nii parkes'
u.s. tour diary
posted by nii parkes on Jul 17, 2003,
20:00
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truth is my
father's lips twisting truths from the sweaty pits of a second-hand
saxophone / truth is my father's lips blue black in the cold
wind at speaker's corner, hyde park, london / truth is the
blue-beaconed battle ready beasts ready to cut into the truth of his
black power rhetoric with their black batons / what is less evident
is whether the sky was black or blue when he disappeared / somehow
under the gathering black clouds of police menace sirens became a
miles riff and transported him back to africa / poof / gone / truth
is nobody knows our name.
nii: 'so
what' (real player)
jive poetic:
'suicide note' (real
player)
i'm constantly
writing in my head. i'm on flight ba2167, listening to miles davis'
kind of blue and plotting the show i'm writing for stage. my
destination is tampa, florida where i'm scheduled to read poetry at
palabra loca (june 2) and
black-on-black rhyme (june 3), all set up courtesy of my friend
stazja mcfadyen who is picking me up from the airport.
the problem with
these airport rendezvous is i never know where to wait! stand
in the wrong place, and suddenly you're stranded. i've left stazja's
cell phone number on my bed in ilford. genius! i'm so stressed
that i almost miss the sunny glow around the airport and the
abundance of palm trees. at least the weather is good. thankfully
she finds me after having my name announced on the intercom at tampa
international airport. we hug, and she asks the new most-asked
traveller's question: "did they give you any problems in customs?"
"not really.
they asked a few questions, and i gave one of the
officers my cd." we laugh, head off to find her car, and zoom
onto one of florida's many long bridges towards stazja's condo in
clearwater. i've arrived two days early so i get to visit the
beach, catch up on some writing, and listen to some more miles
davis.
somebody said something that night:
it was miles davis / stumbling through a
childhood of open eyes / learning to see
with his ears/ watching louis armstrong from charlie parker's porch
/ disti lling the unspoken queries of unseen dreams / into
the dark night of his lips / so he could blow the world away with
the question mark of his virtuoso stance.
so what?
soon it's back to
work. the travelling spoken word artist has two goals. one is to
share your work with as many people as possible, impress the
audience and build a fan base, the other is to sell your
product! i'm good at the first, but I stink at selling. i
lack the aggression required to sell twenty cds or books a night,
but droves of people line up to join my mailing list.
 |
| jive poetic, nii and mahogany
browne | the selling thing is
a u.s. specialty (i estimate that about 90% of travelling
spoken word artists are from the us) and it hits me especially
hard when i do the last of my two featured readings in
tampa. a real estate consultant named orville c. smith
comes hands me his card. "but I live in london", i protest.
"but you might move here?" the commercial mind has to be
respected!
i leave stazja and tampa to deliver myself
back to the hands (literally) of u.s. customs. i am so
thoroughly searched that i have flashbacks of my mother seeking
lice in my hair when i was six. on the flight - a cheap one-way
ticket to nyc on jetblue airlines - tv is focused on the
world changing events of sammy sosa, a local baseball hero, using a
corked (lighter than standard) bat to gain advantage, and martha
stewart, domestic guru, allegedly lying about insider trading on the
stock market. i switch channels until finding some classic
tom and jerry. much better!
joy is a big smile on a
little face / a small light in a big place / a globule of glee in a
media puppet show / an arrow of silence in the heart of
life.
at the jfk howard beach subway
station i realise to my dismay that subway single ride fares
are up by 50 cents. alas the exact fare on the metrocard i
saved from my last trip is insufficient. by the time i top it
up i've missed one train. this means i might be
late for my feature reading at the bethel junction arts centre at
7.30pm in connecticut. my readings are scheduled
that tight!
faith vicinanza, host of the bethel junction
reading, is announcing to the audience that i might be lost, when i
get through the door. and it's exactly 10 minutes
before i'm due to go on. because the audience is quite small, i am able
to do some fairly 'quiet' poems before i get energetic. the key to a
good live performance is estimating what will move an audience.
sometimes you get it terribly wrong, other times, to steal a u.s.
phrase,
it's like butter! the bethel junction reading is smooth. it's obvious
during the q&a at the end of my reading, and even the product is
moving smoothly!
oficially, my
mini-tour is now over, but i promised two nyc-based poet
friends of
mine, mahogany browne and jive poetic, that i would hang out with
them and read at some open mike spots. so work is not really over.
we hit the first spot on thursday (june 5), poetry in motion at the
cheyenne roadhouse in queens. it's a typical ny open mike, low
lights, a buffet, and 50% of the poets are
carrying
cds to sell. i see a couple of faces from my previous visits to nyc.
i know the host harlem 125, and brother earl - an erotic poetry
specialist who recently released a cd, poemography.
 |
| nii and harlem
125 | on friday night, we hit o's bar,
where an open mic has been scheduled to precede a hip hop/
soul party
night. reggie mason, who I later find is a talent scout for bet's
lyric lounge when he asks me to send a press pack to him, is the
host. hHis enthusiasm for poetry rubs off on the audience making for
a good night of metaphor swinging. once again, brother earl is
present, as well as chris slaughter and lil' sean who i met at
the cheyenne roadhouse the night before.
