Sunday, January 04, 2009


The Book of Arrows by Mike Amado
Edited by Jack Scully and Nancy Brady Cunningham
Červená Barva Press, 2011

Accept life
In all its beginnings
Accept life
In all its blooming
Accept life
In all its endings

-Mike Amado, December 2008

This was penned by Mike less than a month from when he left us. In this book we try to show you a picture of Mike's early life in Plymouth and his family (Beginnings). How his poetry evolved from the dark to tell us about things which he believed were wrong and should be changed, especially the wrongs done against "Native Americans" and the warehousing of kidney patients into dialysis units (Blooming). In October of 2008 Mike knew that his time was coming to an end and this book includes seven poems written during the last months before his death (Endings). Mike had almost 500 unpublished poems. In his final months he put some of them in collections on his computer in what he called books. Most of the poems in this volume were under the heading of The Book of Arrows; thus, our title. This collection is fondly dedicated to Michael "Mike" "Spokenwarrior" Amado (April 23, 1975-January 2, 2009).
Jack and Nancy

And if I were to cut the thread,/it’ll be my best act of rebellion./I was brought up to be a fighter. Mike Amado was the bravest of poets. Not only for his writing, but also for the way he lived. He took on his doomed life with poetry of honesty and hope. The few times I was fortunate to meet him he was, outwardly, a happy man, not mutually exclusive from his suffering. Moreover he was a deep thinker and writer of great poetry. He truly was a fighter for those who needed a champion and against the illness to which he finally succumbed. His legacy is that bravery, his poetic career and this book of poems.
—Zvi A. Sesling, author King of the Jungle & Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

The Book of Arrows. No kidding. Mike Amado filled his quiver, took aim, and let these poems fly like his life depended on it. It did. An arrow for a childhood of poverty where he slept in the living room so he dreamed on the pillow/just underneath a picture of cats on a fence. An arrow for school which he loathed, often sick, embarrassed in pants from the irregular store, so he learned to learn on my own. An arrow for the dad who left him with only his name so he took his Native name Spider Song because Native custom says that name/passes from mother to child. Arrows for an awkward adolescence of denim jackets, tight jeans, mohawks, and heavy metal all beaten on his teenage passion, the drums! An arrow for European invaders, protesting, dressing and dancing in used regalia at the pow wow. Arrow after arrow for the disease that chased him down from the age of seventeen, challenging death, Who says the story ends? Who says indeed and Mike Amado wasn’t giving in without having his say. I never understood when someone called a poet or poem brave. These poems are not acts of bravery, the living of the life of these poems is what’s brave, a life of dreaming, loving, protesting, drumming, writing, standing on stage as the Spoken Word Warrior.
—David R. Surette, poet, author of The Immaculate Conception Mothers’ Club

Mike Amado has left us an astounding body of work that is both insightful and unsettling. Each poem reads like a memoir tinged with an a keen awareness of the unspoken. Michael, from the Hebrew,/Who is like God,/an Archangel with a sword. To call his work compelling is an understatement. Mike’s poems live. Mike’s poems sing.
—January Gill O’Neil, author of Underlife

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Sarah Hannah 1967-2001

STRANGE ANGELS

STRANGE ANGELS

Laurie Anderson The Dream Before (for Walter Benjamin) lyrics


"Hansel and Gretel are alive and well And they're living in Berlin She is a cocktail waitress He had a part in a Fassbinder film And they sit around at night now drinking schnapps and gin And she says: Hansel, you're really bringing me down And he says: Gretel, yu can really be a bitch He says: I've wated my life on our stupid legend When my one and only love was the wicked witch. She said: What is history? And he said: History is an angel being blown backwards into the future He said: History is a pile of debris And the angel wants to go back and fix things To repair the things that have been broken But there is a storm blowing from Paradise And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future And this storm, this storm is called Progress."

Laurie Anderson The Dream Before (for Walter Benjamin) lyrics




Tony on Sherman St.

Mary Louise Parker

Mary Louise Parker
Good Witch of "Weeds" TV

Goliath's Head

Goliath's Head
Caravaggio

MEMORIAL DAY by Lo Galluccio

I might have stood with my Mother

on Sparks Street cheering the veterans of America’s

just and unjust wars

march past,

weeping for my Dad who died

jaundiced in the infirmary of society

not on the opera bloodied battlefield.

Instead into the cold confines of

film spectacle to see young Scandinavians

wrestle with writing and go mad,

jumping into the cold cobalt sea

off Oslo piers--

Two days ago Caravaggio’s dead Madonna

in crimson cloak crossed my mind as a Reiki healer

pulled my ear lobes. The church rejected

her because she was so heavy and lifeless,

daring to lie there dead,

not asleep for ascension’s sake--

That day I left behind my watch and black wrist band.

Strange, he’d made me undress--

the badboy of the Renaissance who loved his sword

and put his head into Goliath’s -- eyes bulging

with crazed fury, held by David’s victorious angelic fist.

To be today, not to be seen, to swear allegiance

to something else.