Elliot’s T-shirts Find Good Homes
“Did you find one you like?” I asked Phil, father of our youngest spoken word reader, Mars.
“No, I’m just reading the funny papers,” he answered as he held up one with a fish on it that said ‘don’t give me that carp.’
Chelsea, a retired Radford University Professor who has recently authored a chapbook dedicated to her addictive love of coffee, picked out one with a coffee theme to take home. Jayn’s was black with a photo of one the three stooges and bright red letters that said, “Just say Moe.”
Earlier in the evening, Mara shared a short poem written in a form called a “minute,” and so I followed with one just as small that I labeled “a sip.” The last reader of the night, a Hollins College Graduate student who drove up from Roanoke, read a long poem that I thought was three different poems, or maybe a book. He dubbed his genre a “guzzle.” June said she was even more nervous than when she last read, which was her first time. Maybe it was because of the crowd. It was bigger than usual. At one point I counted thirty-six people. 
Sally, the café owner, was too busy serving customers and then introducing the readers, to set up the sound system, so we projected our voices. I resurrected my poem “Dream for President Bush,” which was written five Novembers ago, before the U.S. invasion into Iraq. At that time it was read at several peace rallies and handed personally by me to actress Jessica Lange who spoke at one of the pre-war Peace Marches in Washington D.C. I went to.
I want President Bush to have a dream … like the one that Ebenezer Scrooge had … I want him to be haunted by the ghosts of Iraqi children … who cry out, “but mankind was your business” …
I particularly like saying these lines:
I wish President Bush would have an affair … I wish he’d take off his black pointed cowboy boots … and look at the moon more often …
And these:
I want his mouth washed out with soap … every time he says “weapons of mass destruction” … and for him to wear a Darth Vader helmet … if he ever says “the axis of evil” again …
Nobody seemed to miss the mic.
At the start of the night I lugged a heavy garbage bag full of T-shirts up to the reader’s chair and spread a few out. “It will all be explained soon enough,” I told the curious onlookers who were watching me.
Elliot was a poet and member of the Floyd Writer’s Circle, the group that co-sponsors the monthly spoken word nights. It was the second anniversary of his death. Earlier that day, Kathleen, another writer’s circle member, and I had photographed Elliot’s T-shirt collection in a final farewell memorial for him. 
Mara put Elliot’s name on the sign up sheet for one of the ten minute slots because we planned to read a few of his poems. When Sally got to his name, she spoke faintly and questioningly, “Elliot?” while scanning the audience as if she was looking for a ghost.
Jayn, Mara, and I shared the spotlight for the tribute to Elliot. “He sat right in this very chair and read these poems himself not too very long ago,” I told the crowd. Mara talked about the book of Elliot’s poetry that she and Kathleen have been working on. At the end of the night, we invited everyone up to find a favorite T-shirt to bring home.
Post notes: You can read my account of the Washington D.C. Peace March HERE and the rest of the poem “Dream for President Bush HERE.
November 20th, 2007 11:55 pm
I love the Bush poem, Colleen. I hope someone on his staff finds it and reads it to him!
November 21st, 2007 7:17 am
I had meant to tell you that night that I really liked the Bush poem, but got sidetracked. As usual, good recount of the evening. Thanks for the memories…
November 21st, 2007 9:20 am
You folks do such cool and wonderful stuff. Wish I had a second home there.
November 21st, 2007 10:39 am
What a GREAT GREAT Poem, Colleen. I wish you would post this on this blog…! I’d love to post it on MY Blog, with your permission….It Is POWERFUL, and just as relevent today—I’m sorry to say. Maybe there should be a POST COLEEN’S POETRY DAY when all of us Post this Poem on our blogs….!
Your friend had a most interesting collection of T-Shirts….and how lovely that many people now have one to remember him by…!
November 21st, 2007 11:18 am
I always get irritated when I hear the press say “Americans have started to turn against the war” when I know how many were against it from the start, marched before it began and knew then that it was a phony premise that would open a Pandora’s box. I went to two marches (my first time participating in a protest), one in October and another in January. Probably half a million marchers were there.
Feel free to post the poem, Naomi.
P.S. Elliot was adamantly opposed to the invasion as well, and said so with a mic in his hand.
November 21st, 2007 2:46 pm
Maybe Bush’s people have only seen the protestors at the end of a gunbarrel. I held signs protesting the war when Bush came to Chattanooga earlier this year … which I reported here: http://continuingthequest.blogspot.com/2007/02/pantywaist-protestors.html
I didn’t write about the gun pointing out the car window toward me (and others) because it chilled my soul so much that I wanted to process it. That was months ago, and I haven’t written about it until now.
The man holding the black rifle (an AK-47, maybe?) was in the car behind President Bush. As they slowed to turn in towards the Convention Center where Bush was to speak, I could see right down the barrel of that powerful weapon … and my heart caught in my throat. I wondered at the time why the man didn’t have it pointed downward at least a little bit. And I just now had an involuntary shiver run through me, just writing about that day.
I am an ordinary citizen of the United States. I am an older woman (almost 67 at that time) who was standing apart from others on the sidewalk, as instructed by Chattanooga police. There were children in some of the clumps of people. I had two signs being held up, one in each hand, so I couldn’t have been seen as a danger to the President or his entourage. What if the driver had hit a pot hole? I don’t think there were any, but what if? I had the very distinct feeling that I had looked at death that day, and it was certainly a moment I will remember if … WHEN … I protest again.
November 21st, 2007 3:15 pm
I wish I had known Elliot, I only met him once or twice but he was a magnificent person.
I was there to help at his house after he passed on. It was outside of his house that I saw the milky way for the first time.
November 21st, 2007 4:02 pm
Bonnie, That was chilling. Thanks for introducing me to yet another great blog that you author. I wrote:
I’m always proud of anyone and everyone who has stood up to call Bush on his phony war. Too bad the killing isn’t also phony.
My bumper sticker says: When Jesus said love your enemy, he probably meant don’t kill them.
Hi Leah, Elliot was certainly a mixed bag. Like I said, part Scrooge, part flower child poet. But real people. I like real people.
November 21st, 2007 4:58 pm
A wonderful and thought-provoking poem, Colleen.
What a great idea–to share Elliot’s t-shirts with his friends and fellow poets! I expect he would be pleased.
November 21st, 2007 8:35 pm
Thanks for the poem, Colleen — unfortunately, I think that you need a brain and a conscience to dream: and Rove has gone, and it’s not clear that Bush ever had a conscience, so we may be out of luck….
N.
P.S. Michele sent me tonight,
N.
November 21st, 2007 8:40 pm
“…imposing his nightmare upon the world.”
Indeed.
Michele says Happy Thanksgiving! And so do I!
~S
November 21st, 2007 10:29 pm
Wonderful that his memory will live on like this! 🙂
November 23rd, 2007 10:53 pm
Just out bloghopping this evening. I love to land in your neightborhood. There is always something worth seeing or reading. Powerful poem. I also read your entry about Jim and Thanksgiving from 2005. It is such a gift when we find some meaningful ways, like your writing and the t-shirt give away, to remember loved ones who have died.
Blessings,
Sharry
March 14th, 2010 6:44 pm
[…] and as a celebration for a new local literary publication. How about the night all the poets got free T-shirts, the time we wore green and spoke in Irish accents, stood on chairs, did it in ruby red […]