TIME
Time stands still;
_When hours would pass_
_It's just minutes_
Life is blissfully long,
when you're in-love

Sin?
I don't believe we're wrong
_Love shouldn't have a toll_
It's not a sin
_Or God wouldn't love_
Sorry, my logic is flawed
_Or God wouldn't kill_

Just back from a poetry "slam". I put it in quotes because it wasn't a real slam. A woman who worked at the store and another woman judged one round of poems and chose a winner. It was their first time holding one though and they managed to have seven people reading, so they were doing fine.

And I shouldn't complain. I won, or "co-won" in that they decided it was a tie. <-; I won this digital photo something that they are going to put their store logo and my poem on. I did Distant Early Warning. It was so much fun. I hadn't performed it in years and no one there had ever heard it except my husand Karl. And I still remembered most of it off the page. And the "gestures" I'd worked on for it with John Basinger, the slam team's acting coach 10 years ago. The first line when I say, "That man there with the health spa tan..." etc, I pointed past the crowd of pierced and painted teenagers who'd come to hear their pierced and painted friends out to the door and the whole damn crowd turned around to look. LOL.

The slam/reading was at "Shock & Awe", basically a head shop. It was in the back of the shop in this tiny art gallery, where most people had to sit on cushions on the floor and the walls were very psychedelic. Other than the style of the teens, it was like stepping back 40 years.

Some of the poetry was pretty good too and the performances were better than I had anticipated especially this one guy, Sartorio maybe? Turns out he's in a hip-hop band. Another girl and her boyfriend were recently moved from Vegas. After the reading she told me my poem was funny because her boyfriend had just cut his hair short to get a job and she told him he should get rid of the lip ring too, and she had cut off dreadlocks. LOL

They brought a guitar and it was okay, but when asked about bringing guitars next month, the owner said fine. So I'm afraid what will happen is what happens to too many open mics. They turn into acoustic open mics. If too many musicians show up next month, I'll talk to them about splitting and doing poetry one night, and acoustic another.

It's nice to have a reading in Waterbury, whatever it is. Q: What's the difference between Waterbury and yoghurt? A: Yoghurt has an active culture.

You know I love reading...LOVE reading. I have been in the UAE for 3 1/2 years now. It just happened yesterday that I was out of Nancy Drews to read!! So bored, I glanced at my 2nd grade school magazine. It consisted of copied poems (copied from Chicken Soup for the Preteen and Teenage Soul), and not-so-original jokes….
But then I found something … someone had written this (or maybe copied it or maybe its true) about thinking simple:

''When NASA started the launch of astronauts into space, they found that ball, gell, nib etc, etc pens wouldn't work in space at zero gravity. In order to solve this problem they took ten years and USA $12, 00, 00,000 to develop a pen that worked in zero gravity, upside down, under water, inside crystal and in a temperature range from -80 degrees to +300 degrees C!!

But, what, oh what did the Russians do???

Any guesses??
Any one??

THEY USED A PENCIL!!