Bonne Année!  Happy New Year, you sweet people you!  Open Secret, your arched-stone cave alternative open mic experience, is getting dressed up in The Emperor’s New Clothes 😉 to “ring in the new,” with you!  Got my jester’s cap & bell ready. . .

Wednesdays downstairs at Le Bistrot des Artistes, 6 rue des Anglais (a skinny baguette that points at Boulevard Saint Germain & rue Lagrange), 75005 Paris, France, Le Monde, The Big Surreal 3D Surround-Sound Film Called Life. 😉  Metro Maubert-Mutualité (line 10) & Saint-Michel (line 4).

8:30pm, nightlong sign-up does its vocal warm-ups, & at 9 the proverbial fat lady sings!  Tonight featuring brilliant & important poets John Swain & Youssef Alaoui-Fdili…more about these visiting artists below.  And some of their ultra-fine poetry!

Yes!  The promised, precious secrets of yet another generous year are soon to be here, “Open Secrets” we are eager to rip open – so much multicolored gift wrap.  “Make it new!” proclaimed that controversial ‘better maker’ to whom T.S. dedicated The Waste Land, my fave brain-candy for the last 25 years.  Quite a can o’ sour gummy worms! 😉

“Make it new!”  That is our Not-Theme, but Thing to Do, for tonight’s year-end/Happy Freakin’ New Year episode of SpokenWord Paris’s sister open mic.  In Canto LIII, good ol’ Ezra commemorated the Chinese emperor Tching Tang [Ch’êng T’ang], founder of the Shang Dynasty in the eighteenth century, who in Pound’s account wrote “MAKE IT NEW / on his bath tub / Day by day make it new.”  Dig – that major motto of Modernism.

Here is my New Year’s offering to you, my holiday song “Kiss the Clouds,” which I just recorded live at Leo’s 😉 onto SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/david-leo-957067099/kiss-the-clouds-this-is-my

Happy New Year two-thousand & sixteen!  From your spaceshot-in-residence host, David “Leo the Big Ego Lion” “Puff the Magic Dragon” “He poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once…Yorick…the king’s jester” “Joy Division/New Order” Sirois.

Open Secret is a gathering-of-the-tribes of artists: poets, & singer/songwriters, comedians, & storytellers, performance artists, directors, actors…creators & listeners of every genus (genius) & species. 😉  Come see what community feels like…this week our two exquisite Special Guest Poets: John Swain (see poem below) visiting us from Louisville, Kentucky, USA; & Youssef Alaoui-Fdili, whom you may have seen featuring at SpokenWord last week.

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John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Ring the Sycamore Sky (Red Paint Hill) and Under the Mountain Born (Least Bittern Books)…

The Winnowing

Daybreak and the remains of the sky finally knelt

on the blue expanse of its vibrance shining like weaponry,

I cried praises for your heart’s warmer lasting.

Twilight colors crater pools like a bruise on purple fruit,

we washed our callused hands there

to touch dawn and be clean.

Shade created pale havens on the paths of weathered stones

where the river deposits its rust wash and corroded barrels.

Juniper trembled in the wind like my lips against cloth,

the intention and circumstance held bright sails to your nape

as your skirts trail the gentlest flow of water like pure idea.

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Youssef Alaoui-Fdili’s Bio:

Moroccan-Latino, born in California. His family and heritage are an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings. He has an MFA in Poetics from New College of California. There, he studied Classical Arabic, Spanish Baroque and Contemporary Moroccan poetry. He is also well versed in the most dour and macabre literature of the 19th Century. His poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, 580 Split, Cherry Bleeds, Carcinogenic Poetry, Red Fez, Big Bridge, Dusie Press, and nominated for a Pushcart at Full of Crow. Youssef is an original creator of the East Bay literary arts festival “Beast Crawl.”

http://www.carcinogenicpoetry.com/2011/08/youssef-alaoui-fdili-one-poem.html

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I welcome you to come join us tonight at Le Bistrot des Artistes, share something of your great creative self (or simply listen with both ears).  Let’s “Make it new!” 🙂