if traveling

if traveling

tread water rather than sink
if too hot dive into water
if wet get wetter
if dry get wet
if cool warm up
if north go south
if south go west
if hungry eat fruit
if doubting believe
if anxious study breathing
if paranoid let the imagination run out
if calm continue
if up look up higher
if person near touch before talking
if you hear wind chimes write
if outside stay out
build a fire before freezing

Carvings

 Carvings

1     skateboard spins skyward

2     letters fly off
       frieze in time

3     space ants dark love
       pollinates the silver moon

4     hooded scarecrow rising
       playing a viola
       for the baffled.
 

We are a collaborative remembrance

What?
i can't rest!
I've been dancing a dance of density/ far beyond any rhythm or place unknown
When i start to sweat and tire, i discover what i've found;
the world which is a Woman...earthen / holy / dynamic
her island of nurture, nest and cavern
of sires and brave witches that fly together at dusk
the windy conditions that bring about delight
the cross-pollination of minds
her minds, our minds,  blowing through corridors and Wild open fields
kissing the flowering plants and food rich grains
the grass seeds fused to their ovaries
the tonguelike ligule at the junction of blade and sheath
her body of OVER-RESTED Grassland turned to sand
the lonely deserted Savannah
it's trampling, grazing, salivating, defecating herds ( millions gone )
their dust storm songs pitch clear words into Northern light
a blood pumping remembrance
of co-evolving collaboration; ANIMAL / GRASS / SOIL
the inseparable whole
it's dream is one of saving this World
which may be the most fearsome adventure yet!

thanks for the beautiful collaborative word collages, folks...brought much joy!

spiral and zhoom

friends

swirl

two

symbioses

(for everyone who wants to frolic

connect the pogo stick

with

monkey bars

j’adore.

my budding viola /

baffled cavern,

and

your

dark

Chocolate

instrument, called "Sweetmilk

pitch our

streams and beams into

a fabulous

[source note

Prompt: Hymn of Hymns: Imunuri Carve Out - Ready, Set, Crow...

In this prompt, we create a third derivative poetry wave form. Vortex out!
Spark and sparkle, Carve Out!

Some Imunurian Poets in Portland vortexing out
of a spiral hand zhoom. Try it. August 2012.
Photo thanks to D. Copeland

First, Imunurians post poems.
Second, Imunurians and their friends and interactive poetry reading folk spark off lines from Imunuri posted poems to write new lines and swirl these together with the Imunuri poem lines in an interactive word play. We post two of these such poems here, collaboratively written in Portland on August 11 and 12, 2012.

Third, we will now "carve out" other poems from these latest symbioses. Post your carve- outs here as posts (for Imunuri poets) and comments on this prompt (for everyone who wants to frolic with us).

It's more than carving: we invite you to riff, bounce, sandblast, muse, reveal, reconnect, connect the dots, ride a pogo stick down the road not taken, whatever gives delight. Ready, set, crow...

PS - for extra fun, we have set links to the poems for the lines that came from Imunuri poems so you can have further tinder for your creative kindling!

Labels: carve-out, poem, [poet's moniker]
Extra points to those participating to post other pix

To explore an earlier version of this prompt cycle, sparked by our November 2011 show in Oakland, go here.

Group Collaborative Poem 1 – Bipartisan Café August 11^th, 2012

I’ve got so much life in me, I can feel the earth closing in.

Oh, the TriMet Terror!

Beyond Euclid and his orthogonal existence,

Hold the seed within.

Sea, carry me through change.

Breeze, fill me with your ease of flux.  

Bubbling,

I know me and I won’t go there.

Mile square park, monkey bars, and softball games.

Low pitched and rising in the throat to a sound between laughing and crying and something else.

Love was only amore. Until the baby came, j’adore.

I glance out back / at my budding summer garden / to discover the rain /

Playing a viola / hosting a surprise party / for the baffled world. 

The world, which is a woman, earthen, holy, /dynamic, nurturer, nest, cavern, wholeness. 

Why do ants carry their dead? 

To send them off to the maker above with respect and love.

Pushing myself brusquely out of nite wrappings into jeans. / Out to Sweetmilk’s feeder and Nature’s dark art.

The eyes that sight the surface, /the play of light as it convinces 

The colors that read rightly, even if they are wrong.

To pitch our words into Northern light. 

