Indianapolis poet and performer Januarie York read Coming to the Stage to open and close John and Peter’s August 4 Conversation with DeAmon Harges. Watch the video here.
Coming to the Stage
You don’t have a clue why I do what I do but I do what I do just for you.
For your freedom song to sing above the clouds and cruise at altitudes foreign to you, I want to wipe the dust over your shoulders,
Move the debris out of your pathway
May these poems blow southwest winds against the northwest tumbleweeds that are headed to cloud your dreams.
I write to save the overdrawn from completely checking out
For the Norma Jeans
That get lost in between Monroe hoe tactics,
For the practical and the unpredictable
For the dancers with no balance
For the 5, 6, 7, 8, hundreds of thousands of de-throned kings cooking up rocks in pipes meant for smoking through broken antennas
I write to save the teenage girls because what if I can change her direction
Writing with the blood of the neglected
Writing with the blood of the neglected
I am unprotected
Like a fertile ***** to a ripened ******
Womb tight and pregnant, holding capitalized secrets and lowercase print
It was a cold night in December when I saw a halo hanging over a ballpoint pin
Poetry,
Is my walk-in closet
Kick your feet up in my den of lyrical equity
I do the opposite of what is expected of me,
I started writing to make sense out of the senseless,
My 5 senses would let me miss this, but the ink went blank, so I put my tongue on the tip….
And because I’m a poet,
I ain’t been right ever since
I fear my own lyrical mortality more than my final casket lay
But once I get here
In this space
My own personal Pluto
This here plateau of poetry
The proven history of this violence is that I come alive up here so much
That when you see me sitting
Consider me in my postmortem pose
Postmortem prose
Lights out!
Everybody knows that dying is easy that’s why I stay so pen sick
Almost every time I spit
And you will literally see me spit and I really hate that but-
This is me living
Taking the breath I only get to engulf when I am with you, I guess you could say I wish we lived together
Shacked up and ringless
Menage’a’life me – You, Me,
And this stage
And I don’t need a mic for this,
This is me,
Alive,
Full blown
That’s why my poems be so long because I wanna live for more than 3 minutes most times
So never mind who can’t get it, or who ain’t with it
Bullseye you shot me
But you can’t change who I am
Or alter the trail of my lyrical umbilical that leads to the lights of audience smiles
I get born again up here and I mean it
This is life up here
This is life up here
To lean forward to stand
Hoping not to disappoint this time
Hoping to come alive by rhyme
To be totally honest and 100% true,
And when I come alive on this stage,
I am secretly hoping that I can bring life,
Back to you.
Copyright © 2013 Januarie York. All rights reserved.
Public domain home image by Photo Cindy
