More tar pit findings

Saber toothed tiger

California state fossil

Smiloden fatalis

Emerges from La Brea tar pit

Right claw raised high

Dripping black oil

(Freeway sounds only jazz)

Jet whine shriek

Explodes peace

Wheels down & close

The airliner is huge 

Right overhead

-freeze dry this frame -

- put it in your time capsule-

- added to your memory bank-

Yours to recall

For trivia night

"Smiloden fatalis

The saber toothed cat!

California state fossil"

2mud

1.

the grit scums up near ridges where

2.

i found a false painted nail in the refuse before clearing where

my nail beds extrude new tough:

we laid cardboard, leaf mold, rocks

my hands have become dirt

and plants dug up from another yard

ified, do i even have fingerprints

where the oil tank will soon rise

left?

and whinny like a horse

now the earth is my fingerprint

by the end of the afternoon, a new garden bed

3.

by the end of the day,

i don’t have a name anymore

bones worn smooth

by lift and tuck

the dirt comes out the truck

and i am one with muck

back with earth, i feel home

ly, reverent, thick:

all the pressing questions clunk

into evaporated rain mist

as the clouds become our

beloved watering can, can

i lay down in the garden bed,

fold over, flower and earth,

and tuck

in? 

IMUNURI prompt: Ooze

An ongoing series of earth-related prompts as part of an Imunuri experiment to dwell repeatedly on a theme and its riffs, and/or the possible poetry challenge, bit by bit, of producing an epic or body of poems...

Slime, muck, primordial goo. Our eldest ancestors might have arisen from the muck. What poems make you "oo" from the ooze? What do the tiny single and multicellular life forms have to say/hum/oog? Are there poetic forms incipient in primordial goo? Take 5 minutes, lay on the earth, and backcast along your DNA to earlier days of goo vats of slime (or stick your hand in the mud). What wriggles up to be articulated?

Keywords: ooze, poem, poet's-moniker

For Sylvia

Mama's sweet boy
Laying in a coma and slipping away
Her clay boy
Soaked in a fool's gold nectar
The fusion of light and paranoia
One very bad night on Meth

Hold her in the embrace of many women as she screams
As she remembers carrying him on her back
Back in her hippie days
When the human potential movement thought they had him covered
Those early Esalen days
When she searched the stars for her golden high 

Cover her in thick layers of mud
Let it draw the grief out from her pores
May she be held by it like a newborn covered in its mother's blood
May she be held by it until the shaking stops
Until it stills her body into a calm and dusty mass

Mud

I've always wanted to wrestle an angel.
That Tyrannosaurus angel, the one who threw
Jacob's hip out of joint in Genesis.
I want to wrestle with that angel in mud.

Mud that's wet, primeval, slime-slippery slick.
Slick as the moss on a rainforest redwood.
Slick as a wet log bridge suspended over a raging stream.
Slick as those stones in the same stream in summer,

the stones that capsize you into cold water,
the water you would have preferred
to have submerged into slowly,
inch by inch, stopping at the waist,

like a cautious explorer in crocodile country.
A wild, muggy country of butterflies and panthers
with no doctors or lawyers or wireless connections
for a hundred-thousand square miles.

A country much closer to the moon than ours
where ear-splitting monkeys howl,
frightening you from sleep
only to find, beside your hammock,

that dinosaur angel,
scale chested, arms crossed,
solar flares flaming from his eyes,
muttering, "Want to wrestle?"

Asphaltum

Asphaltum

Mudman

  Mud noma

    appellation:  Muro Dols

last seen in La Brea Tar Pits

searching for old bones

& discarded pet collars;

oxygen tank near at hand

steam still rises from black

oiled earth

sulphur wafts

Muro Dols stick searches muck

lifts a studded leather ring

up onto the bank

Slodurom his dog

runs over to sniff, tail wagging,barks

& circles the collar

crude oil spurts from below

a natural resource

Pioneer Gas Company

brings engineers & petrogeeks

down to the National  Natural Landmark

soon to buy the nearby 7/11

soon to be razed

a well dug right there on the city corner

of Wilshire & W 8th St.

to tunnel down & through native horse bones

to suck earth’s stuff

so man can drive thru

& steer down asphalt streets.

Meeting Clay

                        I’m hearing a soundtrack by Les Claypool

My surname is Mud. Isn’t yours?

(The truth is, I’d forgotten it.)

My given names are Anda Corse

(first words I heard as an infant).

Middle name’s Movin. Nickname’s “Force.”

Put it together, and you get

Anda Corse “The Force” Movin Mud.

Whose hand is mine? You’re shaking it.

