Sunday, April 25, 2010
Renaissance City Online Magazine
Two poems i've written were accepted in the Renaissance City Online Arts Magazine for their second issue. See the link on the side for the site where this can be viewed.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Undefined: A poem about Poets
Undefined
People,
Parading around pain
is not poetry. The point
which where we
draw our lines and rays
towards the sun
is being missed.
We are parenting parallelograms
with uneven sides and angles
that appear in acute ways
but are so far obtuse
that it cannot be right.
Relating modern music
or society to slavery
doesn’t make an awesome African American
poem unless providing a solution.
We are a people tattooed in torture
but fully sitting in the seat
to allow someone to etch sorrow in our skin.
The color of our paper is conspiring
in classes and behind pages of anthologies
stating that we should not write
about experiences that are definitely there.
If poetry is only old, dead, male and white,
than by no means is what is scribed bow
that. It is illustrations of egg shells
hatched and broken at birth
making mosaics out of story.
It is a problem we aren’t taught
to solve, but to just show the work
that brought us to the conclusion,
Undefined.
A mean rhyme scheme
may seem
to beam what we deem
supreme poetry or lyrics
but it is no more than the tune
of the Orcas in the ocean
echoing sounds,
it isn’t their original voices.
If you must be woman than be more
than a queen, be a goddess for goodness sake.
Sculpt yourself in the mud
made from your earth bearing womb and tears.
You will be judged until you
bake cakes of demons with your face
and see rain clouds in your car,
and after all that like
Sylvia and Anne
they will still judge you.
You are greater than that
you are our Lourdes and Angelou.
You are a heaven
battling hells they refuse to read.
If you must be a hue of man
than douse yourself in it’s
bottomless bucket of splendor
and paint with the brushes
borrowing down from
your hardened knuckles.
If you be young and White
than don yourself as a cloud
and fly into forever rather
than be as unmoving and unchanging
as your marble predecessors.
Be uniquely you, undefined.
If you be Black know your possibilities
are as endless as the night sky.
Don’t be confined in corners
like shadows any longer
because eventually there will be
light coming to erase you.
If you are Asian know now
that the origami unfolded
has always brought
wise willows and wonderful words.
Your history is as rich
as any others and always will be.
If you are Latino
raging bulls are awaiting
to be released from the salsa
sitting inside of your veins.
Do not allow yourself
to be overlooked.
If you hail from the Middle East
the desert is not empty
but filled with a treasured legacy
endowed to you. Your words rejected
by the canon of the European
have been powerful cannons of their own for ages.
And all else must remember that this
undefined art we create
is made of nothing more
than the ink welled in our eyes,
the lead resonating in our bones,
and the stanzas stretching the strength of our muscles.
We can’t be defined into
experiences of the excruciating,
memories of the melodious,
intelligent images in sentences
or stories structured in Sestinas.
Our work will remain as diverse
as the people who read them.
We will continue to collide
planets of thought
over what is and is not something
that we don’t really have the power to decide.
We are undefined,
a quantity of infinity equal only to quality.
We are undefined,
a question unanswered because it can’t be.
We are undefined,
and this is our definition.
People,
Parading around pain
is not poetry. The point
which where we
draw our lines and rays
towards the sun
is being missed.
We are parenting parallelograms
with uneven sides and angles
that appear in acute ways
but are so far obtuse
that it cannot be right.
Relating modern music
or society to slavery
doesn’t make an awesome African American
poem unless providing a solution.
We are a people tattooed in torture
but fully sitting in the seat
to allow someone to etch sorrow in our skin.
The color of our paper is conspiring
in classes and behind pages of anthologies
stating that we should not write
about experiences that are definitely there.
If poetry is only old, dead, male and white,
than by no means is what is scribed bow
that. It is illustrations of egg shells
hatched and broken at birth
making mosaics out of story.
It is a problem we aren’t taught
to solve, but to just show the work
that brought us to the conclusion,
Undefined.
A mean rhyme scheme
may seem
to beam what we deem
supreme poetry or lyrics
but it is no more than the tune
of the Orcas in the ocean
echoing sounds,
it isn’t their original voices.
If you must be woman than be more
than a queen, be a goddess for goodness sake.
Sculpt yourself in the mud
made from your earth bearing womb and tears.