i also
catch up with two poets whose work I enjoy immensely, marksman and
q, and exchange emails with a couple of people from the media.
that's another thing a travelling poet absolutely needs. good
contacts. you take all the e-mails you can and e-mail everyone at
least once, because you never know when you might need a warm floor
on a cold night! e-mail is how i became friends with mahogany
and jive in the first place.
i planned to
interview new jersey's poet laureate amiri baraka on
saturday. unfortunately, we couldn't schedule a convenient time,
so i spent the day watching the matrix and crouching tiger, at
my cousin's house in connecticut. come sunday, my plan to go to
philadelphia goes to the dogs when mahogany remembers that she has a
show to host in nyc. i'll have to wait on philly again - i've
visited three times but never done a show there. i did however
write a poem for philadelphia the last time i was
there.
'a walk through philadelphia'
home of will smith and benjamin franklin / 12 midnight and
there's no one left standing / must be the rain streaming down the
stained glass / of downtown bus stops / beautiful but less
comforting than a stiff drink shared with friends.
i am
blue as I course through the city.
down
chestnut street, plaques with the names of men / 56 men who signed a
document dubbed 'declaration of independence'. / men who, for all
their claims of importance, still endorsed the enslavement of black
men.
bad blood leaves marks in the ink of pretence.
like irony, streetlamps give luminance / to
beggars huddled under affluence / uptown the river washes lies away
/ downtown the liberty bell longs to say "welcome to the real
american dream."
it's clear why the bell has a crack in
it.
mahogany suggests i come into nyc and
visit two readings; one at five myles gallery, the other, an
erotica reading, which she is hosting. i pack my bag, wear my
poems, and head off.
five myles gallery is at the heart of
brooklyn. you can tell by the old rownstone buildings and the space
around them. space is at a premium in paces like
manhattan where the houses huddle together like refugees. the area five
myles gallery is in bedford-stuyvesant, famous for its hip hop
artists including the chubby christopher wallace later to be known as
notorious b.i.g.
i get off the subway at
franklin avenue, remembering that rakim line: "i
seen her in the subway on my way to brooklyn / hello good looking is
this seat taken" when i take the a or c train to
brooklyn. i walk a couple of blocks
and come upon a warehouse-like building with a rusting metal door.
outside is a feeble sign that says five myles gallery
where i step in. once
inside, i am impressed by the by the size, and silence of
the audience. my good friend, poet ainsley burrows is on stage and
winks at me. immediately i feel at home. he reads an intensely
political poem in which the phrase 'weapons of mass destruction'
features prominently.
also present
is osagyefo, a fiery jamaican poet whose passionate delivery is
enough to drive every disenfranchised man to take up arms! he is
another us-based poet who visited london with great success.
crossing the oceans adds considerable weight to your credibility
over here. he went on to do shows with the likes of buju banton in
new york. on stage i read 'journeys':
in life / the happiest people / are those who know /
that the journey / is the destination / so they are always
there.
mahogany taps me on the shoulder before the
five myles gallery reading is over. we have to drive to queens for
the erotica evening. in the car, we take bets on which 50 cent song
will be played first. he's on every urban radio station in new york
at ten-minute intervals! mahogany wins when
"magic stick" comes on. for a moment we consider stopping at taco
bell for a quick refill, but we decide to focus on getting to the
venue on time. it's a new place called ambiance and the night is
organised by the brains behind hottest poets
at jimmy's
uptown in harlem in an attempt to diversify.it hasn't been
successful. there is no one at the venue except the organisers.
having spent $10 to get into new york this is not the best news for
me. i need to sell cds to meet my travel costs! instead i head for
the free buffet and fill my puny gut. somehow, i will get my money's
worth.
after waiting around for about an hour and a half, we
all admit defeat and head to jive and mahogany's tiny apartment in
brooklyn heights. we console ourselves with ice cream and sweet
potato pie, and discuss the ups and downs of our chosen profession.
one filled gallery and one empty restaurant all in a days work. i
set my camera on the table in the middle of the living area,
programming it to take a picture of us. i'm leaving tomorrow and i
need memories. three poets seeking joy from the bases of ice cream
tubs. i run to the futon where mahogany and jive are already
scooping away and slip between them. i make a face. click. this is
the life of a performance poet.
'round
midnight'
round midnight / tars continue to push / through
holes in the nights black net / round midnight / the sun whispers
distractions to the moon / ries to get her to come to bed early /
but she turns him down like a dimmer switch.
round midnight /
winds become secrets / sprinkled over silent seas / to evoke waves
of excitement / round midnight / speech sheds its skin to reveal raw
rhythms / rises and falls / of chests and breasts / gurgles and
giggles / subtext and riddles / breath - slow and sure.
round
midnight / the earth rises in heat / from its bed of aphrodisiac
plants/ reaches out with tree arms / to embrace the skies /
damp with longing / to make the universe one.
round midnight
/ the world becomes poetry / and I dare not
sleep.
niiparkes.com
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