art, design and style
nii parkes' u.s. tour diary
by nii parkes
jul 17, 2003, 20:00
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.
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.
