A long and needed update/love is revolutionary

So, fortunately, and I guess also unfortunately (as far as my online life goes) I have been incredinly busy since I have been back in Salt Lake and haven't had a whole lot of time to update my stuff. But alas! A window of time has been found and update I shall!

Where to start... where to start...

While traveling, particularly in Houston and Austin, but also in Minneapolis (which are cities that have a very integrated slam/performance poetry community) I saw/performed at cash prize poetry slams, where basically they advertised the slam like a show or concert, charged a cover charge at the door, and gave a cut of that to the winner/winners of the slam. There are quite literally poets in Houston Texas who pay rent off of winning poetry slams. Granted, there are like five cash slams a week, but none-the-less, it happens. And that's just three cities, this goes on everywhere! So, needless to say, I started thinking, "so, if this can happen in all these other cities, why the hell can't it happen in Salt Lake?"
As soon as I got back in to SLC, me and my friend Michael started brainstorming ideas. I told him about my ideas for the slam, he was totally down, and within a week of being home we had Salt Lake City's first cash prize poetry slam (Put Your Mouth Where The Word Is) booked at Mo's Neighborhood Grill (http://www.mosbarandgrill.com/) The next three weeks went alsmost entirely in to premoting the slam, working on different projects to prepare for it, and trying to get media coverage.
After a lot of social networking, mass texting, fliering, calling, rogue reading and postering, we raised five hundred and twenty five dollars at the door! That means we had one hundred and five paying audience members, and thats not even including the probability that people snuck in without paying because there was without a doubt more than one hundred and five people there.
In short, it was a great success, it was so much fun, and if the amount of people who approached us afterwards saying that they had a great time and were definitely coming back next month come through, then those numbers will be at very least doubled!

As for me individually, I'm doing great. I'm super broke and looking for ways to make money, relying on poetry and teaching as my only form of income, and living almost completely on the good graces of good people and friends, and man it is liberating. I'm homeless and broke, couch surfing and backpacking, walking everywhere I go, living as an artist relying on his passion and the good graces of other people and the universe for money, shelter, food, etc. Some day, possibly sooner rather than later, I'm going to get a job and an apartment and live as an alleged "functioning," member of society haha, but right now I'n enjoying and gaining so much living far below the poverty level. I have learned to appreciate so much more living like this. The smallest scrap of food, the smallest donations of money, purchasing my art, offering a couch to crash on and a roof over my head, a hot shower and a dry towel, it means so much more to me now, I see gifts and small conviniences through different eyes and it's wonderful.
So for now I shall remain a vagrant, a vagabond, a poet, an artist, a musician, a lover, a friend. Fuck the system man. Active disobedience! They have perfected violence for centuries, what they do not know is peace.

Love is revolutionary

-Cody Winger

My Final Baited Fingertip

You almost forgot how to breathe

If your lungs are machines with minds of their own
Then call society the rust building up on your hinges
You once saw the corroded gears of your grandfather’s emaciated body
Spitting up dust and grime and blackened oil phlegm
If his vocal chords were exhaust pipes
Then call his breathing the final puttering
Of that good old American Muscle on its last bend
My boy there is more than metal and oil

Over the past twenty years
I have baited my fingertips with opportunities
That your skepticism continuously refused to accept
Like offering a feast to a starving person
Who is terrified of food
I must express my thanks
For my fingers grew blistered and raw
I did not know how long they would have lasted

My boy your blood has changed colors
It no longer courses through your veins
With the black self loathing of mislead dreams
Your heart is a goat skinned hand drum
You have learned the tribal intricacy of carving bone
Fashioned two hands from your breast plate
Set them to the frequency of riotous
So now as they play
Your heart beats with the untamed rhythms of freedom

I must tell you
When god designed the heavens
Like everything else he made them flawed
                Imperfect
Like everything else the master plan of such
Was that of a genius architect
Then came you
Baby boy wrapped in a blanket of uneasy first impressions
You fell through the cracks of heaven
At the ripe age of fourteen
When your skepticism continuously refused to accept that life
Was not what the people in charge made it out to be

Some will call you a demon

Others a messenger from god

I will call you a fallen angel suspended in mid decent

If pawn shops can be the recipient of a junkies lost soul
Then call your broken angel wings golden redemption
For you have traded their weight in gold for words
You do not need wings
To engrave your accomplishments
On a tomb stone that one day you will rest under

Only stories

They will hate you for it

But it is time

Wash the corrosion away from minds of masses

Carve trenches with your vocal chords in the floors of heaven

Open up a drum circle and play
Until the world can hear your untamed rhythms

Because you
My boy

Are the embodiment of an unbreakable idea
Whistled through the organic throat of a megaphone

A word perpetually stuck in motion

A scatter bomb mental guerilla warfare explosion

If bullets can govern the world
Then call your ammunition of superiority
Seeds

For I know you would use shotgun shells as incubators to grow food
And not a medium to steal life with

They have perfected violence for centuries
What they do not know is peace

This is my final baited fingertip
You know what you must do
Tell the people stories

Inform them that freedom is free
It’s as natural as breathing
As simple as a drum circle
And as easy as falling

To be free is to love
Unconditionally

I love you

Sincerely,
            Life