Monthly Archives: July 2017

Roll your hardened polymer clay against your cheek.

Soften it. Heat it. Dash it against ridges and lumps.

Flick it against the back of your teeth.

Then speak. Speak proud and clear in your broken alphabet.

1. Get a chair, perhaps a folding table with a table cloth, bring a lunch, your computer, maybe some personal items. Got to a busy street, find a open parking spot. Put money in the meter, then set up your chair, table and other items in the parking spot. Invite your friends or business associates to join you. Spend all day. Engage the meter attendant in a discussion about rental rates for space in Vancouver.

Go there in the evening of a high summer day when the sky is clear and the moon is full. The light of it, and the stars, will be cold in the warm air. Be barefoot, as you will want to experience the boundary between the warm dry sand and cool wet pack through the soles of your feet. Lie on your back so that you can feel the loose sand shift beneath your weight, mold to your spine and fill the hollow of your lower back. Feel your heels sink into the earth. Don’t close your eyes. Open your mouth and breathe out. You are sending a piece of your warm self upwards into the cold starlight to become part of something ice cold and infinite.

Scar the writhing salt meadow of stranded jade
And trench the oozing sepia
Frame shambling barques and splintering quays against the sapphire glory
Ravage the ebbing expanse
Live the dying profession
And dye in living meagreness
Then fade into the swelling seas of generations
And watch the living strands of emerald transpose the harm
Festoon your expanding pupils with skyfire silhouettes
And adorn the flowing darkness with your insight.

Start by grabbing the plumbus by its gleeb
Next, rub the gleeb to release the fingles
We’ll need the fingles later.
Now, turn the gleeb counterclockwise,
This will activate the stoob without overheating the gleeb.
The stoob now locks in position to allow the pingslot room to breathe.
Pass the plumbus over the water trough, and dunk it in the porseball.
Now, take the fingles and attach them to the plumbus near the base,
Unhinge the stoob and roll a farnstock over the gleeb three times.
Now the plumbus is ready for the final step.
Cover the plumbus in stoffle shavings,
and it’s ready to eat.
Be careful not to stimulate the gleeb while you eat, or the fingles will become bitter and expand, deflating the stoob.

Step through the doors into musty air mixed with acrid, sweet colognes and nostril-singeing perfumes.

Don’t let Bob Gibson ogle your Mom or touch her long fingernails.  He’ll bike to your house while your Dad’s at work and scare her.  Have a laugh with your Mom and sister as you hide upstairs, terror turning to relief as you watch him swearing at your German Shepherd, Sheba, who won’t let him anywhere near the house before he bikes away in defeat.  Give Sheba some table scraps that night, and let her sleep inside for the first time.

Sit quietly during the sermon like all respectable five-year-olds.

Suspend your disbelief.

Listen to your father mumble lyrics in a deep, self-conscious monotone during the hymns, and wonder why he didn’t choose a religion that doesn’t demand group singing.  Also wonder why they would put high notes in almost every song.

Avoid questions or dialogue about mental health or identity issues when the minister is hospitalized for “exhaustion” and a member of the congregation shoots himself through the mouth during a lone, off-season, late night “hunting accident.”  After all, these issues have no place in the 1980s, or in a community setting aiming to inspire and uplift the human spirit.

Praise Him.

Suspend your disbelief.

Get kicked out of Sunday School at least every other week. Be proud that you are the reason your family sits in the back of the church so your grandmother doesn’t notice when you are sent back to sit through the sermon with your embarrassed parents.

Grow up into a hardened Athiest with basic critical thinking skills and a beautiful contempt for believing shit just because people tell you it’s true.

Drive by an empty relic of spirituality so forgotten and unnecessary that it pollutes the landscape with many others in small towns across the map. It’s ominous shell can’t contain your spirit, and you never needed it to be a decent person.

Hi Folks,

Sorry I cut time too short after the ecopoetics walk to share with you some examples of event poems. On one level, I’m glad I didn’t, as I don’t want reading these to influence your event poem in any way. I want it to be whatever you come up with, not what you think it “should” be.  I have now posted examples on the Resources page, (click the tab on the header, scroll to the bottom). These are examples from the anthology Technicians of the Sacred, edited by that master anthologizer, Jerome Rothenberg. Connecting to event poems as a tradition situates us. It is a way of connecting to the land and to all aspects of place, as they tend to be place specific, they are put into practice when they are realized. They can teach something more important than poetry on its own: they can teach the art of “living poetically”, as our own Carl Leggo writes about, see his article Pedagogy of the Heart: Ruminations on living poetically.  http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/stable/23767223?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

.

The air thickened,

and the humidity increased,

making it difficult to breath .

Smoke arose in the sky,

overcasting the clouds,

so that nothing was to be seen.

Road closures emerged,

and caused havoc,

with emergency procedures in place.

I stood on a hill just past my house,

and yelled to the trees,

“Stop, stop burning!

Can’t you see!?”

Enraged now, I continued

“ You will soon reach my home,

and burn right through me!”

With a gust of air,

and a loud breeze,

the trees spoke up,

“Are you seeking,

to speak to me?

If so, what is it that I have done,

for which you are blaming me?”

“It is you, who is responsible,

for this ghost town,

where you hear no laughter no more,

no Robins chirping,

no school bell ringing,

no horns honking.

Yet, you ask me,

what it is you have done?”

I respond with the flames still,

blazing behind me.

The trees spoke up once again,

but this time to silence me.

“I did not set fire within me,

but look within yourself,

and question why you do not see,

the cigarette within your hand,

with which you speak to me.”

Immediately looking down,

seeking to justify myself,

I put out the small blaze,

only for my home to be burnt down hours later,

with that very same blaze.

Where would we be without eachother, you help me see.
Without you, you have no idea how lost we would be.
You rest on my nose ever so lightly, you help me see the world even more brightly.
Without you I’d so lost, I will try not to lose you at any cost!

:

Eat with your elbows off the table
Eat with your fork pointed down

Eat with your mouth closed
Eat only in between conversation or questions

Eat slowly
Eat smaller mouthfuls

Eat so that you don’t spill
Eat everything on your plate