Brett Axel Native American Slam Poet

Brett Axel Native American Slam poet

Brett Axel is like Toto. He holds no malice for anyone, yet in his search for simple truths he opens curtains, exposing the frailties of our Wizards. A trait which earns him the friendship of seekers and the resentment of humbugs.

Revolution

Revolu shuuuuun
People don't want revolution
They want a DVD with Dolby Surround Sound
Or whatever they saw advertised this week
On the World
Wide
Web
You want to talk about revolution?
Take your Mister Coffee programmed to give you a cup
Just the way you like it at the touch of a button
And throw it out the window along with the other shit
Used to keep you content with your John Tesh lives
You are bathing in a Jacuzzi
Around its rim is a lid with a Tupperware seal.
It is filling up with hot water.
You are getting soothed by a jet
Of a thousand tiny bubbles
While you drown.
Revolu shuuuuuun
I am going to choke the next guy
Who quotes Gil Scott-Haron
As if he was willing to give up any of the comforts of life
To get his feet wet in a real revolution
The Revolu-shuuun
Sure as shit will be televised.
You'll be gathered around your projection screens
Watching it on Pay Per View
And the outcome will be determined
By viewer calls
To a fucking
900
number.

Pitching Juice

Twenty-five years of writing
Is rendered to this moment:
Will I peddle Frutopia
On Network TV?
They know I prefer Snapple,
They don't care.
A rock star is out of their price range,
Poets work cheap.
It is more money that I've made
In two books, five awards, one hundred periodicals
And five hundred readings.
My career as a poet is rendered to this:
Will you support A Gathering of the Tribes?
What's that? They answer.
Which of my poems do you like? I ask.
What have you written? They answer,
Give them to me, I promise to like it.
Do you read poetry at all? I ask.
Sure, yes, why
In fact I've got a copy
Of The Giving Tree.
I'll take that as a "no" then.
Twenty-five years of writing
Is rendered to this moment:
Will it become another poem
Or will it end them?
Do you want the money or not? They ask.
I wasn't their first choice they tell me-
And they have Bob Holman's number
On their speed dial.
Oh, I know him, I say.
I know people who know him well.
Let me pitch your commercial to him
I'll bet he'll do it for half the price
And you could split the difference with me
For making the deal. What do you say?
That's O.K. they tell me, there's a budget.
I just thought maybe I could compromise
My artistic principles a little-
Sell out less publically-
Just enough to fix my car
And catch up with the phone bill
Without everyone having to know.
Call Bob, I'm sure he'll be perfect-
He'll sell a lot of fruit juice for you-
He looks better on TV than I do.

You'll Be Me Soon Enough

1963 John Kennedy
Toasted my birth
With blood and flashbulbs
. My nurse peers awoke
To a generation of carrying the torch
Our parents lit
Through the streets of Woodstock,
New Hope, Big Sur,
Extinguished before the first hairs
Sprouted in the cups under our joints
We raged against Nixon;
We raged against 'Nam;
We raged against the white
Bank of the river
Demanding red and grey
And brown and black sand;
We shook our angry rattles at the system
And threw off the oppression of cloth diapers forever.
Rom Doss, I was there then,
Allen Ginsberg, when America got naked
We were naked already.
We spent the summer of love
Singing the alphabet with Buffy Saint Marie
And whoever else stepped
From our parent's bong parties
Into Mister Roger's Neighborhood;
Walked the Sesame Street counting winos sleeping
On subway grates:
One wino,
Two winos,
Three dirty smelly winos,
I love to count winos.
The first word I knew how to spell was friend:
F-R- I-
E- N -D
Special.
I thought 'special'
Was the last letter of the word, 'friend.'
If we didn't know,
At least we suspected
That Ernie and Burt were lovers
And it was O.K.
Because they cared about each other very deeply
And they weren't asking us
For health coverage
Or joint tax returns.
There was no thank you
For the 'AtomKraft, Nine Danka' bumper sticker
I put on my first car,
Or the 'Reagan's an asshole' songs
I spit on the stages of CBGB's,
Max's Kansas City, The Ritz
(before Joe Camel took over the place
started dealing nicotine)
"Hey kid,
the first hit's free."
We bottled out bags and bagged our bottles;
Rejected extra packaging on CDs;
Swung hammers for Habitat;
Held hands across America...
Worked, spent, yes,
Bought a Saturn and installed
Windows '95 on a one thirty-three
Pentium processor clone with sixty-four megs,
But saved a few dollars
From every three or four paychecks
To send a check
To the World Wildlife Federation,
The Elizabeth Morgan Defense Fund,
Whatever the fuck
ABC's cause of the week was.
God Damn it!
We did our marching
And pissing
And fighting
And fucking
And killing
And saving
And we still do,
In a way,
By sending a check.
I don't know when I became another something
The youth can rage against.
It crept up on me.
One minute I'm making an effort
To understand Metallica,
The next I'm walking through Tower Records
With Nine Penny Nails or some such shit
Blasting my aging eardrums out of their sockets
And I knew my youth was over
When I heard myself asking the management
To turn off the God-Awful racket.

