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• 9/28/2008 9:49 AM lady wrote:
  Mike Ceraolo still looks like he did when I was his girlfriend for 3 years
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  1. 9/28/2008 1:15 PM Jesus Crisis wrote:
     I had no idea!  I just met him this summer, though I've read and liked some of his poetry in the past.  Small world....
     
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     1. 9/29/2008 1:59 PM lady wrote:
        He has an excellent book out with Deep Cleveland Press - Euclid Creek.
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        1. 9/29/2008 2:01 PM Jesus Crisis wrote:
           I haven't read that yet, but have heard good things about it before.  I must get a copy now....
           
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• 9/28/2008 10:09 AM Elena wrote:
  I feel a sense of deja vu and wonder where you found the muse for your poetry.
  It certainly was aMUSEing. *smiling*
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  1. 9/28/2008 1:17 PM Jesus Crisis wrote:
     Haha!  Maybe it was the holey spirit of Gawd - they call me Jesus after all.
     
     That second poem was actually inspired by and written in prison over ten years ago.  I consider it one of my weaker poems and have never read it publicly before or since.  But I like the message of it, and 8/8/08 seemed like a day for optimism.
     
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• 9/28/2008 12:41 PM chris wrote:
  Awesome as usual... once you finally get it all posted.
  I need to come back to and view the video in its entirety.. have seen only the first 17.00 mins...
  All I can say is I wish we didn't have to wait so long for these.. because their really worth it.
  But I know things interfere... understandable.
  
  I assume once your caught up we'll see them in a more timely fashion.
  
  Are you going to have your ( your's and Diane's) 806 club preformance video taped? ...I hope so...
  
  Love your longer piece in the City zine by the way.
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  1. 9/28/2008 1:32 PM Jesus Crisis wrote:
     Thanks, Chris!  I wrote that City piece this past weekend with a bad headache - am glad it turned out well.  And I'd forgotten all about writing the other piece they included.
     
     I'm getting caught up, attending fewer readings, and have apparently resolved my computer issues for good - so I'm optimistic.  Wanna start posting these as soon as possible after events - and I only have three more to catch up on now (3 August open mic at Joe Sundae's in Sandusky, 11 September poetry night at the Literary Cafe, and 20 September scenes from the Tremont Arts & Culture festival where Steve Goldberg shared his poetry.)
     
     Hope to video our "Lix & Kix at the 806"....
     
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     1. 9/28/2008 1:54 PM Elena wrote:
        Only three more to catch up on? I hope this isn't deja phew like the elephant's tail (tale) in your poem. Long time since Chris was here with you and long time for poets to realize their abundantly exquisite thoughts perpetrated for eternity into a mic and video tape reading and stuck forever on the outerspace (internet) believers in art and artistic expression forever until eternity.
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        1. 9/28/2008 2:14 PM Jesus Crisis wrote:
           Amen.
           
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           1. 9/28/2008 2:30 PM Elena wrote:
              LMAOAROTFF just now.
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• 9/28/2008 2:38 PM Dianne wrote:
  Another great blog entry, JC-- well worth the wait. This is the first time ever, believe it or not, that I've actually seen myself perform my poetry, so it's an invaluable tool for me, as well as a wonderful documentation of an event I really enjoyed. I appreciate your taking your time and making considerable efforts in making these videos available for us. And your poems kicked ass, too! Congrats on your pieces in The City Poetry-- they're grrrrrrrreat!
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  1. 9/28/2008 4:10 PM Elena wrote:
     I am for all believers in greeeat art.
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  2. 9/28/2008 4:20 PM Jesus Crisis wrote:
     Thanks, Dianne!  I very much like your contribution to The City Poetry , too.  Congratulations!  I'm glad that if someone else had to beat me to publishing your "Dig," it was The City Poetry .
     
     
     Your performance of "Following Jesus" makes me blush every time I hear it... lol.  Didn't you do it in Sandusky, too? Gotta get some of your other poems on film as well....
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     1. 9/28/2008 7:18 PM Dianne wrote:
        LOL! That poem just begged to be written! Yes, I did do "Following Jesus" in Sandusky, and again at The Lit (where I rewrote some of it on the spot, when Geri gave me an idea-- which I then used to write a couple of lines about her). I plan to do it-- the revised version-- at the 806, too, if opportunity presents itself. Maybe after you do your "Ahem (a hymn)"-- might as well keep the theme going!
        
