IMUNURI Prompt: Write of the Night Sky and How We Carry Constellation(s)

In Classical Chinese Medicine, the meridian lines are the maps of star constellations pulled onto the human body.

Adrienne Rich in "Planetarium" describes how she relates to the stars, how she is "a galactic cloud so deep...an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations / into images for the relief of the body / and the reconstruction of the mind." (further fab poem excerpt below)

Select a galaxy or constellation and write about it, either from the poetry of its name or image, how it resides inside you, or where you carry it within or express it.

Here are some images of galaxies to inspire (click "images" to see more)... clickable pictures of constellations... and here, for the science geek poetic sparks, what are galaxies? (from NASA)

keywords: constellation, poem, [poet's moniker]

Excerpt from "Planetarium" by Adrienne Rich

...Heartbeat of the pulsar

heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse

pouring in from Taurus

I am bombarded yet I stand

I have been standing all my life in the

direct path of a battery of signals

the most accurately transmitted most

untranslatable language in the universe

I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-

luted that a light wave could take 15

years to travel through me And has

taken I am an instrument in the shape

of a woman trying to translate pulsations

into images for the relief of the body

and the reconstruction of the mind.

Adrienne Rich's poetry is reprinted in entirety here at the Poetry Foundation.

and and and and, a humanifesto

“The Freeing of” “the Wreck”

[Denise Levertov - book title, 1975] [Adrienne Rich - book title, 1973]

1.

"the sacred bats

hang in their chosen grove" [DL, Door in the Hive, 59]

"too long dead" [MP, poem title, Colors Passing Through Us, 2003, p. 20]

"I know I have been dreaming" [AR, Dream of a Common Language, 1978, p. 25]

"Of all my dead it's you

who come to me unfinished" [AR, Dream of a Common Language, 1978, p. 57]

"I dreamed you were a poem" [AR, Dream of a Common Language, 1978, p. 25]

"the bats hang dreaming

of an airy world" [AR, Diving into the Wreck, 1973, p. 42]

2.

bats, omens of birth

does finding you again and again

mean that's why they suddenly end -

to begin again?

3.

my fists are full of poems

why is my heart still empty

full empty?

stay with us still, i demand of

the dead their blessing

presence

i can handle almost anything

if only the mothers stay near

4.

Conjuring “Dream of a Common” “Sorrow Dance”

[Adrienne Rich, Title, 1978] [Denise Levertov, Title, 1989]

i can't remember how to speak

on my own, for grief

"in a world almost archaic

so precious by this time

that merely to step in pure water

or stare into clean air

is to feel a spasm of pain" [AR, Diving into the Wreck, 1973, p. 36]

5.

"the sacred bats

hang in their chosen grove" [DL, Door in the Hive, 59]

"too long dead" [MP, poem title, Colors Passing Through Us, 2003, p. 20]

"I know I have been dreaming" [AR, Dream of a Common Language, 1978, p. 25]

"Of all my dead it's you who come to me unfinished" [AR, Dream of a Common Language, 1978, p. 57]

"I dreamed you were a poem" [AR, Dream of a Common Language, 1978, p. 25]

"the bats hang dreaming" [AR, Diving into the Wreck, 1973, p. 42]

DL = Denise Levertov

AR = Adrienne Rich

MP = Marge Piercy

"liberation into interdependence"

(Watkins & Shulman, 2008)

i want to laugh but i am tearing

out my hair/heart with adrienne

gone

how can you leave, o goddess of the deep?

when my wife was in the hospital i tried

to read you to her but it was too rough and wrangle

and she needed peace

now what i need is you, hope you can be

an ancestress blessing us

we sure need some of your

can-must-will in this time of freefalling:

steady on, adrienne, goddess of all

(no foolin)

IMUNURI prompt: scramble

This week, make a scramble.

Take another poem, song lyric, prose passage or other piece of writing and play magnetic refrigerator poetry with it. Rearrange the words in any order you like to create a new piece of writing.

Will you echo the original meaning or leverage the process of rearrangement to make a rebuttal? Will you try to keep your source material apparent, or will your new piece be unrecognizable?

In your post (if you wish), indicate the original work for reference.

Tags: poem, scramble, your name

"communication for fools" by FangO

and we’re waiting for brunch after our order ticket

was dropped out of the queue due to a server error,

talking with our friends visiting from Sacramento—

he’s a professor sick of watching grinning young faces

turned downward into their laps where their hands are

moving vigorously. Please stop texting during my class,

he says several times a semester. Through the morning,

I have made it a point to glance into my red smartphone

and run thumbs across its keypad, but now I pretend it

is vibrating and pull it out of my pocket with annoyance

and disdain. Like this thing, I cry. It never lets me be!

And I throw it into my water glass where it splashes

spray onto the table and then sits magnified through

the glass and the cold water. My smartphone is under-

water. Nobody says anything. My friends are stunned

for ten seconds at least before they begin to fish around

for a question or something appropriate to say now that

our down-with-technology mantra has come true. It is

that crux of time that’s the joy of the trickster, the joy
of the fool. A shout out to my friend Janet who is a pro

photographer and thought of me while she was getting

rid of a set of fake cell phones that are no longer being

used in ads. That thing made April 1 very special for me.

