This is the official blog of Northern Arizona slam poet Christopher Fox Graham. Begun in 2002, and transferred to blogspot in 2006, FoxTheBlog has recorded more than 670,000 hits since 2009. This blog cover's Graham's poetry, the Arizona poetry slam community and offers tips for slam poets from sources around the Internet. Read CFG's full biography here. Looking for just that one poem? You know the one ... click here to find it.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Utah Arts Festival Team Poetry Slam, pre-slam trip and preparation.

A prairie dog across the road from our motel in Parowan, Utah.

The creek across the road.

The Aladdin Theatre in Parowan, adjacent to the diner where we had breakfast.

The Klute, left, Lauren Perry and Aaron Johnson smoking a morning cigarette in front of a quaint house in Parowan.

A vintage mural advertisement Lauren found.

A 1941 Buick near the gas station in Cedar City.

Aaron in our swanky Marriott room, compliments of Jesse Parent and the Utah Arts Festival. Note the bottle of Jameson we bought before crossing the border into Utah.

The bathroom.

Welcome to Utah, here's your Book o' Mormon.

Enjoying the third story view overlooking downtown Salt Lake City.
The Utah Arts Festival Team Poetry Slam starts at the Big Mouth Cafe Stage in downtown Salt Lake City at 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Bunny ninjas theaten city - only tomorrow's Sedona Poetry Open Mic can save us

Sedona Poetry Open Mic – open mic poets needed

From 5 to 7 p.m., poets take the stage in Northern Arizona's longest running poetry open mic.

Now more than six years old, the Sedona Poetry Open Mic has regularly hosted amateur, professional, performance, page, published and closet poets.

All poets, spoken word artists, lyricists, songwriters, rappers, MCs, comedians and storytellers are welcome. If your art can be spoken, come and speak.

Nearly 1,100 different poets have spoken on stage since the open mic was founded by its host, veteran slam poet Christopher Fox Graham.

As always, the open mic is round robin: one poem per poet, per round, and we cycle through the poets from start to finish.

This means if you show up late, need to leave early or don't have too many poems to read, we can easily work you into the cycle seemlessly.

Java Love Café is located at 2155 W. Hwy. 89A, next to Harkins Theatres, Suite 118, West Sedona. To sign up, be at Java Love around 5ish. For more information, call Graham at (928) 517-1400 or e-mail to foxthepoet@yahoo.com.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Even amid a street riot, Canadians are irresistible

Photo by Rich Lam/Getty Images
Australian Scott Jones kisses his Canadian girlfriend Alex Thomas after she was knocked to the ground last week by a police officer's riot shield in Vancouver, British Columbia. Canadians rioted after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins.

Details of the Famous Vancouver Riot Kiss Photo Revealed

Couple claims the photo wasn't staged, and that the woman was knocked to the ground.


A Canadian newspaper has named the kissing couple caught on camera by photographers documenting Wednesday’s Vancouver riots, and detailed how the iconic embrace unfolded.
The Globe and Mail reports that the pair in question is an Australian, Scott Jones, and a Canadian, Alex Thomas, who have been dating for several months. Jones is said to be a 29-year-old aspiring stand-up comic and, according to the way his mother tells it, may just be the best boyfriend ever.
The photo of the couple, taken during the riot that began after the hometown Canucks lost game seven of the Stanley Cup, quickly became an Internet sensation and fueled speculation that the embrace was staged.
According to Jones’s mother, that wasn’t the case.
She tells the paper that the couple was at the game and got caught between police and rioters as they were leaving. Thomas was knocked to the ground by an officer’s riot shield, and Jones leapt to the ground after her to comfort her with a kiss.
“I just thought, yep, that would be Scott because he’s a bit of a dreamer and he wouldn’t have even known there was a riot going on around him, quite possibly,” Jones’s mother, Megan, said.
The story lines up with the photographer’s take on what happened. He said that he initially snapped the photo thinking it was of someone hurt. “I looked back and thought someone was injured and I shot that,” Rich Lam told msnbc.com. “I framed it up, juxtaposed with the policemen.”
It wasn’t until his editors were sorting through his digital images that anyone realized just how amazing of a shot it was.



Proof that Canadians are irresistible to the foreigners who love them.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Last call for discount tickets to June 11 poetry slam

Last call for $10 discount tickets to June 11 poetry slam:


Phoenix poet Shaikh Sammad headlines Sedona Poetry Slam

The Sedona Summer Poetry Slam will explode at Studio Live at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 11, presenting three rounds of poetic competition as poets battle for pride and $100.



Shaikh Sammad, of Phoneix, features
at the Sedona Poetry Slam on
Saturday, June 11.
Between rounds, the audience will be entertained with a feature performance by Shaikh Sammad.

Shaikh Sammad is a poet, actor, vocalist, performance artist and activist.

A native of Newark, N.J., Sammad now resides in Arizona where he divides his time between the Phoenix metro area and Cottonwood in the Verde Valley. An avid gardener, he spends the majority of his time developing community gardens to feed residents in low- to no-income areas.

Additionally he has taken on the role of Youth Arts Program director with the Tigermountain Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit agency which encourages urban farming as a means of community development. He believes strongly that all people should have access to affordable, nutritious, locally grown produce regardless of race, gender, age, class or income. The stage is a powerful place to begin the exchange of ideas, Shaikh stated.

