Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Sharon Elliot features January 9th


12/26 Holiday, No meeting. H A P P Y    H O L I D A Y S !

1/2/2017 No meeting    H A P P Y    H O L I D A Y S !

1/9/2017 Sharon Elliot hosted by Jim + OPEN MIC, always free except for restaurant purchases.






Sharon Elliott has been a poet activist over several decades in national and international social justice concerns, especially the rights of women and girls.  Her activism began in the anti-war and civil rights movements in the 1960s and 70s, and she spent four years working with women and teenage girls in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and Ecuador, especially in multicultural women’s issues.  She is a Moderator of Poets Responding to SB1070, and has featured in poetry readings in the San Francisco Bay area. Her work has been published in several anthologies and her poem “Border Crossing” appears in the anthology entitledPoetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, Francisco X. Alarcón and Odilia Galván Rodriguez, eds.  She has read it in Los Angeles at AWP and La Pachanga 2016 book launch, in San Francisco and at the Féis Seattle Céiliedh in Port Townsend, WA.  Her chapbook, Jaguar Unfinished, was published by Prickly Pear Press, 2012.  She was an awardee of Best Poem of 2012 by La Bloga, for The Day of Little Comfort.  She loves to mentor young poets and assist them in spreading their creative wings.  She is studying indigenous traditions of Scotland and Norway and is searching for the home of her heart with the guidance of her ancestors.  She is fluent in Spanish and is learning her traditional language of Scots Gaelic.  A true child of the north, she loves cats, stormy blustery days by the sea, and blueberries.


she wears
her morning coffee
like

a tea stained dress

warm

audacious

chimera

fond of peaches

and dark chocolate


Copyright © 2016 Sharon Elliott. All Rights Reserved. 

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

David Erdich Features Monday, 12/19/16


12/19  David Erdrich  hosted by Bruce
Always open mic, always free except for restaurant purchases.


Combine the sensibilities of a stand-up comic
   With the observations of a naturalist
Serve it through a saxophone
    And you've got a full fool eating falafel--a poet

psychiatric social worker-schizophrenics, alcoholics, own daycare center, juvenile delinquents, senior meals program
Telegraph Avenue airbrush artist/street vendor/organizer
truck driver 
gardener
single father
grandfather

12/26 Holiday, No meeting. H A P P Y    H O L I D A Y S !

1/2/2017 No meeting    H A P P Y    H O L I D A Y S !
12/19  David Erdrich  hosted by Bruce   Plus OPEN MIC & Always free except for restaurant purchases. 


Combine the sensibilities of a stand-up comic
   With the observations of a naturalist
Serve it through a saxophone
    And you've got a full fool eating falafel--a poet

psychiatric social worker-schizophrenics, alcoholics, own daycare center, juvenile delinquents, senior meals program
Telegraph Avenue airbrush artist/street vendor/organizer
truck driver 
gardener
single father
grandfather

12/26 Holiday, No meeting. H A P P Y    H O L I D A Y S !

1/2/2017 No meeting    H A P P Y    H O L I D A Y S !

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

12/12/16 Julia Vinograd features

12/12 Julia Vinograd  hosted by Jim       Plus OPEN MIC & Always free except for restaurant purchases.




Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet.  She has published over 59 books of poetry and won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. She has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa.  A Pushcart Prize winner for "The Young Men Who Died of AIDS," she has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley and is one of the editors of the anthology New American Poetry Vol. I: The Babarians of San Francisco -- Poets from Hell. Her latest chapbook "Look Out"has just been published in October, 2016

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

12/5/16 features Garrett Murphy


12/5 Garrett Murphy hosted by Jan + Open Mic + always free (except what you order from restaurant

Garrett Murphy, a political and human nature satirist, lives in Oakland, CA, and has written several chapbooks of poetry and prose. 

THE OPPRESSOR RULE BOOK


ATTENTION:
If you are reading or hearing this
You have no doubt purchased
The
Oppressor Rule Book.

Rest assured,
our aim is to take you through each
commandment
in this manual
to make you achieve
all your effort’s worth
for your investment.

We shall begin the reading
of the commandments,
which are as follows:

Oppressors expect kudos from

the ones they oppress.

Oppressors feel good by
making others feel bad.

Oppressors pick symbols 
as easy targets
instead of going after
the actual culprits.

Oppressors believe that they
are the salt of existence.

Oppressors believe that only
they
can be right and are shocked
that others can possibly think
for themselves.

Oppressors always believe
that they are perfect
so how dare we oppose them!

The oppressor’s favorite hiding
places are:
            Tradition,
            Popular opinion,
            Authority,
            Poll numbers
and
            Sound bytes.

Oppressors never believe that
their actions are wrong.
Oppressors never believe
they can ever be wrong.
That is what makes them
oppressors.

WARNING:
Some oppressors believe
they can never be oppressors
simply because the institutions
make that “impossible!

