Category Archives: 60s
A Valentine for Angela (for Angela Davis, George Jackson and The Black Panther Party)
When you see Angela
Give her… this Valentine
Tell her
No code of morals
Or pastoral sermons of redemption
in bastions of struggle
nor private language
Or puritanical divinity
from the tyrannical gatekeepers
of black consciousness
in Baptist Churches
Where the house of God
like the people are falling
and bibles are missing
countenances are broken
and carriages are bent
on Grandfathers
huddled like old horses
in Chapel basements
can keep her locks from draping
my thrilled skin
I felt the linguistics of freedom
without right-wing caveats
and the sophistical footnotes
of kept intellectuals
when Black Power waxed
the center of my tower
and the bottom of your well
farther than this cell
and closer than holding you
in my arms now
I found the status quo
on endless streets with names
and no names
we neglect or accommodate
In a sound dream
on spots
we smother
or straddle
we are a sexual coterie
I wanted to indict you for voluntary servitude
buying part and parcel of our own existence
like exploitation bought and exploitation sold
back to the exploitable…
With a shameless display
of unnecessary needs and haughty miens
napping, unconscious, and folded
Like Black parents
who cannot recognize their children
Hiding inside androgynous clothing
Reciting the lines of criminal poets
perverting language that appeals to them
Black Panthers in proletariat-drag
When Heidegger said
The dreadful has already happened!
Tell her…
Huey
is an effete dilettante
living life inside a penthouse
longing to be outside in the cracker box
raping after he was free
Down with the masses!
Up with the bourgeoisie!
Eldridge
came to the Party shouting
“I am a rapist!”
“I [am] a patriarch!”
Power was not concept
abstract or privilege for Eldridge
His last contribution
will be the design
of cock pants
And Bobby
is a politician
with idealistic intentions
running for the Mayor of Oakland
loyal to the Patriarchs
that bound and gagged him
in the courtroom
Elaine Brown
confused pussy with power
will deny
Huey beat her down
and ran her out of town
in her red Mercedes Benz…
Hide your guns from Jonathan
My brother is poised for Fatalism
Suicidal ideations are necessary considerations
when voluntary death is a blow against
excessive regulations
The gun…
is justification
for the enigma
of an absurd existence
when God is dead
like Nietzsche and Sartre said…
and heaven is empty
When you see Angela
Give her… this Valentine
Your status in the ballroom
on that intellectual runway
does not resemble
the place we found
Bring me back from Limbo…
Your breath is shallow
Your pulse is faint
The ring is dark
The tower is steep
The well is deep…
Are you coming too?
I am waiting
in this din
pacing the floor in my 9 x 4
in absolute solitude
wanting
you, you, you,
again…
Copyright 2004, 2015, 2021 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Twenty Twenty-One
Fun Espresso
Egad, the Casbah in Santa Barbara
Part of the fun is the embrace of perfume
Cafe Angelica Emerald Crème
A sabbatical delay waiting to be served
A ceremonial promenade hunched over gazettes
Unwelcome raindrops splatter the canvassed toes of my shoes
Thus the au courant cartoons on my stringy denim knees
Inside at last, I’m saved and Mocha Berry satisfied
Like the face of the fretless little girl
Blowing candy off the floor in her mouth
Clicking up and down in shoes too big for her feet
Stealing glances at an intellectual jerk
Chocolate Cherry satisfied between deep banter
With a friend floating in Vanilla Colada
Part of the fun is real references to books
And book references to real well read attitudes
What’s the shiniest patented leather flats
On the girl with the silkiest blonde hair
Doing with the darkest man
In Dreadlocks and Birkenstocks?
No talk between them
Then they’re sharing the table
Those lined outside will share tables too
The Raspberry Almond can sit with me
Keeping the beat with an aggravated drum lead
His body twitched with jazzy guitar licks
He smiled between the plugs in his ears
And faces fade into a mirror in the back
Part of the fun is waking up here
In an essay on spice and circumstance
A sabbatical renewal once more
On a regional affirmation of decadence
This day of rest I worship Santa Barbara
And the celestial trip I straddle
To be able to dry my canvassed toes
With the heat of Golden Pecan
And the fervent chill of observation
In my sanctioned Casbah
In my sabbatical home
I hold my head up
My cup runneth over
Reading books and people vicariously
Egad, I am dry and satisfied
© 2002, 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Artist Statement… Unfettered Birds (WIP)
Introduction
My work explores the relationship between what is real, and what is unreal. With influences as diverse as Yukio Mishima’s Onnagata and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Where words are illusory and freedom is real, and brick and mortar is a wasteland — for mortal dreams and nightmares.
Where categories don’t matter, and you are god… the god of your dreams. My work is a journey – from the perspective of the young prince and princess in Hollywood, Dubai, the Great Caves, and Capote… Where freedom rings supreme and the fiction in your mind comes true — for real.
