Those impatient shadows

Those impatient shadows

grey persuaders
those impatient shadows
walking in step with me
two timing dance partners
sneaky fellows

grey persuaders
those impatient shadows
at my back
pushing me into dark pools
of my own matter

grey persuaders
those impatient shadows
attack my good sense
make me fall out
of doubt on to my own arrows

grey persuaders
those impatient shadows
take a little glance
turn it into an obsessed trance
believe my own chatter

grey persuaders
those impatient shadows
clamp on their cuffs
knock me down
lock me up rough

grey persuaders
those impatient shadows
my personal guides
take me to dangerous places
lead me into riptides

no safe bets
no way  home
with those grey persuaders
those impatient shadows
stuck at my side

I got time

I got time

A gospel call and response

[A lead singer leads the song and the chorus responds with echos or exclamations.

After the third verse, different singers improvise the lead vocal, and when everybody has had a turn
and the assembly is satisfied, the first two verses are repeated with a long ritardando at the end.

Chords are major I-IV-V-ii in familiar gospel style, played by everybody who has an instrument.

Dancing is encouraged.]

Oh, I got time.  (I got the time.)

Yes, I got time. (I got the time.)

Now, I got time (I got the time.)
To do what I love, (Do what you love!)

Do what I want, (What you want!)

Do what I need. (What you need!)
Yes, I got time. (I got the time.)
I got time. (Hallelu!)

There was a time (Once was a time)

I didn’t see (Lord have mercy!)

That I had time (Yes, yes!)
Thought time had me. (Mm-mm!)

But gradually (Praise the Lord!)
I found I’m free, (Hallelujah!)
And I got time. (I got the time)
Yes, I got time. (I got the time!)

To read to my daughter

To drink a little water

To see a river otter

To read Harry Potter

To save a quarter

To drink some porter

I got time. (I got the time!)
Yes, I got time. (I got the time!)

To do my study.

To see my buddy.

To get real muddy.

Even get bloody,

Go down in the floody

Play with Silly Putty.

I got time. (I got the time!)
Yes, I got time. (I got the time!)

To answer my mail

To wag my tail

Fix the hole in the pail

Eat dino-kale

Get hit by hail

Get old and frail

I got time. (I got the time!)
Yes, I got time. (I got the time!)

[This goes on for some time with different singers all taking turns at these listing verses 

wherein six lines all rhyme ending with the refrain “I got time…”

The lines should come rapidly, spontaneously, sloppily and joyously
in the surrendering spirit of improvisation.

More potential verses are shown toward the bottom of this post.]

inside the box

inside the box

that there was light inside the innermost box
only the raven could see
red as black as the sea
& in the northwest
great carved poles with eyes
& beaver faces & tails
& ravens & eagles
stand in front of rectangular wooden houses
made from trees
& my sweet traveling companion gave me
a carved raven box
full of Haida stories.

IMUNURI prompt: write a song

For me, this article from writersrelief.com wasn't eye-opening. When we talk about musicians who are also known as poets, who doesn't think of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell (misspelled in the article) and John Lennon. Jim Morrison called himself "American Poet," though my personal bent is much stronger toward Patti Smith (right) and Tom Waits.  But I have even greater attention these days for poet/musicians like Mark Growden and Paul McNees, among the many who are not as famous as their talent warrants.

Though not enlightening, I found the Writer's Relief article inspiring. It reminded me how adjacent the countries of poetry and music are and how extensive and blurred the border between.

This week, write a song. Consider submitting in audio format or with written notes about the sound and style of your song. And consider increasing the attention you give to the sounds of the words you choose.

[keywords: song, poem, your name]

VACANT~ a tribute to “Growing Home” a Chicago inner city urban farm

Pace along pace...

Husk of emptied womb flying

Constellating seeds of grace

Rains from yesterday's crying

Farmer claims this vacant place

Lost

Between broken row housing

Wisdom's hands, hips and face

Her hooded scarecrow rising

house empty

house empty

no tea or coffee
naked fixtures no bulbs
toe torn linoleum
shadows removed from closets
echoes stuck in stairwell
white plastic covered doorbell
entryway long uncrossed
dust settled untasted
paled green wall untouched
no fingerprint evidence left

neighbor points her cane
& says “ It’s a shame to see
an empty house like that
that someone could live in”.

The empty house

Wood floors, walls and angles
encompass rectangles of space.
Here's a room with no trace
of any living race; for no
bedstead, bookshelf, bureau,

robe, roast or radio is there

in the small, quasi-lair.

