Detroit to LA

tryna be cheap, it took me 10 or 12 hours to get from Detroit to LA (the ticket was something like $120) but i finally made it and am at my little sisters house for a few days before i head out to hawaii to feature at the honolulu slam for womens history month...the biggest one in the country...detroit was very good to me...stayed with cassie poe with daily special guest appearances by ben (you KNOW...BEN! Ben!) who is the most politically incorrect man i've ever known but who is also so hilarious, i forgave him...performed tons (more than what's posted on my schedule), did a youth performance workshop with nandi at youthville last thursday, attended the youth slam on saturday night, and hooked up with my new fave poet blair afterwards...kalimah's joint, pic nap, at the meetery eatery on fridays is the shiznit...very cool crowd and venue...christina archer set the whole detroit leg up so mad love to her for that...also: versiz took me to the best borders books in the world! it was like a revolutionary independent bookstore and i finally found "theatre of the oppressed" by agusto boal and also picked up natalie angiers, "woman. an intimate geography" because i'm a copycat and if roger bonair-agard is reading it, i wanna be down too...versiz also came up with the word "fonkgoddess" while helping me revamp my bio...am super exhausted now...was gonna go to a slam at green with my sister melany and her boyfriend kevin sandbloom but decided to stay home instead (I WOULDN'T BE SEEN...GREEN!) and watch the three little pigs starring jeff goldblum and billy crystal...more later...cbell

in this moment

i am so happy to be here, in this body that i have chosen, with all it's little lines and crinkles, moles and marks...this body that is starting to creak in the morning when i get out of bed if i haven't stretched the night before...that has carried me through my entire childhood and the entire decade of my 20's...my body (the one i have chosen!) has loved me, even when i hated her...she has forgives my constant criticism and given me flawless skin...smiled at me with perfect teeth...she never ever gives in to sickness (ever! i am ALWAYS well!)...and no matter how much weight i gain or lose, she wears the clothes i choose as if she were the empress of the entire universe...yeah...she fly...and thick...and healthy...she comes magnificently whenever i call...and is the best kisser i know...so what am i doing with all this lusciousness? tonight; i am reading her poems, feeding her lemon pound cake, the kind with the crunchy lemony white frosting, stretching her, rubbing her with oil, and stroking her to sleep...because i have decided to love her...i am all that she has...

Black Power Vampires

octavia butler, who as you know, has absolutely no sense of humor, is accidentally hilarious in her most recent novel, "fledgling". the story centers around a young, by vampire standards, girl (she's 53) who wakes, an amnesiac, in a cave to find her entire family and community has been destroyed: burned like in an alabama church bombing. the story is mostly a mystery where she follows various clues that lead her to the white, vampire supremist vampires who were responsible for the death of her family. the interesting twist is that, she is a genetic experiment. she was bred from a group of black women and as it turns out, because of the melanin in her skin, she is able to walk in the day light, unlike the non melanated vampires who slip into a coma by day.

i love the different takes that black folk have of the vampire mythology. i'm remembering tananarive dues book, "the living blood" that tells a vampire-esque story about a group of black people who became "vampires" (i don't believe they're called vampires in the book) by stealing the blood of jesus while he died on the cross, drank it, and whose main occupation was praying, meditating, and cultivating their supernatural powers in the undergrround stone churches of lalibela ethiopia. i haven't read jewel gomez's "the gilda stories" yet, but wesley snipes' blade also follows a similiar story where the black vampires are a sort of saviour of the world.

