Winter stories about my mother

//My 78 year old mother is a heavy set, anxious woman
With a propensity for head spins and passing out in crowds//

~~ Picture her voluptuous ~ rolling ~ undulating form as she falls>~~

" Don't worry!!!!  + Fainting on public transit* is just my blood sugar's way of getting my attention...and I  get to meet the all the good folks who come to my rescue!"
  
On one of my Winter visits, she befriends a stranger on a bus

I witness her over-heating and over-empathizing ways
A bad news magnetism that solicits his lament 
As they stand shoulder to shoulder rocking back and forth with the horde
Her eyes slowly beginning to dissociate as the intensity of his story mounts
Beneath an unbelievably tight girdle~bra and under layers of full winter garb
Her body begins to swell with heat and contract with resistance

Later she feels dizzy and we sit on a bench in the snow

She tells me about her Father. 

~He's been dead for 40 years//nevertheless// she still takes his bad advice##
~Being a man of his times ;;; he was certain that every good woman should:::
~Strap her soft and bulging parts into a proper restraining garment.
  
~Those who did not do so thoroughly disgusted him ~

    there's nothing I can say...
 

Later that season on a usual morning after absentmindedly eating half a pear...

she puts on her gear and delves into the fast moving river of the crowd 

outside the safe isolation of her apartment ;;;; the pear being just enough to jack up her blood sugar ;;;; sending it spiking and then ( at the typically bad time )  crashing///// just a she is ascending the mall escalator == Her body giving into the dizzy spell as her lungs are barely expanding against the formidable resistance of her D cup brazier>><<The backward falling of her hefty mass is broken by  three unfortunate strangers who she will later refer to as her angelic saviors ~~~ she feels her body cradled and it pleases her ^^^ She takes refuge in the strength of their arms when they huddle around her and yell "Call 911!" as they remove the taut fabric of her skirt from the sandwiching pull of metal while the moving staircase delivers them to the top floor where there are more angels who again cry out "911!"   One of them holds her head ))) another takes her hand ((( She gives them permission to unbutton her coat +unhook her bra+///  She feels the rise and fall of her chest}}} 

Bulges  sagging  unharnessed ~~~ everything at ease.+

 

note: after writing this poem i felt very dizzy and had to lay on the floor with my head on my dog's belly

Ooze Too

In must must humor 
Sadly too serious
All the oozing 
of body mind soul

Car vehicle oozed
every last drop of
synthetic or other
wise dark dank oil

Somewhere at some
time oozing spotted
the ground and that
human humor took on

Overly magnificent
proportions of ooze
Can mind just be
mind running amuck? 

What crack? Perhaps
to leave seriousness
to its own and find
what ooze oozes in

Counter gravity in
some say levity it's
come to this in wait
without waiting here

Ooze just is its part 
is everything in its
must --unseen or seen
calibrated to its own

Prompt: Land Curve

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...

The contour of earth can resemble a part of the human form. A craggy shnoz in your local mountain range? The sleeping earth in hillscape? Respond creatively to some site where the local landscape seems as if the earth itself is taking human form. A possible riff: Write from the point of view of this landcurve, and/or include a photograph or drawing.


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



Image credit: Purportedly Zeus in Mount Yiouktas in Heraklion, Crete, photo by Pavaan Solanki,  from Ten incredible faces in the rock

 
Other examples: 
http://www.goddessalive.co.uk/issue19/sleeping_beauty.html
Human influenced: http://naturalworldfoto.blogspot.com/2009/03/anywhere-smile.html

OOZE

Oh, not to be sparked except in the
Os in ooze, as in double-o ooze.
Zero, nothing, like I said, I find nada
Except word itself speaking its own.

The Ooze Blues

I write lyrics with my toes

‘til they wriggle out my shoes

for the rhyme of garden rows

and the rhythms of the ooze.

For the writhing crust sing: Oh!

The subterranean zoos,

The newts and roots and sparkling

in the blackest of earth’s hues.

Down below the darkling spheres,

tuck me deep and hold me close.

Throb, my ears are hearkening.

Thrum, my mouth and eyes and nose.

My particles quarkening

into archipelagos.

Disintegrating the blues.

That’s how it Galapa-goes.

To the ooze all joys and woes.

Wizendom's Folly

skimming floating swimming
this mud stuff of wizendom
virtually invisible coating it all
stuff of stuff discerning no place
one from another no folly such
folly as that only this omniverse
universe's mud bath omnivore

partaking of us sustenance of
stars making up bodies elixir
plentiful often undetermined
yet nonetheless profoundly
material and indivisible same
subtle dividing infinitesimally
stuff on stuff cleaning stuff

follow follow no follow none
outright makings some flying
some swimming others crawl
soup as a concept or nourish me
mineralization biofilm gut deep
remembering primordial soup
bacterial fantasy climbing heights

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 .

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