Hello, my name is John Rhodes and I am proud to present to you this special on open mic
poetry in San Francisco from Cable Access 29.
I'm going to be producing numerous specials with poets from the open mics of San Francisco
and hopes of producing a series with the open mic poets from San Francisco and all of the
Bay Area.
I also will be recording poets in general and possibly writing in general.
This show will also be podcasted from mysticbablon.potomatic.com.
I have a lot of audio and video on that site and if you care to download the poetry from
there please feel free to do so.
This Cable Access TV show will be in much higher resolution though than my podcast.
I have numerous websites but my ring website is at www.roadsportory.com.
Today we have Clara Sue, an Asian poetess who frequents the open mics and I have known
for many years.
She has a chat book out called Mystique published from Viettetou Press.
Her marvelous website is at www.clarisue.com.
Out of her house she runs a monthly evening poetry venue with food similar to an open
mic called Poetry Salon.
Also Clara has been having park poetry get-togethers twice a year or so called Poetry with Trees.
I'll read this bio and also a description of her works to better describe her.
When she was a little girl Clara wanted to be a hermit and a martial artist living in
the mountains of China.
Clara's mysterious path took her to the United States.
In this reality she practices the art of multi-dimensional being.
Mother, musician, philanthropist, activist, purveyor of Clara and Music Center, a world
music shop of exotic musical instruments, traveler and ultimately poet.
Clara was nominee for the Pushkart Prize in Poetry in 2001.
Some of her poems can be found in the Homestead Review, the North Coast Review, the Hadesbury
Literary Journal and the Internet Journal Red River Review.
Her poem on censorship was published in 2003 in the North American Folk Music and Dance
Alliance.
Clara gives featured readings at various Bay Area venues and benefit events, but her home
is the Sacred Grounds Cafe at Hazen Coal where poetry readings happen every Wednesday night.
In December 2005, Clara sold her music business for 23 years to focus on her art and her unusual
performance ensemble, Loonation, which combines Chinese and original poetry with Asian traditional
instruments.
She is also developing the concept of the Poetry of Hotel, organizing free social activities
for the poetry community in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Quoting Jack Hirschman, Poet Laureate of San Francisco about Clara's works, he said,
Imagine a piano that plays not notes, but the movements of Chinese writing that is immediately
translated into American words and rhythms on the page, and you will be able to approach
and then enter many of the lovely sentiments that rule Clara Sue's poetry.
Short poems like Waiting and In His Eye are superb in their simplicity, and every longer
poem has an inner virtuosity of composition that is the mark of a poet who is very self-possessed.
I myself in this special am going to read some of the poetry that I submitted to the
Poets 11 contest that Jack Hirschman, Poet Laureate of San Francisco, judged, where
I was one of the 30 or so winners.
The poetry comes from my poetry book, Spirits of Bondage and Inherent Transcendence.
The images in the background when I read are a few of the illustrations that are in my
poetry book.
I will read after Clara.
Just to note, the location that Clara will read from is at a public library just a few
blocks away from the TV station here in San Francisco.
There is no introduction in the clips, so what I will do is just fade into a reading.
The reference to the person named Kent, first name of Kent Kennedy, is because she was the
hostess who put on the reading.
It was during April Poetry Month earlier this year.
The pictures that are included in the intro in the beginning are photos of Clara Sue.
That about sums it up.
If you would like to contact me, the producer of these specials, or would like more information,
please email me at info at RhodesPoetry.com.
Clara will read shortly.
Thank you, Kent.
It's a pleasure to be here.
I usually like to organize my reading with a theme, but this time I didn't have anything
in mind, and a whole bunch of poems sort of just scream at me and say, read me, read me,
so I'm going to read them.
But then as I was listening to everybody, there is actually a theme in this selection,
and it's all about transition in life.
I'm going to start with the first one, it's autobiographical about myself.
My mother died when I was nine, and this was about the night when she died.
A girl without mother.
A lock yells at me.
She is dead.
Slams the phone and shuts the kitchen door.
I knew when they brought me to your bedside yesterday.