It is daytime. The bare window

permits the light to flow

in from beyond and go around

the walls, then on beyond

this room. It isn't bound by four

walls, for one is no more

than made-believe—and forfeited

since she uncommitted

her game and admitted that toys

aren't interesting as boys.

With a clattering noise, her dolls

fell into cardboard stalls

and their home's sunny halls went down

to the crawlspace, a town

of vacant, underground tangles.

snatch

i.

the unborn

who are a mighty tide of life

waiting in the now-ocean of future unfurling

beside us,

inside us

like all the ocean tides that will ever

kiss the lips of sand and foam

where life started/starts/will start

ii.

if you think it’s all going to

hell in a handbasket

imagine meeting a woman in labor

in the middle of the sidewalk,

water broken,

bellowing – if we didn’t

know she was in labor

we’d just think she was crazy,

going to hell

in a handbasket even

iii.

instead, trust

that all is somehow well

that we are breaking open

into something capable of carrying on

life

iv.

wombs,

handbaskets,

houses,

tides:

the world, which is a woman, earthen, holy,

dynamic, nurturer, nest, cavern, wholeness

the earth-world

mound magma gyre pyre pyrenees

plankton skeleton algae guano

tornado hive

is making more life in the snatch

womb basket house tide

ladle

kangaroopouch

of possibility

v.

remember to stand

close to the teacher

(who’s channeling the future unborn

laden with advice)

as we learn to weave

(how life weaves)

and listen, and

for the sake of life, of earth

do as she guides us

pick up the floss, the straw, the branch

and flex it through, connect, and flex;

weaving things back

together

again

IMUNURI prompt: Empty House

Write a poem about an empty house.


Searching for an image to go with this week's prompt was a good reminder of how many ways there are to go with this idea.

labels: poem, emptyhouse, your moniker

*

If you'd like some notions to toss into the hopper of your creative mind, here are some to consider:

... interior or exterior...

....your house, your prior house, someone else's house, nobody's house, whose house?

...why empty?

...shack, mansion, condo...

...house also means the seating or the audience in a theater; house also relates to the 12 divisions of the celestial sphere; house also means a gambling establishment; house can also refer to the body; house is also a verb.

... and what about the word empty?!

A cappella in Full Moon

[Bravura]

Andante moderato, appena forte

If I could prompt you
I'd say and I'd ask and I'd sit
at your feet, I'd not implore
but I would shed a tear
that contains all the Love
Unrequited love
A love that waits
The love impeded
and Love Unstained

Con brio

Know there's a time
It's a time and a place
Where there's no longer a race
Or any bindings

No sweepings away
Or saying what's Nay
No findings of fault
Just form or Gestalt
 
Meno mosso
 
That tear-like magic elixir
Here to soften Hearts and clear the Eyes
 ~ darkened with places once passed ~
 ~ whetted by songs not sung ~
 ~ covered and caught in webs left hanging ~
 ~ made fearful for being held back ~
It is a sacred thirst that calls for This
Drink This Remedy
"Unfettered"

Adagio

Know there's a time
It's a time and a place
Where there's no longer a race
Or any bindings

No sweepings away
Or saying what's Nay
No findings of fault
Just free-form or Gestalt

Con calore

Imagine what freed might now come
The ribs lungs rise and fall in stride
Tightness finds its ease shoulders
Glide drop their burdens dissolving
Arms disarmed fingers spreading
Spine fluid lending an ear
Down to the toes circulating

[Cadenza]

Senza interruzione 

I am me and you are me and you are you and I am you
and you are me and I am me and I am you and you are you
please let this harmony melt away everything that is not you
and is not me and is not free and is not clearly the LOVE of We

{repeat x1}

ASHER

From bellysoft arms

 

Her fallen boy keeps falling

 

Mouthing  recycled speech

 

Heaviest at it’s lowest point

 

While wearing her bullish head

 

The stench that still owns him

In the Key of See

See me play

Feel me glow

See walking high

Now gliding low

See me like you

See you like me

Let's eat vindaloo

Up in this tree

Showering down

Singing with glee

See naked lovers

Wallowing 'til 3

See yummy green

Drink pot of tea

Over the top

In spite of me

Walking again

Playing even more

See how I run

Down the seashore

See me say 'Hey!'

Swallow me whole

I'm the mystery

Slide down the pole

Happy for you

See how free

See how doubly

Wonderful this'll be?

our alphabet is missing its third letter

our alphabet is missing its third letter

In surf green waters of answerless days
beyond mile limits
offshore LTDs
destroy mainland radio waves
raise bus fares
amidst sleazy affairs
land & take-off in seaplanes
drop off new loads of ten keyers
& deet to kill the skeeters.

