dark moon (returning)

when i begin

to imagine

the drop of me

has risen

(effusive ebullient effervescing)


from the river of me


(bereft at parting)

(imagining completion)


i fall

back

into myself




relieved
by the mystery
of totality.





near the dark moon
(graphic source in this)

Sparking [5/30-6/5]

Sometimes we are catalyzing, sizzling, zinging, sparkling, sparking, barking, praising - helping our creative friends on new artistic adventures.

Write a poem inspired by the word "spark" or by the concept of how we can support our friends in creative adventuring...

Tag words: poem, spark, [poet's moniker]


First image: Dalal, oil painting, "A Field of Energy"

Awkward Moment

I tasted infinity in my wife's meat loaf
but was afraid to tell her as she's a
sensitive cook

and besides we had guests.

So I swallowed hard and asked,

to no one in particular,
"What single-syllable sound would you choose
for your epiphany?"

to which my wife replied,

"You're just asking that

because you don't like the meat loaf."

"I don't much care for infinity," I confessed.

"Makes me feel negligible,"

to which all our guests applauded.

"But you are insignificant," said my wife.

"We all are, in the great grand scope of

eternity. In six billion years,

what will it matter?"

We all grew quiet and stared

into our napkins.

"I have an answer to your question,"

said my wife:

"∞"

Infinity sounds like this

Infinity sounds like this

melody manque
text-ure
black coffee cup -cough-ee
tandem addictions ride head long
panic strikes- heart stops - recoil
flee go around get to the
outside air-space

i thought i glimpsed the moon
it was a slowly revolving
lit up cross in the Oakland sky
i thought about visiting the church below
a little later i thought about going
into a movie that already started
it is a Zuni fetish of mine

he got off the bike & sat back down at the fountain
he thought about cotton candy
& water melon pickles
carry down the sum
of the Tigris & the Euphates
in human tears & earthly minutes
(kohl and lace)
musk & mules
2 kivas that meet and form one
earth & sun

asonic bells bring momentary
pain relief clouds merge (red with)
to stencil his radiant design
dissipates into flawed seconds we carry forth
into the dancers rattles
in each circle
the sound of seeds being cracked
timb-r thee tree fell silently.

Yow

YOW! Bit hard
the inside of my mouth.
Why the hell does this happen every time I write a poem?
Chewing away on the
rubbery gristle of
undigestable thoughts
I've inadvertantly devoured
the inside corner of my lip.
Poetry should never be
this hard.

Tune

i.

if sound were a chamber, walls with windows,

(like the inside of my head)

the sounds my mind makes would be

more crisp than yowl

more staccato than inflammatory

an incisive moment of all-sound

cacaphonic not symphonic

i don't know where to carry the boombox of me to

where to play the music that is me, that my thinking

produces. it feels like there's no where

in the freeway and mower hum a day world

airplane guzzlebuzz

for me, perhaps the faroff noon birdsong

is closer, better than clocktick

maybe i sound

more like apple blossoms, less like garbage truck

more rockshine, less garlic press

more chimetone, less crow caw

more magnolia flower spires and azalea blasts, less truck roar and brakegash

ii.

mother dying in a hospital bed

dying more quickly than you or i

at the asymptotic almost-null point

where time expands outward

bridging monstrous chasms

this is when all sound falls away

when time opens up like the ruddy giddy

shutter-stop caesura

between standing up

and finding yourself passed out on the floor

five nurses clucking

iii.

may time always carry us so,

some times a bridge, some time is a gurney

comes to a close, pushes us through the pinprick

(needleprick)

into something more spacious than this, something

fabulous, more like flying carpets, less like hospital gowns

iv.

when my mind, the sound chamber

of me, recomposes itself

after this rattleblast hospital trauma

(only a moment of witnessing the endless trauma that is her daily ken)

settles, how will this have changed my whistle?

what will the acoustics be like

in my headstrong head?

i pray for choral tuning, bell-like, amphoric

so that is my word, my one word, my fe-fye-fo

TUNE TUNE TUNE TUNE

blow across the lid of me

wind of making

tune me whole

This Week's Prompt: Approaching the One syllable - Containing Infinity

Words like Om (Aum) - represent single syllable sounds encompassing many sounds within them.

