2 Videos - Spoken Word Legend Taalam Acey @ The Inspired Word

Spoken Word Legend Taalam Acey @ Mike Geffner Presents The Inspired Word, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2011 @ One and One Bar/Restaurant, Nexus Lounge, Manhattan, NYC.

Acey, a child of the Newark Rebellion, was raised by a single mother who was a member of the famed writer and activist Amiri Baraka's community organization. Acey is an independent artist whose work has been featured frequently on TV One and was selected as the original "number one thing you need to know about" on BET's countdown show, "The 5ive."

Over the years, BET has featured and aired roughly a half dozen segments featuring Acey. He ranks among the vanguard of artists who use the internet to connect with listeners. Likewise, his YouTube videos have been seen by more than a half million viewers and he has tens of thousands of social network contacts.

The Newark, NJ native's poetry has appeared in Essence Magazine and Susan Taylor, the magazine's Editor Emeritus, personally invited Acey to perform for an audience of six thousand at The Essence Music Festival in New Orleans. Acey was honored to be a guest of Congresswoman Maxine Waters for the Congressional Black Caucus' 2007 & 2008 "Young Gifted and Black" panels.

He has shared his work in several countries and approximately one hundred schools of higher education; including the prestigious Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley, where he delivered a lecture on contemporary Spoken Word.

He has recorded more than a dozen CDs and authored four books. Additionally, films that include his work have garnered an Audience Award (2002) and a Special Jury Prize (2006) at the Sundance Film Festival. He was featured in an acclaimed Radio-One London slam poetry documentary and Marc Smith, the founder of slam poetry, used Acey's work in his definitive book. He currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland.

"You have so, so much inspired me with your Spoken Word," said the legendary Stevie Wonder, while interviewing Taalam Acey, during Wonder's own birthday celebration in May 2008.

For more info on Acey, please visit http://www.taalamacey.com/

The Inspired Word is New York City's hottest new spoken word poetry series happening every Thursday night in downtown Manhattan, produced by longtime writer/journalist and former Village Voice columnist Mike Geffner.

Videographer: Elaine Delehant

Music by Oveous - "Never Stop" (w/ Quetzal Guerrero)
http://oveous.blogspot.com/

Poet Charan P. Morris @ The Inspired Word - Poem "Dismembered" & Pics

Dismembered
(Persona of veteran Lashawn Linton, who assaulted an air force recruiter at the 125th St recruiting office)

“Air force recruiter leaving work was brutally stabbed by a crazed woman in Harlem yesterday.”

Field reporters never tell the whole story
when its complicated, like how blown off
arms and legs of bodies
spray wings of
blood and fly
away
from them.

No ceremoniously folded flag
or factory made purple heart
will make the families of the ones
who didn’t make it back
in even partial living pieces
see honor sitting in their dinner table’s empty chair.

“Lashawn Linton the 28 year old suspect - served in the Air Force, according to her father.”

No reporters asked me what happened.
Why an air force veteran turned on her own,
just mention my weekly therapy appointment,
like half this damn city
don’t rely on therapy
to get by.

These fuckin’ low budget veteran therapy appointments
can’t begin to sop up the dead bodies flooding tsunami-like
in my sleep, or while idle on the subway,
or at the sight of my father cheffing my favorite home-cooked
meal, my face turning some camouflage color of green,
the woman who slept on the bunk below me
comes apart at the stomach, the skin of her torso
splays all open in a smile full of worms,
skin curling back, peeling until there are lips…

“Staff Sgt. Sara Charles, 27, of The Bronx, was walking from the recruiting center on 125th Street
at 1 p.m. when she was approached by Lashawn.”

for a second, all I can hear
is not the bullet curling up in the blanket
of my left thigh’s flesh,
not even her voice’s hoarse dying,
the dulling of it rising over her terror like quicksand
as we realize she will not be
sewn back together in time
to be bunk buddies
another night,

just the slithering sound of moist innards
moving snake-like to escape her body
pierces the thick film of shock
clogging my synaptic passageways,
as I watch her.