Shaikh Sammad stated in a press release that he "looks forward to sharing his messages of love, faith and community as feature poet at the Sedona Slam on June 11, 2011."

All poets are welcome to compete in the slam.
Slammers will need three original poems, each lasting no longer than three minutes. No props, costumes nor musical accompaniment are permitted.
Poet Shaikh Sammad will rock Studio Live.

The poets will be judged Olympics-style by five members of the audience selected at random at the beginning of the slam. The top poet at the end of the night wins $100.

Poets who want to compete should purchase a ticket in case the roster is filled before they arrive.

The slam will be hosted by Sedona poet Christopher Fox Graham, who represented Northern Arizona on the Flagstaff team at five National Poetry Slams between 2001 and 2010. He has hosted and competed in poetry slams and open mics in Sedona since 2004.

The slam will be hosted by Sedona poet Christopher Fox Graham.
Graham has performed in 40 states, Toronto, Dublin, Ireland, and London, and wrote the now infamous “Peach” poem.

For more information or to register, call Graham at (928) 517-1400 or e-mail to foxthepoet@yahoo.com. See video from previous poetry slams at www.YouTube.com/FoxThePoet.

Founded in Chicago by construction worker and poet Marc “So What?” Smith in 1984, poetry slam is a competitive artistic sport. Poetry slam has become an international artistic sport, with more than 100 major poetry slams in the United States, Canada, Australia and Western Europe.

For more information about the worldwide phenomena of poetry slam, visit www.poetryslam.com and foxthepoet.blogspot.com.

Home of the Sedona Performers Guild nonprofit, Studio Live is located at 215 Coffee Pot Drive, West Sedona. For more information, visit www.studiolivesedona.com.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

For Sarah Palin: "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Today's odd news is that former Alaska governor and current political pundit Sarah Palin claims Paul Revere warned the British. The quote:
"He who warned, the British that they weren’t gonna be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells, and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed."
The Twiterverse -- my first and hopefully only time ever writing that word -- exploded with other humorous historical errors satirizing the error, such as "The Daily Show's" #AccordingToPalin.


I often find arguing about national politics is as a fruitless exorcize as celebrity watching as we can generally only make an influence our local congressional districts, hyperlocal municipal and county races, and very rarely states with our senators and governors.

What saddens me is not that a political figure who has served in public office has made a error -- but that the remedy is so readily found in an easily memorized poem by a well-known 19th century poet. The poem takes some liberties that differ from historical fact, omitting the other riders, Dr. Samuel Prescott and William Dawes, and that Revere was arrested by the British two hours into the ride while Prescott and Dawes got away but Longfellow certainly gets right for which nation Revere served and the reason for his ride.

That said,

"Paul Revere's Ride"
aka "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere"
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, -- "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light, --
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said good-night, and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somersett, British man-of-war:
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack-door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade, --
Up the light ladder, slender and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still,
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, --
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then impetuous stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely, and spectral, and sombre, and still.

And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height,
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

It was twelve by the village-clock,
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises when the sun goes down.

It was one by the village-clock,
When he rode into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village-clock,
When be came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning-breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British regulars fired and fled, --
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, --
A cry of defiance, and not of fear, --
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.

Published in the Atlantic Monthly in January 1861.

Sigh.

"This Country: When You Tire of Travels, Come Home" audio recording

This Country: When You Tire of Travels, Come Home by FoxThePoet

This Country:
When You Tire of Travels, Come Home

when your feet grow tired of globetrotting
and all the monuments to forgotten kings
have blurred into obscurity


when your shoulders ache
from carrying your whole world tortoise-style
from one rest-stop lover to another


when you’ve heard all the foreign tongues
repeat the same stories for the last time
and you’ve grown tired of translating


when your shoes have fallen apart
unable to martyr their soles
for your hobo evangelism …

come home
this country still longs for your sunrise
its geography is easy to map:

to the East lie my arms
curling inward to hold back time
their digits stretch northward
ten fingertips on separate crusades to find you
they unite only to pen poems about
the futility of kidnapping you across the borders
back into the caverns of my chest
overwhelming vacant since you stole its last inhabitant
which you unraveled the way Hansel and Gretel taught
to fashion a string to trace your route back here
these cave walls still shudder with your laughter
turning ribs into organ pipes
I play in dreams to orchestrate your reconquest
fool my yearning that you are only a hitchhiker’s thumb
and an hour from my doorstep —
a lie, but at least I can sleep through the night
without filling the hollow in my bed with my wailing
instead, try to keep it warm for you

to the South
are mountains of memories
impossible to scale without oxygen and a Nepalese Sherpa
they stretch to the clouds and in winter, blot out the sun
I chip at them with a pick axe of ink
take the pieces home to an orange juicer
attempt to squeeze out story after story
told in Homeric fashion
the gods of Olympus jealously dwarfed in the shadows
find their epics insufficient
Odysseus, Gilgamesh and Arjuna
camp in the foothills unable to scale you
talk about the good old days
when there wasn’t so much poetry in which to live
on the cliff sides I hunt for the road trips
the afternoon siestas
the midnight embraces
the slow Sunday mornings
for new word wombs
new poems to trap, take home, raise to maturity
and release back into the wild
for the world to see how you changed this boy
I will climb them as long as a pulse thumps me into movement