A hungry night owl bee / Pollinates the silver moon / Milk-weed flower, a galaxy 

I have so many dimensions  

When I wake, discover what I’ve found.

Sugar peas, sweet peas, and runner beans beam gladness.

…and a stamp was created from that quake of bodies bending…

I’ve been dancing a dance of density/Around and around the propensity / Of having to keep and keep and keep / But now I’m giving it away in my sleep 

This is not an island of sires, witches, giants, storms. / This is a place, alone, to wait /

Which may be the most fearsome adventure yet. 

Wisdom’s hands, hips and face / Her hooded scarecrow rising 

Intelligence, a bloodless victory

Far beyond a place unknown, a coffee milkshake and almond steamer are ready.

My mother took us to this cool park where I (seen here) am playing on a stagecoach 

One time I dropped my writing nib, another time a nub of cheese 

Embouchure was for fluting / until I saw my baby nursing. 

I’ve got so much life in me, if I grin / the songs of creation leak out. 

Try to smile, we dare ya. Imunuri Bringing Grins at Taborspace August 2012 (Photo thanks to D. Copeland)

Group Collaborative Poem - Taborspace – August 12^th, 2012

What precedes the start of a story arc? / A place devoid of heat, sound, and motion, /a still space fraught with potential to spark.  

Comfortless in my own skin

Soundly sleep dreams erupting

Swell skateboard spins skyward

My wisdom’s free

Heart drum solo,

As I learn to beat alone.

Follow the ecliptic side to side /with every full swing / as if you pelvis were earth. 

The dawning realizing, IT WAS ONLY A HALLUCINATION.

I stop typing and move out the window/towards stars and caverns, where I can pause and take shape as air bodies.    / Finally, a l l l e t t  e   r   s   f   l    y  o    f        f     

One time I dropped my writing nib, another time a nub of cheese

Just freeze in one place. That’s one way to deal with it. Back up to see if you can escape... 

Frieze in time

Slow.

Reconciliation

Ahead.

Sink and sink

think and think

and sigh and sink.

I have so many dimensions

Moon cycles, circle of life

Turning, everlasting

The window that lives /in the flesh and /pulse of my / energy / is a / torus / of energy / that opens out 

Frames the light / into a design / I’ve never seen before / or since, the sign / of make it nice 

The world, which is a woman, earthen, holy, /dynamic, nurturer, nest, cavern, wholeness
A hungry night owl bee / Pollinates the silver moon / Milk-weed flower, a galaxy

The best things fill S P A C E !

The sky swings its bat to hit out our shooting star.

My mother took us to this cool park where I (seen here) am playing on a stagecoach

Many times you pick up your fingers nibbing them to a nub.

Are we not dark, dark in our marrow, in our quiet… 

Chocolate

Granola

What you see of me depends on who are you

When you meet someone, you never know when you will actually “meet” them…

Four years later: a knock at the door. The children have found their way home, / tall and gaunt as geese 

Well, not the oldest one…he’s gained some weight.

See me say “Hey!” Swallow me whole 

[Picture of drummer with metal tines of a musical instrument, called "Drum Solo - My Icon"]

My wife and I were happy for 20 years, and then we met. 

even Space is full of itself 

Held in my hand

A black galaxy

It flew off,

A swallow

The eyes that sight the surface/ the play of light as it convinces 

Pushing myself brusquely out of nite wrappings into jeans. / Out to Sweetmilk’s feeder and Nature’s dark art. 

to pitch our words into Northern light. 

Are we not light, streams and beams rising out of the marrow, singing hope into the air?

And grows into a fabulous handle bar mustache that everyone wants to wear.

Source material:

Half the lines are from previous Imunuri poems [source noted in brackets]

Half the lines are generated by each person present, sparked by a randomly pulled previous Imunuri poem line.

These poems were spontaneously generated by the thirty+ people who attended two live poetry shows. 

Go, go, make more art!