Where the pale blue wren
self-sure ways
wet toed stands
in sea palm sways?

Not here, not now
when our alphabet is missing its third letter
postmarked yesterday.

“Konnektion is not a street fight” ~ quote by Brene Brown

As the front lies in a Kontinuum it's hard to see the sweat

display of

Salivating moral ambiguities

Akkurate to 500 million.

Future rightness for the benefit of ALL.

Digital money gum.....Warm gut spills.

Krumbs: are for one's very own Kradle.

Kourage: is vulnerability up klose.

Kollision with a full size glass House of God:  is Light sustaining Light.

Eichmann believed in the same sentimental notions

that the rest of us do

the Real in M A N .

Goats kreating silk stronger than steel.

Knight and maiden and their inkorruptable love.

Earth Alive

Question: How do you feel part of the earth, the earth as alive? What rejuvenates you in this? 

Answer: When I think about how the Earth is alive, and how dream and revery take me out of my smallbuzzing brain into the larger aliveness, I think about a dream I had a long while ago that stays with me, about flying. In a way, the dream feels like earth aliveness in that it's like I'm in a bird body. I see starkly down into the land that's going by. I feel the air buoying my body and also whizzing past my beak. It's exhilarating. I am keenly aware of the trees, I see/sense their large green beings far out from their trunks and limbs. Also, my sense of "I"-ness is different than in my waking human body. It's almost as if when I put my attention to something, I go down into it, into its depth and also see/sense from its point of view. Every part of the aliveness has a different signature/feel/way of see/sensing. --I also get this feeling sometimes while gardening, tuning into a plant, I feel it's ?aura? ?energy body? ?present momentness?, also from its being, its aliveness/wholeness.-- In the fragment of the dream of flying, I go down to sit/sense/rest am in a large tree, inside of its greenness, both in body and in that feltsense extending beyond the tree body form. That's it, like many dreams, it's not a story, it's just a moment that stays, that felt sense, that different way of being. When I think of your question about how it feels to relate with the larger Earth, that's what arrives, these bird-being tree-present senses and feelings. In good, whole moments of waking, I also feel inklings of this. And when I arrive/arise/realize that's where I am, I feel renewed, deepened, fresh, alive. Something else, almost submerged, underneath, but that is tingling and alive, emerges. My senses widen. I know I am whole while also being dissolved/merged/thrummed/extended into everything else, and that too feels whole. 

Healer's orders: ride the ferry

Healer’s orders:

ride the ferry.

Breeze, fill me

with your ease

of flux. Mountain

and green paradise

ground: lie easy

in my sight.

Day, bay, infuse

my every sigh.

I have nowhere

I must go

The only needs

will find me

as they may.

The white wake

takes me there.

The Letter "C"

Write a poem without using the letter C. 

It can be short, it can be abtuse, it cannot ever have a caboose (or a chandelier). No candles or crutches, no chimpanzee. What will we do without the letter C? 

 

Poets, please add three labels:  "poem" "letter" "[poet's moniker]"


Image thanks to Matt Lyon (2009). 

Where they came from

First Nation's TORONTO

Place of meetings

First Summer's mania. Humid and full.

Hot air pushing through the bloated corridors

Of our First World/ New World apartment building.  High rise melting pot of global soul emergencies.

Neighbor's quick courtesies. 25 mother tounges. Indescribable colour.

Something like a love rush (post a British colonial purge)

Back from the days of War On The Horizon

And mother stuck in: “Everything has got to be OK now!” with

“Were it not for these winters and this damned English language!”

Week old curried elevator rides bring us her dollar a day patrons.

Our rooms filled with their freshly soiled children.

Her frantic need to save them.

Obsessive holding that halved me body and soul.

Pinning the bizarre relief of her neglect

Across a section of conqueror's culture

Recieving the difference as a wedge.

On and into the tales that throated a constant cackling.

Sweetly stained wording. Perfumed. Hidden contracts burgeoning.

Air Canada 1968. Refugee immigrant status.

Arrive to snow and pale pink skies.

Leave the spices, tagine and carpets behind.

Desert wind, pomegranate reds and spiced heat.

