MICHAEL PAUL and TAYLOR GRAHAM Aug. 16, 2010

Michael Paul came down from the foothills to read some poems from his big black book. The following was one of them. This poem is one he wrote a long time ago for his current girlfriend (which Paul admitted she still doesn't like . . . but he does).

HE BEING DEAD YET SPEAKS, PIPES, WRITES

Listen:

Lessons in bone.

Jazzman lifts brass, like knife riffing

Filigrees of sadness, sonic scrimshaw,

Upon tiny hammers, anvils, stirrups, all

The smallest ossicles of this

Benighted head

Bowed head

Bowed head. Eyes burn.

Listen:

My love comes,

Kittenlike,

Bearing gifts. Four roses odorless

And still as newly killed mice.

Lays them out like my heart

At her feet

With the news of her leaving.

Alone now,

Taking all the wine dark lines

Of haunted face

Written by the blind luck draw

Of double helix,

Scribed by horn

(Not ax, but knife)

Now sharpened

On the castanet clatter

Of my loves knocking

My loves leaving. I raise

A toast,

A cup of gladness

Turned to vinegar and gall,

Put four roses in it:

The color of memory

The complexion of time

The shade of solitude

The hue and pattern of

The chiaroscuro coloratura

The jazzman scratches on my bones.

Listen: I will

Raise a toast to the woman

Whose tuition though bitter,

Costly as a mouthful of ants,

Is the unwilling dues

I pay to hear

All the way to my bones,

That hard bought beauty

Of the blues.

Then Taylor Graham read from Walking with Elihu: poems on Elihu Burritt, The Learned Blacksmith. The following is an excerpt from that book.

A GOOD LONG WALK

One of my motives . . . was to look at the country towns

and villages on the way in the face and eyes.

— Elihu Burritt, A Walk from London to John O'Groats

For two minutes and forty-five seconds

the Ron Horse stands waiting

in the harness at the station, trembling with impatience

of metal and steam; a snort,

a roar as he plunges into dark passages

under the city. Who could

catch his breath, as he's hurled through a tunnel

under paved streets and church vaults?

Then, re-emerging into daylight, those deranging

glimpses of tenements and black-throated

chimneys, children trying to

make-believe in backyards eight feet square;

and wicked boys flinging dead cats —

You won't travel that way.

Seven hundred miles by footpath —

you'll take your time

through pasture and yellow field,

see pied cows ruminating in noon shade,

and hear the song of bees.

You'll pass the time of day

with a hundred pleasant greeting:

a farmer at the stile,

reapers with scythe or sickle

across the hedge. It will be a good

long walk.

A healthy open mic followed afterwards with Lawrence Dinkins (NSAA), Moira Magneson, Hatch Graham, Wendy Williams and others.