“Spring comes like an idiot” — Edna St. Vincent Millay
“April is the cruelest month” — T.S. Eliot
I disagree. Spring may be an idiot but at least it’s stupid in the sun. Thank you to all who came to last month’s SCRIBES event. HERE are the photos from the event. Massive thanks to c.r. hooker for taking & producing such wonderful photos!
I’m really excited for our next event. This one’s a long time coming. It is my absolute pleasure to introduce fantastic writer & good friend of SCRIBES Nycir Keen.
Nycir Keen is a philly based poet and playwright with roots in competitive slam poetry who found his start competing in the Philadelphia Youth Poetry Movement. A member of the Collective Mic as well as House Poet and a performer for the Gullah Traveling Theater, Nycir has a passion for facilitating creative and safe spaces for writers and has hosted several writing circles in the Philadelphia area. This year Nycir wrote and directed his first short screenplay, “Renaissance///Addiction”. Today he is still active in the poetry scene, moving between Beaufort South Carolina and the Philadelphia area to cultivate his own work and find new writers to work with, share with and create with.
HERE is a poem by Nycir:
MY GOD
My god lives in
Every dread lock
My god is the judge they dredd not
The gavel knock in the head
The case drop
The familiar head nod
My god is the beat cop
The unwarranted police stop
The please stop complying
Submit to violence
My god reaches for officer's guns alot
My god is a gut feeling
Something akin to a instinct
My god is a word of warning
warpaint to get sworn into war with
a sword swing
Feeling rewarding
My god might take a life
But my gut tells me it's a form of healing
So what is war then?
My god is a scab picked at
The wound where bloods pooling
My god is appalling
My god believes that your God is pussy
Y'all should be alarmed then
My god is an armed gunman
My god always wants something from nothing
My god manifest in the stomach of law men
Who are afraid of the communities they're policing
My god is a street thing
Thugging
Blood for blood loving
Fuck submission my god likes when bloods pumping
Doesn't matter if it's a heartbeat or the ending something
You had it coming
My god is a man of action
Hymnals sound like police harassment
My god would bend over backwards
To see you use them as target practice
My god doesn't believe in reactions
This is what's happening
The political climate allows violence when under oath
So I swear to my god
I'll get you back bitch
My god is a knuckle sandwich
My god is punching fascist
My god is a savage
A hard R
A F bomb
A drag queen dragged in the street to get beat on
And we have to pretend like nothing happened
My God is a bastard
And American is his father
Who raised him and dare to ask him
Why is he causing so much drama
My God will grow up to resent him
And at the same time
Represent all of the evil within him
The cycle of sin is so odd
But My God
I just want to get evenHERE is the flier for the event. Rules are the same. Sign up at event. 6PM doors. 7PM show.
See you there! Stay unhinged! Write something crazy! Read for the first time at SCRIBES xoxo!