Monday, May 28, 2012

IMUNURI prompt: Meta

"Torso" by Lauren Ari
This week, write a prompt.

Your prompt might by the only thing you post this week. Or you may follow your own prompt and post the results as well. Or you might post a prompt and follow somebody else's prompt or a prior prompt you may have missed. Or your poem may be about prompts, prompting, being prompted -- or being prompt, which this prompt is not due to the Memorial Day weekend and the vagueries of early summer.

Keep in mind that a prompt can take many forms. You can prompt a poem by requesting a subject.
You can give a few words to be used in the poem or the title.
You can prescribe a form or format.
You can prompt a poem by requiring a certain technique or influence on the action of writing.


Prompt away!

tags [poem, your name, meta]


Morning Flutes

Morning Flutes

Heard above the air-conditioning
Heard across from the snow peaked Rockies
Peals of laughter & peals of bells
Outer skins of our fruits
Allowed to jell
Music of morning flutes

two days of thunder



my nine
year old
friend asks
where it 
comes from
does it go 
sky down or
ground up? 


i don't 
know.


i know the noise
comes after
the light. 


i know 
that friday the
rainbow rises
from where the
air split with 
white.


through the
window at
namaste


restaurant.
coming here
last year jan
uary my 
friend and i
are crashed
into by a two
fisted cell phone
talker, 
zoom.

he split 
my shoulder 
with speed
like a light.
crash like
thunder. 


i know the noise
comes after
the light. 



my nine
year old
friend asks
where it 
comes from
does it go 
sky down or
ground up? 


i still
don't know...
maybe both


maybe when you're in the 
middle of the strike
in the tin
tinn
ab
ulation

there is 
no up 
or down.
just crash
just zounds
just bright.



5-28-12

Sunday, May 27, 2012

The sky brighter and the buildings broader


You leave the spa into a different world.
While you were in there floating away
on hot water springs or dissolving salt
into the sweat on your friend's back,

they were rebuilding each building,
repaving every street in perfect replica
of what you knew. Even the trees,
and plants, even the hills and clouds

and sky reformed into the image
of what existed before you paid
your money, locked up your street
clothes and melted yourself away.

That's why the city is nearly perfectly
identical, and why, as you walk through it
going back to your car, every aspect,
great and minute, gets set to begin anew.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Prompt: Part of the Mystery -or- music in the morning

Dansch, 2011, Mystery Rain

 I woke up this morning with this portion of the song "Fall Down as the Rain"  going through my head...

Jennifer Berezan's rendering of Joe Crookston's "Fall Down as the Rain"

When that eagle learns to fly
and flutter from that tree,
I'm going to turn myself around again
Part of the mystery

Part of the mystery
Part of the mystery
Turn myself around again
Part of the mystery

This week, write about turning yourself around again as __what?___, or about turning around again as part of the mystery. I know it can be difficult to discuss the numenous/ineffable, that's part of the Imunuri poetry challenge this week, to write about the ineffable.

Another possible direction: the first line of the poem/song talks about turning around and falling down as the rain.

And/or, write a poem riffing on a song that comes to you on waking.

Enjoy!

Tags: poem, mystery, poet's moniker

Friday, May 18, 2012

[ ] loose

I've been cutting away for these years
these years like left over one-time-use items
I wash them after
insist on getting m--e
of my share

Finally the truth
[much is worth less
than initially sequenced]
essential code fragments
figures notes text on page

All that
emptiness
as if less than
or more emptiness

achieves better results

Add it all on only to take it off
 Add it all on only to take it off
  Add it all on only to take it off

    it all     only to take   it
 Add            to              off
              on        off

 As if writing soars
like wings for elusive
nature       sadly falling
one feather at a time

Such tender business
cutting back
through cutting
slicing out a piece
pie that life upside
cake down

I feel the loss
of what was
patriarchal
purpose passed potentially promised
father figure
tacking the likeness
next to something
cracking through
yellowed paper peeling now

Why so sad said she
tearing into tenderness
swapping swaddling
hold hard nose
firm boss [bite through]
where remains now