We launched Dreamscape in a glass cocoon — opaque me and transparent you. Content is buried there — over black people, white people, red people, yellow people, brown people, rich people, poor people, and melancholy. Inside pods power is fetish, and fashion is an avatar. My work explores the freedom to be who we are — dreaming unfettered in space — birds…
TRENCHPEOPLE.COM
Copyright 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Love Divine — Opens
Love Divine — Official Release Date
Directing the Master Scene in the Mirror
We’re standing behind you
The window is your mirror
We‘re filming your reflections
In the window
You can see
The teardrop on her cheek
The other tear — is in your hair
Reach up and wipe the tear
With your thumb
Roll the tear on your fingers
As if water — is on the wings
of a butterfly_
Now, your face is dry
You point and say something
Insignificant like
“See that gas station down there.”
Vignette for Love Divine.
Copyright © 2018 E Maria Shelton Speller
Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)) [Reserved][Reserved] 3.0
Overture: Woodstock is an ensemble. There are two voices and the beat in this WIP… the Narrator’s voice, Hitchcock’s, and “That Yoni” by JuseBeats!
In a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
In his magnum opus
about a world… full of extras
in architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning and more — of her…
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
He nods
I’m thinking
Disappointed… in us!
[There’s no other way to say it — I can’t dress it up]
Caught between a slumbering scream and Vertigo
Cruising isles and isles of sweet and sour
People who think they are special
People who know they are not
People who wish they were
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers prologue
Guess what we did?
A party of twenty
Three couples played before
winking and willing
shills playing in the round
Lovely trips on the Hill
in augmented VR
I’m thinking…
Baby boomers had their turn Woodstock!
Barefoot bell bottomed hippies
Denim sweeping the ground
[Reserved]*
Revolutionary hair — fists in the air
Dragging us back in the mud
Blunt antiquity
Move on Woodstock!
Take your shades, caps, change and loose articles
Bombs in black holes!
[Where did you go?]
We should be sunning in the Bahamas
chilling on hemp swings and
chairs swiveling in immersive environments
Higher than kite fights
A soaring for points experience
Get off the ride Woodstock!
You had your turn — at freedom
Exit signs are easy to find — look
The dragon is in the window
Freedom is accessible
Wonder is a trip
with walk through assistants
Dreams of power and prizes
Optional…
Fall out and Jack into
a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
in his magnum opus
about a world… full of extra
architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning — and more — of her… virtually surreal
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers song
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
Copyright © 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved.
*I’ve toyed with a conundrum, for too long. [Reserved][Reserved] functions like a digital art installation in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)). I could render [Reserved][Reserved] a mechanism – to catch That Yoni’s beat in perpetuity. I could close the brackets with bars that fills your loins with blood. I could leave redundant emptiness here — like tautology or romanticized art, or structural language — in this bifurcated space, like stars.
I could invite Poets to fill the empty bars for [Reserved][Reserved]
Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)) [Reserved][Reserved]
Overture: Woodstock is an ensemble. There are two voices and the beat in this WIP… the Narrator’s voice, Hitchcock’s, and “That Yoni”. See Side Bar by JuseBeats!
In a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
In his magnum opus
about a world… full of extras
in architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning and more — of her…
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
He nods
I’m thinking
Disappointed… in us!
[There’s no other way to say it — I can’t dress it up]
Caught between a slumbering scream and Vertigo
Cruising isles and isles of sweet and sour
People who think they are special
People who know they are not
People who wish they were
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers prologue
Guess what we did?
A party of twenty
Three couples played before
winking and willing
shills playing in the round
Lovely trips on the Hill
in augmented VR
I’m thinking…
Baby boomers had their turn Woodstock!
Barefoot bell bottomed hippies
Denim sweeping the ground
“Interrupting — The Star-Spangled Banner like
That Doors dude dizzy on Dewey Decimal”
Copyright 2017 by Tang
Gawd made them like him
they never met — ticks time
Copyright © 2017 The Parthenon
The flag was a smoke screen over a grid
a chance to be — a white Supreme
Copyright © 2017 — Nudedcendg
They were diptychs, triptychs, and chapters…
The beginnings and endings… you can play too >>>
Copyright © 2017 E Maria Shelton Speller
Shut the fuck up
Sit the fuck down!
Copyright © 2017 by Donjoncity
Revolutionary hair — fists in the air
Dragging us back in the mud
Blunt antiquity
Move on Woodstock!
Take your shades, caps, change and loose articles
Bombs in black holes!
[Where did you go?]
We should be sunning in the Bahamas
chilling on hemp swings and
chairs swiveling in immersive environments
Higher than kite fights
A soaring for points experience
Get off the ride Woodstock!
