Babafidrious

There is always even if unseen a perfectly reasonable reason
Now I understand how the light on dying magnolia looks like snow

In the morning equivalent of gloaming

We start with concentric circles from our heart

And if squeezed, becoming defended, we contract

And this pinched up inward drenching/trenching/quenching/squishing

Means our outsides are pulled in

This inward pinch brings issues of control, dominion

And attack because we’re smaller than we’re meant to be.

Anger, and its covert allies, quicken the pulse.

Finally, decades later, the anger slackens

Just for a day or two, enough to realize

How long it’s been there, pinching and defending.

What saved me will kill me if I don’t release

And reembody the extended spheres of being.

It unclenches.

My energy body recoheres.

I expand, and thus can release the dense clutter/tissue/emotional suppression

That I had been working so hard to clench in order to seem nice.

Unspiralwinding wholeness, loose and free.

Once again, my arms flap and bootie shimmies.

Qigong shaking. Happy dancing. Realigning.

To expand from the contraction also strangely brings more space

And also less clogging.

We set out thirty boxes for recycling in the predawn light.

The same light by which the November magnolia leaves

Appear to hold snow.

By a parallel token, twenty-one years after the death of my wife,

To the day, the anger leaves me. This glistening clearing

Purges even those old pains. To say “I am born anew”

Is babafidrious. Exactly so. Breaking through, bud bursting

And also effortless. A form of chrysalis opening. A time of

Butterflying. At last. At last. At last.

November 26, 2014

IMUNURI Prompt: Wordup

Exbibliation.

Quazon.

Hoverpie.

Arsk.

Make up a word,

Make it the title of your poem.

Write the poem.

[keywords: wordup, poem, your name]

Holding Hands with a Rock (Chant)

clap hands.

clap hands.

stones tremble.

stones ring. 

clap hands.

clap hands

stones tremble.

stones sing.

sumptuous earth

groundswell blessing
each little continent

whirls in hope turning

shape wrought of fire

wintered pucker, ropy water

bead breaker
seed shaker

clap hands.
clap hands.
stones tremble.
stones ring.

clap hands.
clap hands.
stones tremble.
stones sing. 

stone egg crack open
heart of stone released
fierce future brings together
stone hearts burst or cease

clap hands.
clap hands.
stones tremble.
stones ring.

clap hands.
clap hands.
stones tremble.
stones sing. 


future, guide our mending

ancestors, rout our sending

pebble cells and stone bodies
unmake our deadening

clap hands.
clap hands.
stones tremble.
stones ring.

clap hands.
clap hands.
stones tremble.
stones sing. 

Stones of Memory Workshop 

2014

Dr. Charles Charlie Martin

One of the city’s marginal,

laughing in genuine mirth,

passed me going the other way.

That was last week.

Today a barefoot woman

roared at Market Street.

I had my face on,

and I didn’t know (often)

what I should do.

That’s part of urban life:

how busses are big red ads

and a busy street is a zoo.

It might have been the laughing man

who defaced the photo

where suddenly my feet

stopped: a doctor, stethoscope,

magic-marked red mouth,
neat black hair and bowtie,

and wet, beating heart

held on his fingertips

beneath the texture of trample. 

And the White Ginger is about to Bloom

“This will be a hard thing that I am going to tell you”

and with a shrimp taco (in red sauce) in front of me

R. told me how he had been to the top of the hospital parking lot a couple of times to look down and see how far he would fall if he went over the ledge and that two weeks ago he bought a half gallon of vodka that he carried up there with the intention of seeing if he uncapped and drank some he would gain enough courage to jump

“R. you gotta call Psych and tell them this and text me you called in”

and he apparently did as I received a text from R. that intake would be the next day

And the white ginger is about to bloom

the giant dahlia is above the deck communing with night blooming jasmine

the persimmons are turning gold/orange

big black “O” the barn cat finishes his perimeter check, sits in the deck door opening

and the white ginger is about to bloom.

IMUNURI Prompt: "Read" something illegible (Projective Symbiosis)

One of human's favorite activities is projecting meaning into the dense ineffable catterwaul of nature, culture, and life. Are these moments of fathomless oracular power or hopeless species-dominant voicings? Find something ineffable and actively project meaning into/through/with/in/and/on/as it. The scrollwork of beetles under bark. A painting of modern art. The fugue state of clouds. Bonus to metacognize in your poem or creation your idea about whether you are speaking through, as, or for. Bonus to include a visual representation of your projective symbiont.

