Thursday, September 28, 2006

Mmm Hmm!

Dear Good Time Crew,

Come on by the Freq-nasty for a "conclave of fun" (a funclave) with Aaron Belz, Aaron Balkan, and Daniel Kane. These are some high-powered poets, and after the reading we will throw them in the back of the Good Time Van and take them to test their sea-kayaking skills.

That's 2:30 at the venerable Four-Faced Liar. 165 W. 4th St., New York, NY 11238. Saturday the 30th of September.

Love,
Shafer

Aaron Belz's poems have appeared in Boston Review, Fence, The Canary, Jacket, McSweeney's, Verse Press's "Younger American Poets," etc., and been anthologized in March Hares: The Best Poems from Fine Madness, 1982-2002. He lives in St. Louis, where he is a teacher of high school
English and Creative Writing as well as the founder and director of Readings @ The Contemporary.

Aaron Balkan grew up in Arizona and attended Pitzer College in Southern California. He received an M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University, as a Times fellow, and is currrently on the faculty of NYU's Expository Writing Program. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Gabrielle and their sinewy cat, Horace.

Daniel Kane is the author of All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s (University of California Press, 2003) and What Is Poetry: Conversations with the American Avant-garde (Teachers & Writers, 2003). His poems, interviews, and essays appear in in
Fence, Exquisite Corpse, The Denver Quarterly, and other journals.

Friday, September 22, 2006

September's National A Couple of Poems Month!

Remember My Smell & Cold Tinkling On My Diction Maker

Remember My Smell

Remember my smell
when it was so wide
that morning
on the other side
of standing up?

Remember when
that cold weather
made us feel like
we could do everything
without moving?

Don't forget about
the way the weather
smells; the weather
was us that day --
September so fine.

Cold Tinkling On My Diction Maker

Cold crickets make sounds
unrepeatable by my diction maker.

They live in the lips
between the accordion door
and the garage floor.

When cold sneaks down from North,
the stars twinkle to keep warm,
and I breathe sealed breaths
to tune my diction maker.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

But brother, that ain't what's inside...

Compliments Whisky Rebellion's MySpace profile, here are some links to live country music in Brooklyn and around New York City. That's LIVE COUNTRY MUSIC and NEW YORK CITY, if you happen to be a search engine, or anyone else wondering where to find live country music in New York City.

For live country music in New York City, please see
Alex's Brooklyn Country Music or
Leon's Brooklyn Country or
Nate's Good Music New York.

Yeeha!

SeptoWriMo!

Squirrel Battles Crow

It’s such a summer siege,
and here, at the end of summer,
the seemingly mechanical bleating blasts
from the crow’s talking utensils
must irritate her tonsils;
that hairy beast
who won’t leave her children alone
will surely curl up somewhere
once it has snown.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

September is National Poetry Month!

Major Arcana
compliments beer-drunk muses Ann & Lindsay

Anyone can tell the future -- you can't fool
me; I know I don't have to be a magician
to foresee the weather or when the next emperor
will foolishly smash the heart of his empress.

I scared the pants off our local hierophant
when I broadly proclaimed "this chariot
someday will house the love of the young lovers,"
but everybody knows they've nowhere else to go.

Justice: your average swinging hanged man
will exhibit as much strength
in his ugly vertical death
as a sister of Jesus will in her temperance.

And as I sit here watching Wheel of Fortune
like thousands of other urban hermits
who’ve made Vanna White a high priestess
and turned Pat Sajak into a constellation’s star,

I won’t whip my head around anticipating the Devil;
I know he’s back there be it night or light of Sun.
All this knowledge condenses and leaves me moon-eyed;
it’s just knowledge; it’s not judgment:

My low-frequency brain sits on my body’s tower
receiving broadcasts from the past and future of the world.