Mahnaz Badihian 2010

We had to soak a bowl of wheat or lentil

And swaddle them in a wet cloth for a week

And spread those sprouted grains of wheat in a

Beautifully shaped dish and let them grow to a weed

Then we would make little colored figurines

To represent us, so they could sit atop grass wheat

Then mother will go to “Charbagh” bazaar and buy

Beautiful little red fish to represent life

On the table we had hyacinth to freshen the room

Then came time to color eggs in those little pots

Mother would never forget to put

Open-paged Hafiz, on her chosen ghazal

While reciting the lines

She told us never sleep with old clothes

The night before uncle Norouz is coming

We were seven little dwarfs then

At the 13th day of Norouz

We had to throw those planted grains 

In any river or running water we could see

To have old, sad roots taken away from us

                                                  Dee Allen 

LIGHTBRIDGE

                                                 _____________

Schools of fish swim

In both directions,

West and East.

Patches of clouds travel

At the speed of

Turtles on the ground.

Millions of raindrops fall

Millions of ripples made

On the immense, waving shadow of water.

Quiet pastoral visions

In animated light.

Exquisite sorcery

Cast by

LEDs via ethernet. 

Exquisite enough

To draw the masses away from

Warm, dry homes on a cold, rainy night

And catch the latest twist on

Something old above the bay:

Morphing structure of light

Where the shores

Of two cities

Make a connection

From Emeryville to SF

From SF to Emeryville

Motorists drive in either direction

And find themselves on

An illuminated path

Parts of the glowing attraction

Stretched well above the

Land of the Golden Gate

Two miles long

W: 3.10.13

[ Inspired by the art installation “The Bay Lights”

  by Leo Villareal. ]

A World of Women;Women of the                       World
Join the Revolutionary Poets Brigade  in Celebrating                     International Women’s Day!                 and honoring Juana Briones             “The Mother of North Beach”   Featuring:Jorge Molina: Blessing, music and song (Peru) Alejandro Murguia, Poet Laureate–Introduction and poetry (Mexican-American) Diana Gameros: Guitar and song (Recent BAMM Awardee–Mexican) devorah major: Emeritus Poet Laureate (Caribbean-American) Mahnaz Bahidian: Poet, translator, editor (Iranian) Agneta Falk: Poet, painter, editor (Sweden) Jorge Argueta: Award winning author, poet (El Salvador) Enrique Ramirez: guitar/song; immigration activist (Mexico/USA) Richard Gross: poet/activist (USA) Miguel Robles: Poet, food and immigration activist (Mexico) Brenda Montano:Emerging youth poet (Mexico/USA) And many more!! Friday, March 8th 7 PM ArtInternationale!     963 Pacific Avenue  San Francisco        Food and Libations Provided Join us!!                                                

I recycled again in the spice bazaar of Jama Alfana Souk

With beautiful people in colorful djellaba

And love that smelled so spicy

From the heavy smell of black pepper

And hot spice for the Tagine

The smell of cinnamon sticks in Jama Alfana Souk

 Took me to the grand bazaar in the city of Isfahan

I recycled again in the Alfana Souk in Marrakesh

Where centuries ago it was used as a place

 For beheading people

And spreading the color of red all over the square!

Now only snake charmers and Hanna tattoo artists

And shops and live music exists

This is Marrakesh where the snakes also understand

 Arabic and French and dance to the rhythm of their music

In the Alfana square a little monkey said “Bonjour!” to me

And an old beggar kept repeating

Marhaba, Marhaba, S’il vous plaît Dinar

I was recycling between Alfana square and Isfahan grand bazaar

 With its amazing turquoise  colored mosque 

Where they are selling natural loofah with exfoliating white balls

And hundreds of unimaginable art pieces

With the orchestrated noise from the copper smith bazaar

 Where in each corner an artist is sitting with a hammer and a pointed instrument

 Creating ancient designs on the soft bodies of copper pots and trays.

Is Art the language of all people with no need for translation?

