CHECK OUT: http://www.newtownarts.org/shows/10_blast_phemy_5/index.php

to get the full story on the May 26, 2010 performance at

Cinefamily in Hollywood or see the next posting below, NEWS NEWS NEWS NEWS.


Which poems will they perform?  Who will be in the band?

What will the background video be like?

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Email TRANSVALUE at: chuck@transvaluepress.com


!!! NEWS !!!

TRANSVALUE

— LIVE —

IN HOLLYWOOD
MAY 26, 2010 @ 8:00pm
Blast Phemy! 5 AT CINEFAMILY THEATER
Also live film scores by Lucky Dragons
Co-presented by

NewTown ARTS
and
L.A. Filmforum


Tickets – $13

BROWN PAPER TICKETS

CINEFAMILY  SILENT MOVIE THEATER

View Map

Wars For The Numb
(01-21-91)

War is entertainment
We watch fake wars when there is no real war
When the real war starts we are riveted
Hypnotized…. “The real thing”

We send our children to die
To fill our emptiness with their bodies
To fill our empty TV evenings
To keep our newscasters heroic

We start a new war every twenty years
In case we run out of war stories
We must not run out of war stories
We must keep the numbness quiet

Oh War please entertain us
Keep us numb, we pray
If you abandon us
Our pain will be upon us

We must be entertained
We have a right to be entertained
Or the real war
Will rage un-numbed within us

 

 

QUALITY IS A MAGIC
(03-31-09)

The dry delusional sun of quality
Revolved around me

Like a mummy in a desert
I used to expect eventual notoriety
And believed notoriety
Was a magic of quality

Willing the gods to notice
I waited eons for success

Then

All the un-mummified
Pyramid builders

All the un-published
Yearners

Finally taught me

I now believe
Quality is a magic
Of function

Beyond the stringy shrouds
Of human manipulation

I wait no longer

I am swimming in an ocean
Of billions of souls

Mouths I can not see
Speaking the words
That float me

I am dancing on the ground
Of billions of bodies

Feet in their old dust
Allowing their physics
To lift me

I am breathing in the air
Of billions of ideas

Lungs once filled with hope
Willing their spirits
To animate me

I am burning in the fire
Of billions of passions

Eyes obsessed with visions
Growing in their deserts
That singe me

Successful Predators
(02-18-08)

PLAY THE TUNE: Successful Predators

It is sunrise and I can tell the white thread from the black.

I don’t have to prove this.

I know it and you know it.

Modern human culture goes all the way around the world covering and polluting earth, air, and sea. Van Nuys and Istanbul look the same as Seattle, Tokyo, Haifa and Hebron. CNN is everywhere. The culture of coercion and consumption is everywhere in me and in you. We feel justified in our consumption and our conflicts. We want billions of things that no one has ever needed. We cringe at the wolf and the shark and the lion but they are endangered by us. We are THE predator. The world’s most successful predator.

They will have to go along…
You have to…
You need too…
How can I get you to???
I have a right to make you…
What ever it takes…

It is sunrise and I can tell the white thread from the black.

I don’t have to prove this.

I know it and you know it.

The Madras and the Humvee advertisement, the church and the public school, the drug advertisement and the McDonalds advertisement, the Oil Company advertisement and the political advertisement and the all volunteer army. ALL invite us to consume against our self-interest, enlist against our self interest, vote against our self-interest, accept all manner of violation against our self-interest and violate others against our self interest. We are invited to forget about consequences.

The environment doesn’t matter…
Animals don’t matter…
Children don’t matter…
Women don’t matter…
No other human matters

It is sunrise and I can tell the white thread from the black.

I don’t have to prove this.

I know it and you know it.

People can not be un-violated. Some people refuse to be violated some more. When you continue violating people many will become extremely efficient destroyers. Some will come from Ohio, some from Kolkata, some from Timbuktu some from Haifa, some from Pittsburg, some from Shanghai and some from Hebron. They did last week. They will next week, except there will be more next week. All over the world the violated are becoming the PREDATOR.

It is sunrise and I can tell the white thread from the black.

I don’t have to prove this.

I know it and you know it.

Victims who become PREDITORS often express themselves through the medium of terror. Sometimes they say they have a great cause and sometimes they leave no note. It always hurt the innocent.

It is sunrise and I can tell the white thread from the black.

I don’t have to prove this.

I know it and you know it.

There was once a time for war and a time for peace. Now it is permanent war. Permanent famine. Permanent suffering. All over the world the human response to violation is rising in a crescendo none of us can measure. It will be a tsunami coming suddenly from any direction. It will be from an earthquake that has already occurred somewhere submerged.

It is sunrise and I can tell the white thread from the black.

I don’t have to prove this.

I know it and you know it.

Mark these words.
We keep choosing to have more children as we continue to create more and more suffering. We set loose the rage-voice of the violated, we lie to them and rape them and starve them then we buy them explosives. We destroy the forest, the field, the rivers, the oceans and the air we breathe.

As humans continue to violate each other and the planet, the planet will find a way to heal from our folly. Human folly will cleanse the planet of humans. Human beings are of the dust, we have stirred up the dust and now we will all return to the dust. The planet has expressed itself through us. Soon…when we are gone… the planet will throw up another.

We will not be here to notice.

It is sunrise and I can tell the white thread from the black.

I don’t have to prove this.

