Category Archives: poetry

Here is where you’ll categorize poetry posts during your field study. A minimum goal is one poem per week, 4 total, posted by Monday PM midnight. One of your four poems must be posted in a “Poetry Observed” video format (www.poetryobserved.com/). The goal is to perform your poetry in situ—within the context of your passionate immersion.

Glassblowing Poetry Part 1

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Like Hephaestus at his forge,
I am molding molten lava
To d e l i c a t e and beautiful form
I dance atop my Volcano with trusty rod in hand
From table to bench,
Rolling
Folding
Shaping
Forming
Heating
Cooling
Rinse
and
Repeat

Do Fire Gods treat molten glass like gum?
Harvesting glass rock to heat and chew in their fiery maw
Twisting on long flame-dripping fingers
Like a child in boredom
Cosmic child at play

Fire and Pressure bring life to Earth
Processing rock into bits and bits of beautiful sand
Fire licks the sand to a wonderful potential
Dripping glory of matter’s birth into new form

E – Week 7 Poetry Collection

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The Most Beautiful Thing – somewhat suggestive

The Most Beautiful Thing

Oh it’s dark. But a small light shines,

Illuminating what little I can see of her.

It’s blurry. My glasses are next to the light,

Left there to avoid getting dirty. Dirtier.

 

Oh, we’re sweaty and sticky. I am not allowed

To do anything. So I lay and compose poetry

Distracting myself from the goddess sticking

 

Oh so elegantly to my skin. Her noises drive me

Wild. They make me want to help. But I am not

Allowed. Shift hips. Slide into her. There, yes there.

 

Oh her noises. I melt against her. It’s so hard to lie

And do nothing when she’s making those noises. Poetry.

The way people flow together, flow apart. The way that we

Flow together and flow apart.

 

Oh she’s screaming. This is the most beautiful thing

As she falls onto me, weak, knees not working. I can move.

So I do. I hug her close, stroke her hair. My turn.

 

Oh, I’m looking forward to this.

 

Carving – self injury trigger

Carving

I wish it was as easy to see

The marks that not cutting

Leave on me

As the jagged open wounds ripped

By a dull knife wielded in shame.

 

Because scars are a reminder of what you did.

But I don’t have anything so neat for what

I don’t do.

 

I have a ring. Silver. It sits on my finger.

A reminder of how long I have not cut.

861 Days. (I had to look it up. I am not

Careful enough to keep count). Two years is

The number I remember.

 

The way the ring sits the lines remind me

Of a tree. Resting on my finger, breathing with me

As I hold on to my will power hold off this thing

That I will never be able to beat.

 

For the rest of my life I will probably

Count those days.

I’m fucking proud of those days,

All of them hard won.

 Fast Lane

Fast Lane

My life is forever going to be slow.

I live at a different pace because my body

Demands. Its demands grate on my nerves.

I see people fly by me, doing things so

Effortlessly. Look, this person works

And goes to school. They work and they

Go to school and they never wear dirty underwear

Because they are too tired to get out of bed.

 

What a world that would be, so different.

How much could I get done if I was not me

With this disability?

Oh, but where my will, my will did it come from?

Would I still have my will if I did not have to shape

My body away from so much disability?

How much would I get done if I was not me

With this disability?

 

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

I have questions without answers (doesn’t

Everyone?) because what I want, oh what I want

Is to go into the fast lane with my peers, see them

LIVE.

But I can’t. I can’t live like them, my body (OH

MY BODY) will not allow it.

 

I sit in my chair as people speed by.

Fine, I huff. Fine, fine, fine. I will sit

And watch what I cannot have. I will paint

My chair wings, I will give it wheels, give it

Life.

I might not go anywhere, but I can make my own world.

If I must be caged, it will be a pretty cage

Made of language and stories, freedom from

My own little corner, in my own little chair.

 

What? The End

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When in the outside world,
all seems to be crumbling,
all seems to be at an end,
what shall we consider the cause?

Is it the workings of
our politicians, bringing
our spirits to a lowly state,
or is the root to ruin found
in our past, in the foundation
of our country as it stands.

So many questions,
so many answers,
all right
in their own right.

Poetry From the Forest

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Insidious One(your best friend and enemy)

I know you, I have known you, I will you know you

Cruel Black Dragon

You slayer of kings

You sinker of ships

ride me low

till the tide breaks

and I am forced to flow

 

The longest journey With every footfall I’m learning to walk again I’m learning to talk again I’m learning to be silent…

 

Kno me?

Know one, can know me

unless they get to know me

unless they get close to me

so these judgments

I toss them out.