Al Ajami in prison in Qatar

   FREE
   for Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami
   “A robin red-breast in a cage,
   Puts all heaven in a rage.” Wm. Blake
   – Auguries of Innocence

   GO BLAME
   FREEDOM FOR
   FREEDOM, GO BLAME THE CEREBRAL
   CORTEX FOR THE ABILITY
   TO WAGE TALK, TO TAKE TALK,
   TO TACKLE THE FREE SPIRIT
   IN YOUR MAMMAL MIND, BLAST
   A HOLE IN MEMORY’S CORE TO
   TASTE THE FREEDOM OF
   ANCIENT ECHO-CHORDS CAUGHT
   IN CATASTROPHE
   YET BENT ON HOLDING YOU
   TO THE MIND YOU HOLD
   IN YOUR EYES

   unspeakable, yet vote you
   must, press the issue
   as you might slip a leaf
   into a book of poems
   to be found a century later,
   brittle, restive, a feast. . .
   listen to the crackling surfqcd

   it’s just another
   day in the human
   universe askimng
   for speech, indeed
   demanding we converse
   a dream or a tough
   reality so the mind
   glows in meaning
   and imagination, freedom
   to speak, to be
   your own ideology, your
   own president

   free speech should run
   your life as does
   the mortal ribbon
   tied to mantles
   of sunlight looming
   over shadows
   in doubt and
   deception, free
   talk, free mind, free
   art, free poems, free
   medicine, free thought,
   free love, f
   in the woods of
   self, free to awaken
   and feel as you
   wish, free to
   speak, free and
   dangerous in what
   you say, to carve a
   mantle of the new
   in the presence oif
   what is old, free to
   practice the art
   of calligraphy on
   fine paper or
   in a cheap spiral
   notebook, and

   free enough
   not to see
   your poem locked
   behind bars, this
   Oh! this handsome
   right we must
   claim because
   every right is
   due us in the meadow
   under a impetuous
   moon, yes all
   right, come down
   and be reborn
   in the shadow of
   the shrub and
   tree amused on
   your pulsating
   art, no fatwa
   again, free for
   freedom to
   hammer from
   stone and clay
   a song, to
   hold a mirror
   up to the unicorn
   who has a bearded
   smile and one
   horn, and a set
   of glass beads and
   a love for the moraine
   and the rock-strewn
   terrain above
   the tree line
   where freedom
   is a lot of loud
   talk by windy
   drummers
   GO BLAME
   FREEDOM
   for your crippling
   tongue, GO BLAME
   FREEDOM AHEAD
   OF YOURSELF before
   you kill the goat or
   expend your hand
   on the lamb’s throat

   blame an empty
   meadow twined
   to the forest-
   fortress, blast
   a boom in the
   tomb of the unknown
   poet who holds
   a crystal rose
   for the love light
   of words

   go free those
   palaces of
   noun and
   adjective as
   the storm clouds
   bleed and the
   children proceed
   to gather language

   free speech must
   ruin a bad and sultry
   night, yes, free
   words, a snip
   of a twig of an
   olive or a vine
   on which the
   rich wine gathers

   a honeybee
   for chanting, a
   wasp for chiming,
   the cat for
   peace and
   solitude, curled
   by freedom’s
   door, a dog
   running free
   on the hill, a land
   crammed with
   birds

   O burning turning
   fucking licking
   kissing sucking
   lucky murky
   madness in a single
   eye, on a community
   of salt, in wounds
   of betrayal, on a bed
   of ice

   go be free, let no one
   imprison your mind
   or your body

Events for January, 2013

THURSDAYS AT READERS POETRY SERIES:
MAHNAZ BADIHIAN AND TONY GALI

Details

Join us at Readers Bookstore in Fort Mason Center for the 2012 Thursdays at Readers Poetry Series!  

Curated and hosted by Friends’ Poet-in-Residence and 2007 San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman, every Thursday boasts a duo of talented authors and poets, reading and performing their work.  

Featuring:
Mahnaz Badihian and Tony Gali

Enjoy great poetry and support the San Francisco Public Library. 

Location

January 3, 2013
Jayne Cortez, Jazz Poet, Dies at 78
By MARGALIT FOX

Jayne Cortez, a poet and performance artist whose work was known for its visceral power, its political outrage and above all its sheer, propulsive musicality, died on Dec. 28 in Manhattan. She was 78.

Her death, at Beth Israel Medical Center, was from heart failure, her son, the jazz drummer Denardo Coleman, said.

One of the central figures of the Black Arts Movement — the cultural branch of the black power movement that flourished in the 1960s and ’70s — Ms. Cortez remained active for decades
 afterward, publishing a dozen volumes of poetry and releasing almost as many recordings, on which her verse was seamlessly combined with avant-garde music.

