One hundredth of a half step

I reach along an arm of awareness
(this one into seeming empty sheer empty)

not writing but what writing feigns wonders
days go by physicalities ponder their own

can it be conveyed all is held right there
without unnecessarily fabricating something else

primacy  sometimes sleep speaks of this
sometimes music or space between notes

I've been given what I have emptiness of
words seeing hearing and something elusive

slowly without pace or time what is empty
finally remains so even as flowing over

what sleeps on sleeping when that wakes
re-crystalizes itself with aikido likeness

If only (Jung & Freud)...

If only (Jung & Freud)...

I sleep with pigeons
   on the concrete building ledge
      dream drowning.

Too many aliens appear/robed in white coveralls
sport bubblehead noggins
 move in too close
     to my self skin
      silently menace
          scare me into a new dream drowning.

A lion on the floor above
leaps on another lion
 two big beast cats
   come crashing down below
     onto my ledge of pigeons
       & we all free tumble downward.

- if only Jung & Freud had seen us
so they could play chess with these dream drownings
of mine & maybe I could glimpse what was what
& who was who under the buzzing lights.
  

HORSEBACK RIDING

Last night i realized

this poet is like a wild horse

and I have mounted her back.

Sometimes posing.

Sometimes holding on for dear life.

Italics are the crab talking (I think).

We’re out of control, and cocktail sauce

Destined to boil, that crab (I imagine)

sees me, seeing it. You make a bitter

familiar, tied to the harsh schedule in

your prison. Both of us will be better

come dinnertime. I’m not hungry. My pain

won’t be mellowed by hot buttered spider.

It’s my wrist—plus all this lack of control.

I’m too nervous to wield the shell cracker.

I wish you’d climb out of there and side-stroll

out the door, through town and to the ocean.

We’re underwater. We just gotta roll—

even if it’s California. The banks

closed on the seabed, but I’ve got my whole

life ahead of me. So what? I got tanked.

Too late? Too early? Here is here is here

is here is where I am with claws and shanks.

Adapt. Bubble. Crawl—and then an arm yanks.

tintinnambulation

06 september 2012 friday 6:52 to 7:27am

i dream about writing this poem

i write this poem in a dream

i dream about a poem

i wake to write a poem about the poem in the dream

tintinnambulation

daniel we are reading a poem on a computer screen in a future

i look up, at the end,

where light comes from the computer, projecting stars onto the ceiling

the stars are metaclusters, pinprick patterns in deep fallows of darkness

the poem has pictures in it, and great whorls of words

all in ?portuguese/spanish? 

a child follows me around, comes up and hugs me

[i can't believe my friend is in the hospital with a garden hose out of her neck

will she get a transplanted heart? will she decide to be even more bionic]

at the end of life, or its cusp, 

at the cusp of life, its limn

remember how the moon is 

larger looking on the horizon? 

in the dream the computer has a setting

the computer that is emitting darkness

and light, color, i had never thought to wonder

what the poem meant, i was so taken by the beauty of it

the way i could feel the ardor of the poet towards the muse

the beloved, the central picture, the way the fabric flows

and flowers, whorling words around her skirts

he clicks a button and it turns to english, the font so

small it's barely legible, yet i do take a look

into the incantations of incarnation

is this how an angel speaks, or g-ddess? in whorling poetic

sketches, with light and darkness emitting into the ceiling

where the constellations, tighter and more amassed, rather than spread out

become another kind of alphabet

are we looking at the same poem 

curling around us every night

with seasonal variation? 

is the sky a kind of biblic braille regarding

the (re)generation of the world? 

how small and fine the lights are, how impossibly

beyond a light bright set, into the passion that made

the world. two small children come up to us and ask for hugs

fully eloquent, out of the mouths of babes

if all that is sent this dream to confirm

that life is beautiful, i am right there with you

right here, gazing up at stars in the darkness

[ in the story the man can hear his beloved family

speak to him through the stars, and he can send messages

out on clouds]

in the dream, the belly of the world, (the furnace?) its belly button

is  also its coded dna, through the lighthouses of stars

guiding our way back home

we look up and see the deep seed blanket, not like gems on velvet

more deep than that, and darker, the image of the thing also being the thing itself

we are gazing at the dense fabric of night

[when the crystal in mid morning shines and shakes rainbows

across the room, i go to stand in some of the rainbows

i go to stand in some of the rainbows

cast by crystal and sun]

it is just exactly not that, it is dark. it is so beautiful

like lights and stars are bells ringing

i realize surprised at the end i had never thought to 

wonder what it actually said, this poem, the phenomenon was

so breathtaking, i am so OK with the world i don't need to understand it

[like when i hear my friend has 6 months, maybe]

[part of me rushes to live all the unlived days

the other part knows we're all already ok, there is only this moment]

daniel finds the "translate" button on the dark dense screen projecting stars

into the ceiling and it all uncurls, moves to the right, in english. the words and lines 

are so long and ornate on the dense screen that keeps (fractally?) becoming more and more of itself

as we zoom and zoom, we have to keep scrolling right. 

the lines of the poetry of the world never cease. the creation spark of dense

unfurling metaphors and clarity ripples onward in all directions

the man in the poem is declaring his love, he keeps on describing it

even the stars of the night sky are insufficient. in the dream, there is no light

no sunlight, only these densated hallows of bright tiny beams remaking galaxy 

upon galaxy of night, and the larger darkness. the swirls of the drawings of the 

world's skirts flaring out. the wind we feel though we cannot see comes from

the screen. is there a way to stand and feel the wind from the turning of the earth

its friction with galactic wind? now, writing this, the awakening sun (our turn toward her)

overpowers all the kinds of darkness, the tangible, frangible bellsong of blacks

that the dream describes. in the dream, the poem, the better world, 

the world we might prefer, we walk in bellsongs of starbraille

and unrolling poems tight dense small they go on beyond dark screens with shaded letters

in the generative dark of homestead towns. tintinnambulation, 

we walk with these stars, this song, hoisting children into the fallowing depths

of night-maker-sweetness.

i remember the moment, beyond the black screen and dark

 words, the color drawings embedded fifteen lines high with whorls and roils of poem words around them, 

i remember in the dream the moment, stepping back

to realize all around the poem was glowing with dense galaxies

projecting onto the room, the ceiling the floor. 

perhaps you should step back now, reading this, 

and gaze up. they are there, like the glammer-furl-glowing of coals, 

the dark deep galaxies of creation

their star song. go walking there, the tintinnambulation. 

IMUNURI prompt: First Thoughts

by Lauren Ari

1st, I M U N U R I just have to say: we're awesome.

What an amazing group of poems this past week, and what astonishing source material, the honey from a beehive of poetic energy in a state-crossing, transpersonal, poet-and-non-poet hive of Let's Do This.

As we've breeze by our two-year anniversary of poeming together, I M U N U R I think it's sweet to note how lovely the endeavor continues to be.


This Week's Prompt:

Tonight, put a piece of paper and a pen beside your bed.

When you wake up, write down your first thought.
Just a word or an image. Maybe it's barely legible as you reach over to fumble for the pen and scratch out the letters.

Before you arise, send your sensing spirit back into your pre-waking state for any stray thoughts it might find there.

Jot down anything you find. Maybe you'll catch phrases or images, maybe words, maybe just isolated syllables or letters.


Later in the day, revisit these pieces and spin them into a poem.

The poem could be related to the original context of your dreams, of waking, of starting the day—or the poem could be about something completely different.


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