Just published in a limited edition of 69 copies!

a steal at only three dollars (plus two for shipping) from

Crisis Chronicles Press
420 Cleveland Street
Elyria, Ohio 44035

* * * * * * * *

And in other news from Crisis Chronicles Press:

Our 1st publication, Bloggerel by Jesus Crisis, is now sold out!
(but I hear Mac's Backs in Cleveland still has a few copies available)

We're running low on copies of Dianne Borsenik's HardDrive/SoftWear chapbook
(send $5, plus 2 for shipping to Crisis Chronicles Press for your copy or click here)

Our long-awaited Fuck Poetry book will (gods willing) be released in the next two weeks
(the 1st issue features work by over 30 great poets from across the U.S. and beyond)

Also coming soon from Crisis Chronicles Press:
works by Hart Crane, d.a. levy and an all new chapbook by Alex Gildzen!

Stay tuned to my blog (http://crisisblog.crisischronicles.com) for updates

        

I am happy to announce that the Lix and Kix poetry series is moving to the Bela Dubby Art Gallery and Beer Cafe at 13321 Madison Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio, every third Tuesday. We've thoroughly enjoyed our past few months at Visible Voice, but we decided to move west for a few reasons - primarily (1) I live in Lorain County and (2) there don't seem to be as many opportunities for open mic poetry in the western suburbs as there are on the east side and in the heart of Cleveland. We held our successful St. Patrick's Day show at Bela Dubby and are excited about returning.

We're celebrating our move on Tuesday 21 July 2009 at 7 p.m. with four excellent featured poets and an open mic. Two of our features are from northeast Ohio: Philip Metres and Terry Provost. The other two are coming all the way from New York: Will Northerner and Kent Brown, neither of whom has read in Cleveland before. This should be a very special evening.  My co-host Dianne Borsenik and I are looking forward to seeing you there!

More soon....
Peace and poetry,
John

        

McMahon a dead Ed
Jackson finally beat it
Fawcett stopped running

Media christened
Cosmic Charlie's new angels
Almost born again

TV noose keeps live
Carradine yesterday's news
War children buried

        

  

Some of you may recall that in April 2008 I began a blog series dedicated to my Favorite Poets from A to Z.  It's taken a while, but I'm finally getting around to the letter E and and the incomparable T.S. Eliot.  In the course of the past year I've added over two dozen Eliot works to the Crisis Chronicles Online Library, including his first two collections — Prufrock and Other Observations and Poems — in their entirety, as well as what some consider his most important poem, The Waste Land.

Rather than try to put into words why I've chosen T.S. Eliot, I prefer to let his writing speak for itself.  For your convenience, here's a listing of every Eliot poem in the Online Library.  Click the title of your choosing to go to that work:

Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
    The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 
    Portrait of a Lady 
    Preludes
    Rhapsody on a Windy Night
    Morning at the Window
    The Boston Evening Transcript
    Aunt Helen
    Cousin Nancy
    Mr. Apollinax
    Hysteria
    Conversation Galante
    La Figlia Che Piange

Poems (1920)
    Gerontion
    Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
    Sweeney Erect
    A Cooking Egg
    Le Directeur
    Mélange Adultère de Tout
    Lune de Miel
    The Hippopotamus
    Dans le Restaurant
    Whispers of Immortality
    Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service
    Sweeney Among the Nightingales

The Waste Land (1922)
    The Waste Land

from Four Quartets (1943)
    East Coker


Online biographies of T.S. Eliot include http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot,
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/18 and
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1948/eliot-bio.html

        

Huge oak cabinet console TV
With a broken screen
Sits on the tree lawn
In front of my Cleveland Street house

Took four would be macho men
To get it up the porch stairs and into the living room
Took one might be mouse of a man
With a hand from his wife
To push it out and off
Then down the sidewalk to the curb

She he it
Three major net works
At least one of them 
Less high than deaf

Same sidewalk the neighbors' Blazer
Sat blocking today when the police came
Told them to move it
While one of them with an outstanding warrant
Fled out the back basement door
Stumbled his way to a fence behind the house
And barely made it
Over

I in my driveway felt claustrophobic
Not just
Because of the cop car
Blocking my innocent exit