        I look forward to your getting some of my other poems on video-- I held back on my choice of poems for the Poet's Haven podcast(s), as I was saving some of my latest ones for my feature read/podcast in December. And I am anxious to see how "Pet THIS" comes across, as well as my own epic poem, "Back To The Pack". So film away, JC!
        
        And thank you for your kind words on my "Dig" being published in The City Poetry. I feel quite honored to be in a journal with such a respected reputation, and I count myself very lucky to be in the company of those published in that issue.
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        1. 9/29/2008 2:07 PM Jesus Crisis wrote:
           I forgot all about my "Ahem" when I was contemplating pieces to do at the 806.  Good suggestion!  Thanks....
           
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• 9/28/2008 5:49 PM Vertigo Xi'an Xavier wrote:
  Thanks. This made up for not finding an open-mic to go to this weekend.
  
  Is it a bad thing when I realize I have heard TM Göttl's "The Last" often enough that I now have it memorized? (Okay, it was in a podcast, but that podcast recording was not the first time I'd heard it. )
  
  I like how you worded that up there... It sounds like Josh told the manager to "piss off," not that he was worried ya'll would "piss off" the manager. A more fun thought. lol
  
  Thanks for the Phoenix show plug, Dianne!!!
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  1. 9/28/2008 7:31 PM Dianne wrote:
     You're welcome, VX-- I'm plugging the December show, too! And I'm planning on doing all my best and most entertaining, most oral-friendly (ooh, that sounds naughty!) poems then-- including the two I mentioned in a previous comment. For anyone who hasn't yet listened to VX's podcasts, you need to check them out-- he does a fantastic job with them!
     
     Oh, and re: your memorization of TM's poem-- I know what you mean. I think I'm almost there with "Identity Crisis"-- lol!
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     1. 9/28/2008 7:48 PM Elena wrote:
        Identity Crisis? If you can memorize this
        it might be the last oral reality poem produced on the podcast that screams with JC's reality. Listen or shut up....
        Reply to this
        1. 9/28/2008 9:08 PM Dianne wrote:
           There's no need for you to be rude, Elena. I simply meant that I enjoy listening to "Identity Crisis" so much that I've just about memorized it-- it's a compliment to JC's technique, delivery, and artistry.
           Reply to this
  2. 9/29/2008 7:09 AM Jesus Crisis wrote:
     Thanks, Vertigo!  Funny... I have a lot of T.M.'s pieces nearly memorized, too; but to me "The Last" was new.  Of course you and I have (with the exception of 23 August) seen her read at completely different places.  Interesting....
     
     And since my "Identity Crisis" poem has become a topic of conversation, I thought I might reproduce it here.  Remember you can hear me read it on the Episode 8 podcast at www.poetshaven.com.
     
     Identity Crisis
     
     I don't want to be anyone but me
     Man
     Really
     I just want to be all I can be
     Until I can't be
     Know more
     A pure and enduring shooting star
     Until it's time to say sayonara
     Ka-pow
     And ciao
     
     I don't want to be King or Prince
     But in another way I do
     Since I have a Washington Monument
     Full of dreams
     Musical schemes
     And I know very well
     What it's like When Doves Cry
     But I don't have a clue how to answer
     The Question of U
     (I'm pointing to myself here, too)
     And I wonder why it's vice versa
     Instead of versa vice
     
     I want to be from the country
     And I want to be from town
     I want to be the Nowhere Man who
     Wherever you go
     You find around
     
     I don't want to be Allen Ginsberg
     Except when I'm Beat up
     Which is most of the time anymore
     Though I don't really believe
     In time anymore
     And belief in time is such a chore
     When Corso Kerouac Cassidy and Burroughs
     Are my constant companions
     
     But at times I get terribly tired of feeling Beat
     When I'm On the Road less than I'm on the commode
     
     I want to go Furthur than Kesey
     But I don't want the cuckoo's nest
     And I know why the caged bird sings
     Though I'm not sure about the rest
     
     Maybe the birds and their songs
     And our rights and our wrongs
     Are all Maya
     In a multitude of hues
     
     The colors run through me
     Like a rainbow in an oil slick on an Elyria street
     Running through the halls of Marion Correctional Institution
     On the eve of the new Millennium 
     While I watched the 2000 fireworks across the world
     From my cell 
     On PBS all night long
     And I wonder
     How it's possible I've never been freer
     Never been more of a seer than there
     