These words are fables

Spoken to attack me

I am the one who must know me

 

(re)relapse

Frozen defense mechanism

striped me bear

learning to flow

taught me to repair

growing out

not turning it

Shadows now rise to try and take me back again

 

\Growing Wings/

Arrogant Adolesence find pride in what they can

To build up

little egos.

To Block out the sky

Afraid to fly.

Its to high! they say, but they will pay with their blood

should they stay on the ground

for this is where the tigers stalk the living

already dying

weeping sores hidden under ragged clothes

punctuate the verbage

Arrogant Adolescence shake the youth from your eyes

your wings hide under layers of old flesh

Learn the struggle and the joy that is flight


W o r k

My job

My duty

is to accept

the un
expected

which so
defines                                                                         my      reality without

thesetethers

 

The Shaman Way

trance states, dance and drumming

transmutation: the mundane into the magical

surreality as true reality

Feeling is the most important compass

Playing with the moment

 

Exercises in Flow

Summon  a fire breathing pit demon

and ask it for dancing lessons

Playing with your future

like an REI switcheroo

make like a kangaroo

and bounce

watch, listen, learn

words to shift by

driving yourself crazy

with haze

its only a phaze

if your react to your plight

don’t fight, if you don’t want a snake bite

that slither in stomach

needs your to speak

Parsletongue

 

New Beginnings

Caterpillar crawling on a leaf

cant see past its next bite

wants desperately to melt away

so it consumes its weight in words

till it unfurls

from its cocoon, now a tomb

…and flies away

to a bright and sunny day

 

Siren Calls

I refuse to be drawn off course by the sirens calls.

They taunt me and tempt with false incantations

So that I may smash myself upon their rocky shores.

Stop. Wait. Listen.

Do you hear my soul?

Its beat is heard just below the surface

Where the waves cant reach.

 

Cult-aural Paradigm

Cultural Scion guard the keys to society

dictating what can leave and enter that tall keep.

Look down on those with fleeted feet not walking in lock step’s wake

and the meek shall inherit the dust

 

These fleeting moments

Wise words exchanged on backs of birds

We tie our minds and

Weave our wills

to common goals

we reach

at priceless artifacts to make sense of

our internal landscapes

 

Pen as my feet, feet as my pen

My feet make marks upon the ground

A whispering willow does not make a sound

Moonlight trickles between the leaves

A breeze brushes the land shaping it

                                                          by its hand

 

shackled———-totheshackled

Rigidity is death

Nature can attest to that

she teaches with the hand of experience

gentle at first

but with increasing fervor

till all is laid low

before her mighty breath

she speaks words of power

resonating with those who will listen

sending children to do the work

we pile the weight of ages on the back of the youth

with breaking back we pick up the pieces, but do we have time

to unravel this tattered tapestry of glitz and gold

 

Week 7 Calculated Poem

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Renee Ingersoll

as poetry recycles neurons

week 7

calculated poem

5-17-13

“The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand. Surely the second coming is at hand..” (Yeats, The second coming)

Passionate immorals hold innocence under the water until no bubbles of hope resurface. The admirable and kind hide in apathy and an unwillingness to try. Hopelessness spreads like an airborne sickness as the sinners, heathens and demons of this world take up arms of ambition. May Armageddon be a tilling of this dry and used dirt, surely the good have planted in secret, the seeds to grow this earth anew

Pilg – Week 6 CP Poem

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So as reading through the reading of the week I stumbled upon “Fractal Geometry” and it jolted the hell out of me. The author goes on to speak, in stanza 5 or section 5, about mirrors reflecting mirrors and the infinite space created between the two panes. As always I have attempted to place myself in the middle of this and while thinking on the fractal mathematics you are a copy of a copy when reflected.

Reflection of absent light

Mirrors reflecting mirrors

Manifesting the emptiness that is

stretching the dark void of inescapable light

perpetuated and replicated

through atoms of lore who spread the virus of shadow

with the static rotations of unassuming  parasites

 

across the vast open wilderness

where the conscious summon the will

to see the reflection within themselves

thought arises and

Like the phoenix rising from the ashes

I am birthed through this inspiration.

 

In the impenetrable darkness

I am.

 

pulling light from the dark

like water from stone

Seeping slowly, invading the emptiness

the darkness is conquered and the light flows

into waiting eyes

 

The brilliance of this moment

overcomes the weak

and I stand beholding,

peering  into the waiting vision of myself

repeated

repeated

repeated

through light refracted, reused, and recycled

ad infinitum

 

Blank space recedes

falling back like the moon tides

and I am surrounded by the reflection

of the reflection

keeping constant vigil

always watching that which is.