Cut through this
I dare you
can only be done
by -adding back- in
flesh to tender bone




pluto retro grade 5 17 2012

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

The Finish Line

The Finish Line

breathless at last/
happy to have left
a few poems behind the
finish line

Monday, May 14, 2012

the nerve

it seems funny
but sometimes it isn't
i argue the point with myself
i toss and turn inside
a tiny spot
could only be
like some vital
biological
paralogical
etymological
diving divining
where knowing is
such as things guided

many things take on
this sourcing as
metabolic highroad
only to find now
destruction* too is
divine sourcing
energy   making space
for what life
is yet
to flow
so why do i resist

this divinity
within the very
sinew and bone
the marrow
the root of wisdom
tooth now aflame
with its work
for this time
achingly true
offering itself
once again such
that i live true

so much energy
yet emerging?
or here perhaps?
and i just confused
with it in its old
form reprimand
beaten back
that wood so surprisingly
springing forth once
again and again
life is just that
innately true
unexpected pure

something at work
                is this private?
sure to hold
               anything in the way?
my attention
               i place myself
yet with the wrong
               here with this
supposition
               nourishment
can it falter?
               sustenance
              



under a dictionary entry for metabolism: 

"Two kinds of metabolism are often distinguished: constructive metabolism, the synthesis of the proteins, carbohydrates, and fats that form tissue and store energy, and destructive metabolism, the breakdown of complex substances and the consequent production of energy and waste matter."

IMUNURI prompt: cutting away

The name IMUNURI comes from cutting all extra letters and spaces from the sounds in the sentence, "I am you and you are I."

The image at the right comes from a piece of soft linoleum where everything but the image is cut away to make a stamp.

Natalie Goldberg quotes William Carlos Williams speaking to Allen Ginsberg: "If only one line has energy, then cut the rest out and leave only that one line. That one line is the poem."

This week, create a poem by or about cutting away.
You might take an early draft or freewrite and find the one-line poem within it.
You might try a blackout poem, cutting away from a found source of words everything that isn't a poem.
You could write a poem in a linoleum cut.
You could write an epic-length poem on themes of cutting away.


If you choose to create outside the usual ideas of what poetry is, simply cut those idea away and create.
Or cut away every distraction between you and your language to make an uncuttable unit of expression.


labels: Cutting, poem, your name

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Roots = up

Jean-Francois Dupuis
Let's imagine the roots as the plant's
upper hands, burrowing head-first
below ground to embrace toward
the center of the pull. That makes
the out-of-earth bodies of trees,
grasses, and all rooted vegetation
into the leggy tendrils dangling
out into cool pools of lit
and darkened space.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

return of the long dormant drachma

Return of the long dormant drachma

the dream drip continued
in this remodeled puppet show
neither weather nor Mother nature
needed group therapy but I sure did

after I ripped a page from the desk calendar
to reveal my birthday
         welcome
an Egyptian lavatory chair
found in a tomb in Thebes

take off my charm bracelets
give me a blood test
even while
tied off with a salmon colored scarf
the dream drip continues
& Dr. Zhivago stands accused of
political malpractice

pewter grapes
surround my heartbeat
& weeds whisper
return of the long dormant drachma
to Greek shores

Sittin pretty

Sittin pretty

he grew as a root
from the base of a tree
 to sit Siddha Bhodisattva
   just above the ground

as i watched
an El Greco light
  emanated about him

he began to vibrate & continued to vibrate
                until
i no longer could see him

& the sky beyond a tree
was blue & cloud free

Monday, May 7, 2012

Prompt: The Root Going Down

From Wikimedia Commons, Tree Roots
 and Temple, Ta Prohm, Angkor,
Cambodia (David Sim, 2009,
Creative Commons 2)
Let this prompt your poem-making this week: Begin at the surface of the earth and go down. Like a root. Follow the meristem cells as they grow down. Wander blind, by feel, through the gritty texture, through the nourishing dirt. Find nurture and break it down. Do roots slurp? Do they intertwine on purpose, like some daisy chains of doseydoe's? What do roots intend? What do roots portend? You could start at an etymological root, but keep going, deeper....


Travel down deep. Give a new meaning to the computer phrase "root path"...