You will be judged until you
bake cakes of demons with your face
and see rain clouds in your car,
and after all that like
Sylvia and Anne
they will still judge you.
You are greater than that
you are our Lourdes and Angelou.
You are a heaven
battling hells they refuse to read.
If you must be a hue of man
than douse yourself in it’s
bottomless bucket of splendor
and paint with the brushes
borrowing down from
your hardened knuckles.
If you be young and White
than don yourself as a cloud
and fly into forever rather
than be as unmoving and unchanging
as your marble predecessors.
Be uniquely you, undefined.
If you be Black know your possibilities
are as endless as the night sky.
Don’t be confined in corners
like shadows any longer
because eventually there will be
light coming to erase you.
If you are Asian know now
that the origami unfolded
has always brought
wise willows and wonderful words.
Your history is as rich
as any others and always will be.
If you are Latino
raging bulls are awaiting
to be released from the salsa
sitting inside of your veins.
Do not allow yourself
to be overlooked.
If you hail from the Middle East
the desert is not empty
but filled with a treasured legacy
endowed to you. Your words rejected
by the canon of the European
have been powerful cannons of their own for ages.
And all else must remember that this
undefined art we create
is made of nothing more
than the ink welled in our eyes,
the lead resonating in our bones,
and the stanzas stretching the strength of our muscles.
We can’t be defined into
experiences of the excruciating,
memories of the melodious,
intelligent images in sentences
or stories structured in Sestinas.
Our work will remain as diverse
as the people who read them.
We will continue to collide
planets of thought
over what is and is not something
that we don’t really have the power to decide.
We are undefined,
a quantity of infinity equal only to quality.
We are undefined,
a question unanswered because it can’t be.
We are undefined,
and this is our definition.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Broadside Press Theatre, Sunday April 18th, 2010
This Sunday the Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture and Broadside Press Poets' Theater will host the winners of this year’s Dudley Randall Poetry Competition, Brandon Clark, Alex Jones, and Deonte Osayande. The reading will be followed by an open mic session. This event is free and open to the public.
Broadside Press Poets' Theater takes place on UDM's McNichols Campus the third Sunday of each month. For more information, contact Rosemary Weatherston, Director, Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture at weatherr@udmercy.edu. We hope you can join us.
About the Poets:
Brandon Clark has been a writer since he was in the 5th grade. He just took third place in the Dudley Randall Poetry Contest. He also is one of the founding members of Rhymes with Orange Poetry Collective (alongside Alex Jones and Deonte Osayande) who have read their poetry at the 2009 Symposium of the Society of the Study of Midwestern Literature at Michigan State University. Has been a poetry feature at open mics at the University of Detroit Mercy. Brandon is currently majoring in English with a minor in philosophy.
Alex Jones is this year's first place winner of the Dudley Randall Poetry competition. He has been published in the Metro Times as well as [sic], UDM's student literary journal. He also served on the editorial board for [sic]'s latest issue. Alex has been a featured reader at the Byte This poetry series at Cliff Bell's Jazz Lounge. He is also a founding member of Metro Detroit area poetry collective Rhymes With Orange, who read at the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature's annual symposium at Michigan State University in 2009. Alex has been scribbling creatively in some form or another since 6th grade, and possibly earlier. He is now a Senior English major at the University of Detroit Mercy and will be seeking a Master of Fine Arts after a year off following graduation.
Deonte Osayande comes from a family of educators and activists and has been writing for a bit over two years. He just finished in second in the Dudley Randall Poetry Contest and also finished in second in the University of Detroit Mercy’s Howling Wolf Chapbook Contest. He has read at the Converging Aesthetics display at the University of Toledo, been featured at many poetry venues around the city of Detroit, and had poems published at multiple online quarterlies. He is a graduate of the Broadside Press Institute of Cultural Studies and is an instructor at the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute’s Pathways to Freedom summer program. He is currently working with Broadside Press to complete his first chapbook of poems and is currently majoring in Elementary Education with a focus in Mathematics and English.
Dr. Rosemary Weatherston
Associate Professor of English
Co-Director, Women's & Gender Studies Program
University of Detroit Mercy
4001 W McNichols Road
Detroit, MI 48221-3038
p: 313.993.1083
f: 313.993.1166
Broadside Press Poets' Theater takes place on UDM's McNichols Campus the third Sunday of each month. For more information, contact Rosemary Weatherston, Director, Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture at weatherr@udmercy.edu. We hope you can join us.