Node: Future Water

These sundry fruits
billowing from early harvest
are a future memory

we fondly recollect
juice as cool as watermelons
when treating water in '33


Spokes and Nodes: 

Connects to Spoke "Moonscape Guava Brain" here: http://imunuri.blogspot.com/2012/08/spokes-moonscape-guava-brain.html

and Spoke "Peach Opal Moon" here: http://imunuri.blogspot.com/2012/08/spoke-1-peach-opal-moon.html

learn

in the palm of the earth
the playground of treebranch
the classroom of dirt patch
o teachers o teachers

the ones who whistled in the leaf fall
the one who put the shine on dew-dazzled roses
the ones who bent the sequoia
to grow sideways so we could scamper up
the ones who put the gloss on magnolia leaves
the ones who learned how to build an arch
so i could shelter out of the strong sun

the ones who played and taught me
how to grin, the ones who hold my hands
as dogwood leaf, heart-shaped,
as southernwood branch
spicy and renewed
the ones who connect across the ages
the ones who opened up their lives, their hearts
so i could shelter out of not belonging
o teachers o sages

the ones who shared their curiosity
the ones who taught me to connect with center
the ones who showed me to my voice
the ones who open up the foot path to trod
between mugwort and rosemary
o teachers o teachers

may your way be blessed and clear
may you always be quenched in your
illimitable desire for knowing
being seeing saying singing grinning gazing
may the way open up
may the way be clear

Beloved Teacher

Beloved Teacher

What color were her heels that day?
I loved my first grade teacher until that day.
I played the gutters in the rain
& splashed & delighted
in water flowing  downhill
in spurts & jumps above curb
& finished splashing
& headed to school
where I found an all so quiet empty playground
& all the class doors closed.
I turned the knob to my room
& it was unlocked, so
I eased into the cloak room
only to hear my beloved teacher call out
“Jim! You are late!”
& the whole class turned & stared at me
& I saw only red
& kicked all of their boots over
& pulled some of their coats on to the floor
& then my beloved in heels
marched me back out the door
to my 1st visit to the principal’s office in first grade
What color were her heels that day?

Influence

1972
Mrs. Olson
Mrs. Tieroff
Mrs. Warner
Mrs. Snyder
Mrs. Passos
Mr. Kajiwara
Mrs. Tanaka
Mrs. Calderon
Mrs. Smith
Mr. Peterson for science
Mrs. Mooney for English
Mrs. Cray for English
Mrs. Cooney for theater
Professor Hollowell
Professor McMichael
Robert Peters
Barney McGrane
Norman Dubie
1993

IMUNURI prompt: lessons taught and learned

School starts this week for many people.

This week, write a poem about a teacher you remember, a specific lesson you learned, or an image from school past, present or future.

Tags: your name, poem, teaching

Spokes: Moonscape Guava Brain

day breaks on the smooth
moonscape of guanyin's guava
and across my scalp


improvised freedom
and calm of resignation
abide in my brain

ISAAC DREAMING

My old

Old father

Strolls a cautious path 

 

Through the familiar public park

With his slow 

Slanted movement 

As he circles flowering beds

Grateful for

The fidelity of spring

Like a disciple of beauty

In rapt attention

Sinking beneath the weight

Of city noise

Uncovering

Surprising truths

At rest in the eye of fear

Rough trunks of his companion trees

 

Steady his shaky hands

Spears of light find his heart 

And pierce its heroic stance

With profound silence

Uncensored beauty

Beneath the weight of noise

IMUNURI Prompt: carry on!

Please carry on with bridges and spokes. New prompt next week.

The Filtering of Light

In a space we call dreaming
where body and brain step off
different platforms like when trains
going off in different directions
take us here take us there
only to return anew somehow
magically or maybe oddly
to that place we call awake

While dreaming all the world
arises and falls seeps in vaguely
staying as light as salt crystals
scattered on potatoes steaming
giving rise to taste what is more
true the salt or the root or the heat
do each of these overhear the other
mixing metaphors soil and cuisine

Dreams we call them conversations
they are each one overheard by this
collective organism of perception
yours mine ours who possesses
and what is private public distinct?
We send you off to do the deed
only to come along tag along with
knowingly or unknowingly so

The body awake a node or locus
a conglomeration somehow particular
to one yet an entanglement quantum
of several or many spread over
here over there transparencies one
into and through another another
indistinguishable where if any are
the seams as each interpenetrate all

An arc of overhearing

D, M, J, T, & L ~ Wishing you all a wonderful round of readings today and tomorrow ... love, Janice

For "J", Scooter and Daniel ~ In Portland

I've noticed  

Your love of shrines

Of wheels and paradox

The music of your naming

The distant realms of you

 

Spoke 1: Peach Opal Moon

the moon peach opal

defies trees to come to me

flies across black night

dwell here, fill my eyes,

saturate my brainpan with 

cosmic guanyin light

Prompt: Play the Recombinant Poetics Game, Spokes and Bridges

During these days of poetic connection, let's take poetic inspiration from a brainchild of Bill Seaman (Fields of Meaning/Becoming in Recombinant Poetics, 1998) regarding electronic poetics: 

PS - don't forget the great Imunuri Portland readings & interactive happenings --  this coming Saturday (6pm, Bipartisan Cafe) and Sunday (7pm, TaborSpace)... 

