We asked the poets to keep themselves company
Last night I was in the West End w/ the artists. Dayjob, home for lunch and back out. T working again today again tonight again tomorrow. I parked on the collarbone of my city, looking down towards her toes. I found an orange chair. The streets all busy in the mirage of May. Wednesday opens up on the hinge of hope.
My city is just warming up, just getting started. Vienna plays from a passing car and I laugh to myself like in memory, like in mirror. The Wizard was at Novel before me and petals, petals let loose in the easy air. We drew light towards the back corner and turned all the seats to look.
We asked the poets to get comfortable. We asked the poets to keep themselves company. A prompt that came from my last week w/ fingers outstretched, last weekend’s desire to simply sit beside. I just wanna listen to my friends. I just wanna work w/ my friends. I want to pull them onto the ride of life, eyes open and holding on.
We have hosted six of these so far and I am still a hurricane in a room of poets and leather. Tripping, imperfect, trying. The Rat brought us flowers & chocolate covered almonds. We collected names and committed our friends to memory, the room filling up. I tossed the slips of paper onto the rug like a child in the sand, playing destiny and holding shells up to God. This is how the list was made. And when we thought we were close to the close, we got four more poets to sign up - Veritas and a few newcomers. Here, we watch bravery grow. I get accused of being relentless and infuriatingly kind. I am sweet w/ my persuasion, saying, I only want what’s best for ya. I’m only curious, wanna see what happens. Thank you poets, for bringing the kindergarten of you, for staying awake and listening, for keeping company w/ us. We scribble on the sign-up sheet, w/ quotes and poem titles next to your names.
The poets were brave, letting their minds change and their words take over. I am proud of nothing except how they feel safe here and how they let us know. They smile and tell us tender things. They adjust the mic and we shut up and the speaker does its job. Poets wear tee shirts and shoelace string belts and patched up denim jackets, sunglasses inside and black gloves and unicorns of glitter. They put on something of themselves and write inside outside their body, being with us inside outside the present. Bodies shake w/ nerves the first time and every time.
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I N T H E R E C O R D I N G
Our samples were plucked from somewhere I don’t know - Benjamine and I just doing what feels right. I brought in Clarice to feel less alone, Agua Viva like the very first time, and the Wizard was going to go w/ Frank O’Hara (like the very first time) but switched it up w/ Zachary Schomburg’s poem The Darkness And The Light from Scary, No Scary - poetry new to me. I’ve recited both for you, here.
Benjamine was right after the Rat and right before the Doctor w/ their poem written small small and from the dirt, exalting, what tantrum must one throw to sprout? A piece of uncertainty honest in the beginning on another unknown thing. During the reading, we got teased a bit for pushing the existentialism w/ this prompt and I think Benjamine was very much leaning in to that space of possibility, that drain we circle of being. I did ask the Wizard to give a little blurb on this piece that came together the hour before the Workshop.
‘Meditation on the Void’ perhaps reveals my admiration for the transcendental mode, finding oneself juxtaposed against the natural. One is, of course, as natural as the rest of existence except in how often one forgets. That which tickles & toiles & grows cannot help but to be present in process of existing. I have here attempted to move w/ such grace, as well as break away from stylistic familiarity; the poetic voice establishes its presence in a mantric repetition, phrases are longer & capitalized, the vacant action gathers no end. I suppose there is an errant desire for growth betrayed in the questioning lines, a need to seek elsewhere for answer, when in truth a thing which grows, like love, will always move in an encompassing spiral outwards from within.
kindly, Benjamine Sapp
I was number 8 and looping around myself. I read through a cocktail shaker and it gave me the beat I was looking for. To keep myself company, I wrote about freedom. I started writing exactly where I was, half inside half outside. I meandered through hope and body and tried to ground it. I roped in a few placeless poems and fit them in nicely. I wrote w/ the freedom to do so. Never alone w/ my freedom. I titled it after Clarice’s line and went on and on, too long in my own company, restless here observant here, nothing owned and nothing outcast, all zen but ending w/ collapse - I couldn’t tell you why.
The artists in the room are all flowers in the city. I am here for the full breadth of Spring and I am something like water here. I coax them out at night and they are taller and wet by morning. How one becomes many and how ideas grow fleshy, grow green. In the brain, in the brain, is all I say, soon to be in hands, soon to be before your eyes. Our magic is messy and that’s why it works.
✺ In the spirit of the Internet, if anyone would like to participate virtually in the Workshop to some degree, be sure to follow Portland Poets Society on instagram and please get in touch w/ me somehow and we can develop that together.
The Workshop VI, a podcast