to the North is an ocean of your words
tide pools of sentences
waves of your stories
tsunamis of our arguments
to wash over any fool who braves to sail them
on maps print the words, “Here Be Dragons”
and I’m never sure which will swamp my boat
or carry me home
white-tip arrogance soothed by Sargasso Sea gentle honesty
choppy squalls when I lost myself to ego
pleas for forgiveness offered on Yom Kippur
all the poems over the phone blowing lost sailors to safe ports
someday when I have outlived you
I foresee abandoning shoes,
gripping frail hands on armrests,
rising from wheelchair
striping down to unflattering Speedo
and walking into these waves to drown
up to my ears in the waters of your laughter
filling my lungs with drops of your whispers

in the center is a house of paper
naked 8½ by 11s begging to be bathed in black ink
the first 30 stories are made of rough drafts
in preparation to meet you
the upper stories will be built to celebrate you
and when I reach my 90s
the tower will collapse with the weight
spreading the pages across this county
Billy Collins keeps an apartment across the hall from Derrick Brown
they meet in the lounge with Shane Koyczan and Ed Mabrey
have coffee on Sundays with R.C. Weslowski and Mike McGee,
each reading a new ode to you
they found that week on the cabinet
under the sink or behind the door
banisters Bill Campana will jot haiku from
window frames slam poems Klute will read aloud after bagels
dueling in rhyme with Shappy Seasholtz
sonnets on fireplaces Dan Seaman and Mikel Weisser will read in tandem
on weekends, CR Avery, Scott Dunbar and Lights
will play the ballroom made of canvasses
echoing through the vents all week long
on the upper floors
poets yet unborn ready to join to the conversation
there is room here
for whomever you choose to fill the house with
forgive the flesh of this man
for being made of flawed skin unedited
he knew not what he did
you always liked me better on paper anyway


to the West is an open country
as far as the eye can see
lie no walls nor borders
no future beyond what we make of it,
without a horizon to fall over
sunsets are unimaginable,
the land yearns for your footfalls
and I will chase you across it
until these feet break beneath me
never ask if it was all for naught
until you have seen the country you built here
the boy you reshaped who lives out in the open
uncertain of where to go now
penning poems from dawn to dusk
dreaming of your open arms
reading them to anyone who’ll listen


when you tire of travels
when you need shelter to rest weary limbs
when you want to see a boy left better
than the one you first met
this country is wherever you choose to meet me
ready to welcome you home


Written Sept. 28, 2010, a year to the day after meeting Azami.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Phoenix poet Shaikh Sammad headlines Sedona Poetry Slam

Shaikh Sammad, of Phoneix, features
at the Sedona Poetry Slam on
Saturday, June 11.
The Quick:
Phoenix poet Shaikh Sammad headlines Sedona Poetry Slam
Studio Live
215 Coffee Pot Drive, Sedona, AZ
Saturday, June 11, 7:30 pm

The Long:
Phoenix poet Shaikh Sammad headlines Sedona Poetry Slam

The Sedona Summer Poetry Slam will explode at Studio Live at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 11, presenting three rounds of poetic competition as poets battle for pride and $100.

Between rounds, the audience will be entertained with a feature performance by Shaikh Sammad.

Shaikh Sammad is a poet, actor, vocalist, performance artist and activist.

A native of Newark, N.J., Sammad now resides in Arizona where he divides his time between the Phoenix metro area and Cottonwood in the Verde Valley. An avid gardener, he spends the majority of his time developing community gardens to feed residents in low- to no-income areas.

Additionally he has taken on the role of Youth Arts Program director with the Tigermountain Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit agency which encourages urban farming as a means of community development. He believes strongly that all people should have access to affordable, nutritious, locally grown produce regardless of race, gender, age, class or income. The stage is a powerful place to begin the exchange of ideas, Shaikh stated.

Shaikh Sammad stated in a press release that he "looks forward to sharing his messages of love, faith and community as feature poet at the Sedona Slam on June 11, 2011."

All poets are welcome to compete in the slam.
Slammers will need three original poems, each lasting no longer than three minutes. No props, costumes nor musical accompaniment are permitted.

The poets will be judged Olympics-style by five members of the audience selected at random at the beginning of the slam. The top poet at the end of the night wins $100.

Poets who want to compete should purchase a ticket in case the roster is filled before they arrive.

Poet Shaikh Sammad will rock Studio Live.
The slam will be hosted by Sedona poet Christopher Fox Graham, who represented Northern Arizona on the Flagstaff team at five National Poetry Slams between 2001 and 2010. He has hosted and competed in poetry slams and open mics in Sedona since 2004.

The slam will be hosted by Sedona poet Christopher Fox Graham.
Graham has performed in 40 states, Toronto, Dublin, Ireland, and London, and wrote the now infamous “Peach” poem.


For more information or to register, call Graham at (928) 517-1400 or e-mail to foxthepoet@yahoo.com. See video from previous poetry slams at www.YouTube.com/FoxThePoet.

