"ted
baldwin", dubbed "the Poets Poet" by the Baton Rouge Slam host
Dr. Ray Sibley, is available to read his
poems, or speak on a wide variety of topics, including but not limited to
poetry, screenwriting, animation, film production, direction, and digital
media. 225.413.6051
|
wicket city
I missed the watts riots
our little half-cabin boat
was
drifting past the two sides of the arch
during that two weeks of
history
stainless steel curving gracefully
your eye could follow the
lines to
where they would someday meet so God-awfully tall from the
water's edge
looking forward we knew it was a
moment
Kennedy was dead
but looking back not yet
Robert
Martin Luther King still on the stump in
the
south Vietnam was
just starting man
not yet on the moon
an incomplete arch
we drift on by
wary of barges and river traffic
on the unforgiving
Mississippi
on a two week river trip
I have met people in Baton Rouge
who have
never gone to look at the river
never been to a campus
not once gone
to New Orleans
no sense of adventure, maybe
no
sense
and I sit in my apartment
wanderlust burned out of me
by age 12
already a lifetime of
memories
of the real world before manhood
on a
day trip by car to St. Louis in the late 60's
we watched a helicopter try
to knock
down a tall smokestack
for over an hour or more
it
finally left
they had to blow it up to bring it down
the masons who built it probably
thought
it would last
and
would have been proud, I suppose,
that it held on
The lazy looking
river
rolls on
smokestack or
not
arch or not
sitting
on that river so long ago
waiting for time to change around me
all
things brought me to here
St. Louis still waits
|
 |
 A Poem Stolen at
the Albasha Café
I stole a pen from a
famous slam poet.
I did it slyly so he wouldn’t know it.
I noticed it there when he got up to read.
I then took my
chance and committed the deed.
I wanted to write like him –
full of passion.
I wrote while he spoke – I wrote in his
fashion.
used it to write these words
dripping from the tip
of the pen
like Dumbo’s feather a million times
heavier
the magic wand in my hand that moves my words
makes the
words come
alive
an ebony phallic stick surging
sensuously sliding
slippery syllables sweetly sinking
into the
silky sheets
milky white sheets
black
scratchings from my hand
dark luscious ink flowing orgasmically
letters puddling like the life-giving
juices of my own
dark secret mojo
cocoa lovers caught in a summer shower
scampering
cuddling naked
frantically the bic stick moves in and out
of the phrases
going places the she-eets never dreamed
the writing tool does its job write faster write faster write faster
write…
the pen is spent
the page is satisfied
if it could it
would smoke a cigarette .....slowly
and the poet finishes his turn
to wild applause too
now to clean the pen and return it unseen
before he comes
I can look back now and see what was
created,
I penned a poem that should at least be x-rated.
I think the next time though, and this point can be debated,
I will steal a pen from a poet not so sexually frustrated.
ted
baldwin 3/5/03 |
|
3/5/03 This poem took first place in the
Slam with a score of 29.8 of
30.
More of rocket
popcorn here |
the obscenity
five thousand infants a
month
dying of malnutrition
disease
mothers losing their
children
a 50
cent breathing tube to save
a child with
meningitis
impossible to come by
sanctions
children dying in the street
poverty and homelessness
a way
of life for millions sanctions
unemployment at 75 percent
commerce impossible
5 dollars a
month salary sanctions
med students
corrugated
cardboard covering pages of tattered textbooks
hoping for education in vain
hoping in vain
nothing for the people but UN sanctions
and you in your fancy Baghdad palaces
a thousand gleaming buildings dedicated to the suffering of your
people
domed courtyards and palm-lined
driveways
and rose gardens
roses instead of food for starving children
ornaments at the doorways instead of books to
make doctors
marble fountains and golden
elevator doors
wretched
twisted perverse excess
Five thousand infants a month
Because you won't give up your missiles and
toxins and quest for nuclear fire
Five thousand
infants a month
maybe you can keep the
stench of your dead and dying from
you with
those roses great
teacher beloved leader
I want to see them on your grave
five thousand
copyright 2003 ted
Baldwin
performed 2/12/03 Baton Rouge Poetry Slam (This poem based on
information provided in a news article
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/iraq/life1.shtml) |
| More of rocket
popcorn here |
To
visit Moonlark Productions, hosts of the Baton Rouge Poetry Slam, go to
www.moonlark.org
|
|
|
All work published on this site Copyright 2004 Ted
Baldwin |
