Life Goes In Circles

www.buddywakefield.com

Pretend

BUDDY WAKEFIELD is the two-time Individual World Poetry Slam Champion featured on NPR, the BBC, HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, and signed to Strange Famous Records. In 2004 he won the Individual World Poetry Slam Finals thanks to the support of anthropologist and producer Norman Lear then successfully defended that [arbitrary] title at the International Poetry Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands against the national champions of seven European countries with works translated into Dutch.

In 2005 he won the Individual World Poetry Slam Championship again and has gone on to share the stage with nearly every notable performance poet in the world in hundreds of venues internationally from The Fillmore in San Francisco and Scotland’s Oran Moore to San Quentin State Penitentiary, House of Blues New Orleans and CBGB’s.

In the spring of 2001 Buddy left his position as the executive assistant at a biomedical firm in Gig Harbor, WA, sold or gave away everything he owned, moved to the small town of Honda Civic and set out to live for a living, touring North American poetry venues through 2003. He still tours full time and considers recent tours with Ani DiFranco and The Junkyard Ghost Revival to be the highlight of his career thus far.

Born in Shreveport, LA, mostly raised in Baytown, TX, now claiming Seattle, WA as home, Buddy has been a busker in Amsterdam, a lumberjack in Norway, a street vendor in Spain, a team leader in Singapore, a re-delivery boy, a candy maker, a street sweeper, a bartender, a maid, a construction worker, manager of a CD store, a bull rider and a booking agent. Wakefield is a growth junkie, an expert witness to redemption, avid player of marbles in the trees, elated son of a guitar repair woman, wingman of Giant Saint Everything, and remains generally hopeful for his health despite an abusive relationship with free range pastry buffets.

Buddy, a Board of Directors member with Youth Speaks Seattle and member of Team Seattle 2006 and 2007 for the National Poetry Slam Finals, is honored that his work is published internationally and has been used to win national collegiate debate and forensics competitions. An honored author of Write Bloody Publishing, Wakefield is known for delivering raw, rounded, high vibration performances of humor and heart.

THERE IS NO ACCLAMATION FOR THIS ARTIST…

…except for the time one of Buddy’s hero’s, Benjamin Morse, called him “Monster of Energy, Keeper of Hope, Friend of My Soul…” That was a good one.

MORE ACCURATE BIO:

In the Fall of 1984 Anchor Bay Entertainment released a movie called Children of the Corn while Buddy lived in front of the corn fields near Niagara Falls, NY. This traumatic event (coupled with extensive exposure to Kenny Rogers and Lionel Richie) may or may not have led to Buddy becoming a sensitive poet puss who plays marbles in the trees, listens by talking, and keeps fingers on pulse. HI MOM!

contact: buddy@buddywakefield.com

GIANT SAINT EVERYTHING

There were days I wanted out.
But then You would go and do things
like dive into the Vancouver ocean,
big brilliant cliché poem that You are,
water rolling off Your back
as You swam toward a sunset
that hung like a sacred recipe painted
all the way around Your holy head.

And then there were the ways You watched me
moving back into my cave where the wheels turn,
same wheels that drove You off.
I should have told You
before talking in terms of Forever
that any given day wears me out and works me sour,
that there are nights when the sky is so clear
I stand obnoxious underneath it
begging for the stars to shoot at me
just so I can feel at Home.

What’s left of You now is a shrine
built from the pieces I kept of Your presence,
Your incredible stretch of presence.
It sits in Our room like a sandpiper
cross-legged and crying,
remembering the night we met
and the day You left, and the Light
shifting in between.
By the side of it stands a picture of the poem where I promised,
“You will never have another lonely holiday.”

The words “I Promise” and “Forever”
begged me not to use them
but sometimes I don’t listen to God,
so You can imagine how much it hurt
to let Your last birthday pass
with no word. August 3rd.
You weren’t the only one comin’ up lonesome.

Listen, if I had to make a list
of everything everywhere
- and I mean everything… everywhere -
the very last to-do on that infinite list of
every – single – thing – would be – to hurt You,
so I need You to know
that in an attempt to keep my promise
I did write a letter to You on Your birthday.

It was covered in stickers of flock-printed stars,
choir claps, and a bonfire of buttercups stuck in the air,
but when I finally drew enough courage
to send You all the Love in the World
my hand snapped off in the mailbox
from clenching.

It was returned to me with a gospelstitch, a hope stamp
and a note etched into the palm I had to pry open
with the pressure of pitching doves
reminding me
we agreed to let each other go.

