Arts DEVO
Props to the rebel poets
Devotions Before Arts DEVO dives into the poetry overflow, two quick programming notes:
As previously reported here, the local songstresses of MaMuse will be performing as part of A Prairie Home Companion’s duet competition this Saturday, Oct. 20. You can hear it live (and vote for MaMuse!) at www.prairiehome.org starting at 3 p.m., or listen to a re-broadcast later on KCHO—online at www.kcho.org and on the dial at 91.7 FM.
And, did you know that Del tha Funky Homosapien was coming to Oroville Friday? He is the headlining act for a massive paintball-and-music festival called Splatter Festival. I am not joking. This Friday-Sunday, Oct. 19-21, the Combat Zone paintball arena on Highway 70 will be thumping non-stop to the rhythm of electronic and hip-hop music and air-propelled balls of paint. Visit www.splatterfestival.net for all the crazy deets.
Poems? Multiple copies of each printed on, like, actual paper? Given to the general public!?! I love the Poetry 99 issue! It feels like we’re getting away with something, letting poets run wild across our pages just for the love of the words. And it feels good. (And the good feelings go live tonight, Oct. 18, 7 p.m., at Lyon Books for the Poetry 99 reading.)
This year, as every year, there were poems that our judges loved that didn’t make the cut because the poets didn’t make enough cuts—down to 99 words or less. And here are two rebel poems that I just couldn’t let slip away. Call ’em Poetry 109-or-less winners:
Dreaming of trumpets.
Oh the wonderful dreamers
they give you the
wonderful dreams and the bad
The dreamers are invisible
Although they hold a bag
that they keep their
dreams in
they hold their hollowed
out stick although it
looks more like a straight
trumpet to blow their
dreams through, but it
is not the dreamers’
decision, it is their trumpets’
for they have a mind
of their own, they
only catch the
dreams, then they stick
them in and the
trumpet makes its
decision, when it does
it makes a toot!
Then the dreamers pick
it up and blow out the
dream, and the dream just
seems to find its own.
</blockquote>
-Savannah Cresswell, Age 7,
Chico
I am dealing smoke,
Trying to name my consequences
Wondering how long I will last?
Looking on the internet, I find people looking for me.
Out my back door, I hear the homie whistle asking me to deal more.
My mom, she wants me to change,
but I am like, “Wow that is so hard.”
Now that I’m locked up I think to myself in my cell: “There is no point.”
I wonder if the only reason why I say that is because I’m locked up.
It was the last mistake of my life … or maybe the first.
Unless I stay the way my mind is in.
</blockquote>
-Ann, age 13,
Table Mountain School
Butte County Juvenile Hall