To Allen on Your Way

Allen, I wasn't offended when you suggested an orifice
for my parents' America to insert her atom bomb.
I never lived in America.
I live in New York.
You weren't talking to me.
America is a product on the supermarket shelf
that I haven't the good looks to buy.
America is painted
on yellow Saturday Evening Posts
bundled in an attic collecting value.
America is children singing
"We The People" Saturday mornings
between Scoobie Doo and Wacky Racers;
happy, singing children
hand-holding children
And none of their fathers are bleeding on the battlefield
And none of their mothers are burying infants--
laughing, playing together children
white, black, red, and yellow children
And none of them are in chains
And none of them are hungry
"And the shot heard round the world"
Left a two inch hole in my bedroom window
But America didn't squeeze through.
New York is nothing like America
Our constitution is eighty thousand words
not on display in the public library
You can't buy passage to America.
You can still buy mescaline
But you can't hallucinate freedom on it.
Walt Whitman doesn't haunt the Grand Union.
No neighbor would loan an ax to a deviant freak
in the Walden I know.
Allen, when I heard you Howl
I thought it was funny
and you were crazy--
I rather liked that.
Disillusionment cannot exist
Where illusions never grew.
You had the illusions I wanted
and gave them up for a bowl of beans.
You pissed on the America I never saw
and the lies you hated
were replaced with nothing at all.
You didn't live in a vacuum but I can't see you in the dust.
Allen, did you have Doctor Quinn circled in your TV Guide?
Walt Whitman made an appearance
and Sang the Body Electric in a Colorado grove
built on a Hollywood back lot--
you would have liked it--
you should have stuck around an extra day or so
to witness what they do to heroes
if heroes get elected at all.
Allen, you're not the only one dead.
Dorothy Parker is dead. Walt Whitman is dead.
Lorine Niedecker is dead. Emily Dickinson is dead.
William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost,
e e cummings dead. Dead. Dead.
Your poems are better now.
Like theirs, death becomes you
And our constraints were once
your free radicals.
Allen, I honor your memory
with a souvenir t-shirt,
a poem,
and a moment of noise.
I didn't get to meet
the America that disappointed you,
but we are naked
whatever nation we are.

Like yours were, our libraries are,
filled with tears
now some of them Allen, are yours.

Bottles of The Bath

With it's five
Special agents,
Provides essential moisture
And locks it in.
Strengthens and protects
During wet combing
And leaves your hair
Manageable
With healthy looking shine.
Keep out
Of reach
Of children.
Use only
As directed.
Pour two or three
Capfuls in
To tub
While running water.
Produces mounds
Of lasting foam
Softens water and
Eliminates
Tub ring.
Avoid getting in eyes.
Keep out
Of reach
Of children.
Wet hair, lather, rinse, repeat
As desired.
For best results
Use every time
That you
Shampoo.
You won't need a separate conditioner
Avoid getting shampoo in eyes.
If it does, rinse with water.
For external use only
Keep out
Of reach
Of children.
Shower gel is a mild
Moisturizing liquid
Cleanser that contains
Soothing aloe vera.
Combined with a
Variety
Of fine herbal extracts,
It's scented with
Flowering
Natural herbs.
No animal testing.
For adult use only.
Keep out
Of reach
Of children.

Time To Meditate

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