I know it and you know it.

photo-John Lai

photo-John Lai

photo-Connie Bonner-Britt

Candles Upon Leaves
(For Connie)

Civilization appeared tens of thousands of years ago
Here
Beside this sea

Born of a Spinning Spider
Upon this Turtle
Upon this Rock
Out of the Lips of this Canyon

My people have no history
Just a few lives spent
Arguing religion
Here yet

We try to know them
With our science
With our great wisdom of
Annihilation

Always with reductions
Dissections
We say we study life
Forgetting to stop bringing death

I know this dancing girl
Her body a religion
Kicks with her ancient toe
Some dust into this river

The people watch
As if it turns to smoke
In the twirling current
Or candles upon leaves

Floating to the sea

John Leist, 2003


John Leist
(For Aaron David Britt)

And so it was
In the year 1969

No myth came out of pre-history
No legend came from oral history
No recorded history of these momentous events
No platinum hero emerged or chaste heroine
It was more than a football riot
But don’t try Google

There was an occupying army
There were attacks
There were counter attacks
There were sharpshooters on the rooftops
There was tear gas
There was intrigue
There were lovers
There was a Komarovsky
There was the knife
There was the daring flight
There was hiding

John was our rescuer
Tutti was his rescuer
He the mad doctor at the piano
She the passionate librarian
Who knew how to love through the decades
Making a music
That taught how music was made

For a time
After the rescue
We students made some music

It was you



photo credit

Anima / Benediction
(10-14-48 / 10-14-81)

Oh God
Nurture me
That I may not love what I was given
That I may not hate myself
That I may destroy with less inadvertence
That I may create with less inadvertence
That I may love what I was given
That I may mother the resurrection

Connie’s Song
(02-14-03)

What meter?
What melody before my beloved?
Only some Cosmic Hiss

All trees fell without noise
Or music

Then

You sang me your song
Measure by measure

Each chord discovering
Itself in the last
Then strumming
Unique into another

Your magic
De-waxes cosmic ears

Suddenly songbirds fill the forest
New trees grow along fallen trunks

You plunge my cool toes
Into the hot summer mud

You paddle me down the
Rushing river
Your body a current

Now
Your mouth forming love words
Your hair flowing behind
In the wind you stir
Timeless songs

My eyes on you
My back to the rocks

The rhythm of your tune
The plunge of our boat

Opens my mouth

Your solo
Becomes a universal chorus
Me
The beaming baritone in the back

Firmament Street
(From Lewis Center To Finding Her To Van Nuys To Losing Her To Finding Me)

They came from the loins of pioneers
John Calvin came along to protect them from savages
Too much freedom is a sin
So all feeling is suspect

You can say what you feel
But don’t want to be heard
You can have your needs
But don’t ask me to

Asians and Caucasians and blacks and hispanics
Killing each other in rice patty and jungle and ghetto
But in a basement just off campus
One Caucasian smoked, ate Reeses Cups and read Shakespeare

Criminal led governments and other
Raging maniacs vying for my body
Big ideas bandied by mere humans
Babies and parents and grandparents die

I learned rage first in a suburb
Rage grew in the middle of a corn field
The middle of me husked over
Unable to feel either sun or rain beating down

The best of me demanding to burst out
The best of me forgetting who I might hurt
The Guard and Martial Law husk the town
In a sugar, tobacco and dramatic haze murder appears an option

She came as I knew she would
Just in time to save you all from me
Pulling me into humanity
Then whirling off to another scene

Left before I knew to predict
Little did I know what was good for me
I was meant to be with her
We were just as meant to end

There is a blank space
In the middle
Behind my eyes
Where some hope-boy used to be

My room in a crumbling wet house
Smack in the middle of an over sprinkled dessert
On Firmament Street where nature pretends not to rule
Walls welcomed nails with wet crumbling embraces

I bought ten sawdust and glue boxes
Filled my room up with them
Painted them white
Then painted them black

I filled them up with all my stuff
Filled my empty brain with who I am
Walked out into the Withoutyou Valley
Naked but for my sawdust and glue boxes

One sunny day
I took my mother
To the beautiful little country church
That’s the last I’ve seen of her

Death is miscast as the predator
We are meat to the living
I have gusts of sorrow
Sometimes twisters

Imploding memories
Carrying off babies
Destroying whole trailer courts
Of brain cells

Hoping for no weather at all
I must find a new way to a new home
The Celestial Firmament will contain me
Dead or alive or wet

Land Of Loss
Land Of Gathering
(For James)

Oh in that Land of Gathering
Where together we will be
I will find that light
In your eyes so bright
And I will finally see

In this Land of Loss
We say goodbye
We touch one last time
We rock
We rain

Right in the middle of us
We learn to loose you
There is so much to loose

I remember that
Every day I stay
In this land of loss
It means

I want to be here to know you
I want to be here to loose you
Each one of you
I don’t want to miss
Any agony

You go on
To that Land of Gathering
Where we will follow by and by

Now you will loose
Nothing more
While we rock
We rain

Oh in that Land of Gathering
Where together we will be
I will find that light
In your eyes so bright
And I will finally see



The Proudest Man
(For Charles H. Britt)
(05-07-03)

 

In the eighth decade

The LIST grows short

All the actions
That made me

My mastery of
Principles, machines, and situations
Goes wasted

The stains on my hands
Fade

The calluses
Soften

All the vehicles
That needed maintained

Don’t need
Now

All the machines
That needed mastering

Don’t need
Now

The friends
That needed loyalty

Don’t need
Now

The tasks of seasons
Which could be counted upon

Are done
By others

My list grows short

I am left only
To care for my Beloved
To care for those who love me
To let them care for me

I am the proudest man
Doing the hardest work