The Alchemy series of poetry readings recommenced tonight after a summer recess, so I had a wealth of material to present. I picked my favorite six poems from all I’d written over the summer and went.
It wound up being a great evening. The featured reader had some good lines, there was a good crowd, Anna Marie was back from England and a couple of her friends from there were visiting, quite a few Brit poets tonight actually, Ken Nash led off the open mike (yes, that’s how I spell it, because I’m a rebel, yeah) with a series of fake reviews of fictional authors which was very funny, there were lots of new readers, David Stringbreaker totally surprised me with some throat chanting, it sounded like a didgereedoo (not sure how to spell that), but it was just voice, he told me afterward that it was also meditative and a good physical workout, I think I’ll just take his word for it, and one of the new Brits read an elegy for his grandmother (if I understood him right) that nearly had me in tears.
My stuff was appreciated O.K., I think, I thought my last poem was going to be more of a blockbuster than it was, but I suspect the audience is a better judge than I as to its worth.
On the way home I walked to Malostranska Metro and then figured what the heck, I’ll walk across the bridge and catch the Metro at Narodni Třida, it’s yellow line so no need to change, and then I wrote this poem:
The birds perform a looping flight
above the Rudolfinum
If you’ve walked across Most Legií at night
I’m sure you must have seen ’em
They drift, pure white, in that glowing light
a sweet, angelic vision
but,
I know they’re just fucking pigeons
and I thought that was a pretty good end to the evening.
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