Imunuri Prompt: futurtopia - birdrels and squirds

ebirdseed's Pteradactyl Squirrel

What would it be like to be half one species, half another? In some futur-topian hybrid (hybird?) universe, either due to apocalypse or creative diversification, some poets and writers imagine a world of mixture. Squirrels and birds... wings and hooves (unicorn and pegasus, anyone)? Either through inventing a hybrid poetic form, or by writing a poem of a species hybrid, imagine the future ...

Feed the Birds T-shirt Design

tags: squird, poem, [poet's moniker];

Drought

Much too early

In the Spring of 2014

Native wild bulbs were blooming in full

Unwinding from their underground Winter spools 

On the hillsides above the creek.

Along sidewalk gardens

The Daffodils 

Planted only for the pleasure of the eye,

Were plump.

Their split yellow buds deepened in color.

Reminding me of Canaries bringing a warning 

Of dangers near at hand.

Late Fall, 2013

In dry, hot California,

Peoples minds turned to water.

We dreamed of rivers and creeks.

Those impartial carriers of sustenance

Or poisons introduced

By our ancient fantasy of dominion

And the injury of merely 

Standing aside as an onlooker 

Or a newsagent 

Who broadcasts reason

While well-mannered rhetoric

Masks destruction.

Mid Winter 2013, 

Brought the record drought we all feared.

Unprecedented since 1929.

Our dreams brought us images of

Women singing for rain.

Their bodies merging with 

Alders and Salmon in the shallow creek.

We knew that our lives were 

Completely dependent

On those northwest winds lifting off the ocean

Just forty miles away.

Eventually I saw them 

Pushing and forming the hint of a cloud

Reflected in a pool along a brook

Where a fallen tree had stilled the flow of water

Creating a mirror for the sky.

Late Winter, 2014

Real rains came on the cusp of our despair.

Gradually.

Constantly.

Adding weight and expanse to the sponge of soils.

Settling into underground streams that ran joyful

Like sleeping snakes awakened from long hibernation.

Set free to play their sinuous games once again.

Anchored in service to an inexact compass.

Elastic.

Adaptable.

Unforeseeable in it's shifting.

Δ

“Sailor’s delight, maybe,” she snides,

“but those clouds are menacing weird.”

We lose west a couple seconds,

and our internal clocks spin wild

as though we’ve driven since midnight

instead of since noon, and the sound

of breakers becomes Atlantic—

and we’ve gone back several decades.

“Like a storm’s coming in.” She checks

the rearview, the speedometer.

“Maybe it’s apocalyptic,”

said absently as infrared.

“Maybe those clouds,” she extends rock-

and-roll fingers, “are the heralds

of The STORM of ARMAGEDDON!”

We drive a while, pass a schoolyard.

“Probably just the regular kind.”

Ether Undone

Ether Undone 

seeds in envelope

loose round, unlocked echo

stretched note, soft coat

This Matter Exists, Like a Broken Window

I want to swim
in luminiferous
aether, backstroke
in lighter air
than real air,
float above
quantum vacuums
that fill empty
with perfumes
everyone yearns for,
because there's no
sensory wading
in aether single,
where gestures
remain uncertain.

From the Crisper

You are fresh grassy

lush leaf & raw tender.

Look at this verdant

bud, burgeoning

& developing, such

flourishing foliage.

You are maturing

and pullulating

recent sprouts.

I call you supple,

from verduous beds --

you are half formed,

pliable, unsophisticated

& perfect for salad.

Pantone Poem

 Pantone Poem

shade only known in dream

without sewing thread seam

sifted sans flour

shifted sands hour

characters chronologically mixed

rainbow not fixed

step on stage in no order

script has no border

lose their place

only to be replaced

by best forgotten

IMUNURI Prompt: Pantone

271 Years Before Pantone, an Artist Mixed and Described Every Color Imaginable in an 800-Page Book

Choose a color to inform a poem.
As mood.
As subject.
As imagery.
As word or langauge.
But as you write avoid using the name of the color within the poem.
Can you avoid using the name of any color in the poem and still evoke color. As mood, subject, imagery, word, language?

LABELS: your name, "poem," pantone

Smells like Spirit

In an aboriginal

unified field theory, Sound,

the primal all-belly, churns

every vibration around

wind-blown halls of a conch shell.

Matters foment and rebound,

karma chasing chemicals

to holy transformations

making not just sound but smell,

wafts mixed in air and airborne

wavelengths of primeval salt—

ferric, uric, sulfuric—

animate material.

Gas breath in solid music,

prime reason in primal cause.

That’s why your nose, mute and quick

is your wisest oracle.

Appeal

Unruly wind, spin-kiss this blue soul wing of mine and waft
me above coulees of cataracts, heedless
of my malaise;
catapult my wary skin skyward, heave this heart
into the hail's fussilade
where I might tumble into
perilous light.

Uneasy

     Uneasy

I do not cross the street to get a closer look (to menace, intrude)

I am able to not write that scene to continue 

in this 

uneasy

knowing a Camus moment is possible

an alignment of geological pressures coinciding

one one thousand is enough to realize to shift the focus quickly (to not dwell, not obsess)

take the finger off the trigger the eye from the object change the subject (not subject)

accept distrust of the solidity of the earth we stand on

allow the possible breach, an opening unexpected

a trembling rumbling inevitable but not time predictable

step off the curb with a surety the next earthquake will be felt

May Morning

Mountain fog

forces its heavy

emptiness on fungi,

fondles its way up

forest pines and taps

its tendrils against

skies too innocent

to swallow such

steaminess.

Imunuri Prompt: Elemental - Aether

scribe an offering 
inspired by the element of aether, space, akasha

what hums in you, what moves your essence, what shimmers you, and where is the unseen permeating you? what, if alchemically aligned, would be activated by your subtle vibrations? how is the origin of creation densely interwoven in you? scribe with the unseen pen. write aether.

Tags: aether, epic-earth, poem, <poet's moniker>

*****
Epic-Earth on Imunuri: 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...

Image source: NASA, eXtreme deep field of space (XDF), image and higher res image, Public Domain. Above is a youtube compendium video flying through the eXtreme deep field. "This is the eXtreme Deep Field, a composite shot of all the galaxies in a teensy view of space, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's two primary cameras over the past decade. Look at all those galaxies!" (from Geekologie)

For more, see Aether including the idea that it was "subtler than light" (Fludd) and Akasha, the "substratum of sound" (The Nyaya and Vaisheshika schools of Hindu philosophy).

asperity and rupture: quakewriting

asperity

An asperity is an area on a fault that is stuck. The earthquake rupture usually begins at an asperity. 

- http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/glossary/?term=asperity



this is the lethal consequence of block, writers
words stuck behind the fingernail and retina, how
they build
up


forcefield   stockpile   kryptonitelock

part of myself clamping part of myself
as if somehow silencing would shut down the fount of truthing
this rubbing sanding clamping cramping bracing coerc
sing asperity troubling vexing vortexing rupturing out

sputter clench sputter clench press sprout
spring sling stout shout
tumbling rumbling fiercing forking flocking
word quake bursting out
rabblemassing crumble sassing Shasta bubbling
seesawing whipsawing magmagyrating
dirge-liloquy-abrupt-abruption
shimmyword shake eruption

temerity loquacity vivacity bulge force spout

like the pacific coastal mountains
I didn't know
who I was
how i was
til it all came out.