So where do we go from here, bud?

I’ve crisscrossed the high crust two score

and five. I’ve pulled a lot of pud.

I’ve left some accidental dents.

I’ve always moved to do some good.

Now I’m suffused inside your scents,

meeting you like the first begot,

forming a mutual legend

that begins, of course, where it ends.

Board and water

      ~~~~~~~out there~~~~~~

          there are more waves

Knowing

back     into the water

board

  my

Throw

   I

Board and water

IMUNURI Prompt: Mud Name

An ongoing series of earth-related prompts as part of an Imunuri experiment to dwell repeatedly on a theme and its riffs, and/or the possible poetry challenge, bit by bit, of producing an epic or body of poems on a related theme...

Respond creatively to the idea of a

Mud name. Who are you, the earth at your core? What name does the mud where you live tells you it has? Bonus points for slathering in mud before writing, or drafting your poem in clay slip.

Tags: mudname, poem, your moniker, epic-earth

Image from http://name-list.net/img/images.php/Mud_6.jpg

Angels

Angels

They are the first responders,

barefoot, bleeding light,

the envoys of God rushing in

after the bombs explode

only to kneel 

among the splintered

and scorched

only to say

against all logic

and evidence:

"Do not be afraid."

[here they come, from the tree of life]

here they come, from the tree of life

down the shutes of ducts:

sacred balsam trickles

i will not wipe these tears away

i will allow, like sap accretes on sap, 

the vital elixir

  more flexible than sap

to mark where 

my life opened

and the pulse of life flowed through

over time, over the bark of my skin

around my eyes, amber fountains

create waterfalls over crags

can't you see them, 

even now, 

diaphanous, glowing

why it helps us feel across, 

these ghostly flows, slow

and potent

around the eyes, their staying 

power, geographies of pain 

and tender, each to each

IMUNURI Prompt: Balsamic

Balsam magnified,  nouslife.blogspot.com

"The distinction between resin and balsam is one of form, on a fundamental level: Simply put and generalising, resinous materials come in the form of solidified, gum-like 'tears' seeping from the elixir vitae circulating into the bark of big trees, such as the Boswellia Carteri (which produces frankincense). Balsams on the other hand are trickly materials, not necessarily tree secretions, often coming as they do from flower pods or bushy twigs (such as vanilla orchids or the Mediterranean rockrose). ... The real focus when referencing balsamic and resinous terminology is how the materials actually smell and how they're different or common in scent, rather than what their origin is. 
Therefore, for ease, resinous & balsamic materials are classified into 3 distinct olfactory profiles according to their aromatic properties first and foremost." These are soft balsamic smelling, resinous balsamic smelling and powdery balsamic smelling. More details including pictures at Perfume Shrine.

Now some definitions beyond the definition of balsamic as relating to balsam, as illuminated above.

Balsamic can refer to any fragrant ointment, specifically those used for ceremonial or medicinal use.
Balsamic can refer to any substance or energy that heals, soothes, or restores.
And of course, there's balsamic vinegar.

There's also in astrology the balsamic moon, which occurs when the Moon is less than 45 degrees behind the natal Sun. Per wikipedia: "The balsamic Moon is said to relate to one's commitment to destiny, so whenever the Moon is placed in this position it is at a very crucial point, and attention should be made to the earthly events that occur during such an astrological configuration. The balsamic moon also is said to relate to healing and rest, since it is the last phase before the Dark (or New) Moon."

Write sparked by what you've seen and read here.

Keywords: balsamic, your handle

shells (fibonacci poem 112358)

1.

tornadoes
shells
perlescent, plus
old mollusk fossils
enter the realm of dreams
suddenly the sky (of mind) splits open, hurling eyes


2.

too spare, like poem anorexia

the idea of only one word in a line overandover.

instead i'll do it with stanzas, fibonacci my way
to something more spacious, curvaceous, generous.

in the trumpet of shell, the sea wind
blows this instrumentality to a new bell arch song
rippling along the tube cone curves, echoing outward.

if i knew there were swaying bellbottoms of bone
flaring forth in mermaid realms, that the honey tide would
turn to cement-castle clarities, now offered up on sand,
i would have asked the unicorns to bring home justice in their
tuba cases, or sea turtles to pattern nets from their shells.

instead, the ocean itself weaves seaweed into fibrile catchers
and the rain of nautilus, pearly pink vortices of song, avers the reign
of same size curlicues. Fibonacci is the name of the supple merfolk who
stretch every shell bell out with their meaty haunched tails.
They remind us to expand, every wider, just when we thought
we couldn't get any bigger, or our aspirations for tender empathy
love any more of this raucous planet. Their spiral shells remind us we
ARE that big, YES, and more, gripping our rainbow shine arcs as sails to deeper water.