Founded in Chicago by construction worker and poet Marc “So What?” Smith in 1984, poetry slam is a competitive artistic sport. Poetry slam has become an international artistic sport, with more than 100 major poetry slams in the United States, Canada, Australia and Western Europe.

For more information about the worldwide phenomena of poetry slam, visit www.poetryslam.com and foxthepoet.blogspot.com.

Home of the Sedona Performers Guild nonprofit, Studio Live is located at 215 Coffee Pot Drive, West Sedona. For more information, visit www.studiolivesedona.com.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Miami poet Will “Da Real One” Bell shot and killed


Close friends said Will ‘Da Real One’ Bell was struggling to keep his poetry cafe open.


jbrown@MiamiHerald.com


The family of a talented North Miami poet who was gunned down in an apparent hit early Sunday is bewildered over why anyone would want to kill someone who spent the better part of his life using his art to inspire others.

Will “Da Real One” Bell’s path took him from a life of crime to national fame as a poet who performed on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, on celebrity albums and at countless other venues, both locally and nationally.

A gunman leapt out of a car and shot Bell, 47, multiple times outside his business, The Literary Cafe and Poetry Lounge, 933 NE 125th St., about 12:40 a.m. Sunday, May 29.

Police detectives said Tuesday that they do not believe Bell was involved in anything that caused his death, but that he had recently fallen into debt. The shooting, police sources said, appeared to be an assassination. One witness told police that after the shooting, the gunman coolly walked away.

Bell’s brother, Curtis Fullwood, said Bell survived too much hardship to die such a cruel death.

“He came too far in life to go like that, shot down in a parking lot. It’s not right,” Fullwood said.

Bell grew up in the Edison Court Projects at Northwest Third Avenue and 62nd Street in Miami. In 1989, Bell was arrested for cocaine trafficking and spent 14 months in prison. Those who knew him said he stopped dealing in the street life when he discovered his talent for poetry while incarcerated.

“It was rough growing up in the Edison projects. It was dope-infested. Anything bad that could happen was there. It wasn’t the best environment one could be brought up in, but he didn’t let that keep him down for long. He was brilliant,” Fullwood said.

On Tuesday, friends, fans and family began planning celebrations of his life and fundraisers to help his family pay for his funeral. Those closest to him spoke about his selflessness, how he devoted endless hours to his poetry and to helping mentor others in spite of his own struggles with his business.

Yongsta, 25, a poet who goes by a singular name, said he met the imposing six-foot-five artist eight years ago when Bell visited North Miami Senior High. His words and his dynamic presence changed Yongsta’s life. He made “freeing minds” his mission, with pieces that illustrated the plight of urban poverty like Black Heroes and When I Grow Up and Run.

Yongsta said Bell treated him like a son.

“The poetry kept me looking for something else instead of doing something wrong,’’ he said.

But he admitted that Bell was under a lot of pressure financially.

“It was a constant burden keeping it open,’’ Yongsta said of Bell’s business. “You have your good nights and your bad nights. But he dealt with his problems and he didn’t worry people.’’

Bell, a charismatic poet who is credited for putting South Florida’s poetry scene in the spotlight, for the most part kept his financial problems secret.

Joseph Coach, the in-house DJ who goes by “DJ Make It Do What It Do,” said there were times Bell pawned personal items to make the monthly rent for his North Miami poetry lounge.

“Will wasn’t the kind of person who would ask for a handout. Times were hard. He was stressed out sometimes trying to keep the doors open to make sure poets had a place to go,” Coach said.

After heavy promotion on social media, some nights, the club saw about a dozen patrons.

Miami Herald staff writer David Ovalle contributed to this report.

Services for Bell

A viewing will be from noon to 9 p.m. Friday at Wright & Young Funeral Home, 15332 NW Seventh Ave., near North Miami.

The funeral will be at 1 p.m. Saturday at Cooper Temple, 3800 NW 199th St., Miami Gardens.

Several poetry benefits are planned in memory of Will Bell and to help assist the family with expenses:

Wednesday, 1 p.m., at The Bohemia Room, 3215 NE Second Ave., Miami.

Thursday, 8 p.m., at Verbal Calligraphy, 2029 Harrison St. Hollywood.

For more information on other upcoming events, see Facebook, keywords: Will “Da Real One” Bell, or contact Ingrid B. bsidentertainment@gmail.com. 305-519-1369.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Sedona jet crash

On Wednesday, May 25, a small private jet crash landed at the Sedona Airport.

As our photojournalist Tom Hood was already on his way to cover the Sedona Red Rock High School Class of 2011 graduation, I went to the airport to get a photo.

Mac McCall, the airport manager drove me down the tarmac, but the U.S. Forest Service had closed off the area as a HAZMAT site due to a fuel leak coming from the port wing, which was ripped open in the crash.

Sedona Fire District Battalion Chief Jayson Coil, however, recommended that I hike over to Table Mesa to get a photo, which turned out to be a far better idea considering the steepness of the terrain let me shoot photos that put the whole crash site into perspective in regard to Airport Mesa.

The hike was about 0.44 miles, if GoogleEarth measurements are accurate. I got to a great angle about 90 minutes after the crash.

The two pilots and three passengers all walked away.

I love covering breaking news.

You can read the Sedona Red Rock News Story here.

