I Protect Protest I

[in response to the prompt: Reckless ~ April 22 – May 7 2012]

What is there

to protect or be                 protesting from?

This question

gives gave given

to me as a gift

from above

above

above

above

I feel

the ‘above’ (as in

above/below)

is so not real

is    so   not   real

and yet

yet yet

yet

it runs me

like the protestation

that I feel        within me

yet there is a Me that is

not any of this

I know that for certain

and yet I’ve carried

this wandering baggage                               

trying to clean it up

find it a home and more

all unconsciously as if as if

there was        something

to do about

the                 it

that is

not an            it

after all

all the

                     charades

all the

supposing

all the

inner              wrestling

                                  with deities

that have long long long been over

their reign in this world

what is there to protect

I was told the answer

to this question

I was told that I am only protecting

         in self preservation

protecting myself <<<<<from>>>>> myself

II

In that answer

the walls come tumbling down

not like Humpty Dumpty

but like the fairy tale world

that all the deity’s horses

and all the deity’s men

couldn’t put Humpty together again

The News Is

this may be the best turn out of any fairy tale

yet we are told to weep and sorrow

at this outcome

and    even that  

is the clue       that was there         all along

Can what be dashed on the ground

be real

in the first place

if there was a first place at all

What do others think of us, when all that crying

is the very factor with which we can begin

to test

         and taste and feel and touch and gaze

into ourself(ves)

w i t h  t h a t  l i s t e n i n g

self pre serve vation

self press innervate

whooosh

furupmph

phweevovvle              




Thanks to William Linville, co-Creator extraordinaire

Mistaken happen Stance or happy mistakes

the puck is further north
under a linden wood tree
waiting to be slammed home

the gravestone blank
picks up the story long dead
& gone up the Rogue River

The writing on walls left
to awaken at a finish line
in two-bit time

Honor them & give them
space to steal
or change into something mistaken

strike a happen stance
with the Siskiyou salmon
swimming upstream now.

the foetal arc of dream

what of the part that hurries to escape, that wants to turn from this eostar yodeling beautiful day and crawl back into the foetal arc of dream?

or who cannot help rising 5am before anything anyone everyone everything has breathed back to life from the small death petit mort of dream and sleep?

who else knows we are here, looming lurking above our bodies?
potentialities unfolding, amorphous, possible, lurking?

Written on Nowruz

The old book fell off the shelf as we were cleaning up to move.

We picked it up, the book we wrote together back when

we would streak through the backyard, looking for plums.

That book we wrote together came loose and fell onto my foot.

We picked it up and sat on the coffee table in the office to crack

its shell of dust. There were the pictures, and there were the words.

That book had butterflown face down onto the fortunes we told.

Now we read divination in the drawings and poems, what we agreed:

that we want more, that we can wake up together and everything else

must wait, because the drawing together must be done and done first.

I had two drafts, and chose the latter, and that’s the record in the book.

You had looked out your studio window just as I was walking up.

Do you want to try, too? The invitation in color, open wide,

arriving down the garden stairs with flowers and wine,

reading from the floor, for ten nights, since that’s what it took:

waiting for the press and the bus and the wand to wave to make

the book fall from the shelf while we are cleaning up,
tidying for a move, that book that we made together coming
down like paper snow, no words on the spine, forgotten beside

an obsolete print dictionary we got before things went online.

Before we had kids, we wrote that book. Here’s proof we did:

pictures in the texture of trust, words in a coy dance

venturing forth with small silent steps to ring the meditation bell.

It is our book we made back when the umbrella lady balanced

on the line and we fell with absurd abandon into each refrain.

IMUNURI prompt: reckless writing

Happy Verbal Accidents To You!

This week, set yourself to make mistakes while writing. START EARLY ON THIS!

STEP 1:
If you're typing, set your font size to 1. Type the poem very fast in a font so small that you can’t read it as you go.

If you write by hand, cover your hand and the page with a towel, or write in pitch darkness—and quickly.

You could try using your non-dominant hand, or writing while doing something else—like exercising, grocery shopping, dancing or gardening. You might try writing with a pen that barely works or a pencil with the lead worn down too far.

Dash something out, then put it aside for a couple of days. THAT'S WHY YOU SHOULD START EARLY.

STEP 2:
Come back later to see what you wrote.
Increase the font size to a readable scale.
Examine your handwritten scratches and decode or recall them as you can, letting go of or re-inventing what is indecipherable.

Work the writing into a poem paying special attention to the things you can't understand, the typos, the accidents. Honor them and give them space to stand unchanged or to change into something you would not have written intentionally.

Happy mistakes!

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