 

Seeing the mirror image in the light

I stare behind closed eyes

into the genetic darkness

where boundaries are borderless

and the infinite lies in the heart of birth

 

 

Pilg – Calculated Poetics Week 5

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                As I read Sphere I had the thought to work with something sphere related. I first tried to work with the sphere as a place inside the mind where one can retreat to but in doing so I lost the sphere and found only emptiness. I worked with the poem in class on Wednesday and as I did I realized that Sphere is about the Earth and how the author envisioned the world after seeing Earth from space for the first time. I took another route and wondered what would it be like to create something from nothingness while keeping to the known spaces that are our housing spheres. In the beginning there is nothing but with thought comes action and through thought the world, the Universe is born.

 

Sphere, Home to the Conscious

Floating suspended and disjointed in the ether

Pieces spread throughout the vast openness

In the blank vacuum  that is my home

A thought appears and I am born into the realm of Man

Pieces flung to the outer reaches of human myth

collect and form into

My body.

The thought resides inside what is now the consciousness

the once absent form is now the mind

The collective energies colliding, making the abstract cohesive

I am

 

I forget the realm of time and space

I fall forward into myself

folding into my new found consciousness

I am alone here at the junction of awareness

Here there is nothing

the darkness surrounds me

the vacuum consumes me

and I huddle into my own mind

I seek companionship

I cry to the palpable emptiness

There is no response but the echos of my screams

I am but one who shall create many

Thought arises

and the Universe is born.

Fire and flame dance the gentle strokes of creation

The pieces of the ether collect and recollect into housing spheres

It shall be in the spheres of life where humanity will prevail

I am the creationist the master of all

and into the spheres I place human kind

Look upon humanity through the lens of blue

See inside the sphere, the Earth

as humanity raises its voice to scream into the dark

 

P – Week 6 Poem – Homecoming?

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The locals all think we’re wild gypsies

–and maybe some of us are–

“watch your wallets and hide your daughters.”

They know the men by their muddy work boots

and eternal sunburns, by eyes lined

too deeply and too young

from squinting into the sun twelve hours a day.

They know the women by the big pickup trucks

we drive, too large for our frames, but just right for

pulling a small house down the interstate every few weeks.

We leave the powerful diesel engines running

when we stop at the bank or for a carton of cigarettes

or gallon of milk.

 

Even though this is all pretend,

even though I am wearing a costume and

playing a part,

even though I’m not really here,

I want this. This life.

The freedom of space, of a movable place

to call home.

I want this life I walked away from

so long ago.

They say you can never go back and

I never thought I wanted to, but

is it going back if it’s on my own terms,

this time?

 

I’ve always enjoyed being an outsider and

am rarely at home in the spaces I inhabit,

but I am at home here, without a home,

in this mobile life of everywhere and nowhere,

where the view from your front door

changes overnight and your little piece

of the sky follows you down the highway

with every change of address.

The open road has been calling me

my whole life, but I wouldn’t answer,

afraid of what would happen if I listened

and let go, but now I have my map and my compass,

I can read the signs in the sky and in my heart.

If every road leads me back to where I want to be,

why don’t I just get in the car?

E – Week 4 Poetry Collection

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Home

I am built

From the taunts of catty rich girls.

They are hurdles on my path

To boyhoood.

 

I am filled

With the sounds of rushing

Creek water. Peace and quiet here

When nowhere else feels

Like home.

 

I am the sounds

Of demons being slayed

In the basement

Of a dissertation being slayed

In an upstairs study.

Life defined by two absences

As much as what is present

 

I have rot

From this house that tried

To kill me,

Life away from friends and school and

Sanity

 

I am the couch

Where I lost my virgnity

This old combination of cloth

Cushion and wood a bigger

Absence than my father.

 I am

A cripple. Sixty years old

At least on the inside.

Pills and bottles, mobility aids.

My body is a husk. Or something

I work around, not with.

Maybe I would get along better

If I tried with not around

But it is demanding, picky about

How much I sleep, what I eat

When I do what  do

So much I cannot give it

Or even

That it won’t give itself.

Life is to busy for me to rest away

All of the aches and pains. So maybe

I am pain. Life is pain in

My fingers, elbows, ribs, knees, lungs.

Loud or quiet but always

Always there.

Yet I go on.

Maybe that makes me pain’s super villain.

Paws

Your paws will carry me.

They will guide my life as you

Help to grant me my freedom

From fear and anxiety.

These paws carry your big and magnificent

Body. Life without you, without

Those paws would be bleak indeed.