Monday, May 23, 2011

"Revolution 2.0 (We weep with you, Wael Ghonim)" audio recording

Revolution 2.0 by FoxThePoet
Revolution 2.0
By Christopher Fox Graham

type, type, send
type, type, send
the revolution begins not with a bang
but with a text message

Wael Ghonim on DreamTV, Egypt, on 9 February 2011.
we weep with you, Wael Ghonim,
you did not sign a declaration
shoot a gun
nor take an assassin's bullet
you ran a Facebook page

Egyptian secret police held you blindfolded for 11 days
promised you would be buried nameless, anonymous


as a Facebook event,
your ghost of Khalid Said,
brought down a dictator

we weep with you, Wael Ghonim,
you unintentional revolutionary,
you sob as the names of boys fallen
crawl across the bottom of the screen
as Mona el-Shazly asks you to gaze up
swallow the Facebook images and off-kilter photographs
taken at parties
or late-night on-the-towns
images become epitaphs,
of boys like us
who before January 25
just watched girls pass
traded albums
downloaded music
called their mothers on thieir birthdays
and never thought their country
would ever be theirs

if we could stand with you, Wael Ghonim, we would
embrace you as man to man
wrap arms around you to hold you standing
convince you to believe us
that your hands are clean
your soul is unstained
the blood of brothers and sisters on them
wasn’t spilt by you
use it to paint flags
touch it to your childrens’ foreheads
and tell them “this was shed for you,
by men and women who gave more than we did,
it is why you now have a voice
why 'freedom' is more than a noun”

wash it off in the Nile
let it taste of the mother river
swim upstream to the sources
and down to the Delta
tell all of Egypt
from Luxor tombs
to pyramid shadows
to the library halls of Alexandria
that your country is free
shake the earth
so dead pharaohs wake trembling
and living tyrants flee from their thrones

Egyptian Christians protecting Egyptian Muslims from pro-Mubarak
counter-protestors during their prayers in Tahrir Square, Cairo, Feb. 10.
we weep with you, Wael Ghonim,
we stood with you in Tahrir Square
we were the breath of bravery
you felt beside you
when the enemy rode in on camels
we stood beside you
five times a day
when you knelt to pray to Allah
we,
atheists, Christians, Buddhists
Hindus, Sikhs, and Jews
we watched your back
stood guard in silence
we were the ghosts you felt
assuring you the world was listening
we don’t know your prayers
but understood each word because
“freedom” never needs translation
it feels the same
no matter the shade or age of skin,

we weep with you, Wael Ghonim,
because your tears are too heavy for one man
let us carry them for you
permit us bear their weight
because we could not physically stand alongside you
allow us sing our lullabies in 1,000 languages to your children
let us tell them our words for "liberty"
so no matter where they travel
we have that in common

we weep with you, Wael Ghonim,
because you are not alone
you never were

                  now,                 sleep,
guiltless

weightless

and free




Wael Ghonim is an Egyptian computer engineer and head of marketing of Google Middle East and North Africa who was living in the United Arab Emirates. He ran the Facebook page that organized the Jan25 movement to protest Egyptian President and dictator Hosni Mubarak. In January 2011, Ghonim persuaded Google to allow him to return to Egypt, citing a "personal problem." Planning only a six-day visit for the protest, he was captured by Mubarak's security forces and held blindfolded for 11 days and the protests swelled in Tahrir Square, Cairo. The day he was released, he appeared on a DreamTV program hosted by Mona el-Shazly.

On 9 February, Ghonim addressed the crowds in Tahrir Square, telling the protesters: "This is not the time for individuals, or parties, or movements. It's a time for all of us to say just one thing: Egypt above all."

On 11 February, Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned as president and transferred authority to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

"Orion," audio recording

Orion by FoxThePoet
"Orion"
By Christopher Fox Graham
For Azami
Written Nov. 18, 2010

MapQuest the miles in the sky
it's easier to find you that way
than to traipse the hills between us

begin at Betelgeuse,
the moment we met
you, smiling as a stranger yet to know me
me, tripping over words
until I learn the rhythm to match you
we trace the lines
the midnights you teach me the art of touch
the mathematics of how to hold you
wrap starstrings of limbs to encase you
and become a hammock for your dreams

I first kiss you
near the lips of Meissa
taste the words camping in your backyard tongue
bring them inside mine
swirl them around until they lost track of their speaker
and became one breath

on the edge of Belatrix
we start our roadtrips
showing you all the places I loved
atlasing each one in sequence into new memories
snapping photographs for future shoeboxes
and Facebook updates

the fights erupt near Mintaka
parry, thrust, riposte,
we practice the arts of combat
study the hows and ways of pushing each other
you always win the battles, even if you don’t believe me

near Alnilam, you proffer forgiveness
and I discover how to say "sorry"
without losing face
on the brink of the Horsehead Nebula
I dive into all your stories
bleed out all of mine
let you examine all my sins
with the enthusiasm of a hell-bent prosecutor
working an open-and-shut case
but on the executioner's block
before the guillotine blade drops
the electric chair switch makes contact
or the Sodium Pentothal entered the vein
the pardon comes
and into my arms you sweep like a storm
tsunaming my defenses to wreckage
and calling me back to bed