     And I want to be that free here
     Find perfect vision outside of prison
     
     Like it was in the years before and after Bush
     In between the ears before and after religion
     Tradition
     Convention
     Ambition
     Subtraction and long division
     Before and after I was a Skyline Pigeon
     With no clue who I was
     Or who you were
     Or who we are
     
     Maybe I do want to be Ginsberg
     Or Kerouac
     Coleridge or Kant
     Byron
     Christ
     St. John of the Cross
     d.a. levy
     Lennon
     Martin Luther King, Jr
     King Tut
     The kid in the cheap seats eating Junior mints
     Wishing he were purple like Prince
     Or green like the US Mince
     Finally infatuated with the friendship of Peppermint Patty
     And earning the love of Lucy
     And Desi and the little red-haired girl
     And Fred and Ethel Mertz
     And Pigpen Jerry Garcia
     Che Guevara Citizen Kane
     And Linus without the line
     Or the lie
     
     I don't want to live in vain
     I want to be like Steven B. Smith
     Michael Salinger
     A .44 Magnum
     Not just a Derringer
     Johnny Cash, Johnny Carson, Gary Larsen
     Tearing down Bergen-Belsen, Washington DC
     Garfield and Odie, O.D., and Oh Die
     I want to give Peace a chance
     But be able to accept that War
     Is her partner in the cosmic dance
     Accept that both are lies
     That nothing in the universe is left to chance
     And yet in another sense everything is
     And "there's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so"
     
     But what do I know
     
     I want to be Dostoevsky without the crime
     And especially without the punishment
     Have freedom without the army and the government
     And I'd sometimes like to choose
     The Karamazov I prefer
     And refuse the others
     Pretending one brother is better than another
     
     But I know all too well
     That we're all all-four Karamazovs
     We're all Kazantzakis,
     Who said "the doors to heaven and hell
     Are adjacent and identical"
     And I think they might be the same door
     There might be only one door
     We all look at it like blind men looking at an elephant
     One grabs the trunk and calls it snake
     One grabs the leg and calls it pillar that will not break
     One grabs only a whiff of the tail end
     And calls it P.U.
     
     But what is that elephant
     Man
     Really
     With the incredible memory
     
     It's Steven B. Smith
     And the firth of fifth
     It's Ray McNiece and Tolstoy's War and Peace
     It's Donald, Dianne, dreams desire denial demerol
     The doomed and the Divine
     It's juiced up Roger Clemens saying
     Look Babe I didn't share my cigar
     With Jose Canseco or Andy Pettite
     It's the heavy and the petty
     Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt and Mario Andretti
     Racing toward the grave
     Slaves of the thrill and the almighty dollar
     Kerouac Corso Ginsberg and Burroughs
     Delivering us from literary squalor
     Bush and Cheney making us holler
     Whitman and Dickinson
     Clinton and Monica
     Dylan with his harmonica
     Clapton and Hendrix with their guitars
     Jay Leno with his classic cars
     Venus and Mars and Pluto
     A big black hole
     And a supernova
     And so unimaginably much more
     
     I don't want to be any of it
     Man
     Really
     I don't want to be Barack Obama
     Hillary Clinton
     John McPain
     Cheech and Chong
     Kennedy Nixon
     Mason Dixon
     K-Fed, A-Rod, Brangelina, Britney or Bono
     Or do I
     
     I just want to be me
     But what is this "me" anyway
     What am I
     Man
     Really
     
     I don't want to be Kipling,
     Shere Khan Genghis Khan
     An ex-con
     The naked Nagasaki bomb bleached Japanese child
     The so called whore in the so called Nazi Joy Division
     Or the so called Not-See in her
     I don't want to be the caged bird
     But I want to sing
     And I want everyone to listen to my whistling and chirping
     Until everyone's bending
     And maybe only pretending to listen
     Which is probably all they were ever doing in the first place
     Bending
     Pretending to hear
     Man
     Really
     
     And me too
     Though I try like the Devil not to
     I pretend to listen and then wonder what I'm missing
     
     Maybe the whole shebang is a lie
     Mighty Maya,
     Caged birds, songs and all
     Because how free can we really be
     Man
     Really
     
     How free in the land of the penny pinch
     And the US Mince
     And poetry turned know-it tree 
     Or no-it tree
     
     It's all bleeding like a sappy lie
     Sticky sweet
     Through the crimson streets
     And in our futile funk
     We tap the trunk
     Try very hard to refine or define the goo
     Yet it's totally true, too
     All too real
     And there's nothing more real in this whole ordeal
     We call the universe
     
     It's all illusion
     It's all allusion
     And it's all there is
     
     Kurt Cobain said "All in all is all we are"
     But he did not believe it
     Said the gun
     And if there's no fun in the pretense
     If there's no joi in the vivre
     Then we might as well leave
     And maybe someone who sticks around will be happier.
     