“Sources said Linton, who had just left her therapist's office,
apparently didn't like the way Charles looked at her and…”

When I saw her with 2 teenage boys outside that recruiting office,
my gut gurgled at her lips curling outward
sweet talking GI Jo patchwork personas
for those boys to paper doll themselves into,
they could have been
my cousins, my brother,
high school boyfriend
or best friend.

I know what a family is like when the child they
gifted to the war - teaming with life -
comes back a lemon of a body and mind,
the piercing look of devastation that eclipses
a parent’s face when first met
with their veteran son or daughter

“…the two began to exchange words, the suspect then whipped out a knife.
An eye witness said Lashawn then plunged it into the eight-year veteran's chest, stomach and leg.”

they entrusted the love of their lives with,
returning to them only
jalopied remains,
no explanation
will ever be
good enough.

When I saw that recruiter’s finger-nailed grin,
smooth with the talk of patriotism
tongue slithering out intestine-like
exposed for all its grotesqueness,
my belly started kicking out at her as if
wanting to rip itself open,
show her what she will be
responsible for when another
doesn’t come home.

My hand gliding through the air with the
rhythm of post-traumatic hysteria
for all the mothers and fathers who wake up
every morning from nightmares so vividly repulsive,
visions of the constellation of wounds their children became
under the middle eastern sky,
the wind working to make them
a new skin, patching wounds
with sand to stop
the bleeding,
mother nature the
only attendant before
their body’s nightfall.

no matter how pretty this government packages
cheap metal poorly painted purple,
no manufactured honor can fill
the chairs at kitchen tables
for families of the dead.

“Linton was charged with attempted murder.”

*****

Below are pictures from Charan's dazzling featured performance @ The Inspired Word.

Poet/Educator/Performer Charan P. Morris @ Mike Geffner Presents The Inspired Word
Thursday, Feb. 3 (along with spoken word legend Taalam Acey)
One and One, Nexus Lounge
Manhattan, New York City

Photos By: Holly Van Voast

Legendary Spoken Word Artist Taalam Acey @The Inspired Word - Feb. 3

Mike Geffner Presents The Inspired Word features one of the all-time spoken word greats, Taalam Acey.

*****

In addition to Mr. Acey, there will be a 15-slot open mic (open not only to poets and spoken word artists but fiction/nonfiction writers, comedians, monologists, singers, and musicians).

*****

When: Thursday, Feb. 3, 2011

Where: One and One Bar & Restaurant (downstairs Nexus Lounge)
76 East 1st Street (corner of 1st Avenue)
Manhattan, NYC
http://www.oneandoneny.com/
Phone: (212) 598-9126

Time: 7:00pm

Cover Charge: $10

Must be 21 years of age or older. Please make sure to bring ID.

*****



BIO:

"You have so, so much inspired me with your Spoken Word," said the legendary Stevie Wonder, while interviewing Taalam Acey, during Wonder’s own birthday celebration in May 2008.

Taalam, a child of the Newark Rebellion, was raised by a single mother who was a member of the famed writer and activist Amiri Baraka’s community organization. Acey is an independent artist whose work has been featured frequently on TV One and was selected as the original "number one thing you need to know about" on BET's countdown show, "The 5ive."

Over the years, BET has featured and aired roughly a half dozen segments featuring Taalam Acey. He ranks among the vanguard of artists who use the internet to connect with listeners. Likewise, his YouTube videos have been seen by more than a half million viewers and he has tens of thousands of social network contacts.

The Newark, NJ native’s poetry has appeared in Essence Magazine and Susan Taylor, the magazine’s Editor Emeritus, personally invited Acey to perform for an audience of six thousand at The Essence Music Festival in New Orleans. Taalam was honored to be a guest of Congresswoman Maxine Waters for the Congressional Black Caucus' 2007 & 2008 "Young Gifted and Black" panels.

He has shared his work in several countries and approximately one hundred schools of higher education; including the prestigious Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley, where he delivered a lecture on contemporary Spoken Word.

He has recorded more than a dozen CDs and authored four books. Additionally, films that include his work have garnered an Audience Award (2002) and a Special Jury Prize (2006) at the Sundance Film Festival. He was featured in an acclaimed Radio-One London slam poetry documentary and Marc Smith, the founder of slam poetry, used Acey's work in his definitive book. He currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland.

For more info, please visit http://www.taalamacey.com/