You had your turn — at freedom
Exit signs are easy to find — look
The dragon is in the window
Freedom is accessible
Wonder is a trip
with walk through assistants
Dreams of power and prizes
Optional…
Fall out and Jack into
a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
in his magnum opus
about a world… full of extra
architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning — and more — of her… virtually surreal
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers song
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
Copyright 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller
I’ve toyed with a conundrum, for too long. [Reserved][Reserved] functions like a digital art installation in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)). I could render [Reserved][Reserved] a mechanism – to catch That Yoni’s beat in perpetuity. I could close the brackets with bars that fills your loins with blood. I could leave redundant emptiness here — like tautology or romanticized art, or structural language — in this bifurcated space, like stars.
I could invite Poets to fill [Reserved][Reserved]…
“It is said that what is called “the spirit of an age” is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world’s coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today’s world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.” ― Tsunetomo Yamamoto
and this…
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein
Girl Band of STEMs
Girl Band of STEMs, is a lark, a careful ruse about a writer, who comments on her own stories. It is metafiction in a digital world. This, I would argue. The author writes a story about herself, writing a story about her Band, and the Band knows they’re in the story, about a story that interacts with you. She writes a story, where her audience is her muse – may demand she change the ending, in an installation we build in space — for dreams, on a loop…
The Band asked me to write tags for my work. Tags! But, opportunity or obstacle… the Muse is insatiable — until it works. Poets know that tick, when everything becomes art – in a second glance. Woodstock, was absolute freestyle in a digital world. I worked on it for weeks… and wrote it Live one Saturday afternoon – five hundred revisions at least. Poets know that tick. I changed commas to periods and back again – metaphors to imagery, slowed it down, sped it up. Reminisced. If you were there on that Saturday afternoon, Woodstock was a writer’s tick at work. I wrote the hook on the 7th Street Bridge in DC. Installed [Reserved][Reserved] when I lost my way. Found the beat, marked the spot, and then it looked like a digital art installation, in spite of the implications — for structural functionalism in space. But, my muse is pissed…
Tag: Yellow Tape [A Memoir]. “I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe in synchronicity…”
Tag: Woodstock. A Band for Immersive Content. A Woodstock Experience.
Tag: The Foreword to Insomnia’s Istanbul — The Voice of an Unreliable Narrator in Medias Res: Unlike the neighbors next door, who desperately moan for us all, in the back of a dolmus — sex is existentialism. It is earnest copulation, a period of decline in a carriage drawn by a wild-eyed spooked horse — and I hoped she felt the sharp turn, at the corner of the Soup Kitchen of Lady Nilufer, in her throat.
Tag: Love Divine: Tadao bathes Tess in a black granite tub. Then he slips behind her like an ice cream scoop. Blood spills like a waterfall in a Japanese dream over the side of the tub. Red water on the porcelain floor looks like a strawberry swirl.
Tag: Metafiction — [The Dollhouse] with the Red Corvette: [Vous êtes contrarié parce que je suis sorti du lit. Ce n’était pas ce que tu imaginais – dans le film dans ta tête. Je ne peux pas aller aux toilettes, quitter la pièce ou fumer une cigarette. smh]
Tag: Tagging Dystopia: [OdamnIwantedtheopportunitytocomefrommichelleO]
Tag: Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso’s Parallel Discussions: Come on baby. All you have to do is dream — from the end of a pen.
Tag: Luda’s Second Soliloquy — Miles Language II. [Metaphor].
Tag: [For The Purple One]
Tag: [The Life of Pie] He thought/Big Blue was a deeper trip/Absurd space looked/Absurd from here/He looked around the virtual/And mad shouted/Who read the pieces first?/Anyone?/How did it ring?/How did it feel?/How did it resonate?/She said, I started at the slices/Chaos, straight out the gate/When Big Blue was just/The sky.
Tag: Picasso The Bohemian (Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon) “…She told halcyon tales of life — uninterrupted by death and chthonian sex — like the brazen whore in the fore — riding the fugitive cube — with the wasp waist and black aft — Eucharistic grapes, and the curl of the rind — pointing to glorious thighs — and with eyes in the back of her head — she watched the spectator off center… watching — Picasso The Bohemian — who lived in Barcelona — standing behind the curtain — wearing a mask…”
Tag: Explode [Am I awake, or are you a dream?]
Tag: The Gaze (WIP) I know I needed to stay in and listen to music like Paz did and avoid humans — he said, “To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.” Instead, I left my home and this is what happened… Apparently, a new and poorly trained employee provided incorrect information over the phone. Consequently, I arrived unprepared, and had to return to my vehicle. Because, I had to return to my vehicle (in the rain) parked around the corner — I ultimately, received a ticket for expired meter! A ticket. What should have been a $26 transaction is now $76 in this crowded, greedy — unimaginative city!
