Upbeat music
Hello, this is the San Francisco Open Mic Poetry Podcast TV show with John Rhodes and Clara Sue.
Today in my segment, we have Marvin Himstra and in Clara Sue's segment, Jeffrey Lilly.
Clara will go into details with Jeffrey before he starts reading.
Marvin Himstra is a very entertaining poet who publishes the Seasonal Bay Area Poets Review.
He was born in Iowa and his latest book is Poet Wrangler, Droll Poems.
And Marvin has a website with the appropriate address of www.drollmarve.com.
Before you read, Marvin, I wanted to ask you, can you say a little bit about what you're going to read for us today?
I decided to put together a book with all the poems I've ever written about poetry.
I was surprised there were so many and I was delighted to see they were mostly all humorous poems.
If I may, I have an important announcement. As of now, I have an official Roku channel on the Roku box.
I'll bait a private channel. And if you go to your Roku channel account, you'll see an option to add a private channel there.
The passcode is SFPoet. There's a few little bugs in it. You might have to unplug and plug back in your Roku box when I update the channel.
But hopefully they'll fix that bug. And I hope you enjoy it. And now we'll fade from this shot and Marvin can read his poetry.
I'm going to begin with a very useful poem. It's titled How to Choose a Muse.
My last muse ran off with a monosyllabic hearty from downtown Omaha. Yikes!
I struggled on museless knowing my poetry machine would break down very soon.
A friend in the know suggested I try a police lineup. Just one visit jump-started her love life.
For a hundred bucks and a pair of safe-sex sunglasses, you can see a museum of sinners and saints.
One lineup guy, ice-picked goatee and a bet-midler heart tattoo could inspire slant rhymes' eyes closed.
But it turned out he was allergic to epics and muffins, a dubious muse at best.
So I opened myself up to any rhyme or any scheme, hours without even the hint of a sonnet I was about to leave.
Pick up an Alcelan caster DVD on the way home and resign my post self to slow-pros and coconut milk when the celestial snare drums rolled.
And a deus ex mach and a talent scout spotlight hit my consummate muse.
Tutored in a yurt, ghost wrote for Gandhi's ghost. Loves a blueberry waffle breakfast.
Finished off at Oxford, grins a lot. My poetry machine has never felt better.
Hums like sunrise licks the mountain.
The next poem is titled Three Poet Frogs About to Croak.
It's a balmy early morning at the pond, quiet except a mayfly snores, and a hungry-toed dream she swallows the entire universe with only one burp.
The Three Poet Frogs always wake up early to chat before those shameless dragonflies shatter the serenity-absolute lascivious flybys and come hither, tail English.
Tempted Poet and a scientist every day stuff on this pond.
Someone tried to push me off my favorite lily pad yesterday. I almost croaked.
Mother is Poet Frog the first. A serious Shakespearean sonnet snob.
It is too sensitive for your own A-B-A-B-C-D-C-D-E-F-E-F-G-G's be more accessible.
Croaks Poet Frog the second, the one with a mouth to watch out for.
I want a poem that tells my reader it's juicy. They gulp it down whole.
Poet Frog the third rolls his wise eye's chance. His omniscient dry or wet omnipotent credo.
Never indulge in a single syllable without a kind and exhilarating purpose.
That includes your final croak.
A frisky dragonfly gets fresh with the air morning opens.
Three Poet Frogs sleep in late and put their croaks on hold.
Next I'm going to do the title poem from the book.
It is Poet Wrangler at Work.
The cover of the book includes one of the poets and the back cover has the other four archetypal poets in the poem.
Poet Wrangler at Work.
Tonight we have just time for one short poem for each for you to give it your best.
Let's hear it for Willie Chiseled.
Okay, cool. I have ten poems tonight. One for each finger.
They're tightly bound in a neat, organic sequence.
A Gordian slip knot of relentless ecstasy.
So I'll just have to read all ten times.
Next we have Paulette Nazal.
Hi everybody.
Here is a world premiere audience participation poem that requires everyone in the audience to strip to the waist.
No need to rush. Time.
Next we have Rufi Kako.
I think Mother Nature is awesome. How about you?
Title of my poem is Earth Tickle.
Get us in the mood. We'll close our eyes for five minutes.
We listen ever so closely.
We can hear the unforgettable sound of raindrops hitting the lid of an 18-inch pizza box.
Time. Meet Cynthia May.
This is a one-word extremely urgent concrete survival poem.
It's untitled.
Sponge, sponge, sponge, sponge, sponge, sponge, sponge, sponge.
Time. Last but not least, we have Harry Bonds.
My poem's title Plato's Squeeze begins with the surprise,
a Tory mirror image of the reader's scary butt.
Oh, so meaningful.
From there we dashed a philosophical debate just like that symposium,
but with a full bar moving right along we languish briefly
in a sweet lyric interlude of cloying self-indulgence.
Next we submerge ourselves all the way under in a spirited apocalyptic vision.
All the Disney characters bravely face their final destiny without any licensing rights
except Pluto. Then we time.
What a wonderful group tonight. Thank you all.
Next we have a little bit of a poem that's more relaxed titled My Best Audience.
