Videos from the creation process in El Carmen de Viboral, Colombia:

Porque de tierra está hecha la tierra y de hecho todo
está hecho de tierra: los desplazados, los desterrados,
los enterradores, los recién migrados, los paracaidistas.
Con sangre se hace el lodo y hay de todo bajo el sol.

Porque el copiloto coyote nos cruce al azul:
horizonte-barda, de movimiento es el humano, altisonante salida:
azul azul nuestro sueño de siglos azul, del desapego está hecho el vuelo.
Nos cruzamos, soles, el cielo: lo logramos, todos solos, indiferentes.

Porque nosotros pequeños pequeños inventamos problemas
más pequeños para sentirnos menos pequeños que los problemas
con los cuales nos empequeñecemos. Es decir, una pregunta:
¿el sol se quema por celos del cielo, por vestirse de azul?

Porque discutimos atardeceres y el sol no sabe de qué diablos hablamos.
Pequeño día pequeño día pequeño día y así se acaba la vida.
Mar abajo, mar enventanillado. De lodo se hace el agua, mar adentro:
cuerpos de agua agitado, cuerpos con el sueño insólito de vuelo.

Porque el sol calmado, el mar calmado, el azul calmado.
Pero la tierra no se calma: pequeños pequeños nosotros,
por más pequeños que seamos, nunca quietos:
de inquietud estamos hechos; de soles nuestros sueños.

En marco del 6º Encuentro Internacional de Poesía Caracol, Tijuana, BC, México. Septiembre del 2011. Grabación por Logan Phillips. Descarga las 9 canciones / Download all 9 songs.

So many things a bullet can do
and most of all only one.
The weather just turned in Tucson;
it hadn’t seemed so cold this morning.

Most of all in this one, this
late dawn-drenched pueblo, sun metal-warm,
it hadn’t seemed so cold this morning
until bullet screamed first.

Gunmetal warm, tear-split pueblo,
a bullet interrupts, echoes, lingers
until all have screamed without wanting.
An exit wound in me, in every chest:

one bullet can find many bodies.
The political climate had slowly turned,
unforcast violence in every chest;
so many things a bullet can do.
 

II.
For my mother’s favorite politician

Most of all only one:
her smile rare for política. Smile,
the kind that seems a heart.
This morning your breaths are yours again.

A política rare, smiling:
contact at palms, one by one.
That morning your breaths stolen.
Finding them floating, you inhale them back.

Palms in contact, each one
with tears beading in palms,
find ourselves floating–pull each other back–
a smile is a circle we inhale,

deeply, until like you, we smile
the kind that seems a heart.
A circle breathed for each other
but most of all for only one.
 

III.
After Barack Obama

How well we have loved,
each of us, in our time,
widening ourselves into circles,
holding all inside our ribs.

But each of us in this time–
our instincts sharpened for gain–
hold all we can inside our stomachs
until each, alone, is sick with wanting.

Now, sharpen our instincts for empathy,
expand our moral imaginations
until solo sick wanting, left alone,
evaporates. We make believe

that all is already here,
widening the circle of our concern,
condensing our belief that now, making
each other well, we will love.

•

Three Circle Poems For Tucson by dirtyverbs

Solo performance art piece exploring the somatic experience of writing a poem. 13 sealed envelopes were given to the audience, each reading “open on 1/1/11.” Second in the NoVOGRAFÍAS series.

NoVOGRAFÍAS: poembirth
excerpt from a performance by logan phillips

production assistance:
maya asher
heather wodrich

camera:
heather wodrich

2010
tucson, arizona
dirtyverbs.com

Preparations:
[nggallery id=10]

Puerto Libertad / Puerto Peñasco / Isla de San Jorge.

Afternoon arrangement
of molecules, novel, not normal,
a pulling together of similar things:
minerals, wavelengths of sound,
frequency of the sun, fins and wingtip
feathers over bright water.

Desert conversions:
calcium into bone,
copper into bullet,
chapopote into lightbulb,
smoke into sky:

aquí donde nacía el agua,
desert petrol town, donde
se da luz al humo, dirt
street, waves & wind,
steam & turbine scream.
Smiling teeth through dust,
improbable laughter.
Desert boom town,
ocotillo fence & diablitos.

Sun paint path
on sea, to horizon.
Sun walk on water,
transverse lungs like air.
All the favorite rock
smelted into spoons.
Waiting-to-be-found
islands of plastic
where jellyfish dryhump
water bottles, our shared
tendency toward impossible love.

A sailboat riding smoke into sky.

•

En vivo en el festival Poesía.en.Voz.Alta.10, Casa del Lago, UNAM, México DF. Canción cardenche, canto tradicional de Durango, México. “El canto cardenche se niega a morir” (Milenio, 06/03/2009)

Descargar todo el disco // Download all 11 tracks here. (ZIP file, 58mb)

Recording from a walking performance: on foot from Colonia Roma to the heart of Mexico City and back on the night of the country’s bicentennial.

Un performance de Gustavo Monge.

Artistas invitadas: Marta Vazquez, Mario Corrales, Fiorella Álvarez, Lauren Latifa y desde México en vivo Logan Phillips.