     I want to be Faithwalker
     And sight walker
     Oblivious to and aware of every hurdle
     I want to be Theresa Göttl
     Stretching the window from out of the desert
     To be like Hansel and Gretel
     Eating their gingerbread house 
     And being tasted and tested but not consumed
     To impress all the chaps
     And even perfect bound books
     Like Larry Smith and Mark Kuhar
     But be the Top Dog
     Deeper than Cleveland
     Like a Jim Thome homer back in the day
     Finding its way to the bottom of Lake Erie
     And beyond
     To be professors like Howard Ellis, Timothy Leary 
     John McKenna, Helen Shepard
     And the Good Shepherd
     The innocent shepherd boy blue
     With the sheep in the meadow and the cow in the corn
     And a Satchmo horn that I can blow like Miles
     And a free pass to get me through
     The most expensive turnstiles
     And the aisles and aisles and miles
     Of poetry in your eyes
     
     I want to be like my wife Geri Lynne
     Like my mom again
     Like my grandchildren
     Like my dad
     Like my dear old granddad
     But without the nasty Nazi tattoo on his hand
     I want to maintain a bad boy image
     Without having anyone mistake me for bad
     To keep them from messing with me
     Without keeping them in fear
     And maybe then I won't be so sad
     Around here
     
     I want to have a certain semblance of madness
     To infuse and inspire my art
     But I don't want people to take me too seriously
     When I appear to fall apart
     Or think I'm really mad except in the most brilliant of ways
     
     And I guess that what I want most these days
     Is out of this daze I've been in
     Since God-knows-who knows when
     
     I'd like to be able to start again
     
     I want to know who I actually am
     And to be it
     I want folks to see it
     Man
     Really see it
     And not judge it and hopefully love it
     And be what they are and love it
     And I'll love it too
     
     You know there's a part of me that thinks I'm really you
     And yes, you're really me
     And if we could just open our egotistical eyes and see it
     We could love
     Man
     Really
     And maybe love would be all we need after all
     
     And I don't think things would get too terribly boring
     With all this love and no warring
     As long as we didn't all live forever
     And overpopulate the earth
     To the point that we suck her dry and
     Destroy our chances of living at all
     
     But we're doing that already anyway
     And I wonder if our birth and being
     Really complement the earth we're seeing
     Or condemn it
     
     And while we're feeling up the elephant in the room
     Blind as bats and batty as Babe Ruth
     We mistake the lie for truth and truth for lie
     We swallow maxims like an eye for an eye
     And wonder why we can't see
     Maybe there is nothing real or untrue
     But thinking makes it me 
     And makes it you
     
     I suspect I know all too well
     That we're all Karamazovs
     In handwritten Russian heavens and hells
     Nabokovs
     Molotovs
     Kerouacs jacking off
     We're all Mandela and Frederick Douglass and Crazy Horse
     Stephen Biko and the Velvet Underground and Nico
     Zorba the Greek and Nikos Kazantzakis
     Who said in The Last Temptation of Christ that
     "The doors to heaven and hell
     Are adjacent and identical"
     I'm willing to bet my chances at either-or
     That they might just be the same door
     That there might be only one door after all
     And we're all pretending to see it
     Like blind men looking at an elephant
     
     One grabs the trunk and calls it a snake
     One grabs the leg and calls it a pillar that will not break
     One grabs only a whiff of the tail end
     And calls it P.U.
     But we fail to see it be you
     And be me as much as it be him or her
     Or B.M.
     
     And all in all is all we are
     Like Kurt Cobain said before he blew off his head
     All in all is all we are
     Despite our poetry
     Or know-itry or no-itry
     And one day we will know it
     See
     And if Kurt didn't really believe it all before
     He said ciao and ka-pow
     He does now.
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• 9/29/2008 2:35 PM T.M. Göttl wrote:
  Nice job with the pics! Haven't gotten around to watching the video yet, but I'm sure you did your usual great job. Looking forward to watching that one too
  Reply to this
  1. 9/29/2008 3:04 PM Jesus Crisis wrote:
     Thanks, T.M.  Your performance/poem is one of the highlights!
     
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• 7/8/2010 4:36 AM magnum boots wrote:
  Thats cool
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