On the contrary-----


You don’t have to be a race
            to be an oppressor.
You don’t have to be a gender
            to be an oppressor.
You don’t have to be an economic state
            to be an oppressor.
Don’t have to be a hierarchy
            to be an oppressor.
Don’t have to be a religion
            to be an oppressor.
Or ideology, size, nationality
or any other demo
            to be an oppressor.
You just have to oppress
            to be an oppressor.
And not even for twenty-four hours
            to be an oppressor.
And you sure can’t be
            BORN
            an oppressor.

for

Oppression is action
            plus intention
not accident of birth.

Oppression
is
Oppression
is 
Oppression
is
Oppression.
Therefore,
you
            too
can
            be
an
            oppressor.

And now the replies from the
makers and readers of this book.
What do you have to say?

NO
POPPYCOCK
PREPOSTEROUS
ERRONEOUS
I DO IT BECAUSE I LOVE YOU
BALONEY
I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG
DEAL WITH IT
IT’S YOUR FAULT
YOUR  PROBLEM
GET WITH THE PROGRAM
GO WITH THE FLOW
BECAUSE I SAID SO
RESPECT YOUR ELDERS
YOU’RE JUST JEALOUS
IT’S ALL IN YOUR MIND
YOU’LL THANK ME FOR IT SOMEDAY
OBEY AUTHORITY
MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY
DO AS I SAY
NEVER MIND WHAT I DO
IT’S YOUR DESTINY
IT’S GENETIC
IN-YOUR-FACE
YOU JUST MADE IT UP
                        MADE IT UP
                                             made it up…

(Well,
what can you expect from a perpetrator
but a typical oppressor line?)

That concludes this reading of
the Oppressor Rule Book.
See NEVER for more options.
                                                Garrett Murphy
© 1995 Garrett Murphy

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Lily Fangz a Surprise Feature 11/28 (plus our usual prompt night open mic)


11/28 Surprise Feature: Lily Fangz!: Plus,"Pool" is the prompt. (prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) 


 Wordsmith, Painter, Poet, Speaker, HipHop Artist
See Lily Fangz TED Talk at the address below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HZp1fh7KUw
Lily has had roles in “Deliver Us” and “Alfosantory: City of Broken Dreams.”
Also see her facebook site at Lileana Fangz
For more info see  http://www.planetfangz.org/

Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.  hosted by J.D.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Lucille Lang Day features 11/21

11/21 Lucille Lang Day hosted by Bruce

Lucille Lang Day (http://lucillelangday.com) has published ten poetry collections and chapbooks, most recently Becoming an Ancestor and Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems, winner of the 2014 Blue Light Poetry Prize. She is also a co-editor of Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California and the author of a children’s book, Chain Letter, and an award-winning memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story. The founder and director of a small press, Scarlet Tanager Books, she worked as a science writer and science educator for many years, including seventeen as director of the Children's Hospital Hall of Health, a museum formerly at the corner of Shattuck and Kittredge in downtown Berkeley. She is of Wampanoag, British, and Swiss/German descent.

COSMOLOGY LESSON

When I was four, my friend Diane
said her cousin Claire thought
she was the center of the universe
and everything existed just for her.
I was stunned. “I thought I was
the center of the universe,” I said,
my lip starting to quiver. “We all
start out thinking that,” Diane, age nine,
who’d taught me how to add and read,
explained as I burst into tears, scared
in a brand new way. Her mother said,
“She’s just a little girl. Don’t make
her cry,” but it was too late. Birds
were already singing for someone else,
maybe themselves. Even my parents
and my toys no longer belonged
only to me. The sun, moon
and stars trembled as they turned
away, leaving me alone, small
as a bit of broken shell on a beach,
helpless before the gathering waves

Lucille Lang Day features 11/21


11/21 Lucille Lang Day hosted by Bruce

Lucille Lang Day (http://lucillelangday.com) has published ten poetry collections and chapbooks, most recently Becoming an Ancestor and Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems, winner of the 2014 Blue Light Poetry Prize. She is also a co-editor of Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California and the author of a children’s book, Chain Letter, and an award-winning memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story. The founder and director of a small press, Scarlet Tanager Books, she worked as a science writer and science educator for many years, including seventeen as director of the Children's Hospital Hall of Health, a museum formerly at the corner of Shattuck and Kittredge in downtown Berkeley. She is of Wampanoag, British, and Swiss/German descent.

COSMOLOGY LESSON

When I was four, my friend Diane
said her cousin Claire thought
she was the center of the universe
and everything existed just for her.
I was stunned. “I thought I was
the center of the universe,” I said,
my lip starting to quiver. “We all
start out thinking that,” Diane, age nine,
who’d taught me how to add and read,
explained as I burst into tears, scared
in a brand new way. Her mother said,
“She’s just a little girl. Don’t make
her cry,” but it was too late. Birds
were already singing for someone else,
maybe themselves. Even my parents
and my toys no longer belonged
only to me. The sun, moon
and stars trembled as they turned
away, leaving me alone, small
as a bit of broken shell on a beach,
helpless before the gathering waves.