octavia butler explores race and class, and in fledgling, sex, in the most provacative of ways. i didn't mention that the 53 year old girl vampire is middle aged by human standards, but has the body of an 11 year old, yet none of the adult human men or women resist sleeping with her. very interesting. she also explores what a healthy polyamourous relationships can look like (whether you're human or vampire...more later...christa

what the cab driver knew

is it me or does everyone hale crazyfantasticmystical cab drivers every time they need a ride? tonights was a shaman of the yaqui tradition. an old white man with choppy silver hair who wore a tiny skull for a ring. his wife was yaqui and she died last year giving birth to their child, who also died. she was a heroin addict whom he met at mardi gras sometime back in the 70's. he told me he was a healer and i asked him, being funny, if he drove cabs in between healings? very seriously he answered that the greatest healings took place in the cab. people needing someone to just listen to them, and through listening, he said, he helped them to hear themselves. and so as he pulled up to my hotel (am in st. paul tonight, performed last night at macalister college) i asked him for a healing. he told me that the source of my problem was that i am agitated. meditate, he said. and i laughed, thanked him, tipped $10 and and came to my room with the intention of following his instructions, but ended up watching ice skating instead...more later...cbell

DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS

in austin right now and the entire neo soul crew was traumatized for me about my experience in houston...very funny, and sweet. I LOVE THIS VENUE! amazing poets, great audience and gracious host. shout outs: june (who is mama slam herself), kim aka 13 aka notorious 13, mike whalen, erica and brian...was invited while there to read at texas university for a love jones type of poetry night sponsored by the AKA's, the quietest, most demure group of southern bell type young women i've ever seen. i think there were a lot of pledges in the audience. lots of polite clapping and tentative smiles...they actually grasped their pearls when i did the "coochie magic" piece...oh! and i don't know why everyone and they mama felt the need to warn me about the san antonio crowd. i thought i would be booed off the stage or something, but they were great!! stayed with ria and taught her how to put together a ritual...i love her even though she fed me mexican food that completely ruined my stomach. and i had to stop every 10 minutes from san antonio to austin to use the bathroom!!!...and that might be TMI (too much information) but get this!: vocab, who was my ride into sanantonio, warned EVERYONE who met me that i had eaten bad mexican food and this is why i would probably have to leave the room, the table, etc. a million times! how embarrassing is that????!!! lol...more later...cbell

ishtar of babylon

ishtar is the multilayerd babylonian creator goddess, the source of all life and embodiment of the power of nature. she is the giver of plenty, a lawgiver, a judge, the goddess of time as well as the goddess of both love and war. her name means "giver of light" and derives from her role as queen of heaven. she is the planet venus as both morning and evening star, and her girdle is the zodiacal belt. ishtar descends into the underworld and restores the vegetation god, tammuz, to life and thus restores fertility to the earth. as she descends she removes a veil at each gate. while she is underground all life on earth is depressed and notheing comes to life. ishtar is a multifaceted, powerful symbol of a forthrightt mode of being that is unafrad to venture into the depths of the underworld. she represents the creative feminine, active and strong.

--Michael Babcock

Roe V. Wade

...and what it's really all about is the inherent divinity of woman. that, like the gods of the partriarchs, she has the absolute authority to create and destroy within the galaxy of her own body. this reality contradicts the teachings of the male religions that say woman is inferior in all ways to man, who is allegedly created in the direct image of god...yet man has no power over internal creation. none at all. so he has become a controller and a destroyer in the external realm. his laws are an attempt to regulate the divinity of woman. to somehow share in or control her connection to the universal womb...his wars are an assertion of his ability to control death (life)... his sense of powerlessness is deeply pathetic...


what do you think about this?