Yowl. Craw. Plume. Swee. Gong. Chuff. Flum.

What single-syllable sound would you choose for your epiphany? And what poem would express and context that sound?

A potentially fruitful tangent:

(A poet's rendering:) Asymptotes in math represent that the closer you get to a point, the more infinite the space remaining.

Related lyrics for a riff:

Slip slidin' away

Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

How can a sound be a chamber for sounds within it?

Labels: yowl, poem, poet's moniker

Graphic credit - Wikimedia - Asymptote - in context

No crisis

Beside and beneath the rows of wheels,
the crow moves her crumb with a sound like “mine!”

At last, I’m in short sleeves again, a Hawaiian print
that attracts bees. The neglected sidewalk back
to my desk, cars pass above and beside me.
This is Marin and the world. Summer promises
a tiredness, the urge to unplug while deadlines
turn brittle; anyway, I’d just as soon get fired,

drop to sand as warm as wintertime flannel or
into grass to become the tomato in the salad,
to penetrate the backyard, treasure map in hand,
and stop there by the broken statue, twining
cobwebs around my pinkie. Setting out to rake
the leaves from the library of last autumn,
I stay to the shaded stacks, then let the piles sit.
They could melt away while I rest on a stucco wall,

using the stillness to try to unknot this feeling,
this urgency, this incessant incessantness
that something must be done, now and always,
faster, more efficiently, for the good, for me,
for you, to make everything worthwhile.

Such is the knot. Such is the shady spot.
The smell of jasmine will move me
when we are ready. There is no energy crisis.

Poetry weeds

On
Man blackened
manless hill
Yellow pollen
blazes sun warmed fertility.
Poetry weeds
f*ck in air
Earth’s self cure.

creation (how poetry can save the earth): the musical, concept treatment 1

Sounds:
percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

oboes and flutes: high ethereal long slow sounds

clarinet: low slow sounds, pulsing alternating with the oboes and flutes

(Direction: oboe, flute, and clarinet weave around behind the narration, except for the noted percussion pulses)

Narrator, lecture-style, part 1:

in the jam, in the boot of the car, in the boot of the year, near 2012
when all around with arms upraised the mad scramble
clickety split of the roaring furnace of a warming planet
makes us think we've gone to hell in a handbasket,
poetry reminds us that there is all the time in the world

percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

poems dilate time, create nests of leisure and spaciousness
creativity, as in the expansive moments of our most recent expansion
BIG BANG where change happened in milli-jilli-nanoseconds
creativity also can slow us down, into the breath whisper silent
stillness between eye blinks

percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

poems bring us back to our hearts, where we connect
with the infernal heat of all creation
including the guidance from other star peoples
that we are held in cycles beyond our ken
nestled in the nest of earth, woven of feathers and fluff,
a preciousness pervades

percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

by awakening love,
poetry can save the earth
by resuscitating our capacity to care, our earth empathy
poetry can save the earth
by reminding us of what we share,
poetry saves us, to be whole and present, right here,
right now right here right now
[Direction: "right here, right now" continues and threads through percussive interlude]

percussion backbeat, in a pulse, with space between: ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

Because I am a molecule, a cell in the body of Gaia
and poems are like ribbons of DNA, a code of guidance
in how we can proceed to thrive,
poems are part of the earth,
can save the earth, aché!

percussion backbeat, in a pulse - this time with oboes and clarinets also, also with echoes of the last two stanzas, a culminating flash of furling fires of creativity: "right now right here right now" and the words of the last stanza:
ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tick
ticky ticky tock tock ticky tickety tick tick tock

Scooter Cascadia 5-3-11 12:19pm

The Prompt Now: Can Poetry Save the Earth?

In a time with a perception of energy scarcity, how can poetry help change climate change? How can poetry help us plug into a gejillion watt source of energy, everywhere available: human creativity?

What if we were able to solve the energy crisis by plugging into our creativity, directly? What would the world look like?

Take a flight of fancy and imagine, for better or for worse, literally or metaphorically (or metaphysically)... How can poetry save the Earth?

If you're interested in this topic, check out this recent book: John Felstiner's Can Poetry Save the Earth? (2009)

Keywords: poem, energy, [poet's tagline nickname]