must be an ass
Make me Life’s holy ass
May others ride on my mistakes
To where they need to go
Lord, help us –
Make me an instrument
Make me an instrument of your divine chaos
Let me surrender any claim
To be evolved, to be further down the path
Make me Life’s great
Role model from hell
If others may not want to be like me,
Then let my screwed-up example
Make them want to be
More and more like them.
“If even he can keep moving,
Can put one foot in front of the other
And trust that they will take him somewhere
Then so can I”
May I lead the troops
Further into the swamp
Than man or woman has ever gone
And trust that somewhere
In this gooey, putrid mess
There lies an orchid
A magic jewel that transforms
The mud in which we are encased
Into the heavenly armor that allows us
To fight our way to the gates of hell
Crash through
And be burned alive
Into the phoenix we were meant to be
If my road must be the low one
May I not settle for just
Both feet on the ground
Life, make your drill bit
To the center of the earth (Djimbe quits)
It may hurt like hell going down
But I want to see what’s there