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.

springing off the cliff near april fools

The fool in the Tarot is pictured as a jouncy journeyer with a bag tied to a stick, sometimes with a dog, sometimes poised at/over the edge of a cliff. What does this spring fool you into doing? How is a poet a wise fool going over the edge? How do we land? What is in the valley below? Spark and revery off the Fool and offer us some word delight for our spring journey...

keywords: fool, poem, [poet's moniker]

Image credit: Rider Waite Smith original Fool tarot card, 1909, public domain from Wikimedia Commons

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.

eostar

eostar carries eggs in her

blossom stepping blessing

dance hands, she makes even

blossom husks in spring blush

windy, refulgent, raucous blossom

blustering a kind of eggshell

opening

she passes over my body lightly

and nests inside, my heart a roost

for the flowery fool god

desses: who else makes an art of breaking?

open: spring

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!

keywords: reckless, your name, poem

untitled (music of a mockingbird)

music of a mockingbird spring

takes my long longing for a nest

rain ostinato transforming

bare trees to young horses

we reminisce ourselves from shelves,

shine out impatience and impatiens

lose under the mud for now and ever
the path back to that old anxious center

Tarot Postcard

Prompt: Healing Poem Star

How can early spring rejuvenate and heal us?

The Star Card in the tarot pictures the power of

starlight as guide and balm and
offers the healing powers

of water.

Sanctuary. Blessing. Healing...

How is poetry a healer?

What are the imaginal waters/
waters of imagination

you are finding

to heal?

Keywords: poem, star, [poet's moniker]

Image credit: swath of the original Rider-Waite-Smith 1909 Star tarot card (public domain)

international wom's day

are cheerleaders the new greek chorus? and why are women

so often relegated there. woms can affirm and support but what about

some goddesses with pompom flower power renouncing patriarchy:

each in her own words, the particular incantations and rhymes of

personal experience whittling her brilliance to catalytic chants

in dialects of polyrhythm like breathing not like war marches

once in the ear and heart now blossoming. because of her we're never the same

don't make the teachers be women droning at the front of the class, lucy

i am glad we know a different way that doesn't harm to move us along:

that's an ancient art, worth remembering, carried on

intergenerational matrilineal phoneless cords

via the walkie talkies of our core knowing,

outfurling spring blossoms that trill and blossom

in our own mouths and minds. we are always being

birthed and breathed by she we all gaia yes

Cysteine Chapelle

for d. a. c.

1. Dolores LaChapelle is a daoist skiier goddess who surfs the milky way

2. also when i'm on the phone today with the person from whom i learn

who knew her and taught with her

i ask him how he can hold the ball of qi while holding the ski sticks

when he says you can taiqi ski

he says it's smaller

3. i'm thinking

that's what it is, we are macromolecules to the anthills of heaven,

the local galaxies are lungs and we're inside that, living on a breathing blue bronchiole earth

white frosting on the lizard skin of gecko gaia is (clouds) all the water that's not in oceans

or roiling down the sides of rocks slid up to touch the sky, a small part of the

toroidal big bang, luminal with fang and froth

4. the milky way is a snow

path for galactic snowboarding

we're all surfing the fine edge of big blossom (why bang? why not flowers).

5. it's his 38th turn of earth round sol. for his birth-day he asks

can i guess what is his favorite amino acid? i go from taurine (no)

to dinosaurs, effortlessly mindboarding across scales of fate place and time,

because aren't dinosaurs macroscalar amino acids? i'm thinking taurine

and tyrannosaurus; i guess cytosine (like pachalosaurus) but

he gives me a hint, it's got sulfhydryl groups

(riding the skateboard of creation) - then another hint:

suddenly we're inside the sistine chapel, and cysteine blossoms forth,

from the cosmic froth. we are always holding up the vaults of stars, of

light coming brightly, whether nebula, nova, or swirl:

we're all flowering always, posies in bright gardens of spacetime

skiing out, holding the burgeoning balls of universes between our

skisticks through the swerving curve of days, slalom left,

curve right. we hold each other in the space between our palms,

a galactic dervish, an amino aside tau-neutrino tyrosine tyrannosaurus lex

icon of motion and swerve across the universe's packed delights.

you and i holding hands in full moon night are like gene pairs twizzling

and the epigenes that hold them tight. unfurling and condensing,

inside this cysteine chapelle surfskiblossoming the long luscious delight

of galactic night.

inside all our molecules

inside all our molecules

i wrote my story
  using
    only
microverbs in miniverse
     stanzas

inside/out

“self-same there”
“self-same here”
                   A.F. Negm

atom scoped
proteins sewn in
molecular zippered eyes (i’s) open
to see
     into the micro-wounded ego drawn dialogue dagger

stuck deep

    speaking in tongues.

         

Torus point

At one point that is not a point,

infinitudes of quantum foam

bracket the mote this universe

enfolds, its hypothetical

entire, an interior

at one point that is not a point—

beyond knowable and smaller

than physical sense—outfolding

to reveal what’s contained inside

what’s contained within—and all this

at one point! That is not a point

one can render with certainty—

but you can be swallowed timeless

through the very center of things.

You might see you have always been

at one point (that is not a point).

IMUNURI prompt: inside the molecule

From physorg.com

What goes on in the microworld? What is happening within proteins? What worlds and wonders unfold inside molecules and atoms?

This week, your creative imagination is as powerful a microscope as you need. Zoom in
and observe. Then report on what you experience there.

keywords: microscope, poem, your name


For inspiration:
The Scale of the Universe

[use arrow keys to zoom in and out]

From Macro to Micro in 44 images