Last night (AKA the eve of Bubbles’ birthday), the DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency visited Coffy Cafe in Columbia Heights to share a two hour poetry set.

Around 20 people rolled through, along with 7-8 poets. Regulars Damian, Jessica, and Shahid hit the mic, alongside new friends Flavia, Charles Reese, Inkblot, and Michelle (who graced us with her first public poetry reading ever!).

It was our first indoor lyrical ambush at a new location, and it was especially wonderful to welcome participants of all ages. One entire family joined us, which hasn’t happened in awhile….

Highlights:

• Michelle spoke of how we’re judged not by how we love, but by our possessions
• Flavia shared water music flowing through her heart, revealing itself as the most essential form of art…. “All waters are One, and so are we, descending from the mountaintops down to the sea.”
• Inkblot depicted a gluttonous debt and a painful birth to anticipation; remixed Hollywood; offered the chance to lift each other up, rather than bow to fill our own greed; and explored the genders as yin & yang.
• Shahid shared a rhyming history of the FBI; examined CIA torture under the Bush administration; asked “What do you work towards in this world?”; mourned that “Justice is hard to find in this world”; and hyped the benefits of “reality rather than TV.”
• Jessica asked an amorphous beast, “How do I love thee?,” before counting the ways; observed that her turkey sandwich had gone missing (to the tune of a Michael Jackson song); and quested after a purpose.
• Damian planted a flag as the future of his history and observed holding twice the information with a third the education; has “a peace of peace, and dammit, is gonna keep it”; promised that if “You know this smirk, you’ll love this smile”; whined & bragged; and noted that con men and Congressmen all end up convicts.

Catch us next month, at Bossa in Adams-Morgan on Tuesday March 19, with the Akoma Drummers, and again on Wednesday March 27 back at Coffy Cafe in Columbia Heights!

This Wednesday, February 27, the DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency is dropping an indoor lyrical ambush at a new location. It’s an all ages venue with full cafe service and fresh (sweet or savory) crepes, so bring your kids and your sweet tooth…as well as your poems, of course!

• Where: Coffy Cafe on 14th St., just north of Park Road (2 blocks north of the Columbia Heights station on the Green line)
• When: Wed 2/27/13 from 7-9pm
• What: All ages open mic + a warm and supportive crowd
• Why: Because Washington needs poetry, and so do you

See you there!

Danny Harris from People’s District posted my rambling reflections on the origins of the DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency.  He also captured some video of an old school rhyme I’ve been kicking for years, at our old haunt in DuPont Circle:

Tanene Allison wrote a piece on Huffington Post today titled “Follow the Artists to Our New Democracy.” Check it out for some inspiring analysis and fun links!

Hey everyone — just a quick shout out to let you know we started a Facebook Group – DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency.

Alot easier for sharing photos and videos (although it would be great if you would keep those coming here too).

Join us here, there and everywhere!

Next Open Mic is Monday – 9/15, 7pm at Dupont Circle (at fountain).  Jali-D is the musical feature — and he’s amazin!

Tonight, the SF Collaborative Arts Insurgency celebrates its 5th anniversary with its weekly lyrical ambush outside the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station at 16th & Mission Streets. The crew's been rocking since 2003, and recently got noted by a series of weekly papers, including SF Weekly, the Bay Guardian, and even The Onion!

In addition to the weekly open mic, some cats from the scene also hold down the 16th & Mission Review, a monthly poetry anthology. To submit your work for publication, email submissions to Brandon at seven7htangent [at] gmail.com. Also, an initiative organized by some of the CAI's founders saw the third annual Poems Under the Dome just a few weeks ago, featuring an evening of poetry inside SF's elaborate City Hall.

Anytime you're in SF, pass by 16th & Mission on Thursday night. We'll be out in force from 9pm until around midnight…..

Alexandra Geller

Untitled

As far as all us know, love and sin

Walked side by side in world from the beginning:

Serpent's temptation in the garden of Eden

Turned Eve and Adam into human beings.

Thank you, the cunning serpent, for your gifts:

Apple and passion, untold good and evil,

And has remained for many centuries

The might of sinful pain and gorgeous feelings

Read the rest of this entry »

Project the mind – it resonates with thunder;

Reject the mind – around you t burns.

Intrepid joy – impassioned restless wonder –

The heart-suffused and life-rich way to learn:
Intrinsic conflaggrations, hard to pity

Or to respect, or even yet to see –

The nature's splendor reaching into city

To render its inhabitants half-free

Until joy drops, and out appears concept

And meaning – this, if only for some!

And from beneath the axioms, a rocket

Ballasts into the space, explodes and is gone

And then – another time, another meaning,

The meaning is constructed from all sides

And forms the structure that informs the seeming

Which then becomes the vision of mankind –
 

And then come other meanings and perceivings

Constructed like dynamic SQL…*

The culture wisens, thickens as it's dreaming

And builds to levels more removed from hell.

* For the non-computer types: SQL is a tool that lets the people work with data. Dynamic SQL is SQL statements created by program based on conditions.

The Biggest Mud in History

About Rush Limbaugh

A finger and a pudgy head

On billboard on the road -

It says on it, "Reality Check"

And on the radio

Insults, abuse and poison

And malice of all kinds:

Hideousness, lies and noise and

Attack on people's minds.

 Read the rest of this entry »