A very good reason not to be in school, watching them removing a plastic tube out of your mouth
to hear you whisper, daughter, why don't you smile?
I will smile for you now.
You can come to me without entanglement, so I can hold your face and kiss your cheeks
and let my tears fall with yours, to hear your vowed of remembering and guarding before
your journey of ascension and mine to womanhood.
I turn, but you are not here.
I go to the closet and sniff your clothes, not here, not here.
When our lock puts me to bed, I have nothing.
I close my eyes, I open my eyes, I have nothing.
I have nothing until I throw dirt on your grave, soil burrows into my nails, I cling
to them for days.
Our lock thrusts my hands in water when she notices smudges on her white shirt.
Our lock is a maid who pretty much took up the road of muttering after my mother died,
so this is a little piece about her.
Our lock always closes the door before she acts.
Not that she is afraid of being hurt, but it is imperative her victim won't slide out
of the kitchen.
She is a small woman, about four and a half feet tall, with a head full of jet black hair
running down her knees.
She braids it long behind her back, greases it shiny with some mysterious lotion that
makes me stay respectfully away.
I am always curious and frightened when the slapping sound comes through the kitchen door,
and I'm intrigued with the Herculean effort that our lock puts forth.
I can hear her heavy breathing and curses.
She tells me she grabs the tail and throws it on the floor until it stops flopping.
That's the only way to do it.
When it is quiet, I would knock on the door timidly, calling her name, then squint my eyes
and slowly open a crack to the smell of salt water, blood, and pieces of shiny scales.
Our lock is already splashing cold water on the tile floor and scrubbing it with a brush.
A fire burns brightly, and steam escapes around the walk.
Our lock comes from the village, does not know how to read and write.
When my mother was alive, she taught her numbers.
Our lock would watch mother record the expense every day.
Now that mother is dead, our lock is left with the daunting task.
The notebook has two columns, one for the item, the other the price.
Our lock would put them down all the numbers, but can only draw a few words that she sees
often from the old list.
Before she goes to bed, she would call me.
I would sit next to her, carefully write down the word beside the symbol, fish.
The next poem I'd like to read is from my book Mystique, and this is dedicated to a very
good friend and fellow poet, Dan Brady, titled Poem of Dreams.
Behind the curtain, the fountain of sleep sprinkles, no less and no more than the day
before.
In its predictable rhythm, a bird stands on one leg with head into its down.
A man succumbs in a room of music and dance.
Long, long eternity is minutes past, but a passage is like abandoning future, present,
and past.
When lifting the curtain, the first dream sinks to grasp the trembling tendrils, to unfold
desires so closely guarded by inverted jars.
Indeed, only in such a state does one dare find the most wanted fruit hang so precariously
near.
Then a night creature wicks to play mischief on face and legs, brings ripples and scenes
of chase intrigue.
Oh, weep the echoes, bring me, bring me to mother, to warm arms, save Haven.
Wet with puckish smile, the phantom turns bully, pushes and pins the body down.
Now scream, it menaces as dry mouth gives way to soundless gag, until bored with the
victims in mobile state, it lifts up and grumpily drifts away.
It's wet and shallow breath, the dead finds life as layers of curtain draw to her clothes.
Why the fountain of sleep sprinkles no less and no more than the day before, and long,
long eternity is minutes past, but the passage is like future, present and past.
And here's a set of poems that I wrote as a general, as an overall title called Seasons,
and it has seasons and then it has spring, summer, autumn and winter.
And it is not about the season, but really about the different stages in one's life.
Seasons, last night she mistook the street lamp for a star, and though she embraced it
as her guiding light, it did not dance with her, it did not sing, songs, my mother hummed,
rocking me slow, the longing of inquiring youth, the light shivers of a lover's touch,
from now in dreams.
Awake, she found the wheels churning on rough road, under the hostile sun no shadow survived,
and the chains clanged endlessly while the tires ground threadbare to a stop.
Dead, as half alive is gone, I hurl my frozen body into the night to find you caressing my
head, wrapping me in a flannel blanket, lighting a candle in the rain.
Spring, wisps of lilac drift through the window, soaked with words, softly cover my hands and
sing a verse that is unknown to me.
