grows from possibility and improvisation

the kinds of things you cannot buy

at Wal-Mart

and you cannot find

in profits

It’s soul might get tangled

in misdirections

but beneath freedom’s sky

sunny men and women cannot

resist the rising Light

“If thy offend thee, pluck it out.”

Still a bitter glow in my dark eyes -
The pulling arrows;
Ones not taken from Cupid’s quiver
But penetrating my loving beauty.

O Child!  To finally embrace you!
Up from the holocaust
Of that dark mill that claimed you –
To hold you high inside redemption!

For the most part our poets are realistic in their intentions.  Almost no one is looking for fame or fortune, very few dream of being the next great American poet.  Some of the poetry is amateurish, some heartfelt, some dull, some really fucking good, so good it pisses me off and some just plain hot, smoking hot.  We are a group of people that in one way or another have been turned on to poetry.  Turned on to hearing poetry, yours, others, poetry not only being read and heard but lived.  There is presence in this poetry.

Our format has changed, morphed but is essentially an open mic and feature format, similar to great poetry readings around the country.  It is my hope that more and more our open mic poets will go on to be features.  After testing their chops, realizing what works and what doesn’t and spending countless hours and emotions on their poetry they will find their way to that immortal 15 minute spot and make sure everyone in the room leaves changed after it.

For me, Hotel Lenado Poetry night is a way to live.  It is a way to breathe and scream and laugh, shout and whisper.  It’s a place where I’ve made friends and colleagues with people from all walks of life with a hundred different stories.  A poet and dear deceased friend David Lerner once wrote “poetry is the rock of tomorrow not that pop music is in spiritual receivership. I wish I could read my poetry in front of thousands of people like a rock star because I know that if I did, I could eventually make them weep, hurt, be silent and at some point actually listen.  But even if all that came true, if all my idealistic dreaming saw some light, I would still ramble down aspen street, notebook in hand, order my whisky and coke and listen to the best goddamn group of friends, people and poets a young man could ever ask for.

i saw a fly buzz
from cooler to cooler
it’s going 2 mph
but the truck is going
70 and so
i’m beginning
to understand
the
universe.

rughead said
damn, that sun is hot!
rughead, i said
that sun is billions and
billions of degrees hot
yet the first atom test
was hotter than the center
of the sun (it’s true).

rughead looked at me
and so did leon, westagon
and itchy. i forgot
what happened next
it was very humid
the kind of day
that philly will throw
at you in august
or october :  )
we were doing tree work
for crazy ed taylor.

And somewhere between the shafts
Of dust, will also
Hang the rogation;
A fragile curtain of skin.

But when only the vents are on,
This vessel – This place –
Smells of expectation;
A sterile prostrate space.

From the paper beginnings and
The drafting of the dream -
The apparition, the edifice
To rise like shafts of light.

The glass - a promise of light
From a prism of sand -
A bower or vision
Between heaven and the city.

Steel is a brotherhood of spark
And cinder, fired with imagination -
The strength - forged and forced
Into the first person “I”.

It is that gaunt possibility,
The shell of the ways and means -
To stand with the people,
To stand with the eternal city.

god rested,

let’s wake him now.

But what is mortal
Must be loved in its entirety,
With all its texture,
Until it becomes beautiful.

While knowledge is a basic need,
it’s not the power that makes us bleed.
If all our thoughts were told in speech,
Then lips need not seek each to each;
To make contact and sweetly know.
There’re other powers by which we grow.

The spirit that sets our life aglow,
Is not in that which we now know.
But rather that which we might learn,
Shared with a love that makes us yearn,
To say."That I must grow because I live
And life in me is what you give.”

Pikey.