we swim to the Orion Nebula
lovers in the surf of a black and white movie
drenched in the waves
as if to tell Nature and the gods,
"your eternity will not outlast us"
"our kisses will still come ferociously
long after this sand is washed away to bedrock
and the waves have evaporated in the heat of a dying sun"
"Your mighty Olympus will fall into Eden's vacant valleys
before we yield to your earthquakes
shrug off lightning bolts and burning bushes"
"our pulses will be the last thing the universe will hear
before entropy turns all the matters into orphaned atoms
finding lonely refuge in the dark"

we lost ourselves in those nebulas
swallowing stardust to give birth to new suns
we seemed to live there for eons of mortal time
just black sheets, bare skin, whispered poems
smiles and slumber

but in the bliss, we drift just past Alniltak,
and differences became too much too bear
so we kiss for last time
make love for the last time
said our last words as lovers
and go our own way

You sail on to Saiph,
I go home to Rigel
leaving phone numbers scarred on each other's aorta
mine still beats out the ten digits daily
when the moment feels right
and in the time it takes to draw a line between them
with the tip of finger remembering the sequence
we fold space like bedsheets in the blink of eye
so two points become one

and we cross the thousands of light years
become lovers again, drunk instead on words
remember the old times,
the joys in Orion and Horsehead,
the battles of Alniltak, Alnilam and Mentaka
the road routes to Belatrix
the kiss of Meissa
and the first hello in the orbit of Betelgeuse
but when the phone clicks off
and the points unfold,
you shine in Saiph
and I glow bright above Rigel
so we can see each other

and if on some little world called Earth
where two lovers like us
gaze up and see us shining on the same night and wonder
so be it
navigate by us if you will
send wishes heavenward if you think it'll do any good
but know we don't glimmer for you
we, instead, burn brilliant so the other can see us
and know that despite it all
love travels faster than light
and our story is wide as a constellation

"Unbreakable," audio recording

Unbreakable by FoxThePoet


She’s unbreakablebut easily bent
as stubborn as a mule
but when push comes to shove
concaves her spine into the wind
so she doesn’t need me
until she needs
craves my embrace only
when it’s near enough to envelop her

in the absence,
we are just strangers sharing familiar history
and phone lines,
whispering “until I see you again …”
when she’s here,
we’re a psychic friends network
finishing each other’s thoughts
but languishing in the laborious lugubrious articulation of sentences
when she’s gone,
she becomes ancestral myth
remembered theoretically as a moral teaching tool
cleaving us apart
is like banishing a twin
while the collision together
equally disturbs our rhythms
shakes loose the axis of the galaxy
affecting space alien trade routes
halfway across the Orion Arm
until patterns synchronize and stabilize

I miss sharing her pulse
the give-and-take battles
of ego and surrender
hers as much as mine
although mine takes center stage more often

in her vacancy
personality fades into vapor
ceases to break the surface
slumbers for days at a time
before rising to check the calendar
realize her eviction
then shutter eyes again

how her chapters scribe themselves
I can only conjecture
pen what I imagine
and wait to crack her fortune cookie shell for the answer

unbreakable, she bends in the wind
opening her fate like a sail
landing wherever the breeze blows,
spine bent, but unbowed
conviction untamed,
pride untarnished
mouth closed
ears open
arms wide

"A Plea to Kitsune," audo recording

A Plea to Kitsune by FoxThePoet



A Plea to Kitsune
Written March 12, 2011

By Christopher Fox Graham


the world splits open
cracking the rock, a loaf of bread
the angry sea pitches
rolls uphill turning beaches into seabeds
Honshu homes built with sweat
float inland as driftwood
resistant to Godzilla and Mothra
the rage of Akira
and a 1,000 manga disasters
but the Earth’s quiver
a shudder at climax
topples shopping centers and temples
rips roads from foundations
pulls down a country made of chrysanthemums
cherry trees weep as roots drown in salt water


Einstein’s mathematics harnessed
already wiped two cities into cinders here
and a third teeters on the edge
the pride of Bushido
the nobility of seppuku and honor
as poetic as any martyrdom
has suffered this country too much already
this is the nation that gave us
the word for “tsunami” after all

she may have been there
a Bento box and sushi
fresh from the sea
reminding her of an age
when she still had trouble walking
when she reached up for father’s hands
to cross the street in safety
I gave her a warning
told her to be careful


if there is a world of shadow
underneath this one
where djinnis and angels play cards with fate
shades and yōkais plan their tricks
fairies and daemons brew new magicks
I can only hope a kyuubi no kitsune
unfaded from the eaves
warned her on my behalf
to be near a doorframe
stay away from the beaches
stand firm when the earth beneath did not
I beg him to whisper tonight
that he wrapped his nine fox tails
around her limbs and torso
roundhouse-kicked the falling roof panels
or ceiling tiles or tumbling walls
kept debris from falling on her
left her pristine, unbroken and unblemished
until she returns to my country
and if he could not find her
could not reach her in time
would tell her she is beloved half a world away
by the dozens of us who’ve know her
that we long to know she is unharmed

she doesn’t even have to know it was me,
kitsune,
just pass these words to her


Click to donate to Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami relief through the American Red Cross.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Phoenix poet Shaikh Sammad headlines Sedona Poetry Slam

The Quick:
Phoenix poet Shaikh Sammad headlines Sedona Poetry Slam
Studio Live
215 Coffee Pot Drive, Sedona, AZ
Saturday, June 11, 7:30 pm

The Long:
Phoenix poet Shaikh Sammad headlines Sedona Poetry Slam

The Sedona Summer Poetry Slam will explode at Studio Live at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 11, presenting three rounds of poetic competition as poets battle for pride and $100.