Poets, this week, post brief haiku-length nodes then comment (with interlinks to which other posts you're responding to) and spoke and bridge to others' in an expanding web and weave.  - See more directions and context below.

Tags: poem, spoke, [poet's moniker]

september 30th 1998

Recombinant Poetics: spokes and bridges

~Seed Nodes: ~associative nodes / pivot modes ~interpenetration mode ~a generation of enfolded fields ~a kluged engine of foci ~folding concentrations ~slippery language / conjunctions of the pivot engines ~meta-associative vessels ~loading the fields ~the distributed meta-field ~a poetics of refined meta-slippage ~a poetics of coming together and falling apart ~the device of chaotic reserves ~the forming of statements having simultaneous force values ~multi valued-logic / poly-valence ~omni-directional ~a grafting of nomenclatures ~fragments of non-related discourses / association bridges ~a direction that finds itself / a field of fields ~a proximity of collision constructions ~the forming of informed modules - informed bridges ~Directions: ~Each participant will form a short focused node (Haiku length). ~Each participant will form a short focused bridge from their node to to three other nodes (created by the participants) - (each Haiku length). This will be ongoing. The bridge may lead away or toward. The bridge may pivot or collapse. The bridge may inform or disinform. The bridge may fold. The function of the bridge may be inventive. The participant will be mindfully/aware of how each bridge functions in proximity. Using email as a generator - copy 3 nodes / form a bridge node from each of these nodes to your own "Seed Node"

Abstract from http://ensemble.va.com.au/enslogic/text/seaman.htm

From Seaman, Bill. (1998, September 30). Fields of Meaning / Becoming in Recombinant Poetics [Essay]. Invited essay from a larger work. Teri Hoskin (Curator), Ensemble Logic + Choragraphy: Electronic poetics.  Retrieved from: http://ensemble.va.com.au/enslogic/text/smn_lct.htm. 

Larger set of 8 responses to the prompt of recombinant poetics: http://ensemble.va.com.au/enslogic/

My Moroccan Quan Yin

I'm circling the words I wrote last year

And the forms created in the garden

There is a story in them of how love falls apart

How we are left standing, sitting, clinging to the ground

Facing the wind and the rubble

In the dream, my grandmother comes wrapped in Quan Yin

She follows her heart to my smile and rests there

The sorrows of hate are washed away from her

She is blessing the people she once cursed

Misread email subject line: We've Improved Cloud Prayer

From: Amazon.com 

Subject: S. Cascadia: We've Improved Cloud Prayer

Amazonian cloud prayer? 

what would it look like? would we be floating on clouds, 

and as clouds are prayers, praying? wielding and sharing 

prayer-rain across landscapes of empowered womyn. 

womyn. Womyn. Gargantuan giantesses, 

as the rain drops hit us/them, we/she/they/shey 

sprout instantly upwards, the cloud prayers activating

the Amazonian genes [/epigenetics], after 2 seconds,
already 10 feet tall

after another 7 seconds, 17 feet tall

after another 3 seconds, over 27 feet tall

our skin drinks in the cloud prayer rain

and we become green and polkadotted and furred

we carry quivers of blessings

we become moon walkers, kicking off

from neptune and venus 

into deep space, flying liberators, on space clouds

raining liberation to other planets

our fertile rain brings the three sisters to sprout 

on the moon: ancient squash, beans, and corns, thriving on Luna

we decide we'd like our cloud prayers to rain down 

galaxies, and reveries launch rainbow planets, purple stripe

zebra people and blue birds with hippopotamus bodies

frolic on magenta planets with tangerine oceans

we keep growing, from the cloud prayers, until 

we are each a big bang flower 

in a multiverse of organismic flourishing

yes, spreading the good news, we've improved cloud prayer