pileated woodpecker and cloud - the poet's mind remembers its way

"But then there is all this other stuff going on -- which is wilder, which is bristling; it's juicier, it's everything that you would want. And it's not comfortable. That's the kind of poetry that interests me -- a field of energy. It's intellectual and moral and political and sexual and sensual -- all of that fermenting together. It can speak to people who have themselves felt like monsters and say: you are not alone, this is not monstrous. It can disturb and enrapture." - Adrienne Rich

1.
after the slack dog hunkering days of low belly to earth heat
trying to dissolve into the quantum spaces between
probability electrons which
like nests of looping flight paths between oceans of spaciousness
remind me sometimes it's better to have flown the coop

2.
but the water in the air is fair to boil
ing so that even the space
between electron clouds
is saturated and dense, unmovable, thick:
there is no escape

3.
sometimes
i fly off (as of a vermont summer gloaming) into cloud
to read what sky is saying
if earth is inhospitable

i see how antelopes and flying carpets
and the all-seeing eyes of branch cuts on trees
can keep me going when breathing is not possible

there's another way of seeing, through what has been lost

4.
grief is like a gyre, is like the sudden flight of two
pileated woodpeckers, red banded heads and stripes,
when first arriving. we always know
where we are, and sometimes we depart
just as we arrive. the world demonstrates
something good has come before us
something wild, something beyond.
perhaps it's just a poem, or the thought of a poem.

(just when we thought we'd gotten over good, composted it
or turned it as rusting metal from old farm tools
into yard art)

5.
some days, when the wind has been knocked
from the sails of us, we've been kicked down low
to the faintly breathing earth
(which remembers how to breathe even between
the interstitial steam heaving between atoms's nests)

somedays we can't even write a poem, it isn't possible
but the mind remembers the way, flies off as two crimson blazing
birds into the bush, thinking "this would make a good poem"

this is a possibility of a poem. a line. a catch of words blazes.
the poet's mind remembers its way.
sometimes, this is more than enough.

Scooter Cascadia
August 42011

spark 2 - present state

spark 2 - present state
i believe in motorscooter cellular youth
working hot Yogyakarta daily prayers
into this 2-cycle engine stroking present state.
reproducing & multiplying
dressed in bright yellow,& oranges & pinks of Java modern.
“it works”
so with respect i gave up milk in my coffee for this Ramadan.

i now drink the naked taste of african & arabian mocha beans brewed together,
unfiltered, fresh, top & bottom fuzzy blanketed softness.
our skins teasing bare senses out of my foggy hibernation
into visions of rock hard Osiris in Abydos.
“very strong”
hearing blues coming from behind the curtain
not missing the cream
“working it”

Sugar Streams from Her Fingers

bows to Marie Elena Good, Marna Cosmos, Philip Levine and others…

In Safeway’s industrial kitchen, she

dips her latex-covered fingers into

warm glaze; then, thinking of his stubborn F

grades, moves her hand like magician gestures

over the coffee cakes. Principal Dowd,

you’re not being fair. Robbie, you’re killing

every chance you have. The grocery driver

can’t stop ricocheting between Shirley’s

ultimatum and himself—who is who

he is, like Popeye, damn it. The women

and men go with their urges piled on top

like whipped cream spires. Everything they touch

comes away sticky and faintly sweeter.

When the man with his lonely hunger bites

what her glazed fingers spellbound, may he taste

the soft center between today’s meetings

and the woman who disposes her gloves,

punches out and drives home to the escape

of daytime TV. Holy Creator,

let our tongues school like fish and find blessing

in the joined continuation of our

living substance simply carrying on.

Everything Is All One Cake.

This form is called Poesia de Tema, developed by Marie Elena Good.

Read about it here: http://poeticbloomings2.wordpress.com/

Prompt: poems making a difference - SPARK 2

For your poeming this week, take this quote and/or this image as inspiration. 



"But then there is all this other stuff going on -- which is wilder, which is bristling; it's juicier, it's everything that you would want. And it's not comfortable. That's the kind of poetry that interests me -- a field of energy. It's intellectual and moral and political and sexual and sensual -- all of that fermenting together. It can speak to people who have themselves felt like monsters and say: you are not alone, this is not monstrous. It can disturb and enrapture.

"Poetry can add its grain to an accumulation of consciousness against the idea that there is no alternative -- that we're now just in the great flow of capitalism and it can never be any different -- [that] this is human destiny, this is human nature. A poem can add its grain to all the other grains and that is, I think, a rather important thing to do."

--Adrienne Rich, From an interview with the Boston Phoenix

Image from the energy off the tip of a person who has just grounded