Sunday, May 25, 2014

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];

Friday, May 23, 2014

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.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

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.”

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Ether Undone



Ether Undone 

seeds in envelope
loose round, unlocked echo
stretched note, soft coat


Sunday, May 18, 2014

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.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

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.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

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

Monday, May 12, 2014

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.

Friday, May 9, 2014

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


Tuesday, May 6, 2014

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.

Friday, May 2, 2014

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.