American Dialogues
in July of 2014 American Dialogues : Introduction was premiered at the Museum of Modern Art
The work is a one-hour narrative improvisational experience, featuring four winds, bass, drums, and tap dancer. The poem centered around my experience of our world, an awakening to an urgent and insistent view that traveled between mystic hope and youthful cynicism. The poem was written prior to the era of Donald Trump's presidency. Given the extreme change in the political climate of our society, this offering will stand solely as a piece relegated to its time, a hopeful cry outward, to bring individualism into a collective love. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to present the work, and I was and still am overwhelmed by the outpouring of those in attendance.
an excerpt from the opening of the poem:
I.
Introducing: the Great American Tragedy
or Comedy
the Fantasy of American promises
wrapped in ideal plastic
the circus master
turned marionette:
a lion – rigor mortis-stuffed
brought to life
in aged moving picture credit
a Comedy in scenes
passing through turnstiles,
and climbing up the buildings
thinking the sky
a new frontier
and I have seen no minds
of my generation –
all too dull to speak
the human man
thinking himself an artist
living by
his own path
his own way, another time
displaced in hallucinating ego
Are your clothes on dear homo sapiens?
Does your water come from a tap dear homo sapiens?
Is your shelter made of mortar and brick?
A fantastic delusion –
ferry ride to a broken down woman
not yet tarnished
as her citizens crumble –
but some do fondle, bundle
and couple and cuddle and
puzzle and stumble and bumble
down a solid street where
the bell of bells no longer tolls
but beeps and groans
out of earshot of the cocks crow…
and if cocks crow
does not resound
through the streets of Western Frontier –
does Jesus really exist
with Peter having nothing to hear?
Introducing the Great American Tragedy
or Comedy
a Fantasy, the triptych of lesser
and greater men…