I weep, thinking, this cannot be, I just happen to be here.
And they all have a nest the next moment, I am left with memories.
Summer, rage smacks at the earth igniting fire, the sky is bleached white by the light,
the seed that has been gestating in the inferno swells to its fullest, burst open in the sweltering
dusk and forces its lifeline into the abyss, hoping for gentle rhythm in this flight.
Autumn, it is toward the end of my journey, and though I gather a basket of wisdom, I
am losing my leaves, diminishing beside a vibrancy of youth.
It is time to leave a skunk trail, shove mothballs in the drawers, pickles in a jar, and hang
on to the slanted sun for one last ray upon my lips.
Winter, black is the only color to dress and pain is the only poem to write.
The echoes of footsteps my company went irritated by a child's cry, yet the world a color screen
in red coats, green scarves, cars blaring, people gibbering.
I turn and walk the other way down the long tunnel.
The next poem is titled Meditation, and I think if you can't come up with a title for
a poem, it's always safe to title it Meditation.
You sit through time like aspen's rustle in windless grove, I see only your face.
Who is to say there's no struggle under the soil, roots grapple, choke each other to hatch
in splendid dresses, ruby sapphire, adorn the crowns, forget me not.
The rock you sit on is born in pain, slammed into existence, it is blind, deaf, stubborn,
and cold.
Who would consider the gate of a bird the quiver of a spider?
I greet you with reference because I have prevailed from wolf's mouth with a full moon
on my back.
I recognize your calm, it is a deliberate balance.
And I'd like to end with a poem titled Portals, Portals.
In the beginning I was a tiny cell, frolicking, tumbling in a warm, dark sea.
In time I grew hands and feet, the sea was becoming small, and soon I felt a supple war
and folding, restricting my turns.
One day the wall crumbled, crushed me from all sides.
My painful body was squeezed down toward a pin of light.
I felt I was dying, I gasped and grabbed in vain, and with one final terrifying jolt I
burst into a room of light.
People's laughter, warm blanket, and the comfort of nipple and milk, I realized instead of
dying I had come to be born.
The world was once again immense as I stretched my arms and legs.
I climbed the highest mountains, I rode the wildest waves, but my body began to wither
as the winter sun ashened in tonight.
My world was gradually reduced from house to chair to bed.
How I struggled to stay alive with doctor visits and a regimen of drugs, rare herbs,
diet, physical therapy, to slow the inevitable end.
But my heart stopped beating one day, the back of skin collapsed.
I could not move my hands or feet, though my mind was raving scared, until I caught
the pin of light shimmering steadily toward me.
I realized instead of dying I was about to be born.
Life has no destination, death has no grip.
The soul journeys through portals to become a stone, a flower, a bird, to become the sea,
a cloud, the sky, like nova of a star, to become again and again.
Thank you.
Hello again.
I'm going to read some poems that I had submitted to the Port's 11 Contest which won me a prize.
Here is the first poem, Mexico.
Every step you take through the rising tide is followed by the lines of waves which create
new lines across our two souls and across the unified universe that is in us and is made
up of our genuine, actualized bodies dancing in these lines and waves on the sand.
We merge with God there at the rising tide where your statue of an image comes and goes.
But the beauty of you by the tide will never disappear from my mind no matter how fleeting
life is.
We stole each other's hearts, but just like these we gladly took from each other.
You act like you are unconscious, but secretly you know the universe is below you, above
you, and in the rows and lines of waves splashing at your feet, making your soul dance, giving
you reasons to go on.
You and your small figure do not disappear down this strange shore, but stay frozen in
the actuality of wind, sand, and wave line in the beating hot sun where you learn God's
name and felt Him breathe as the wind.
This second poem is called the Janus Face Popper of Summer.
The word in the title Janus is not after Janus Joplin, it's after Janus the two-faced Greek
or Roman god.
Here is the poem, the Janus Face Popper of Summer.
Stop singing, Popper, and stop running riotous like the colors of summer.
Tooth and nail you take down the summer house of pleasures and its innocent reach towards
controlled civility.