She performed on prominent stages around the world, including, in New York, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Museum of Modern Art and Carnegie Hall.

Ms. Cortez’s work was beyond category by virtue of embodying so many categories simultaneously: written verse, African and African-American oral tradition, the discourse of political protest, and jazz and blues. Meant for the ear even more than for the eye, her words combine a hurtling immediacy with an incantatory orality.

Starting in the 1960s, Ms. Cortez began performing her work to musical accompaniment. For the past three decades she toured and recorded with her own band, the Firespitters, whose members include her son, from her first marriage, to the saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman.

As
 performed, Ms. Cortez’s poems were not so much set to music as they were a part of the music. They were chanted more than recited, employing carefully calibrated repetitions, shifts in tempo and modulations of vocal tone.

It was as if her verse, which often took on large, painful subjects like racism and misogyny, had become an instrument itself — an instrument, Ms. Cortez felt strongly, to be wielded in the service of social change.

In one of her best-known works, “If the Drum Is a Woman,” for instance, she indicts violence against women. (The title invokes Duke Ellington’s 1956 composition “A Drum Is a Woman”):

why are you pounding your drum into an insane babble

why are you pistol-whipping your drum at dawn

why are you shooting through the head of your drum

and making a drum tragedy of drums

if the drum is a woman

don’t abuse your drum don’t abuse your drum

don’t abuse
 your drum

Sallie Jayne Richardson, always called Jayne, was born on the Army base at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., on May 10, 1934. (The year of her birth is often misreported as 1936.) Her father was a career soldier who would serve in both world wars; her mother was a secretary.

Reared in Los Angeles, young Jayne Richardson reveled in the jazz and Latin recordings that her parents collected. She studied art, music and drama in high school and later attended Compton Community College. She took the surname Cortez, the maiden name of her maternal grandmother, early in her artistic career.

In the summers of 1963 and 1964, Ms. Cortez worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, registering black voters in Mississippi. It was this work as much as anything, she later said, that caused her to regard art and political action as an indivisible whole.

She gave her first public poetry readings with the Watts Repertory Theater
 Company, a Los Angeles ensemble she founded in 1964. Ms. Cortez, who had homes in Manhattan and Dakar, Senegal, was also a founder of the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, established in 1991.

Ms. Cortez’s marriage to Mr. Coleman ended in divorce in 1964, after 10 years. Besides her son, she is survived by her second husband, Melvin Edwards, a prominent sculptor whom she married in 1975; a sister, Shawn Smith; three stepdaughters, Ana, Margit and Allma Edwards; and a grandson.

Her volumes of poetry, many illustrated by Mr. Edwards, include “Festivals and Funerals” (1971), “Coagulations” (1984) and “Jazz Fan Looks Back” (2002); her albums include “Everywhere Drums” (1990) and “Taking the Blues Back Home” (1996).

Ms. Cortez, who taught at universities throughout the United States, including Rutgers, was among the artists featured — others include Amiri Baraka, Charles Bukowski, John Cage and Allen
 Ginsberg — in Ron Mann’s esteemed 1982 documentary film, “Poetry in Motion.”

Despite her work’s eclecticism, Ms. Cortez was comfortable invoking a single genre to describe it, precisely because that genre was itself so encompassing.

“Jazz isn’t just one type of music, it’s an umbrella that covers the history of black people from African drumming to field hollers and the blues,” she told The Weekly Journal, a black newspaper in Britain, in 1997. “In the sense that I also try to reflect the fullness of the black experience, I’m very much a jazz poet.”

NY Times
_______________________________________________

The Supreme Being is

Holy
Wise
Pure
Loving
Gentle
Giving
All-knowing
Omnipotent
All-seeing
Omnipresent
Most times He
Sometimes She
Lord
Father
King
Redeemer
Merciful
Creator
Vengeful
Destroyer
Sadistic
Incomprehensible to mortals
Higher than us
Name plastered on roadside billboards
In the South & the Midwest
[ Along with Jesus ]
Muse for church sermons & statesman’s speeches
Backbone for governmental decisions & laws
Impetus for terrorist acts
Excuse for needless wars
Convenient disguise for personal
Unscrupulous agendas—–

The Supreme Being is
All of these to all people.
Then again,
It would be

Downright stupid

Bestowing
A name
A title
A sex
A consciousness
A personality
A moral edge
Onto
An unproven
Shadow of an old idea.
____________________
W: Buy Nothing Day 2012