Dana from My Gorgeous Somewhere has sauntered to the edge of reason, and decided to jump into a free fall of honesty. 100% honesty. Dare you rise to the challenge? If so, post your list, and prepare for questions, for they will come, yes, my friends, they will come.

Here’s a list of different aspects of my life I have never before revealed. If you have any questions, I’ll answer them, with 100% honesty. Like Dana, I’m allowing myself three no comment passes, just to preserve my sanity.
~

I left a dead cockroach in the garage hallway, belly up, for countless days.
Sleep is my friend, and I enjoy her for at least nine hours a night.
Nasal irrigation makes me feel like I’ve been ocean swimming.
I take a fiber capsule every day since the fissure and ensuing surgery after my second son’s birth.
I’d rather watch a period-piece movie from the BBC than go to a party.
I don’t eat meat but I cook it for my husband and sons.
Once I stole peanut brittle from the White Hen Pantry and ate it behind a dumptser. Please ask me how old I was!
If it wasn’t for modern medicine I would have jumped off the roof of my house.
Gardening is an activity I never do.
I wear the same pants three days in a row, but not to work.
My friends and I mooned people from a split-rail fence. I almost said we got splinters, but that wouldn’t have been 100% honest.
I like to embellish my stories, so this 100 % honesty thing is cramping my style.

~
Well, that’s it for now. Any questions? Come on now, don’t leave me hanging.

ageus speaks to theseus from the underworld

By christine

O my son, all time
passes at once. Black flags forever,
there is no beginning, no end.
Before and after my body
crashes upon the rocks,
before and after, you are dead to me.
You draw my sword from the earth,
slaughter thugs on the road to Athens,
save virginal youth from the minotaur,
take an Amazon lover, father Hypolitus.
Is it fate that your wife lusts after your son?
Does Phaedra die for Hypolitus even before you are born?
You are destined to sail home under a black flag–
there is no beginning, no end.
My body slams against sea boulders
before, during, and after¬
without you, my son, life holds no meaning.

~
This poem is written in response to several poems about Theseus, which can be read on a new web site called The poetry collaborative, founded by Dana G. Martin Funnelcake and Blythe Funnelcake, brides and internet spouses.

A pretend dream made from video and photos I took during my recent trip to Montreal.

Along with over three hundred other conference atendees, I’m studying dreams in Montreal, at the twenty-fifth meeting of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Each day for four days we attend symposiums and lectures about dreams and visual art, literature, music, and dream research from a scientific point of view.

But my favorite sessions are the experiential workshops and dream groups. Today I participated in Metaphors in Motion, a dream group model presented by Rosemary Gosselin and Andrée Kingsbury. One of the women in our group shared a dream with us, which we then interpreted with a dance, a drawing, and then a poem.

Here’s the short poem that came to me, based on the dream:

With you I spin
on fire
Secure in the strength
of your bones
Your arms ladle me
to safety

When I return from my trip I’ll also return to reading all the great essays, stories, and poems that will be waiting for me on your blogs.

Branches draw filigree
shadows on the sidewalk–
patches of light become
continents. Africa, Australia,
places of people who might
imagine me in North America.

I see outlines,
purple flowering vines.
Recall a dream– African
violets, different from my
mother’s potted plants,
tiny indigo petals,
miniature folded leaves,
divergent evolution of dream violets.

Buddha Mind
walks with a tortoise
awareness of time.
I lie in savasana, count
down, fall deeper.
Dark space swirls into flashing
dreamlets, faces of women,
men I’ve never met,
faces from continents
revealed in light
patches. If I dream
them do they exist?

readwritepoem, light, and red Ravine, tortoise.

The Kiss, by Rick Mobbs

Again he dreamed of divine love

…………………..for Rick and Naomi

On a star-blue night
he dreamed of a kiss

ablaze in sunlight.
Up his spine rose bliss-

kindling sparks, smoke
and flames burned through his crown–

he was a dragon soaring over sunsoaked
nocturne cliffs and love-besotted towns,

consort of a woman with copper hair
who sang to him from afar:

mi amor, mon cher,
my princely jaguar,

come find me where I stand,
lift me up with your agile hands.

~

Written for Rick Mobbs’ richly narrative painting, The Kiss. Each Thursday Rick shares an original painting on his blog, mine enemy grows older. His paintings vary greatly in content, but each has in common a story, a mystery, a feeling, waiting to be interpreted.

That wheezing in your chest?

It could be cat.
Felines
linked to sensitivity.
We are telling people
to have an increased exposure
to cats.

