News from the Poetry Front

NEWS FROM THE FRONT by Sympetalous
Poetry Night with Patricia Smith 9/28 at Smith College

So it's a mighty short list
of those I know even just a little
whom I could well tell about this magic
cuz last NightEye went back to where
the T. Wolf say I could never return
Home again ahh but not Home Alone
cuz there I was in the Ahh-oomm womb
a sacred room at the center of a largely unknown universe
with wayfar more than one a verse and so many stan's ahhhs
and oohs for all that gray matter that would make clocks pause
and time-stan-still but not my heart for it burned as it raced
with our spirits just beaming their baby wide smile whenever
the real soul food's there it's all you can eat maybe get your mind around
that clean clear acoustic oval forum o' higher learnin' then some spiralin' wisdom
of last eve's poetic fuzzy logic and La Chiara'still exquisite MotherWomen

Yes it is, just a precious few who could sense (oh yes) and know
of the passion I saw and heard and felt somehow
last night word-Smithin' in ol' Noho way north of Soho
it was baby Boho an' a little yo so much like heaven and there were angels
of all sizes shapes an colors just touchin' takin' oaths and testifyin'
and If I'm lyin' I'm dyin' cuz I was being bein' born
like any other an' with all that talk of babies and motherin'
and cryin and sighin and itchin' maybe moanin' the blues
'bout how bitchin' are women's prisons and/or gasms
both faked and for sure surreal and so still imagined
as grand slam canyon poets love their soft stony chasms

I could go on right here'n'now suffice t'say that after a super sublime open-mike
slam-bam-thank you-mam-selle LaBlue-Belle Patricia Smith worked that crowd like
a pure Aretha who never loved a man that way an' lika Tina turn her whole life around as the Buddha told her what love's got to do with it an' I'll tell ya what, she was so still that little nappy haired girl (white folks get to say that, right?)
on the Chi-town streets maybe jumpin' double dutchin' to the Motown beat
of Temps'n'Tops the PipsSupremes and then she stopped in the name o' love
and told tales of livin' & lovin' round the world, of givin' & hoverin' roun'
the Truth as she saw it and felt it sojournalized it embellished it and then
was banished to a sacred region that now wants more than the news reported
and its ludicrous attempt at pure objec-tivity in a totally subjective reality that
whirls like Sufis on quantum mechanics, one that even Immanuel Kant screw up
and Heisenberg? oh, he's certain about that!...and now I'll shut up!