What experiences

With Janice Sandeen


.

Curtains

drawn

before open

windows     beyond dawn:

consider our selves finely woven

iotas in the waft of unfixed and foregone

designs; we’re the lines among tesseract foldings. Each of us is a wall—

one sticky, critical wall—built to function within honeycombing complexities, convexities of inside-outside decision forks—spun, spanning, spinning and spawned—

“…experience awaits and awaits,  yet also passing us by, pondering us like the creatures we are. Experience having us, we are possessed by that which dawns on us, possessed in measure, great and small.”

Experience hears us wearing it, wears us as we hear it—here—where a line drawn is drawn like an inhalation;

and we might feel impelled like bees or undersea fan-handed barnacles,

how the atmosphere/ocean/emptiness—intimate in infinity—

visions, revises, calls and recalls

you and me,

hanging upon

any

sea.

Word after Wordlessness~1st scibblings after a long pause

1st Haiku:

That morning,  I fainted

When I came to,   there was Breath

My loyal servant

( dispassionate master )


1st E-mail:

FROM: "The Maiden"

TO:   Befriended Shadow
CC:   Unfathomable Void

Dearly clearly recognized one,

I no longer doubt you ~~~ nor do I believe you.
The Pomegranate seeds you forced down my throat last Spring  reddened my tongue.  Then the old woman baptized it with her brew.   Now I can easily dissolve your acids!
We two are indeed Eternal friends .....but I am no longer your quarry, your prize, no longer fair game.
 
I will continue to allow our Winter picnics and night time tea parties.

 Tenderly,

"The Maiden"



1st  Interpretation of the  Buddhist "Heart Sutra"

The patient one
free to live her own precious heart's timing.
Releasing the numberless beings and the ten thousand things.
Risking:
for the truth of which truth can name
for the truth of which truth cannot name
for the truth of which truth can neither name or not name...

Pre-Us

Pre-Us

1    Pre

1    Us

2    Dino   

2    -sauers

3    Immobile

3    Manquin

5    Pastel graffiti

5    Wheel -ed poetry

8    Incandescent flared fleece pant

8    Steel mounted pink hubcap rivets

13  After dinner leftover never spoken words

13  Bone carving thrown into tarpit ivory head first

IMUNURI prompt: Fibonacci

This week, write a poem with a Fibonacci element.

The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers that begins with 0 and 1. From there, each subsequent number is the sum of the two previous numbers.

So 0 + 1 = 1, 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 2 = 5...
and the series runs:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377...

The poem form generally called a "fib" (short for fibonacci) is a 6-line poem wherein the number of syllables in each line tie to the numbers in the Fibonacci series. Line 1 is 1 syllable. So is line 2, and lines 3 through 6 have 2, 3, 5 and 8 syllables respectively.

This week, you could write a fib, or you could apply the series in a number of other ways. At least 377 other ways.

You could apply the sequence to the number of words (instead of syllables) per line; or the number of lines per stanza.

You could also write in the subject or style of the spiral, like the one created by drawing circular arcs that connect the opposite corners of squares in a Fibonacci tiling as seen above.

Or you could simply fib.

keywords = fib, poem, your name

Burst Peony

Burst Peony

RED PEONY

   -open-

   BURST

barely seen yellow stigma shown

neighbors to follow soon

with scarlet poppy sleeves

sprinkling paionic seeds

purple lilacs emit fine aromatics

come bind to PINK ROSE scented air

poppy,lilac,rose,peony petals blown

Twelve

I’ve always envisioned the six of them lurking
in the halls of the vacated school,
bored as hell, stinking of Marlboros,
spitting at walls, pissing against lockers,
at war with the whole damned galaxy—
then Higgins sees us on our Stingray bikes
cruising the corridors, weaving around poles,
and swears to his buddies, "I hate these motherfuckers” —
because we’re Austs, because we’re lucky,
because we haven’t a clue,
because our backyard fence boundaries
his grandmother's orchard
and we eat of the fruit of her trees
with her permission--not his.
Never his.

Those unpruned pregnant nectar-rich trees,
lush apricots dripping with gold
into the dusty high weeds of that gnarled orchard
too huge for her to manage
which Higgins prowls like a border guard
whenever he’s left with her
with Liberty Valance eyes
and a soggy peach in each clenched fist.

Of course we resist--my brothers against his—
heaving threats, insults, dirt clod grenades,
until that inevitable hurled stone
rebounds off our sliding glass door and
signals a clear declaration of war.