There is a point when tears don’t work
to wash things away anymore.
Grabbing for breath has now broken my fingers.
I miss You so much some days
that I beg for the airplane to crash
with just enough time in the freefall
for scribbling “I Love You” across my chest.
That way – when they find my burning breast plate –
they will tell You how the very last thing I did with my life
was call out Your name.

Arnold Remond Liesting

I know You’re momma didn’t raise a sissy,
so it’s best if I believe
that You’ve bounced back and been born again,
but, Baby,
in the bottom left corner of dreams
in the dark spot
where it gets windy and hollow
I can still see you flailing,
eating knuckle cake,
full torque and tender,
heart pounding from being pulled under,
feet bleeding from bracing for endings,
tongue dying to curse Forever
because promises murder us backwards
when people like me don’t keep them.

And sure, we all deserve absolution,
but especially You. You and Faith,
You’ve got the same hungerpunch,
same song
still rising off the watertrain running through the laws
of a moon dead set on daylight
digging marbles from the trees
of a Love not scared to make no sense
and monkey enough to see
the same devastating reason for living this life
My Giant
Saint
Everything

Forever
I promise You
these words have buckled my lips
so far back to the beginning
that I am now only allowed Today,
so from my snap-chested heart spraying
fully flying
sending out the birds:

Today I stop believing in words.
Today all my visions reverted blurs
like the night We saw the Light
and I could not shut up

but I swear I was feelin’ silence.

___________________

Horsehead

When I rode off into the sunset
there was no blackout
or camera behind me.
I did not recede into the distance.
I was still very much present
with what I had left behind.
My horse was thirsty
from how far I ran him.
And your God as my witness
I ran him
until I rode into town here and realized
I am not the end of a movie.
I am done playing sunsets for lonely.
My best days are the days I see clearly
so I had hoped
to come clean here perfectly
for you and the whole saloon
but there is no polish on the table tonight.
Expect rough spots then
when I show you my cards.
These hands we were dealt
may splinter.
The spades could get under your skin.
I was livin’ with’m under my skin.
They were diggin’ up into my film strip.
I was ridin’ with’m stuck in my heart.
It is work to ride head up and holy here.
It is painters with slack in their brush,
painters all jacked up
on stampede dust
just tryin’ to get it right.
I’ve been trying to get it right.
I’ve been learning here how to grow larger
than the monsters alive in my dreams
swinging a crow bar
out of my whistle
and grand pianos out of my rust.
I shot typewriter keys out of cannons I keep
aimed at the bandits alive in my trust.
There were bandits alive in my trust
come to burn down the verbs
left alone in my blood
barkin’ like dogs in a combine.
My horse head sweat
like a war on a land mine
jawbone chomp at the bit
like a bear trap telegraph.
I know I look
like a bleeding dot
by now from where you stand
where there is mad dash
and such wild west
and it is raining down locomotives on a horse
who might not have a name
but who carries a trough in his chest
empty as it may be today
from feeding bandits disguised as the Pony Express
comin’ up spades and splinters,
my workhorse spittin’ out hammers and ink.
There is a colony of bad fathers
who built this place
still alive in the way I was led to think
like a snake
who can shed his own crucifixion
or a midnight rider
who leaves his beast
under whip of the daylight sky.
It’s why I looked like gallop cursive
when you held me under the horizon line
to magnify
every single silver screen I stole
riding high on my filthy electric whale
like a bullet through a junkyard ghost.
Ya know, I don’t care to be good, Sheriff.
I care to be whole.
So read what it says in my buckles boy
Take your sunset out of my rise.
I will not send you sailing if you came here to drive
and I know you came here to drive.
That’s why it reads won’t give up on your saddle
like I wrote don’t give up on my life
like I’ve been
typing my name
on a horse I drove
through the desert as sure as a river he ran
and I swear on my shadow
he wouldn’t turn back
no matter how much slack I typed into his neck.
Not everyone wants to go home
to get the sunset painted back into their bones
to have the law with all that slack in its love
pretending to save me
you don’t need to save me
I already did that myself
when your god as my witness
never turned up
there was a typewriter
buried alive in that horse
I rode to get out of the flood.

Convenience Store

___________

What Do You People Do?

When I was a child
the first thing I would do upon entering someone’s home
was ask them where they kept their toys.
If they said that they did not have any toys I’d be like,
What the fuck?

