Corrido de Doña Lucia: Winner #5

Corrido de Doña Lucia

 

with a flip, her long sponge-roller curls shining like licorice

and with a smack of her always lipsticked lips

she flips through the pile, picks, smiles, slowly slips the vinyl from its sleeve

caresses it between her palms, blows for old dust, holds at label,

shines it on her sleeve and sets it with reverence on the turntable platter

in a manner of sacrificial feast to the music beast console Magnavox stereo

whose dropped needle always finds the wax smooth of the right groove

yet crackles from battle scars of so many sunset to sunrise spañada drinking spilling

45 flipping spinning twisting cackling smoking Spaña Saturday nights

you make me dizzy miss lizzy/lookin out my back door

por lo mucho que te quiero/can’t get no/color tv

‘cause dialing for dollars/ picked a fine time to leave me

Lucy knew all the words

but she had to learn them first

tosses her five kids outside, lock the door behind, ‘too nice to be inside,’

pulls out her pad to write and write, memorize, sing it high

try it low, do it again, lower lip pinched white between her teeth,

gently slips pad tip of her thumb under the stylus to lift, go back

slip it into the right groove, verse, sing line for line

etched into her mind and, out the window recorded for all of time in mine

‘cause that Magnavox rocked the entire neighborhood, vecinos, escuela,

plaza, morada, iglesia y convento de la Villa Nueva de la Santa Cruz de la Cañada

but no one, no one ever called the cops when Lucy played, sang or poured her spañada

to sip on Friday nights.  now she pours one for him ‘cause she wants to dance and

she’s got a plan, she sends him out to buy another bottle of wine and

a six pack of cracker jack ‘cause I get two to babysit

but I’d do it for free just to get my hands on the LPs and

that Magnavox console beast where

she racks a stack of 45’s, posts in front of the mirror before he arrives and

in a pink-can aqua net aerosol cloud her beehive comes to life, styling,

false eyelashes, Maybelline, smacking lips garnet red, a ‘buzz-ard’ going in her head,

a knockout, known by all the guys for miles around for her tiny waist and healthy thighs

but she’s got her man and she wants to dance, and all dolled up he don’t stand a chance

and once he’s back, she insists, he’s convinced, he can’t resist

as she holds out her hand to lift him off the sofa, places his hands on her waist and

hers on his hips, bites her lip and steps, one, two, chachacha, guides him

‘cause he’s watching his feet, one, two, chachacha, let’s do it again,

but hon, he rolls his eyes, drops her hand, stomps her toe, throws off her count,

but hon, no, one, two, but hon, okay, so Mashed Potato then,

do the Twist, the Swim, got to Pony like Bony Maronie,

let your backbone slip, do the Watusi, she knows them all, his little Lucy, but

they spin again, meet eye to eye, nose to nose, chin to chin, hip to hip, lip to lip

just in time for Friday night at Red’s steakhouse and lounge.

 

Congratulations to Anna Martinez who wrote the poem above and who just won the last pair of tickets for Urban Verbs! The competition is now officially closed (though I had a couple more entries so they may get tickets too.)

For everyone else, now you can go to Brown Paper Tickets and get yours for a very cheap $12 each in advance. See this great article and interview with Hakim Bellamy that was in the Albuquerque Journal.

Enjoy Urban Verbs, or the SW Shootout, or both. And don’t forget to save some energy to come out to Monday night’s East of Edith Open Mic at 7:00 pm at the Projects 3614 High Street Ne.

 

When Music Especially Mattered To Me: Winner #4

I Walk In Beauty all my days,

as a full instrument for the Creator.

Orchestrated by each note,

I walk on Mother Earth making music.

I am the music,my life’s journey are the notes.

Each footstep Walks in Beauty*.

I Walk In Beauty through the valleys, into the woods,

around the corner to the pure streams full of water.

I Walk in Beauty, as my 

    heart beats like the drum,

 hand trembles like the tamborines,

    body rests like the cello,

voice high pitched like the flute,

and my soul resound each instrument ever heard.

I am the music and I Walk In Beauty.

*Note: ‘Walk In Beauty’ refers to the Dine’ native word for harmony, peace, and balance known as Hozho.

Congratulations to Shannnon F., Five-fingered person of the Dine’ Tribe, for winning a pair of tickets to Urban Verbs with this beautiful poem!!! Enjoy the show!!!

LOCAL POETS GUILD NOW HAS ONE PAIR OF TICKETS LEFT TO GIVE AWAY!!!

Just write localpoetsguild@yahoo.com and tell us about a time music mattered to you…. give us a sentence, a paragraph, or a poem and you’ll get the last pair of tickets!

Only 2 Pairs of Tix Left to Urban Verbs!!!

To win a pair of tickets, simply write to localpoetsguild@yahoo.com and tell us about a time when music especially mattered to you. You can write a sentence, a paragraph, or a poem. Just let us know if we can publish what you write on the blog (Local Poets Guild will give you tix even if you don’t want it to be published). First write/first win tix.