Image: Bark Beetle Galleries from Wikimedia Commons

keywords: your name, poem, read

crossings (excerpt)

right after that woman made that racist comment in the diversity workshop

that went unattended about not being someone whose family had gotten here

by crossing a river, a friend and I raced, ran full out to catch up

to the group getting to the boats for a sunset cruise of the canal.  we

lunge with bags hefted and jettison all dec(orum) as we vault bionic

down the convention maze and I hear the duhduhduh of jamie summers as

we dodge left and lap right and leap onto the escalator, panting like dogs for our one last jump.

little did we know we didn’t need to race

for our lives (this time), though for us, whose ancestors crossed on boats

unwilling, shackled; for those whose ancestors crossed desperate or forced out;

and for those displaced and slaughtered by ancestors who came on boats;

we knew instantly how to run as if our lives depended

on it. we are a species crouched on the brink, the future

threatened to break, and we summon our strength, hurdle thump,

hurdle thump, hurdle thump. the waters we hurry to cross

are invisible: the deep, stained structures of ownership, denial, dominion.

what will the stories be, and the skills and cultures, ten lines down,

200 years from now? i hope it’s not the waters of the milky way

they cross, infecting other places. in the north american canals

of willingness, let the lapping waters soften us. it’s what we don’t take

that matters. what we put down. here at the brink. the chasm, the ridge

the cliff, the cleft, the jump-off, the bridge.  like fools leaping

off. or over. let our magic bags on a stick be light. filled with autumn leaves

of leaving, and seeds, magic beans, for saving. launching into the cool waters

willingly, this time, and for joy at how water teaches presence, teaches

that sky and land are one, mirrored partners in beauty, this cloud, this water, this land

without gizmos or plugging in, we are part of the river of life running through.

let us be this clear, there is no where at all to go. water teaches:

we are right here. water: river, ocean, giver generous. quivering sun and moon,

giving these back. flexible fabric of connection. slaking thirst and making life.

at the verge of these inner crossings, we lay down

the need to flee in fear either from or toward some migration to somewhere

else. we no longer know whether our children’s children

of all species will survive. we know some will make it through.

we have the canny craft of those who came before. the whisper

wisdom of those who are to come. we lift up a handful of leaves

and crinkle them into duff. the trees have already contracted the green

the chloroplasts, and hunkered off. make your choices. here in the winter

of planetary life, we contract, saving what matters

which is not something

that can be

plugged in.

Unipedally Riffed

Left,
Left,
Left, left, left.

I left
Jeff Taft
bereft by a cliff.

He sniffed,
miffed
that I stiffed him in the lift.

I laughed
'til I coughed
as I rebuffed his guff.

Our theft
was deft
staffed by Steffi Graf.

He cuffed
me on the cleft,
and that's when I

Left,
Left,
Left, left, left. 

Hopped UP

                                                

Hopped up

Came down

Ears flapped

Same foot

Pogo sticky left

Behind

Written on it:

"Right to bare arms"

W/ thanks to my Muse

IMUNURI Prompt: Hopalong

Xpogo RioCC BY-SA 3.0  Wikimedia Commons

Pogo sticks
Kangaroos
Rockets to the moon

Jump on one foot for one whole minute (time it) then write a poem (about that or about anything) - bonus for noticing - how does it change the pace and rhythm of your writing?

Extra credit: pretend you are in a slow motion movie for part of the time, gravity permitting. How does that change it?

Tags: hopalong, poet name, poem

Broken Eggs

cottage built of old pallets

fruit case ads bleed thru yellowed kitchen ceiling

must/dust cat fur on room rug,

walls bare, except 

Egyptian wall hanging spattered with egg yolk

 Horus weighs a (Red) heart against a feather (Blue )

burn marks on wall 

reflect indoor bottle rocket launches

induced haunts

upstairs one hot room before, 

only furniture a metal four-post bed

four more stairs lead up to a (duck!) short opening to a small room with a child size mattress

bay breeze drafts through windowless space

chills the day after

no window left unbroken

Edge talk