Where the heaven is, my audience.
She's painting mandalas on her toenails and reading Jung to Kitty in a bombed-out garden.
He's doing chin-ups after a run around the lake,
didn't step on a landmine today,
mountain sleeping in, cougar wiped out under den,
bighorn ram winks at his rival.
Where, oh, where is my audience?
There it is, the kind sky blue sky.
Angels with human pretensions, poor devils,
the deep blue sea, especially the jellyfish.
They've read all my books
on quiet tropical nights.
The jellies chant my entire opus from the top.
I'm going to conclude with a short but very important poem
titled The Poet's First Duty.
Don't forget to blow tenderly in the ear of the universe as often as you can.
The universe gets lonely.
Thank you.
Thank you, Marvin, for your poetry.
I'm going to read a poem that's about my childhood.
It's a humorous glance at my childhood of being very lonely
and in sort of a duck-and-cover Midwest.
Here's the poem.
It's called The Last Supper as if every meal was The Last Supper.
I was a little kid who thought he was an alien.
At least maybe the only people I knew must have been aliens.
I could tell because they left me behind everywhere I went.
There was no good time spent with these aliens.
Like, for example, oh no, here comes that little rocket man now.
They would say as they whispered the silent vow.
Dad would say, we'll write him out of our will.
He can live on endowments from Lao to Zhu's Tao.
I lost my rocket ship just before I became a teen.
What was this young boy's lot and why, when he was worth his lot in salt,
did he turn to salt every time he turned around?
That salty dog sure was expensive.
All his friends seemed to be his uninvited guests.
You can guess the rest.
They repeated The Last Supper at every meal.
I know you are young, Johnny, but I hope you don't mind.
But this may be your last meal.
As I go down the salty dog and as I listened intently,
I said, mmm, delicious, try some, Howie.
Thank you.
Hello, this is Clara Suko, hosting with John Rhodes for the San Francisco Poetry.
Open my podcast, TV show.
Today my guest is Jeffrey Lilly.
Hi, Jeffrey.
Hi, Clara.
Very nice to have you at my show.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
You're welcome.
Jeffrey, you are a performance poet and you have two CDs out.
Can you tell us a little bit more about your CDs?
You play with musicians.
Yes, I do.
I was inspired to play with musicians by the beats.
I particularly enjoyed listening to Alan Ginsberg perform while playing music.
And, of course, Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues was another influence.
And I remember one of your CDs has a piano accompaniment.
That's exactly...
Should I say accompaniment, but collaboration.
The Butterfly Flies, the second CD, has a avant-garde classical.
Jonathan Commissar performing piano.
And the other one is multi-instruments.
Exactly, promised land poems.
Hans Christian uses four or five different instruments.
And how would people find out about your CDs?
Can they go to your website?
Sure.
Go to JeffreyLillipresents.com and find out more.
Okay.
And what about your AIDS anthology that you've been working on?
What is the title of the anthology?
It's Art Mugs the Reaper.
And the book itself is a memorial for writers and artists who died of AIDS.
And we put it into sections, basically framed with the idea of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in mind.
And also Freud's idea of eros and Thanatos.
Well, I wish you could look with the book.
I know you're looking for a publisher and people can find out more information about the anthology on your website, too.
Yes, thank you very much.
Okay, great.
Let's hear Jeffrey reads.
Keora Buduyala, Bolio de Curvier, Mesterno Moncour, Watashiwa.
Chosky, Salvador, Papillon, Svobodnajit, Naminutkiya, Dinvi,
El Oizo, Mojit Piat, Deset Petite Vie, Sofri, Yeslion, Poivre, Yeslion, Poissie,
Poet, Souvent, Bois, Ischosky, Salvador, Dolos, Enfin, Dumond, Moilabor.
We're rainbow folk, some black, some white, some yellow, some red, some brown.
We're rainbow folk reaching for gold pots waiting like kaleidoscope matches.
We're rainbow folk, one time brown, one time white, one time red, one time yellow, one time black.
We're folk of the rainbow, one time man, one time woman, one time genius, one time retarded, and all times originally disabled.
We're of the rainbow folk, many times middling, many times amoeba, one time mussel, one time starfish,
one time dolphin, many times zygote, many times few splitting cells, many times fetus,
and all humans of female fetus first, and then somehow out of the womb.
Folk rainbow, one time rich, one time beggar, one time bourgeois, one time king, one time serf,
one time saint, one time villain, and all times a stumbling, laughing, crying, crying person.
Of rainbow we folk, and each one is we, and all ripple into world soul dance.
We're people of the rainbow in endless wonder bowing.
We're people of the rainbow sometimes caught in pride before off the tower falling,
sometimes caught in false humility before being, and always spontaneously throwing life dice upon the spinning table.
We're many tale living rain folk bowing, and we're sometimes het, sometimes bi, sometimes gay,
and sometimes caught in celibate wonder.
We're rainbow folk sometimes happy and sometimes sad as we go along on our endless journeys.
We're many, we're one, we're here, we're there, we're everywhere.
