Photos by Bill Perrault
Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On April 10th, Lee Letif and Chris Robbins bring their own blend of poetry, performance art, and comedy to Stone Soup.
Lee Letif has been a regular contribution to the Stone Soup open mike since 1991. He's the author of several chapbooks, including Unpatriotic Flags and Abominating White Houses, Reckless Paella and Defecating Republicans, and his newest, Ultrasonic Amplifiers and Marshall Amps/Genital Wart Puking Rednecks.
Chris Robbins has volunteered for such causes as the Jane Doe Safety Fnd, the Cambridge International Women's Day celebration of 2005, and Brockton's Black History Month celebration. He has read his poetry in venues around Massachusetts and California. He is putting together a chapbook due out by the end of this year.
Sample poems are below.
The Vendemiating Obventional Metaloph
Jarvey and Slite in a nonferuled express sensory. ON that WEM dominator tube amplifying blisting. Impulsor ejectoring. Electric mistress deluxe flanger rebounding. Embolus evactoring. Jackplug socket linked. Truss rod chanel welded. Guitar patterned rewet. Energizing that oxycontincoalited bmw wagon. To rib thu the psychedelic freeways. The hard rock rampires. And the 3 chord punk turnpikes. In airy fairy hyphoid.
An appal in the ciricoid cartilage. Rickled in the tuberal part. Stooked in the capillary network dismayed in the vagus nerve. Doesn't palp a dorsal root. Doesn't sense a grey matter. Ultrasonc trangressing yeanling gamin. With blanch elytrons. Plus his codon wide open. Is streeling up and away in the prune labrador loft. Without valancing his medial epicondyles.
After a ganja interpeduncolar substance induced dullard. Sparks up 10 Micky Dolenz joints every 18 minutes. He takes out of his thermal brasero. A platter of what he imagines multiple seashoring oysters. Knicking flecking clicking zipping knacking and smacking. Like Spain Mexico Puerto Rico Argentina Columbia and Chile are annexing in fusion. Like a fiesta volk.
A coventina of her lyrics. Danu of her clavier. Avantia of her diathesis. Astiya of her corsaint. A phylum beyant the template. A decury forthby instead of ensuing the dharmamythicizing Mary Ellen Amos. Retains up preteritly. Her maxim renky trabal much gaucia manrent well tailored pants. While she surviews down brantly at your oosmical clad.
During a birth of pirene pernathian feast. A rotta of shandy untitled Randall Rendoun dottling wetty bacchic boon jovy gaudful gladful holidaying Jajuka tibe of Marrakech. Jopping about and faining the lifeway. Plus fivering each other on the solco del cingolo with glazy light bulbs. Which trenes on for many folded tittupy eras.
--Lee Litif
Egalitarian Angel
(dedicated to Sweet Honey in the Rock, Alice Walker and Helen Reddy)
The world
should be honored
to be adorned
by the elegant grace
of an egalitarian woman.
Regardless of whether she stands
three feet tall
or carries the banner
with statuesque poise,
she's a guiding light to follow
out of the dismal, mist-shrouded
dark ages.
With a gentle wave of her hands
in a rhythmic dance ritual,
she churns the air
like brew in a cauldron
to expel the stale scent of old-boy mildew
and bring in a long-awaited refreshing breeze.
She's an inspiration
to people who struggle
through hardship and pain
and never get a grain
of respect or recognition.
She adds a touch of red to our blues
to form the fragrant color of unity.
She searches through countless songs
and when she finds none that speak of her spirit,
she writes her own voice
and sends an angelic song
to the world on eagle's wings.
She holds the world
in a healing tender embrace,
an elixir to soothe over the pain
of pierced hearts and split skin,
and she inspires us to tear down
the barrier of restriction and ignorant ideals
known as the Gender Wall;
so called because it segregates men and women
as if they were separate governments
in the same war-torn European country.
With her inspiration,
perhaps one day
we will learn to love and respect one another
and to love and respect our guiding light,
our Egalitarian Angel.
--Chris Robbins
