catch the bag. train your dragon.

this post has nothing to do with dragons. except to say that after a few cocktails you can’t get mad at me and dolly for giving kindheartedly into our chicken mcnugget craving — naysayers can go fly a kite. in the midst of the mcdonald’s drive thru, i enthusiastically asked for two of the dragon toys. that’s how the night summed itself up.

i took the cute one, dolly took the one that lights up.

prior to said dragons and cocktails dolly, savior of saviors, escorted me to another night of lightbulb mouth radio hour in long beach. hosted by derrick brown and mindy nettifee, this week’s installment featured incredible music by cory joseph (instant fan), fascinating informationist buzzy enniss, and the poetic wonders of beau sia and karen finneyfrock.

i’ll keep this brief. we had coffee. we did shots of jameson. i performed stills as part of the pre-show poetry session. greygoose and soda. the show inspired and informed and awed. we hung out. champagne in a can. i broke the seal far too early. buzzy confirmed for me the origin of the phrase “lo and behold.” (look it up) three olive grape and soda. i won a pair of karen’s socks at auction for $20. karen signed my copy of her book. we hung out with cory joseph for a bit and mindy and karen. we talked shop.

well, i talked, they listened. well, i probably sounded either too much like a drunk or a lunatic fanboy and they were probably just being polite. oh well.

for full details you can visit the internet sites listed below. you can hear all of the lightbulb mouth gems (including the “catch the bag” story) on the podcast which shall be posted on their site.

derrick: brownpoetry.com
mindy: thecultofmindy.com
cory: coryjoseph.com
karen: finneyfrock.wordpress.com
beau: beausia.com
buzzy: buzzyenniss.com
lbmrh: lightbulbmouth.com

lo and behold, there is also a video…

excerpt: Medusa’s Diner by Paula Friedrich

I was captivated when I read this poem the other day in a book titled “Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry.” The book acts as an instructional for slam poetry contests and includes a collection of pieces by many talented poets, such as Derrick Brown and Beau Sia.

Here is an excerpt from Paula Friedrich’s poem, Medusa’s Diner:

“every scale on her head tipped the wrong way,
every tongue suggesting different lies
and seagulls only turning into wood.

Medusa’s lover is a blind snake-charmer;
His hair stands on end.
When they dance, Medusa rattles
down to her belly and her hips and her feet.
The rhythm is a lover, is a brother is a song buried alive and
moving like
arteries shifting when marble sucks
the surfaces of her feet linen breaking
bread into biscuits for decades to chew on
when she dances, her desire
is a head full of dragons, cunning fusion of flames
blowing up the highway, licking grease into gold
breathing down the necks
of the ones who write bad checks
and adding extra bacon in a bad month.

Her sweat is poison;”