Between rounds, the audience will be entertained with a feature performance by Damien Flores, one of the top slam poets in New Mexico and a member of the 2005 National Poetry Slam Championship Team.

Shaikh Sammad is a poet, actor, vocalist, performance artist and activist.

A native of Newark, N.J., Sammad now resides in Arizona where he divides his time between the Phoenix metro area and Cottonwood in the Verde Valley. An avid gardener, he spends the majority of his time developing community gardens to feed residents in low- to no-income areas.

Additionally he has taken on the role of Youth Arts Program director with the Tigermountain Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit agency which encourages urban farming as a means of community development. He believes strongly that all people should have access to affordable, nutritious, locally grown produce regardless of race, gender, age, class or income. The stage is a powerful place to begin the exchange of ideas.

Shaikh Sammad, of Phoneix, features
at the Sedona Poetry Slam on
Saturday, June 11.
Shaikh Sammad stated in a press release that he "looks forward to sharing his messages of love, faith and community as feature poet at the Sedona Slam on June 11, 2011."

All poets are welcome to compete in the slam.
Slammers will need three original poems, each lasting no longer than three minutes. No props, costumes nor musical accompaniment are permitted.

The poets will be judged Olympics-style by five members of the audience selected at random at the beginning of the slam. The top poet at the end of the night wins $100.

Poets who want to compete should purchase a ticket in case the roster is filled before they arrive.

The slam will be hosted by Sedona poet Christopher Fox Graham, who represented Northern Arizona on the Flagstaff team at five National Poetry Slams between 2001 and 2010. He has hosted and competed in poetry slams and open mics in Sedona since 2004.

The slam will be hosted by Sedona poet Christopher Fox Graham.
Graham has performed in 40 states, Toronto, Dublin, Ireland, and London, and wrote the now infamous “Peach” poem.


For more information or to register, call Graham at (928) 517-1400 or e-mail to foxthepoet@yahoo.com. See video from previous poetry slams at www.YouTube.com/FoxThePoet.

Founded in Chicago by construction worker and poet Marc “So What?” Smith in 1984, poetry slam is a competitive artistic sport. Poetry slam has become an international artistic sport, with more than 100 major poetry slams in the United States, Canada, Australia and Western Europe.

For more information about the worldwide phenomena of poetry slam, visit www.poetryslam.com and foxthepoet.blogspot.com.

Home of the Sedona Performers Guild nonprofit, Studio Live is located at 215 Coffee Pot Drive, West Sedona. For more information, visit www.studiolivesedona.com.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Learn to write a press release that will publish

For people working in the arts, marketing, public relations or with nonprofit organizations, publicity is everything.

Learn the art of writing a press release from media professional Christopher Fox Graham, on Saturday, May 21, starting at 12:30 p.m.

Workshops taught by public relations professionals may focus on writing a press release, but as a professional newspaper editor, Graham approaches the topic from the other angle — representing the media professionals responsible for choosing which press releases to publish and where to place them in their publications.

Drafting an effective press release may seem an impossible skill to master. Press releases often lack key information, such as location, dates, costs or contact information. Others fail to provide sufficient background to be considered effective by the media outlets and news organizations that receive them.

Photo by Saar Inglebert
Creating an effective, informative, yet brief and easy-to-read press release is often more art than skill. A good press release provides succinct details to inform newspaper or magazine readers, website users and radio listeners about news events, offering just enough information to pique readers’ interest in the topic without boring them.

Using real-world examples, Graham will demonstrate the differences between good and bad press releases; how to transform a bad release into a great one; what media professionals look for; mistakes that will get your press release thrown out and how to avoid them; how to write an eye-catching and informative press release; and how to deal with members of the media.

The workshop is designed for artists and musicians trying to promote their work, public relations and marketing professionals, nonprofit organizers and business owners.

Graham is currently assistant managing editor of Larson Newspapers, which publishes the Sedona Red Rock News, The Camp Verde Journal and the Cottonwood Journal Extra. As an editor, his duties include prioritizing and editing press releases and helping to assign them to pages for publication.

Graham earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a focus on literature and linguistics and a minor in history from Arizona State University.

He has worked as senior copy editor for The State Press at ASU, copy editor for Larson Newspapers’ three publications, managing editor of the arts publication Kudos and a private media consultant.

Graham is also a writer and performance poet. Over the last 11 years, he has toured and competed worldwide in poetry slams, a competitive art form that is focused as much on how the language is presented as on the content itself.

This workshop takes place Sedona Community Center, 2615 Melody Lane, West Sedona. Seats are $30 for the three-hour workshop. For more information or to reserve a seat, visit the Sedona Area Guild of Artists website, sedonaareaguildofartists.com.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

"Checkmates" a new film by the Upright Citizens Brigade


I'd pay to see this spoof trailer greenlit into a feature film.