Stop tempting women who have a free imagination, who long to lust quick, but in ignorance of
ordered elegance, like that found in well-ordered gardens that the Popper's poverty of imagination
doesn't know.
No structured design is he, no emblem of controlled beauty.
The wicked Ahab built his house the louse.
The Popper of unrefined desire even makes the worm crawl, not giving him a spine, making
it look ever more cheap and tawdry.
The Popper spends his days enjoying the worm, but at the bottom of a tequila bottle.
The worm would prefer to live chewing on some dead fungus or mushroom, giving an antidepressant
effect to the worm's life, odd to squirm psychotic.
Summer is hot and the lemonade is cold, but the Popper likes the neutral netherworld that
sullies up contrary emotions, which makes the Popper smile, because these hot and cold
emotions are like a two-sided coin equating the two-faced Janus, and these emotions will
give him a following in the hot sun.
After all, the young ones will say he is only half a devil.
This third poem is called God's Cup of Tea.
I wrote it about a place I used to visit in Mexico or Bayu, where I used to watch the
cranes catching fish.
I see a crane standing in the bayou on one foot.
It is spiritually balanced, but its stance is weak and is not well put.
Its poise appears startingly complete, but like a man is about life a feat.
When the crane gets old, it will have standing on one foot down cold.
The crane seems surrendered to the wind and sea.
Also the bird has a wildness that it won't let be and is very bold.
Eventually the time will come when the bird will feel it has everything down, and it will
no longer be by fate struck dumb.
Its soul shall show through its eyes, and they won't be like two coals or like alibis.
To life's simple pleasures its spirit will be sold, true belief instead of imaginings
the bird will be doled.
The bird when it was young used only its imagination, and the meaning of life was only on the tip
of its tongue, but when the bird got old it stopped imagining life as fleeting and began
believing that each breath of life is like pure gold.
Also through grief it would stand stolid, and Godhead would be to it like a song or
a ballad.
In addition to this man would about bayou life agree that to man, bird, and beast the
bayou would be to say the least God's cup of tea and also a banquet or a feast.
Thank you.
This last poem is called Inferm.
It is about the life of the humble worm.
Here is the poem.
Man seems a mere nothing when weakened and affirmed as when he is colorless and pallid
like the worm, and is called by some a demeaning term.
It seems though if man can crawl he ought to be able to stand up to his fate instead
of stall, and rather than swagger and speak contemptuously with a drawl that all he knows
is the calamity of bankruptcy and the fall, he ought to be able to heed some righteous
call.
When the man much like the worm asks for a reward, for doing much work he is like the
worm not paid for fostering symbolic flowers of inspiration in the garden of delights.
Although man and worm though beleaguered succeed in making fertile both the earth and the
mind as they mutually fight against failure, they still are only metaphorically struggling
and groping.
Through this thrashing about they both find meaning and humility as if coming in contact
with the ground of being by connecting with underpinnings of the mind coming from crawling
and probing about in the earth in mortification.
Man begins to, because of this evasion of honor, feel funny, and he finds this inflexible
posture of society unmanly, striking him as odd, strange, and uncanny.
Is it also that his boss looks at him impatiently when he moves at a snail's pace and can't
stand erect, and because he has a small ego the cold stare of his superior makes him feel
like he has a personality defect?
There is no pay for the forbearance of ill will or disease, and if it wasn't for the
pill the attendant man to the ill would be totally unaccommodating as Caesar not the
layman foots the bill.
He sometimes being more ineffective than others is still listless and feeble, and sometimes
wishes that he too could be more like the worm who struggles and squirms to progress,
because he, even though he fights too as if almost infirm, is never possessed by evil,
and with a very strong will the worm tries to be concerned about any earth-like upheaval,
leaving no stone unturned.
There is actually much power in a worm because it eats its way through humiliation, and even
though affected prevails against the heartless, resilient, and firm.
Thank you very much.
This is your host, John Rose, and this is the end of my San Francisco Poetry Open Mic
Special, in collaboration with Channel 29 in San Francisco.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Please watch for more shows in the future on this local channel, and please keep listening
and watching my free podcast.
Thank you.
