Thursday, March 24, 2011

title as work

that's it i think

trouble the ego finds right next door
nothing at all to whats at home, steer me
the body i live in with
the body attached to blinking me
the body soft shield shaken
quickly graven
into frostbite

that body very same
that body weak they say
oh it's a shame they're right as always

fragrant tussles

to date
nothing but empty talk
swollen parts, rubbed raw and stupid
heres the cow to eat
heres the sugar problem
have another drink

smats

to begin with
instrumental radio
itching elbows
dream cake
to begin with phantom operas
and sheisser house

continual parade
low flying into castles
nursery wines

tumble vines elaborate
the species
as far as i can tell
radio voices for supper

the change of channel sparks revolution as we abide, to imagine that with one quick thought a thousand gestures can be slain.

the irrelevancy of format
a dim student fresh to grasp
clapping for the passé lark
equipped for boring parties
an album cover shirt
index cards
drooling into textbooks

don't even think about it, tidy it to working
stop
remedy the brevity with windy puttered gasp

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

teen bard recollections

early it was scads of lavender or proggy solos memorized
anthems of puppy love beseeched in fm agony
then urban glammy rock tableau tracing lines to words across the pages
water coloured
mostly though slogans and jottings and rhymes on folded wads in jacket pockets
bus stop waiting band names perfect tag

---

i disavow the shame. i admit my secret spoken word fantasia.
let me claw your ears out with my pointed turn of phrase
my lilting jawline journal spree galore
repeat after me
i let me
i let me eat the chips a whole bag through
i let me stay up late and fart with homemade cake and scrape the bowl
a few times to make up these rhymes that heaven bid adieu

season word

i see hounds sitting nearby waiting
black noses jutting from shadows at my elbow

cats fleeting against walls side to side eyes
mice dancing in a basket of lines

---

dying to compose
shards of plastic diss paper
basket waste high

---

dog still there eyes puffed with staring straight down some just-now-oncoming treat
heat rising from his coat the cats are dancing lights the mice have gone to dreary sleep


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the idea of returning to poetry as an outlet rings gassy and obscene at times to me.
i stopped writing when in school someone who i showed my poems to said stick to drawing.
and i did.
but writing all along i guess, words bouncing on my tongue, rattling ears and reading signs.
that fellow postteen knew it all and to think the careless word of one twenty year old can skew the path of the nineteen, sad it is, and silly. that we the weight of others' imagined dreams should so stop us. but it does. or did.

anytime now we can swing around and seize that awful day or if that's too much we can wait it out, gnawing ourselves alone a grieving hermit, punching trees into tables and walls.
to think that writhing in our dust above a background yawning spiral would be chosen over striking out a new and living life!
we choose stasis, fattening the mind and not body moving, tapping out letters instead of dancing.
tenses abolished. i don't do tenses. moratorium on tenses.

monkey trials

i tend to write in small formats: bumper stickers, slogans, band names.

i can't do it longhand because then i'll never reread it, edit it or look at it again.

i need a screen and need to make it somewhat public, to be held accountable for it. to deal with it, to make it not suck too badly.

this is simply a beginning, an outing, a trial i hope to maintain, eveolve and eventually reveal as part of what i do.

the desire to work with text won't go away. i have embraced comics, poetry, visual poetry. now to face the demon of text.

a litter witch

i decided to call this blog project a litter witch because that's a term i came up with to describe one aspect of my spiritual practice, a practice that is rooted - how can a spiritual practice not be ? - in the material world.

i love finding things, i love scouring the sidewalks for ground scores, i love the surprise, the unexpectedness, the delight of seeing what is out-of-place. ooparts galore in the archeology of the streets. a dowsing, an oracular pulling.

it started long ago - maybe in grade 3 or 4 - i would do my hunting in a neglected part of the Morison Elementary School schoolyard, an unused parking lot in the north corner. i balanced on the narrow concrete curb looking into lot and grass on either side, finding bits of rusted metal, broken plastic arms of toys, washers and pennies.

i kept it up. as a teenager my friends would poke fun at my downward cast eyes, they would point out fire hydrants and bags of garbage, suggesting i may want to take those as well.
i kept the small treasures in the pockets of my jean jacket, one side for metal and natural substances (wood, shell, feather) the other side for plastic. i'd spill the contents onto café tables to amuse my pals.

often i would hang the round or holed objects from safety pins, dangling bits of metal from each other. when the clusters got too large i'd remove them from jacket or bookbag and fasten them to a contraption i made that hung in my room, chains festooned with pins, sunglasses, lost hardware, twisted wire, hoodie draw-strings.


a litter witch is a blog of words, the things i find most often.