About the Poets:
Brandon Clark has been a writer since he was in the 5th grade. He just took third place in the Dudley Randall Poetry Contest. He also is one of the founding members of Rhymes with Orange Poetry Collective (alongside Alex Jones and Deonte Osayande) who have read their poetry at the 2009 Symposium of the Society of the Study of Midwestern Literature at Michigan State University. Has been a poetry feature at open mics at the University of Detroit Mercy. Brandon is currently majoring in English with a minor in philosophy.
Alex Jones is this year's first place winner of the Dudley Randall Poetry competition. He has been published in the Metro Times as well as [sic], UDM's student literary journal. He also served on the editorial board for [sic]'s latest issue. Alex has been a featured reader at the Byte This poetry series at Cliff Bell's Jazz Lounge. He is also a founding member of Metro Detroit area poetry collective Rhymes With Orange, who read at the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature's annual symposium at Michigan State University in 2009. Alex has been scribbling creatively in some form or another since 6th grade, and possibly earlier. He is now a Senior English major at the University of Detroit Mercy and will be seeking a Master of Fine Arts after a year off following graduation.
Deonte Osayande comes from a family of educators and activists and has been writing for a bit over two years. He just finished in second in the Dudley Randall Poetry Contest and also finished in second in the University of Detroit Mercy’s Howling Wolf Chapbook Contest. He has read at the Converging Aesthetics display at the University of Toledo, been featured at many poetry venues around the city of Detroit, and had poems published at multiple online quarterlies. He is a graduate of the Broadside Press Institute of Cultural Studies and is an instructor at the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute’s Pathways to Freedom summer program. He is currently working with Broadside Press to complete his first chapbook of poems and is currently majoring in Elementary Education with a focus in Mathematics and English.
Dr. Rosemary Weatherston
Associate Professor of English
Co-Director, Women's & Gender Studies Program
University of Detroit Mercy
4001 W McNichols Road
Detroit, MI 48221-3038
p: 313.993.1083
f: 313.993.1166
Sunday, April 11, 2010
What's been going on
It's been a lot going on since my last post. It's been a really busy and trying time and there will be more to come in the near future. I came in second prize in the Dudley Randall Poetry Contest and two of my fellow poets and friends came in first and third. A manuscript I had written came in second place in the Detroit Mercy Howling Wolf chapbook contest. It probably won't be published in that current form, but i've already began revisions and expansion of that into a full book. Last monday I was part of a semi-final slam for the Detroit national slam team,and I didn't make it in one of the most star studded fields of poets here in the city.Regardless the rundown of stuff i'm trying to get going are as follows.
My poet mother,Ms.Aurora Harris' mom recently passed away and there will be a memorial service soon,either her or I will let you know at a later time.Some time after that and she's been able to heal from this sad time we can get together and finish my first chapbook hopefully to be out this summer.
May 7th-This year's' poetry slam master and dear friend, Omari "king wise" barksdale has deemed the 10 most underrated poets in the city of Detroit. This group of poets (myself included) will be featuring at the Neo Minds Poetry Venue at the 5E art Gallery as a fundraiser for the Detroit National Slam Team.
May 14th-The founding members of the poetry collective Rhymes with Orange (Brandon Clark,Alex Jones and Myself) will be performing and reading our poetry at the Confrence of the studies of Midwestern Literature at the campus of Michigan State University.
More to come soon after things have been sorted out.
My poet mother,Ms.Aurora Harris' mom recently passed away and there will be a memorial service soon,either her or I will let you know at a later time.Some time after that and she's been able to heal from this sad time we can get together and finish my first chapbook hopefully to be out this summer.
May 7th-This year's' poetry slam master and dear friend, Omari "king wise" barksdale has deemed the 10 most underrated poets in the city of Detroit. This group of poets (myself included) will be featuring at the Neo Minds Poetry Venue at the 5E art Gallery as a fundraiser for the Detroit National Slam Team.
May 14th-The founding members of the poetry collective Rhymes with Orange (Brandon Clark,Alex Jones and Myself) will be performing and reading our poetry at the Confrence of the studies of Midwestern Literature at the campus of Michigan State University.
More to come soon after things have been sorted out.
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