Huge oak cabinet console TV
Been around since at least the early nineties
Til rendered nearly irreparable by rash circumstance
Still feeling mightier than the newer sets
Ahead of its time once
But now more than a decade behind
Wondering if it's obsolete
Or if there's a chance
It's just
Less high than deaf
Eyes been aching
To be rid of this console
For a long bit
And the wife's been aching
For a lighter flatter model
For at least as long

So now it's out on the tree lawn
And even the garbage men don't care
To pick it up

Nearly everyone who passes down
Our busybody street pauses to stare at it
Assess its worth or lack thereof and then move on

I dreamt last night 
A strong insightful
Someone stopped
Saw value in our tree lawn trash
Tried her best to push it home
From the end of this claustrophobic driveway
Convinced she could restore it

But I awoke to find
The huge oak cabin net con soul
Remains by the road at the edge
Of this Cleveland Street property
Waiting to be garbage picked
Arrested and destroyed
Retrieved
Rescued
Redeemed

Waiting
Not necessarily wanting
To be the center of attention again
But waiting to be anywhere 
Except
Anywhere near
That lighter flatter high deaf model
It hears clearly
Inside

        

Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen were acquitted yesterday after having spent about a decade and a half in prison for crimes they did not commit.  I've been convinced of their innocence for many years - and finally their case met a judge (James Burge) with the right combination of brains, balls and compassion.  It's nice to see justice finally prevail in what a lot of folks thought a hopeless case.  But it's too bad no one can give Smith and Allen their lives back.

Here's a link to the news:
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/06/charges_dismissed_in_lorain_he.html

For more details about the case, check out this article in Crime Magazine:
http://www.crimemagazine.com/shameoflorain.htm

        

Sitting here this morning, listening to J'Accuse Ted Hughes by Sonic Youth, I notice that Ken Kitt has uploaded more poetry videos to his PoetryVidz YouTube channel.  Here's one of me reading "Mark This" at the Barking Spider in Cleveland during the Hessler Street Fair on 16 May 2009.  Remember that the first live poetry reading or open mic I ever participated in was at the same venue during the same Fair in May 2008.  So you could say this was my poetry performance anniversary.  Thanks to Ken, to event emcee Ray McNiece, and to Le Pink-Elephant Press (who published this poem)!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODiAIslM-6w

        

Scribbling
Scrambling
Random ramblings
Run dumb and smart
Numb and smarting
Smarmy
Flush with art and artless
Like farting in calligraphy

Gas rhymes with ass
And no class
And yes
Class
Dismissed rhymes with pissed
And missed and nearly amiss and remiss
Even this

I'm rambling
Randomly scrambling
The few semi worthwhile thoughts I can
Muster with my ass on the toilet
Abdominal cramps
Faux leather journal resting on my write knee
Foster's beer in one hand and
A wine blood red broken but
Functional mechanical pencil in the other

I'm a man
Who doesn't feel like much of one
Not a woman
Though I suppose I feel like most of them

Trying to find myself in
Random scrambling
Rambling
Ambling through a know moon
New moan darkness
Though it's nowhere near midnight yet
And this is one of the year's longest days

Longest daze I've been in for a while
Or so it seems when I'm in it
Trying to bear it
Bare and grin it
Maybe even win it
Or feel like a winner
Instead of a wiener
A whiner or a ham burgher
Though I know I shouldn't treat
This like a competition
Or a smorgasbord

I want to say
What do you know?
But come to think of it
What do I know?
Even my best attempt at avoiding any gimmick
Makes me feel like another dull mimic
Every stab I make at originality
Smells of another stale gimmick
And sometimes my every scribble
Seems to rhyme
With fibble
But in two words
Fib
Bull
And I'm losing any inclination
To play anything other than
Matador

        

One of the first sites I discovered when I began exploring the internet in June 2004 was

http://www.jesusdressup.com

Fun stuff!  Check it out!  Where's your sense of humor?

        

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyllYyl8nSQ


Read during the Hessler Street Fair poetry contest finals at
Mac's Backs Books in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, 13 May 2009

Camera & editing by Ken Kitt, courtesy of PoetryVidz
Find a lot more at http://www.youtube.com/user/poetryvidz