Men bent over in prayer...wailing their praises five times a day.

of & upon the 27 senses, Anna Blossom:

the bridge

speaking poem amongst the din
                  what was seen remains non specific words
tires spinning metal stretch across the bay
                  heavy heart unburdening without record
this poem naked artless true
                  heart listening within its own measure
nonetheless tasting moments otherwise
                  melancholia undeniable sated
shadowed hard to know what dance
                  all things connected underbelly back body
what contact what continuity
                  touching tenderness speaking unspoken
the span the span the span the span
                 all-is-well-all-is-well-all-is-well-all-is-well
eventual arrival the side yet reached
                

27 rainbows

What if they are right

to count everything but

we’re counting the wrong things?

What if it’s not pulses systolic calories -

what if it’s rainbows?

What if we each only get 27 rainbows?

Or thirty millipede crossings,

or 79 keenings or 9 fruit falling on heads

or 23 frisbee misses?

Are we living in a calculator?

Or it more of praise that the wheels and spheres

churning in galactic bliss

blow round on? 32,758 smiles,

4,569 one eyebrow rising while the other doesn’t.

789 spok hands perfectly split?

Any of these critical thresholds might

involute us into black holes of metabeing,

emitting life so much

it’s like we’re sucking it all in,

we’ve skipped planes of existence.

Don’t trouble on death from this air-sucking sprint,

a momentary blip, bringing grins.   

Really we’re dice tumbling in the

yahtzee cup of life, ripening towards our

27 rainbows.

A portal way to

27 rainbows. 

The Circle of Three

  The

  Two       And there was Two      And

   was                                              there

Three                                           There was                                           Circle

 One

   there                                              was

   And       Two was there And      Two

of

Five Queen Bees

Five Queen Bees

oh they each had their share
of satellite bees
loyal tees all
home before dark fell
no lies to tell.

still isolated queens they be
never to meet
nor drink together tea
solo queen bees.

one day on the same day
all their subjects flee
swarm away
up to the neighbor’s tree.

in their hives,
the five queens
now each alone
cherish the silence of their own
quiet zone at last
but do miss their subjects passed.

they live off last year’s honey
but without company
and never to meet
these five queen bees
alone in their hives
so end their lives.

Prompt - This Living Hand

This Living Hand

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—

I hold it towards you.

                                                        John Keats

Write about your hand "capable of earnest grasping" or your hand dealt or going back in time to shake John's hand or the last hand you held or the last hand held out to you, just not one hand clapping

Setting Fires

Setting Fires

burning poems
in
broad daylight

short skirt

matchstick grasses
set
to ignite

grasshoppers, songbirds, honey bees
play their sounds
in the westerlies

burning poems
in
broad daylight

toy soldiers
fire crackered
burnt

dirt spurts

poppies, weed seeds, sweet peas
in the westerlies

burning poems
in
broad daylight

worded paper

set alight

thrills, chills, hills
in the westerlies

blackened
before night

To capture the fallen grape

To capture the fallen grape

The hand squeegees out and rasps too loud against the shelf with garden books

a tall shelf, one with those heavy heave-ho books

to capture the fallen grape.

That’s the kind of thing that’ll give us away. That’s the kind of thing that

Marmalade the orange-hair scoundrel, our school marm

would have chastised us about in “Advanced Sneakery.”

For how many aeons have we perked along in the rooms behind the rooms,

living behind the bookshelves that are really doors?

Sometimes I wish I could come out into the light of day

though moonbeams through the west window and

night dances are full of joy. We are Anne Frank always

and suppressed joy, now that mortal humans cannot stand

the thought of us; their reality spaces continue to narrow.

We live in the ecotone, the thin limn, the third space

behind the bookcases they don’t know slide. One time I dropped my

writing nib, another time a nub of cheese. Getting their

refrigerator doors open can be trouble. Their insomnia

can be frightening: sudden stuttering bathrobe looming.

Sometimes the fable of the nuclear war feels like a dream.

If they would just die, as Genny suggests, we’d have the

run of the place. But life would be hard, how to get used to the

sweep of open land, the cold touch of stars, the rush of air, the rain.

We’d have to start stockpiling pincushion seeds, and wild mustard

against the frost times.

I’m game, ready to be released from

the time of humans; they’ve lost their way.

Perhaps if we can telegraph our kin

who live in the pentagon bookshelves,

we’ll do them in. 

Responding to

http://imunuri.blogspot.com/2012/06/ideas-for-prompts.html

Prompt 4:

4. Secret doors in bookcases. Pick a wall in your home, a book case or shelf, and write a poem describing the life of the beings who come and go through the secret access door of that shelf, which actually slides back to reveal... what? Use concrete words and full senses to make it real for us...

Con brio ~ Spirited, a prompt

Music and Poetry, close relatives, if not siblings, share so much. Both rest in the hands and hearts of humans in numerous kinds of relationships. They are both scores at times, as Music is written and Poetry is written and then both are expressed or 'read' from those scores such that Original Breath of their Emergence may be again tasted. 