__________________

WE WERE EMERGENCIES

A poet
can stick anything into the fog and make it look like a ghost.
But tonight let us not become tragedies.
We are not funeral homes
with propane tanks in our windows
lookin’ like cemeteries.
Cemeteries are just the Earth’s way of not letting go.
Let go.
Tonight, Poets, let’s turn our wrists so far backwards
the razor blades in our pencil tips
can’t get a good angle on all that beauty inside.
Step into this
with your airplane parts
and repeat after me with your heart:
I no longer need you to fuck me as hard as I hate myself.
Make love to me
like you know I am better than the worst thing I ever did.
Go slow.
I’m new to this
but  I have seen nearly every city from a rooftop without jumping.
I have realized the moon did not have to be full for us to love it.
We are not tragedies
stranded here beneath it.

If my heart really broke every time I fell from love
I’d be able to offer you confetti by now
but hearts don’t break, y’all,
they bruise and get better.
We were never tragedies.
We were emergencies.
You call 9 – 1 – 1.
Tell them I’m havin’ a fantastic time.

______________________

Jean Heath

In the end
Jean Heath’s home was filled with people
who claimed to know her better than they actually did.
They swapped tissues and embellished stories
to appear closer to Jean Heath than they actually were
in the same way wearing expensive clothes on Sunday
apparently brings wealthy Baptists closer to God than they actually are.

It were mostly unfamiliar faces
who seemed to be looking for due credit
on the role they may or may not have played
in the life of Jean Heath,
networking their sorrow and searching
like they always do in every death
for the gate to restoration
as if this life really wants us to stay here.

They took turns crying on Jean Heath’s face
as a sign that she would be missed.
There was so much crying that I, the caregiver,
could hear Jean Heath’s bed sheets slap together when she moved.
And there was food, y’all.
Holy holy there was so much food.
At least an acre of it.
Across the kitchen countertops and over the tables,
falling out of the refrigerator and along the arms of chairs.
There were plastic cups with names written on them.
Sometimes twice. Sometimes two cups.
Kids lose shit.

There was ambrosia with snot on it
cornbread with tears in it
black-eyed peas with the trembling ladle
strawberry rhu-barbed wire pie, melty vanilla ice cream pulp
and there were perfect middle squares still left in the brownie pan.
I know who ate the end pieces.
The little ones were warned
that death is a very serious matter
so they had better not act up
or else they would be forced
to pick their own switch
and get whipped with it.

We were tricked into fearing the ways we will leave this planet.

Emily Holder was 26-years-old that day when
she came to play piano for her best friend,  Jean Heath, age 87
who lay flat and velvet on her death bed
lookin’ like the front pew of a gospel church without the guilt.
When the other guests asked Emily how she knew Jean Heath
Emily thought of Jean’s lonely days on the porch
when no one came to visit
when the money ran out
when the yearning for love haunted her
taught her how heavy the hollows are
how crippled a memory can make ya
how sometimes she cried so hard her throat locked out all the noise.
“I trust you people…
about as far as I can throw you”
Emily said,
“and I can’t throw you.”

The candles inside her piano keys
are why Emily Holder’s fingertips burn when she plays.
She doesn’t scare Jean Heath when she plays like that.
She bangs both feet down on the sustain pedal bouncing
when she sings like that
teeth all gripped out like a hallway howling
Holler holler she sang
I’m goin’ home.
Might be a little bit bit but
I’m gonna show’em.
Might be dirty
might be skinny like water
but there’s a hole  in God and I’m not
gonna fall down in there.

And that day when she played
sometimes with her knuckles
mostly with her memory
she remembered a true story she read alone
in a book about self acceptance
a true story of a girl
who sat at the bedside of her mother in a coma
until one morning before dawn her mother opened her eyes
looked “clearly” and “intently” at the daughter and said,
“You know,
all my life
I thought something was wrong with me.”
Then the mother shook her own head as if to say “What a waste”
before drifting back into a coma where
she died several hours later.
You knew she would.

These stories we give each other
are just different reasons for begging you
to find a reason to stay.
But nobody’s gonna stay here.
Emily knows Jean Heath won’t stay here.
She’s cool with that.
They both just wished they would’ve known
a little sooner about this life that every loss
doesn’t have to cost so much
doesn’t have to hit so heavy
doesn’t have to get so dirty.

Dirty Dirty like Christ
on his little brown mule.
I was baptized in tap water
and I never really went to school.
I got a hunger for ya.
I got a hunger for you
but I never but I never
but I never really came through.

Jean Heath was tender and bossy in the moment
she finally called EmilyBeeshold to her bedside.
While Jean was happy that her house
smelled like a baked good
and she was thankful
for the best of the gestures from the guests in the bedrooms
and she was wondering about some of the recipes,
Jean was very clear and very intent
when she finally pulled Emily’s ear
down to her mouth and said inside of it,
Get these people out of my house.
I’ve never died before
and I’m gonna enjoy it.