Tag: Directing the Master Scene in the Mirror. It’s impossible to write poetry, without libido. Without libido, there’s no passion and without passion, there’s no pluck.
Black Marnie
Looked like [Mardou Fox]
through Kerouac’s eyes_
Remember… those puffy lips?
Yakuza found her in Tokyo
and lost her — in the Philippines….
[Wait… There’s a surprise at the end]_
They stole Alexa
She had all the poetry
Yakuza chased her through Tokyo
to the Phillipines
Alexa, was everything to him
Cream like the color of his skin
Ahh, the poetry
He lost everything
Fell in love with a haunting hunt
Baby, come back to me
Copyright © 2017, 2018 E Maria Shelton Speller All rights reserved.
Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars))
Overture: Woodstock is an ensemble. There are two voices and the beat in this WIP… the Narrator’s voice, Hitchcock’s, and “That Yoni”. See Side Bar by JuseBeats!
In a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
In his magnum opus
about a world… full of extras
in architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning and more — of her…
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
He nods
I’m thinking
Disappointed… in us!
[There’s no other way to say it — I can’t dress it up]
Caught between a slumbering scream and Vertigo
Cruising isles and isles of sweet and sour
People who think they are special
People who know they are not
People who wish they were
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers prologue
Guess what we did?
A party of twenty
Three couples played before
winking and willing
shills playing in the round
Lovely trips on the Hill
in augmented VR
I’m thinking…
Baby boomers had their turn Woodstock!
Barefoot bell bottomed hippies
Denim sweeping the ground
Revolutionary hair — fists in the air
Dragging us back in the mud
Blunt antiquity
Move on Woodstock!
Take your shades, caps, change and loose articles
Bombs in black holes!
[Where did you go?]
We should be sunning in the Bahamas
chilling on hemp swings and
chairs swiveling in immersive environments
Higher than kite fights
A soaring for points experience
Get off the ride Woodstock!
You had your turn — at freedom
Exit signs are easy to find — look
The dragon is in the window
Freedom is accessible
Wonder is a trip
with walk through assistants
Dreams of power and prizes
Optional…
Fall out and Jack into
a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
in his magnum opus
about a world… full of extra
architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning — and more — of her… virtually surreal
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers song
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
Copyright 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller
“It is said that what is called “the spirit of an age” is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world’s coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today’s world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.” ― Tsunetomo Yamamoto
and this
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein
Cheers! I would also like to thank 40K poets at heart (like us) on FB et al, who like and love, and laugh, and mislike this WIP! Please pardon the broken link… We’re working on it. However, this glitch is an opportunity to say thank you for being in this Writer’s Environment with me. Happy Holidays and have a wonderful New Year!
Luda’s Second Soliloquy — Miles Language II
If I could write language
that speaks and points….
At trumpets
when the moon is tone
and the sun is sfumato
See… the chiaroscuro Supreme
[dream in hue]
magenta, chrome, cherry-white
[mixed with blue fugue]
Put-the-night to sleep!
See Sisyphus scorn
at amber headlights
in Paris dew
Skin seeking skin
and birds seeking
[the flutter of feathers]
ink… that runs like blood
on paper… that does not bleed
Contrapposto poets
succumbing to peaches
Dogs… suspended
like meat in Seoul
[In the dawn]
She comes home
the moon is a beat
the sun is trill…
Dada responds
to Surrealism
Hip Hop responds
to R&B
[The trumpet responds]
to me
bebop bebop bebop bebop blam!
Fa Falala…
Copyright 2004, 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Inspired by Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and Zurich Dadaist Hugo Ball who according to Arnason’s thesis on Ball’s conventional language “had no more place in poetry than the outworn human image in painting, Ball produced a chant of more or less melodic syllables without meaning: ‘zimzim urallala zimzim zanzibar zimlalla zam.’ “
Cowboys and Indians and Torture Stories (WIP)
We watched a lot of television
when we were children
Barbie and Ken went to the Theater
to see Porgy and Bess
I am reminded that we liked
“Torture Stories”
The medieval thumbscrew
Spartacus and the rack
Cowboys and Indians!
We rooted for the Indians
They were savages
and were portrayed so
When the Indians tortured the Cowboys
We liked it! Remember?
Then there were “Slave Stories”
Black people looked nothing like us
Slaves were bad people
They deserved to be whipped
When Slaves ran from their masters
for the Underground Railroad*
We screamed on ivory soaped knees
“Catch that nigga!”
Running like those colored people
in the Civil Rights Movement
Before my mother told me rather plainly
You are Colored too
Copyright 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
* “The entrance to the Underground Railroad remains unknown. After leaving our tunnel, slaves would try to make their way as far north as possible. There are no records as to who went through the tunnel or how many.” First African BC Savannah, Georgia