This prompt is an invitation to explore ways of notating your poetry score such that your score has the benefit of noted tempo (timing), dynamics (loudness), emotionality (quality of feeling) for the reader and for the possible speaker of your written word.

Here's some direction, if you wish: look up some the musical terms on the Wikipedia sites (see below) to stir inspiration in whatever way you'd like your 'musicality' to be expressed in your poetry. There was a time when composers only had their notations to convey all the other aspects of their music than simply the notes on the page.

A page of the heart-shaped manuscript by Baude Cordier, showing a rhythmically complex piece of ars subtilior.        ~ Notes from Wikipedia: "Coloration of single notes could also be used to override rules of perfection/imperfection that would otherwise have been called for. The use of red notation flourished in the so-called ars subtilior. Perhaps the most famous example is a heart shaped manuscript by Baude Cordier, which uses the notation for its symbolic effect to set down a line of music all in red within the larger heart."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamics_%28music%29

Or the more general Glossary of musical terminology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affettuoso#A

IMUNURI prompt: Meta Part 2

This week, follow with someone's prompt...

but consider adding a twist:

- changing the rules

- running directly counter to the prompt

- over-literalizing the prompt

- ??

Or just go with what's given and see what you come up with

labels: your name, poem, meta

Ideas for Prompts

1. Three times three times three. Write a poem with the number "27" in the title. Enumerate or elaborate in striking terms, using lots of 3 letter words, or nine letter words, or even twenty-seven letter words. For example, Honorificabilitudinitatibus is the longest of Shakespeare's words and features alternating vowels and consonants...


2. Triangle world. What would a culture based three instead of two look like? What would a world inspired by triangles instead of the modern two-world of line, polarities and bifurcation be like?

3. Wallpaper. Select a wallpaper and write a poem as if you are living underneath the wallpaper or riffing on the print of it. Make sure some word related to wallpaper appears in the poem's title.

4. Secret doors in bookcases. Pick a wall in your home, a book case or shelf, and write a poem describing the life of the beings who come and go through the secret access door of that shelf, which actually slides back to reveal... what? Use concrete words and full senses to make it real for us...

5. Frenemies. Write a poem as if though addressed to your favorite "frenemy" - a person you intensely and viscerally react to but with whom you must get along. Simper you sycophant, and almost make us believe you really like us and like to keep us close.

6. Cloudsky 34. This is your poem's title. What is the poem?

7. Lawnmower sounds. Write a poem that describes an invention that takes all the sounds from lawnmowers and turns them into electrical energy for the grid. How would the world be different if there were no more sounds coming from lawnmowers? And/or what apparatus or consequences are involved in this innovation?

Experience as prompt, reporting as poem

Write in prose about an experience related to writing a poem in an unusual way.
Here are five ideas of ways to manifest this:

1. Write a poem. Burn it. Post some writing about what you experienced.

2. Write a poem in chalk on a sidewalk or in wet sand with a stick. When the poem vanishes, write what you remember of the poem and write about the experience of watching it vanish.
3. Convince someone to buy a poem on spec. Then write the poem and give it to them. Post about the poem you sold and the experience.
4. Take a walk without paper or pen and compose a poem along the way. When you get home, write what you remember of the poem and write about what you forgot.
5. Simply write a poem and then post about the experience of writing the poem, but don’t post the poem itself.

Hand over hand

Hand over hand The ferry boat crew member hand signaled me to load my car forward forward forward-stop-Hand held up. Cut engine. Hand across throat. Up top the White Spot cashier held up two fingers to signify $2 Canadian dollars due for the coffee that warmed my hand.I handed her a coin with a queen on it. I used the hand rail to pull myself up the steep outer stairs to reach the second deck. Another tourist held a hand-held movie camera to capture the Vancouver skyline. A ferry boat crew member pulled in the rope hand over hand as we backed away from the dock. All hands on deck, now on their way to the island.

Turn(Around and)Around

 

Stuck in(one)place once

now every place and no

place is belonging to me

World between worlds

where do you(two)dwell?

Sands of the ocean

at my back sky above

what is what seems(three)seeming

space and solid(and me)

changing places

resting now in sky

what is what now

(Four)Everything that moves

is Spirit Incarnate

we know--con-science--we are not solid

not even attached but

rooted somehow else

Things we make/take are part

of us and yet we(five)are entire

free naked whole without

any of these creature objects

or with, the same

(Six)th sense

I rest

(Here)