Of course, I grew rereading a book of chess every few months (I think it might have been "Judgment and Planning in Chess" by Max Euwe), recording games with algebraic chess notation and playing for money in high school ....

Monday, April 18, 2011

A Wino's Memories

A Wino's Memories

The Wine, by deviantART user juletjess
at the bottom
of wine bottles in the kitchen
hide misplaced memories
those drained, hold relived sins
the unopened ones swallow thoughts of her
swimming in scarlet-violet soup
grapes drowned into sweet poison
each swig pulls me back to her
while killing a little more
recalled kisses stain lips
the weeping remembrances afterward
make driving while under her influence
an arrestable hazard when
Bereaved Aortic Collapse
rises above 0.08 percent

napping in a bottle of Chilean Bordeaux
are roadtrips when I held her snoring on my thigh
beneath high desert nights
along a blacked-out highway
cruising above safe speed limits

resting in the green glass of Moscato d'Asti
her laughter at bad jokes at my expense
when her reverberations
could shake this empty bedroom
scattering inhibitions from my skin

Near the neck of a narrow Napa Pinot Noir
are all the words I spoke
when I thought she was listening
when instead she was just drunk on the sound of my voice
and whatever vocabulary spilled forth
was vacant of content but rich in tone

in the base of cheap Boone’s Farm
is the bruise she left after hitting me
for teasing her too unsympathetically
I drink it knowing
it gives me a headache by midnight and the day after

hiding in the depths of a Beaujolais Rosé
are mornings when I should have risen
but stayed longer and longer in bed
to hold her snoozing brilliance
outshining morning sunrises

behind the label of Wakayama Ume
are the sweetest moments
only suitable for the poetry held private
sent only to her and burned thereafter
you will have to pry me from the grave for those

swimming in Argentinian Malbec
are her stories of cities I’ve never seen
the feel of cobblestone stained with peasant mud
echoes of foreign tongues bartering wares
and revolutionaries’ martyred blood

in the unopened, overly large Mosel Riesling,
is the promise that she would return
when all the quantum equations of quarks and photons
conspired with gravitons and gluons
to nudge her back into my arms
it remains uncorked until she meets me
but I may be buried with it someday

if one could slice open these veins
vines have stained burgundy my blood-red tributaries
I don’t have enough winekeys in this house
to drown in her
so I uncork the moments one by one
swallow them in short glasses
lose coherence in the overswelling libations
pulling me into the touch of her moments
flooding back through open mouths
dripping out into intoxicated fingertips
before, overcome by the inebriation of remembering
eyelids heavy in her photographs
burned backward from brain to retina
push the warmth of her back into hands
allowing me to sleep guiltlessly
but even then, she pours herself into be
squeezes out the wine
so I wake unintoxicated
but drunk on longing for her
and a hangover of memories
I can’t forget again

Sunday, April 17, 2011

"1861" by Walt Whitman

Wade Spees/The (Charleston) Post and Courier
Cannon blasts from Fort Johnson across Charleston Harbor toward Fort Sumter at daybreak signal the beginning of the Civil War 150 years ago.

Fort Sumter sits in the mouth of
Charleston Harbor, South Carolina
1861
By Walt Whitman

ARM’D year! year of the struggle!
No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year!
Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas
      piano;
But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing,
      carrying a rifle on your shoulder,
With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands–with a knife in
      the belt at your side,
As I heard you shouting loud–your sonorous voice ringing across the
      continent;
Your masculine voice, O year, as rising amid the great cities,
Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you, as one of the workmen, the
      dwellers in Manhattan;
Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and
      Indiana,
Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait, and descending the
      Alleghanies;
Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along
      the Ohio river;
Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at
      Chattanooga on the mountain top,
Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed in blue, bearing
      weapons, robust year;
Heard your determin’d voice, launch’d forth again and again;
Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp’d cannon,
I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.



Alice Keeney/AP
The lights shine at Fort Sumter at 4:30 a.m. EDT to
commemorate the moment the first shots of the Civil War
were fired in Charleston on Tuesday morning, April 12.
The South Carolina ceremony Tuesday begins the four-year
national commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the
Civil War.
Confederate troops in South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter 150 years ago this week, April 12 and 13, touching off the American Civil War. There are more than 70,000 books about the American Civil War, so there's no need for me to touch on that aspect, but I think discussing the poetry from and about the period from 1861-1865 will be fun to explore between 2011-2015.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

"Indian Monsoon," March 31/31 Project

For Doc Luben's March 31/31 Project
No. 10

Indian Monsoon

By Christopher Fox Graham



I can smell you on the wind
Blowing east from lands I’ve never seen
The taste of curry and wasabi
Hindu mantras, Buddhist chanting, Shinto incense
I will not voice my yearning
Will not explode my cells
At the thought of hearing your words
Sit still, swallow pride, bear indifference
Attachment is the Eastern sin
As vanity is Western and my own


You came to me in dreams
Erupted from a doorway
As though I would be waiting
And there I was,
Waiting
Like you knew I would be
I will proverbially cut out this overeager tongue
Dumb but undeaf
Anticipating your stories
From Delhi roads and Goa beaches
Sapporo suburbs, Hokkaido hillsides
Tell me your path
I am vapor and ears
Quiet, attentive
An audience
Wholly yours