Heart to Heart

Heal the heart,
support a little,
help some
get heart.

If these doggerels sound like surreal public service announcements, it’s because I took the words from a health magazine I found while waiting in my pyschopharmacologist’s office. It was an amusing activity, plus it was the prompt for readwritepoem this week. The idea was to limit oneself to a finite, predetermined batch of words, ones that were chosen before the poem was written. It’s fun to experiment with words. Why don’t you try it? Here’s a link to a site about blackout poems by Austin Kleon.

Also, readwritepoem has begun a new RWP group twitter page, complete with tiny urls, tiny snippets of poetry news, and a certain sense of a buzzing community. Think of lots of tiny voices speaking in munchkin tones on the web. That’s us, and you if you join!

But we haven’t only gone miniature. You can also join the RWP facebook group. When the blogs are quiet, this is where everyone has gone! It’s a lighthearted social, professional, and literary networking place. You probably already know about it. I’m always the last to enter these games!

PS I decided to make a shufflewords poem after reading everyone else’s. Why should they have all the fun?

]]> http://mariacristinapoesia.com/2008/06/30/more-blackout-poems/feed/ christine http://mariacristinapoesia.com/2008/06/24/691/ http://mariacristinapoesia.com/2008/06/24/691/#comments Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:43:54 +0000 christine http://mariacristina.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/691/

video poem

I took this video while in Dahlonega, Georgia to teach yoga for the weekend, then added the poem. I know the footage is a bit bumpy, but the area is so pretty, I wanted to share it.

Walking along Winding Stair Road,

“…then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: OM– perfection.”
Siddhartha, Herman Hesse

sounds come to her.
she gives them names:
crunch of gravel,
hiss of grass,
chatter of crows, magpies.
She asks, how can a mind
help but list?

On the breeze scents arrive.
She catalogues them–
pond algae,
exposed clay soil
moist electricity from a distant storm.
Each smell contained in a separate thread.

She’d like to become one
with the hills,
like Krishnamurti, who joined with a candle flame.
She wonders if it’s even possible,
this merging with the other,
because she can’t stop
labeling her senses,
can’t release the hold on herself.

She remembers, every time the first time

after Moving, by Jo Hemmant

She’s like a fallen moon in a fine rain
standing in an evening of this suburb,
leaning against a lamppost in a circle of light.
Then she remembers, and it is like a jolt.

Standing in an evening of smokebreath and darkleaf water,
waiting to view a house, curtains drawn, few clues.
Then she remembers, and it’s like a jolt–
the rhododendrons a tangle of dark tongues.

Waiting, the house is revealed, a magicians trick.
She sees her life unfold
to the sonorous tangle of rhododendron tongues
singing a hymn so English she almost smiles.

She sees her life unfold:
a man, a surrealist canvas, a thousand books in a circle of light.
Singing sounds as hopeful as prayers, she almost smiles,
and like a fallen moon steps into the dark.

~

All these images and lucious words come from Jo Hemmant’s mind. The prompt this week at readwritepoem is to “reuse, recycle, and revise,” Juliet’s (The Crafty Green Poet) clever take on the three Rs of being green.

To collaborate, Jo and I are rearranging each other’s prose. Her writing is so packed with vivid details and precise description that it was hard to change anything– I liked it all just the way it was. That’s why I decided to write a pantoum, since the form would dictate the need to pick and choose.

If you read this pantoum first, let me know what you think the poem is getting at, then read Jo’s original. To me, her original meaning is crystal clear, but I’m not sure the thoughts transfer to the pantoum. Either way, it was a challenging, fun exercise. Thanks for collaborating, Jo!

Photo Credit: Lamppost on fire, by Kamermans at deviantart

Time minus writing equalled nervous breakdowns.

Jessica from 9 to 5 Poet tagged me for this six-word bio. In turn, I tag the following:

• Michelle from Poefitti, because I haven’t been in touch with her for a while.

• Gloria, from Writer Reading, because she has a new blog called Short and Shorter Still.

• G.from How to Survive Suburban Life, because I’m curious.

• Joyce from following the little god, because she has been away for a time and I need to say hello.

• Lirone from Words that Sing, because she has had a tumultuous life recently.

• PDW for The Polka Dot Witch Blog because she’s so busy that six words might be just what she needs.

I know this tagging business, with all the linking, can be time consuming. If you don’t want to carry on the meme, no worries. Or if you like, type a six-word bio in the comments section, even if I didn’t tag you. You know I love all of you.