Rainbow folk, rainbow folk, rainbow folk, rainbow folk, folk, folk, folk, folk, folk.
This next one came to me after my mother's death.
Oui maintenant ma mère, oui maintenant ma mère, elle n'est pas sur la terre.
Y'a ni ma goutte, y'a ni s'n'aille ou d'hommage toi.
The three graces play their roles, the third awaits those once falls.
Elle aussi attend pour la conteste, la vie et de la joie et de la tristesse.
Beaux-sous-chevaux y'aute, vieilles-tries-je d'ouillettes. Notre Dieu continue d'exister, et mon Dieu, mon vent, toujours vous souffler.
Hermes took her to the leethe, where he'll take my one-journe friend Billy.
Saberis barked at the entrance to the cave, nearby Chiron Road, but could not save.
The scissors had caught and hades awaited. Once again the gods were sated.
She'll not come back and spring, as does Persephone. Demeters bring.
And God continues to exist. The wind still blow, and my mother's heart persists as I deeply feel my woes.
Beaux-sous-chevaux y'aute, vieilles-tries-je d'ouillettes. Notre Dieu continue d'exister, et mon Dieu, mon vent, toujours vous souffler.
And so God exists to this moment, and the wind will sing of our atonement.
But my mother's not here today. She's joined the wind, or so they say.
Hero. My Japanese savior and I walked hand in hand on a journey home.
My gate was unsteady, made so by drink. Suddenly my ankle twisted off the curb.
Hero, my hero, pulled me back, away from an onrushing car.
I gave him glad thanks in the evening, safely.
Mozart's Magic Flute.
A conjugal future in a mere's eye, magical flute given as talisman, passed along as playful pipe, wed to a dancing libretto of delight.
Through testful labors, the pair go toward their drawn-to connuctios, rising from the lowest chakras,
from impersonal bare arms stretching through the cave of unbridled eros to foretold amore.
Earlier reflected the pair go, the pair go, each blended contrapunto,
and each carried on the wings of Mozart's music.
Julius. A young Jew clinging to beauty played one last lament upon a companion violin
crushing sadness. The notes reaching Wisell's ears then added to a chronicle of the night.
Lover violin, indomitable spirit, you still sing sweetly the insistent beauty
carried within the magic of a young man's soul.
A voice of a people caught in celebration, wed to continuance, overcoming iniquitous death.
Words of a shattered violin, of Job's suffering cruelly dwarfed.
Of 20th century biblical pain, of a people awaiting a messiah,
knowing the cruelly of the absence of a time unborn,
knowing the kept urgency of transformation's call,
and still left with the sadness of tears in the haunting sound of Torah's music,
played upon a violin by young Julius, whose sweet life could not expire in beauty's absence.
Psalms. There are days when I walk too stunned to speak through the valley of the shadow of death,
yet thy rod and staff comfort, leaving my lips in the holiness of quiet,
remembering David's salming words which anoint my head,
leaving wonder amidst the wintry frost.
In the quiet steps, in the quiet steps upon the concrete walkway,
I move upon the stillness of a wheel, drawn to evening celebration past rows of homes,
streets sometimes traversed all in an evening's long hush.
The night air is peaceful as a womb before inward stirring.
In the quiet steps upon the concrete walkway, a candle in my heart,
was born a smile of being as I was drawn, drawn to Temple Sabbath,
to Hebrew words, to a purple yarmulke, now resting with beauty upon my head.
In the quiet steps upon the concrete walkway, I travel with the humility of years,
the one God bringing me to prayer.
Spectrums. The haunting sounds of a violin's bow-stroke strings
bring spectrums of color to my mind.
My feet uplift and dance. I whirl as in prayer as you speak to memories
of endless passings in and outside time from resin to so many faces.
New weight. I held his ashes in my hands, a measured step taken to them,
so carefully were my fingers upon the holding box.
I gauged new weight with slight movement and felt a lasting love for a friend
of varied measures who was now born so lightly.
He with me and my remembering heart were rested the story of a smile
left after expiration.
And pretty dusk, dead pan gray accumulated clouds,
sky sitting like still smoke signals stretched over squat mountains,
making silence. By me, harbor boats dancing in the water,
birthed and wading, making sounds like infinite chimes.
Westward, the golden gate bridge reaches across choppy water like elegant punctuation
emphatically sang, San Francisco at pretty dusk.
As the purple horizon speaks loud color into my remembering mind,
and there ain't no painter of this suchness, baby. Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jeffrey, for your reading.
I would like to end the program with a poem of my own.
It is titled, A Minor Offense.
His hair is greasy. His brows are thick.
His breath is hot. His frown is cold.
His frame is large. His jacket is torn.
His pants are soiled. His zipper is broken.
His socks have holes. His sneakers are unlaced.
His hands are trembling. His legs are stiff.
His days are long. His nights are longer.
His corner is stinky. His blanket full of fleas.
His name is unimportant. His life is trifle.
His loitering is a minor offense in the streets of San Francisco.
Thank you very much for tuning in.
My name is Clara Sue, co-hosting with John Rose
for the San Francisco Poetry Open Mic Podcast TV Show.
See you next time.