I hop the fence solo one dry afternoon
thinking the orchard all mine,
stumble to my knees, look up to find Higgins
glaring behind the star thistles.
I swear he intends to tear me in two
but stand my ground as he warily circles.
Then the wilderness pulls us down and we clutch
and roll in an awkward embrace,
biting the earth, pummeling nothing,
then abrubtly, dirt-caked with dusty nostrils,
stand and part our ways,
relieved to have wrestled Apollyon
for ten seconds and survived.

It’s Higgins sets us up the next spring
at the empty Junior High.
My six-year-old brother, sun speckled and small,
straddles his thick-tired bike
as I grope my filthy locker for a
history book misplaced.
Someone’s hand interferes, clutches the metal door.
 “What are you hiding in there?”
It’s Fredricks. I know him. A wounded raccoon.
I wonder how many grown men he’s defaced.

Six guys surround me. I pause to consider.
Higgins among them, smirking.
And then the spider bites
between the knuckles of my freckled right hand.
That’s Brinkley, gibbon-faced, alcoholic,
drilling his cigarette into soft smoking flesh.
 “Does that hurt?” he says with a clownish grin,
then clears his throat, spits three times in my hair.
I thrust my bike at him.
Surprised, he falls back. Remembering my brother,
I say,“Let’s leave these punks, Tim.”
And back away.
And they let us go. Laughing.

We speed ourselves home, not speaking at all
except to conspire, “Don’t tell Mom.”
Not a cloud in the sky that day, my right hand stinging,
the air full of lilacs and blossoms
and the pondering of my twelve-year-old mind:
how no greater indignity has yet been inflicted
in the history of mankind.

Subsection at the Congress of Flowers, Spring 72013, Announcing the Contested Theme of "Green Might"

Ahem. With the adoption of the international motto of the consortium for the preservation of frolicking nymphs and woodsprites, here in the sunset lit glade with rain that slants like clementine flowers, softly, behind new willow and ash, green- fronded, luxuriant-haired trees, we can embrace "green might" as our seasonal theme with a soft sigh and a shiver of delight. I want to honor those who made the case for "flower power" as theme and the ones contesting power and might with nonviolent metaphors such as "tree hug." I would remind everyone that, though hotly discussed, we will have another opportunity, when next we gather at the flat rocks by the river when the full moon crosses the middle hill then rises, to discuss future themes. 
         I know that those who feel confident there is only one goddess and her color is green as well as those more metaphysical sprites who look to the stars for a polytheistic galactic pantheon glittery in aspect might feel unsettled that we have decided to defer discussion on the nature of Nature to the summer convocation. Nevertheless, let us rejoice, in "green might."

Some announcements: 

        Dragonflies have decided to make themselves available off the cedar esplanade at break time. Shining or buffing wings and/or singing with glitter application are considered acceptable mutually reciprocal gifts for lifts.  

        The group magnolia flower essence making playshop has been moved to the opening flowers by the moon glade, to be summoned by the trumpetflowers after skyglow passes.    

        Thirdly, the sunset team is requesting votes via seedpods for the spring sky palette. As usual, vibrate your magical dandelion seed heads with your color votes and deposit them by the base of the flowering chestnut by the dark of the moon to participate. Your colors count!  A note, to the pranksters who submitted polka dots, the sunset team will not accept clear patterns of simple shapes of any kind, particularly not in neon green, and requests you refrain from placing such repulsive visual horrors near the growing palette emergence. 

A new event: the bumble bees are hosting the first honey tasting of the season at the first glimmer of Venus in the evening sky.  Additionally, three more slots for sparkle and gleam apprenticeships at the hive are available; beings under 1,000 suncycles most welcome. 

With no further ado, let us skylark our way to the main leaf stage where the Gaia Gala will begin. Green Sunshine and the Hummingbirds will lead the dance. 

[Note: Image credits, Julia Clark (c) 2011, "Dragonfly Sparkle"]

IMUNURI Prompt: Flower Shower - one more week

Hold a branch. Smell a flower. Be a tree. This week, connect with the thrumming spring happenings. Write from the point of view of the branch/flower/bee/or tree, what is it like, this thing, spring?

Artwork by Viola Kaia

Riff option 1: Write as a poetic address or speech to the Congress of Spring

Riff option 2: Create ambiguity so it's not 'til later in the poem (if ever) that it's apparent who is the speaker (or that the speaker is not human)

Riff option 3: Write in the pseudolanguage (or human-other species pidgin) of the being who is speaking/expressing in your poem - or in their completely other native language

Riff option 4+: Go where nature takes you...

Keywords: poem, spring, poet's-moniker