The show is Friday June 17th 7:30 pm at the Filling Station and is a must-see. Photograph by Antonio Rael.

Winner #2: When Music Mattered

Congratulations to Anthony for winning a pair of tickets to Urban Verbs with Hakim Bellamy, Carlos Contreras, and Diles. In response to the question When Did Music Matter to You? Anthony said this:

when did it not?

from the rhymic love push that got me out

my heart drum has beaten a beautiful song,

on point

each and every moment of my life

I would luv some tickets to the show!

In health and beauty,
Anthony “DJ Won LUV” Fleg
Native Health Initiative Coordinator and Groupie – www.lovingservice.us

Thanks Anthony. Enjoy the show. And we wish the Native Health Initiative thriving success.

And a reminder to everyone: WE HAVE 3 PAIRS OF TICKETS TO URBAN VERBS LEFT. JUST WRITE US at localpoetsguild@yahoo.com and tell us about a time music mattered to you. You can see what Carlos said here, and what our first winner said also. The show is June 17th at the Filling Station.

LG

Beethoven’s Abkuhlungsmethode & Hip-Hop

Congratulations to John Crawford of West End Press who just won a pair of tickets to Urban Verbs with Carlos Contreras and Hakim Bellamy by writing in to Local Poets Guild about a time music especially mattered to him. John writes:

It was the summer of 1961, and I was in summer school at Cal. Berkeley.  I was taking German 102 at the time, and had dedicated myself to hearing the symphonies of Beethoven in the library at lunch. In German 102 we were reading a Cultural Graded Reader on the life of Beethoven. It seemed that late in life Beethoven had taken to pouring a bucket of water over his head while sitting at the piano composing the Fifth Symphony. It was in the summertime, he was nonetheless wearing his greatcoat, and in the throes of composition he must have overheated considerably. Doctors later attributed this habit of his to his increasing deafness, a deafness which may have contributed to the extreme difficulty musicians encountered in completing the later movements of the Fifth Symphony. The Cultural Reader called this his Abkuhlungsmethode, his cooling-off method. Reading this story, true or not, added to my enjoyment of hearing the Fifth that summer in the tower of Berkeley library. It did seem very hard to perform, I must say.

We have more tickets to give away for the Friday June 17th Show by Carlos Contreras, Hakim Bellamy, and Diles. All you have to do is write to localpoetsguild@yahoo.com with a sentence or a paragraph or a poem about a time music mattered in your life. For more info, click here. First come, first win tickets!!! We have four pairs of tix left. If you submit, just let us know if it’s okay to publish what you wrote on the website. If not, that’s fine too. We’re glad to have the opportunity to offer tickets to such a great show.

Thanks,

Lisa Gill

 

NOTE: I JUST CLARIFIED THAT WE ARE OFFERING A PAIR OF TIX TO EACH WINNER. 4 PAIRS LEFT.

Lift your hands, lift your pens! Get Tix.

Local Poets Guild has tix to give away for Urban Verbs on Friday June 17th. Carlos Contreras says, “[For the tix giveaway,] How about [calling for submissions] something along the lines of a time when people “came back, or went to, music” we’ve all had those moments in the car, shower, after a break up, the day of a raise… that that song just makes sense!  Music moves us!  It flows through our lives’  and makes us all members of the same club….. we believe hip hop is a cultural dialogue that builds communities…. something that speaks to the heart of music being able to do that…”

This is how you can get free tix to Urban Verbs on Friday night: Write us and tell us how music moves you. Let us in on a particular instant or story. It’s a very loose prompt— a time when music mattered. And you can write in with poetry or prose. You can even tell us how music impacts your poetry. (I may do that myself for fun as Eminem inspired a pile of hard core geeky form poems from me.) Anyhow, the deal is simple. We have ten tickets to give away to Friday night’s performance.  That’s right, 10!!! You can save yourself $12 dollars. You can simultaneously enter dialogue with your community on this website. Hope you’ll participate. Just email responses to localpoetsguild at yahoo dot com as soon as you can…. and the first ten responses get tix and we’ll set you up for Friday night the 17th. (We’ll also post responses online on the website.)

[Note: This prompt is for adults. Youth can get free tix direct for Sunday's show which is subsidized by various donors. If you need info on how to get tickets for youth, query me and I'll point you in the right direction.]

For more information on what Urban Verbs is, the official scoop, see previous post.

Here’s what Urban Verbs is to me: an example. A beautiful example of what happens when three people–Contreras, Bellamy, & Diles–come together and trust each other enough to tackle large subjects of disenfranchisement and reclamation. Urban Verbs is a triumph of spirit, an offering of sustenance to the community–all achieved through the hard work of collaboration. Not to mention, the show does what I’m most fond of: reap interdisciplinary bounty with music, film, performance, and poetry. It’s a joy to watch–and in many ways, Urban Verbs is an explicit call for more arts action from the community. Poets step up. Go see the show and get inspired to try what your own authentic voice requires.

LG

[Photos taken at the Projects 3614 High Street by Antonio Rael. Thanks!]