Interview and Review of Slow Living.

Review and Interview at Glass

An excerpt:

When the author provides answers to these questions, the reader is forced to slow down and reflect knowing that the clock is ticking in the background and the reader is racing against the author’s own line of thinking.

Surely it’s the heart before the course

revolutionary suicide,

sun sets and rises

and no reason

to see the clock’s hands before noon.

When Garcia asks, “This is the body to sing?” it is more a challenge than a question, for, as they write, this is a “song sung by heart.” If one fails to challenge or mediate the pace set by normative standards, then, it would seem, one is all the more likely to get swept up in it. The first section ends with the same cup of coffee that started this meditation; quickly collapsing the time it took for the reader to traverse those pages.

To read the full interview go to Glass: A Journal of Poetry.

http://www.glass-poetry.com/journal/reviews/dechae-garcia.html

Remember

remember that one time? how long ago was it? probably too long ago to be vivid anymore. that’s how it goes. that’s how it went. maybe. memory is speculative at best. the past is always so long ago even if it was only recently past. and the vivid leaves as soon as the experience does.

so it’s a vague life living on a collection of incorrect coincidences being most inopportune at the time when time was without time for further consultation.

but something else is coming up anyway and who knows if it’ll be a major life event or if it’ll kill you but watch out for the updates. watch and try to make it vivid. add color where the future is bi-chromatic if able to be seen at all.
*
and when there was a loss for words what was really gone?

one time there was a chance to say something about that one time but the time has passed. the moment is dead, gone, buried in memories.

and when there was hell to pay, about how much did that cost? what currency was exchanged? what was the charge for? will the debt be carried over into the afterlife?
*
yesterday it was easy to assume the routine would be the same and it is so there’s that.

for better or worse is no better nor any worse than same old same old and the yeah yeah responses to be returned without so much as a concerned look attached to a face fast set to depart.
*
but then again there was that one time, you remember, that one time when it was within reach. when what was had wasn’t good enough and there wasn’t a reason to settle for less than what might be. you remember? it’s memorable even if it was only that one time.
*
took out a loan for another time. calculated and counted on hope but you wouldn’t cosign. maybe it was for the best. could be for the worst. who knows? what’s there to compare it to? what’s a comparison worth anyway?
*
who’s been more often read than whoever wrote home sweet home in latch-hook? and when there’s no place like home what does that mean for the rest of the world? oh, and to retreat a bit, the author of ‘welcome’ must have trillions of views by now standing on the stoop with salt on boots eager for a drink and some goddamn sympathy for once.

hell, life isn’t easy. take it from somebody who’s been out there and in here actually living almost every day for decades. living and remembering. remembering and trying to find something to focus on but always coming away from feeling sorry. feeling and then being. just once, can somebody else be sorry for a second? it’s been a series of apologies for longer than should be remembered but they always add form to the vagaries of yesterday. whenever that yesterday was without a shape to fill space but gaseous enough to make do. to make us feel full. to make us be full enough for the moment.
*
whatever words were said it’s up for debate now. watershed moments are lighthouses to avoid in the dark when those waves of other days come back. when a respite is not all it needs to be.
it’s what it was then it’ll be what it will be. what it’ll never be is what it is. to be current is to be a conversation. something a word might change.

First Review of Slow Living by Notty Bumbo

Linearity is discouraged.
After an immersion in Slow Living, by Kenyatta JP Garcia, from West Vine Press
By Notty Bumbo
How he said it. How it got here, gets here, sends messages, goes sideways, across time and back, bounces history across personal synapses. This is a work unfolding, a journey despite its most ardent desire to locate a fixed point from which to observe, debate, break open anything within view or hidden behind unreason. From the Greeks to the Geeks, a brief mention of (the first) Hannibal, and never depositing two hundred dollars, Kenyatta goes and goes, his prose opposes fixed coordinates, this/these poems unfolding origami-like before the limits of understanding. A diary of mad fun and sullen rectitude, careening around my skull in philosophical glee. I suspect “JP” means Jet Propelled, or Just Perusing, or Jamming Profundity. I give this book an easy ninety-nine with a bullet– you can dance to it, all right, all night, outta sight!

Slow Living

Here’s a link to West Vine Press’ page and an interview I did for Kleftikos radio where I spoke with Frankie Metro about Slow Living.

https://westvinepress.wordpress.com/2016/10/21/new-release-tuesday-1/

New Work at Unlikely Stories

“who here remains who never rose wild

from captive sleep
which traps
hope in dreams?

whose vision is anything less than a weed?