Keywords: poem, root, [poet's moniker]

I Protect Protest I

[in response to the prompt: Reckless ~ April 22 – May 7 2012]

What is there
to protect or be                 protesting from?
This question
gives gave given
to me as a gift
from above
above
above
above
I feel
the ‘above’ (as in
above/below)
is so not real
is    so   not   real
and yet
yet yet
yet
it runs me
like the protestation
that I feel        within me
yet there is a Me that is
not any of this
I know that for certain

and yet I’ve carried
this wandering baggage                               
trying to clean it up
find it a home and more
all unconsciously as if as if
there was        something
to do about
the                 it
that is
not an            it
after all
all the
                     charades
all the
supposing
all the
inner              wrestling
                                  with deities
that have long long long been over
their reign in this world

what is there to protect
I was told the answer
to this question
I was told that I am only protecting
         in self preservation
protecting myself <<<<<from>>>>> myself


II

In that answer
the walls come tumbling down
not like Humpty Dumpty
but like the fairy tale world
that all the deity’s horses
and all the deity’s men
couldn’t put Humpty together again


The News Is
this may be the best turn out of any fairy tale
yet we are told to weep and sorrow
at this outcome
and    even that  

is the clue       that was there         all along

Can what be dashed on the ground
be real
in the first place

if there was a first place at all

What do others think of us, when all that crying
is the very factor with which we can begin
to test
         and taste and feel and touch and gaze
into ourself(ves)
w i t h  t h a t  l i s t e n i n g

self pre serve vation
self press innervate
whooosh
furupmph
phweevovvle              




Thanks to William Linville, co-Creator extraordinaire

Sunday, May 6, 2012

5 fists from sally - as the saints come flowing in


from sally/for sally

a
in qigong after the meditation and before the dharma talk
in a shambly old church east of the "jesus is the light
of the world" sign in 70000 point font next to a rise of old doug fir

towards the end, the instructor tells us to make fists and 
be fierce like lions, punching out then scooping back

i can't make fists for the lion, though i still know how to growl
but fists are too much like fighting, like breaking both the bones in my 
arm when i threw the right hook like all the yelling

i lunge out with an open palm, fierce in my nonviolence
the palm up a kind of offering, a kind of maple leaf offered up to sky
sourced from earth, the strong dirt that made the leaf of my palm
zens me still

b
not that the earth can't be angry
it's just i've had enough ire for several generations
haven't we 
all?

c
it's why some of us are committed
to not having human offspring
to not make more of what has so recently become
a plague of fists, a triumph of stomping

d
"when the saints come marching in"? they got it all wrong
when the wood nymphs come floating in
when the spirits of water come flowing in
when the great transformative fire tongues 
come licking in 
when the springs of air come zephyring in
even come earthquake even come tornado
there is no marching, never any marching
in the well order of things

e
my friend suggests to make a poem with 5 things. 
five in my tribe is the star of provisioning, the flow of 
ideas, inspiration, feelings, embodiment, and guidance
that weave into sinews into my being.

this 5 fold weave breathes me to life.

i come to this poem not with a fist but a maple leaf
newly birthed in spring spinning to summer
the green light flowing through
i uncurl my fingers and offer an open leaf up
5 fronds for luck
5 fronds for making
5 fronds for mercy
5 fronds for health
5 fronds for justice



Friday, May 4, 2012

Levity/Gravity after 5Rhythms

spanslip - clicktrack - blankflankanklebankthanktank -tinwhistle - qi 
 

                                                           Levity. Gravity.
           a page inside her book
                                   to love every stage

        pat my back, unseen hand
                                                i pass the hardwood mistakes

 clay jug need not move              the pitcher does not need lifting to pour

        open sound
                             away rain

                                                    bye, bay  bay, bye




Wednesday, May 2, 2012

5 times in the zen box


4 times I smoothed clear the zen box


the first with my breath
the second with my hand
the third with my foot
the fourth in my mind


the fifth time the zen box cleared before me
lightning (not St. Nick)
came
       d
         0
             w
               n
the
   chimney

lit the hearth

backed the cat back
whiskers singed
            o
              n
                t
                 o
the Turkish carpet
          of
golden corn sprouting.