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Pop Poetry 101
by William Sovern
to live in this world
you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it
and, when the times comes to let it go
to let it go
-- Mary Oliver
everyone
a different read
on the past for Grace
2001 will always be
remembered as the
year her mother died
her mother thought i
was the horse trainer
from her youth on the
other hand I got to read
poetry in New York three
times the last dancing
with the Nuyoricans
hip hop slammers
three days before
911
everyone
forgets the year
started with a president
who did not win the popular
vote and no one much cared
there weren't any White Anglo
Saxon Protestants who were
denied the vote and all my old hippie
friends have become caricatures
of themselves driving SUV's
and smoking cigarettes and
trying to con Big Brother
for total absolution
although they never
learned to genuflect
and the citizens in their
citizenship have become
Rip Van Winkles strutting Gucci
hand bags and singing karaoke
at the corner bar
did i tell you
i performed in
New York three
times last year in
February someone
stole the license plate
off our rented car parked
in front of Grant's Tomb the
NYPD did not know how
to fill out the stolen license
report because usually
they steal the whole
car
i gave up art
for lent
then I gave up Christianity
for art
then 19 Muslims
redefined the definition
of performance art
everyone reacts
to death differently
for the Vietnam veteran
it was silence
for Grace it was
sending fragments
of her mother's diary
through the Internet
did I tell you
i performed in New
York three times
last year
a New York
poet I met said
that home is in
your head
when I
die
they will
spread my
ashes under
the harvest moon
where the great
blue heron
flies
©2002 by William Sovern
William Sovern has promoted over 200 poetry readings in the last fifteen years in the Evansville, Indiana area. He is currently the host of the Tuesday Night Reading Series at the Jungle
Restaurant & Fat Cats Bar in Evansville, which includes local, regional & national
poets. He is the founder of the poetry performance group, Shakespeare's Monkey.
which has performed in New York this year at CBGB's, The Poetry Project at
St. Mark's, and at the Nuyorican Poetry café.
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Slow Trains, Volume 1 in print