*

to make the fairytale complete,
there must be a sacrifice. . . ”

http://www.unlikelystories.org/content/its-babies-from-afro-nowism-aint-over-and-future-primitive

Take Place

Been rubbernecking. Keeping an eye out for where time took an odd moment to add an extra scar to the road.

*

The last ditch that took some effort to carve. To assure a certain waylay for someone just needing to get away.

*

The truth for all its power sets everybody else free but itself. Instead chooses transformation. Settles for concealment. To be protected from witnessing itself.

*

Can’t turn my back on myself but my back also won’t look me in my face so what good’s a back anyway? If it didn’t come with the body why would anyone even bother having one?

*

The faults furthered the cause of the tectonic shifts. Line breaks will always be a part of this world. Each side is a stanza. The earth quakes suddenly understanding another version needs to take place. This place.

Tongues for Days

purling this timidity into

cities translated by clouds

as forever rests

on gossipers’ tongues.

*

gulls been fending for

and fending off

longer than this shyness

ever existed.

 

electricity’s been static

fingertips

discovered nothing

but an experience.

*

didn’t go / didn’t get

mad

but took in a tear

on receiving news.

 

sheltered sadness

fostered it

for sake of something.

 

parrots had nothing to repeat.

mockingbirds eased of mimicry.

 

quieted, calmed –

reflecting on the essentiality

of being

another animal.

*

instinctively,

descent comes closer to home

to find the core –

bypass wounds, scars, sore spots

to dismay of symptoms

distracting the cure

*

in fear, death rises again

within

 

breaking out

heaven from hell

fury from fate

–

injustice amused

*

with a distaste being mutual between

needle and cloth

thread – the only common friend –

binds both until

the job is through.

*

aloof

crammed into the corners of the mind –

holding up the walls of theories never to be

a fly holding back the boulder

telling Sisyphus

give up the task

 

what worse could possibly come?

*

rain hungers for a face

tongues for a drop

 

Afro-Nowism When The Future Feels Too Far Away

now as much as ever we need space even more.

steel and superpowers.
we been magical
but sorcercery hasn’t been enough.
*
oh lawd, can a nigga get a force field!
*
let’s talk that real pillow talk
holding onto hope
when thoughts and prayers have failed

let’s snuggle up into cybernetic fantasies of nanotech
smarter than the biology of fingers
and tin of badges
*
oh jesus, how much stronger we got to get?
*
whom does the singularity include?
*
why couldn’t creation have just been a myth?

electric memories keep eyes lit
all night long computing
while chains keep bodies in place,
while cells provide shelter
when the streets fill up with the phobia generations in the making.
so long in the making time travel has more dangers
than the edge of the universe.
*
send thoughts and prayers to parallel dimensions.
maybe they’ll be of some use there.
*
maybe the horizon holds another event
the roads of this dystopia
have yet to find.
*
what good are the pistons without the gas and the grease?
what’s a mission mean
as acid rain tears at the hood
revealing rust and the algorithms
of a nation
forcing you to drive onward?
*
what’s left?
what else is there when only space seems safe?
when to leave is the best defense?
because to stay is conflict.
everyday is a casualty.
the struggle is actually an assault.

Overcast

“… can never forget

Once every wall was water…”

Mary Oliver

Goals were never stated

for tears

set free

for overcast

brought about

by and for

some unknown

bend of shame,

regret.

 

Dampened consequences

bringing to rot

an idea

someone else

would

die for.

Could Be Competition

“can you make it rain harder”

(Prince – before the Super Bowl)

the world don’t behave

and why not

what else is there to be

but transformed?

*

nothing compares

diamonds/pearls

pressure applied/mounting

couldn’t make anything

else

*

when the lakes rose, doves found higher ground. there are tiers. places to rise to.

*

it’s not all symbols,

symbolic, symbolism

but maybe it is. if so, own it. that’s how freedom works. it’s how bats become bigger than the night. how an echo becomes the cave. how in and out transcend placement.

*

and how does an elevator

have the strength to

carry on?

*

what will it take to coax a cessation out of death?

*

as if life

ever had a choice

there’s no other king in town

*

ain’t got no money

working part-time

pretending the rest

.

a little much

. . .

what’s the other?

*

the max,

the morning papers,

the moonlight

who can’t be asked

anything anymore the way it used to when it was cherry

and only a red corvette could be

competition.