cbell

Tour Collage: Baton Rouge/Texas

watched the L Word at a house party with every lesbian in baton rouge! ha! can't believe shane cheated on fine-ass carmen in truely the best most erotic sex scene i've ever seen...ever...tequila was the best show in the south so far...hosted by baton rouge slam master chancellor "xero" skidmore" who calls me mamanatrix because, as he says, i am both nurturing and bossy as hell (the capricorn in me)...good times...austin amazing...so much love...suzy lafolette hosted me and took me to the biggest whole foods market on the planet, where i wandered around in a daze (so much organic food: so little time!) until she rescued me and brought me back to her house... and even though her and her girl were HATING ON CARMEN (who i LOVE) i still respect them :0) ...back next wednesday...houston was absolutely kuh-razy!...invited by marcel murphy of the blackout arts collective and in the cipher before the show there was a group of about 40 folk, over half black men, and 90 percent of them (the men) were arguing that polygamy will be the salvation of the balck nation...i didn't even have an argument prepared...i mean, what do you say to that?...and there was one man (i would call him by name if i remembered it...he's the slam master, i think, for the houston slam) who very seriously opined that woman was only good for her uterus and to cook his food...they all walked out during my third piece, "for bashir"... the women, however, loved me...marcel was the only bruh defending my views (the women were absolutely silent) and they told him to gwan back to seattle with me...it would be funny if it were a cartoon or something...but it was real...on my way into corpus christi the sun was this huge flourescent circle of orange and pink and purple, like the suns you see in movies about the african savanna except, it shone from behind a veil of smoke from the oil refineries that line the highway... about to go fly kites on the beach with stephan...we are both ex-buddhists except, he is a philosopher and so, last night, we had to discuss the one million reasons why buddhism, as a philosophy, doesn't work for us...very funny...my show in corpus isn't until monday night, so i have a couple of days to just hang out...this is hard work...i feel like a travelling monk...more later...cbell

oh hip hop...

by the way: been staying in hotels lately, and hotels have cable, and cable has BET, and i love a big ass as much as anyone, so of course i've been watching, but after tuning in recently for about five minutes, i must officially declare a moratorium on ignorance. sombbody (anybody!) has got to stop nelly. his latest offering is a video about "grills". not the kind you cook meat on, but the diamond and platinum fronts that so many of the rappers are wearing these days. sample lyrics:

got a bill in my mouth/like i'm hilary clinton

smile for me daddy/let me see ya grill/ i wanna see ya grill

how'd you get your grill that way? / how much you have to pay?

and then there was a lyric that i was too stunned to write down but said something like: wearing diamond and platinum teeth is how one shows the world that one is wealthy.

but even beyond the lyrics, the images of grin'n, coon'n, tom toe'n rappers with butlers handing them selections of grills on silver trays was just grotesque....have more to say on this, but am being called to perform...more later...cbell

life after iwps

but wait...there's more!

bout 1:
buddy wakefield
christa bell
rives
iyeoka
Q
versiz
da minista
karen finley
and 4 other's who's names i don't remember right now...but the bout was fiya...my only critique is that everyone except for rives screamed their poems...i performed my ass off...did some new ish for the one minute piece (how to attract hummingbirds and butterflys), and then untitled for the four minute round...

bout 2 didn't get any better:
christa bell
andrea gibson
buddy wakefield...

you see where this is going....

first night i placed 5th in the first round and 6th in the second, second night i placed 5th in the 1st round and 1st in the second, after being talked out of quiting slam altogether by taylor mali when i learned that a poet who didn't even speak english scored higher than me on the first night. go head n laugh...that shit is funny...right? whatever...

iwps was fun for real though...the competition aside...mic mcgee won (after juaquin (and i'll spell his last name phonetically) c-wa-tuh-nae-ho lost due to a two second time penalty...you know i know that hurts...but check it...mic mcgee was so good, so hilariously funny and smart, that after his first piece i gave him his very own private standing ovation! that was the first time i'd seen him compete live and he's amazing...the final four were: juaquin, andrea gibson, mic mcgee and jared paul...all four of these poets deserved to win...stellar performances all around...i placed 14, which is what i placed last year...

am in baton rouge now for a feature at tequila (the BR poetry slam) and then off to austin much later 2night by bus...yikes...pray for me...more later...cbell

individual world poetry slam, charlotte, nc

WWWWWHHHHYYYYYYYY???
this can not be happening.
my first bout is with:

rives (bar 13)
iyeoka (lizard lounge)
buddy wakefield (two time iwps champion)