Featuring @ The Dude’s Poet Society

I will be a featured reader this weekend at the Dude’s Poet Society, a new literary performance event at The Big Legrowski at 812 NW Couch St. in downtown Portland, Oregon.

From our event hosts:

“The Dude’s Poet Society”, a weekly spoken word (No musical instruments, there are rules!) open mic. Hosted by Amanda Helstrom-White, Curtis Whitecarroll, or Doug Spangle. Sign up starts at 7, show starts at 7:15. Every week will be 12 open mic slots and a feature reader.”

Come on out and support a new spoken word event by some high quality local writers!

Southeast Madrigal

Cycling thru streets
Dusted pink with
clouds of Spring, just before

The thundershower
I find a moments’ peace

A tiny interloper,
Folding naive bee winglets against
The coming storm

Rides at my elbow, a brief jaunt
To an uncharted neighborhood
With
Exotic spills of blossoms
Tumbling over mossy walls

The scent of fresh pollen, heady
and intoxicating

Or perhaps,
This was my spirit guide through
This early passage
Down a sleepy back lane of Faerie?

With such live, sunlit green panoply
Reaching out, trembling against
A curtain wall of
Charcoal smudge sky,

Why, one could linger for but a moment,
And years might pass, back in our

Consensual Reality…

Best to keep moving, feet tirelessly propelling onward

For an unspecified amount of afternoon,
I made it to the top of the hill okay.

When I looked down,
My sleeve was empty

(c) SBA 4/2014

Sharing is Caring

Here’s a new poem that just provided me a pleasant diversion. It’s a bit rough, but this is too ridiculous not to share:

Sharing is caring when you’re carrying Karen, who is carrying another Karen, who carries a Cairn.

 

The Karen who carries another Karen kerns.

The Karen who carries a Cairn keens.

The caring Karen is caring.

The uncaring Karen is cunning.

 

The rare Karen reaches behind her back to pull a sword with wings, with which to smite down the bare Karen.

The married Karen shared the air with the rare Karen.

The fair Karen beseeches, “I Love You”,

While the spare Karen retorts, “No way!”, and breaks the Cairn.

 

What can we make of this pairing?

 

The daring Karen then set down the Cairn, for repairing.

The wearing Karen took to swearing.

Then the keening Karen took to burying the Cairn.

The wayfaring Karen scored better with Erinne.

Take heart, however! As the rare ends from despairing Karen’s Cairn calm.

 

(palm to palm)…

 

(c) SBA 8/13

 

 

Compliment of the Year

Walt Curtis and I @ Mark Wooley art opening, Pioneer Place, Portland OR, 2013

I dropped by 3 Friends Coffee today to check out the poetry open MIC. Dan Raphael was featured and I didn’t want to miss that. We’ve read out a few times together, he immediately inspired me when I heard his kaledioscopic sensory metaphors hanging in the air like strange and beautiful crystals on a big astral chandeleir. I was not disappointed. What I heard was a mirror of what has been resonating (or perhaps simmering) beneath my mind for a long time: the sound of the fragments of world tearing apart- and possibly being recombined into whole new modes of being.

Then later on that night! Walt Curtis– AKA Oregon’s Poet Laureate- got up, some time after all the rest of us read, and read a poem while in a full on nosebleed. He had on a straw hat over his polar fleece cap. It was, as Ed might have oft mentioned, in the shape of a “perchy hat.” You’ll have to ask him what that means. He had a hard time getting through the whole poem, he remarked, because of feeling like he is almost going blind. It did take him quite a while, but it was also an epic, whimsical and allegorical poem about his black umbrella. Walt later came up to me and remembered me and wanted to introduce me around. He was saying I had been “an important part of the poetry scene.” He encouraged me to come back another Monday.

People came up and told me how much they liked my piece (I always love that… with visual art people can say, “um that’s nice” and move on… perhaps just to get away from you… With poetry, one has to make the effort to come up and compliment the author. That takes balls.)

I think that makes for a really whizbang evening, don’t you? 😉

Oh BTW: The open MIC people, Show and Tell Gallery, announced they publish podcasts of the weekly readings and archive them on their site. So you can hear me reading live in perhaps a couple of weeks. Look for the show on 12/17/12.

Greetings, Humans

I am the new blog home for Serena Blossom Appel and her literary endeavors. Here you will be able to find SF writing in the form of short stories, poetry/concrete prose, journalistic pursuits, and possibly some out and out ranting. You may refer to the pages herein to learn more about who in the Fract this woman is, and how to track her down and see what other havoc she may have been unleashing elsewhere in the Universe.

Stay tuned for more intrigue coming your way soon, including news on latest projects to come and perhaps some excerpts..