[ ] 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

Loper and riva

The Finish Line

The Finish Line

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

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