yeah! the world is on fire! 🔥🔥🔥

the ecopoetics workshop was LIT, y'all!

(kill yer lawn.)

"the world is on fire"
gets tossed like a match
into polite conversation
& i think
to accept this is to fan my own flame
to burn my own tinder sticks
& to blow myself into ash.

the ecopoetics workshop was lit!

Thank you so much for joining the third installment of Ritual Lab: ECOPOETICS. It was, as ever, a living miracle of community nourishment.

Together we explored: wtf ‘ecology’ even means in the first place, how ecopoetry might be different than nature poetry of ye olden days, and explored our personal and collective ecologies with exquisite curiosity.

An Oracle Line transmission from our audio is coming soon…

Today, I’m sharing three of the poems I wrote during the workshop.

Above is my five-minute poem responding to the phrase, “the world is on fire”.

Next, a ten-minute poem exploring my local ecology:

i did not plant the corn that
replaced these grasslands
or plant the lawns that replaced the corn.
i did not invent glyphosates, nitrates or other threats
to the unborn.
i did not dump fertilizer into this soil.
i did not grow up here, and everyone can tell.

so,
i gasp when the cornfield breaks open to
an asphalt lot
& a building the size of god appears--
what the fuck is even out here?
i think
of the five fingers of these
slow dirty rivers
dumping
poisoned waters past the burr oak stand
and the power lines.
they say that poisoned soil is fine
for low income housing 
& mixed use buildings
like drinking & insurance 
but
i wish i'd known you couldn't swim here
before drifting here in search of safer harbors
because
i don't know how else to
slow down & think.
and unless it comes from out of state, 
i don't know what other 
water 
to 
drink.

Finally, the group wrote poems explaining how all of our individual ecologies work together, using a line from a poem by Robert Hass as a prompt & borrowing lines and images from one another’s class work. Here’s how mine came out:

"here's more or less how it works..."

laptops opening like seeds after fire
rare earth minerals from elsewhere
trucked in over great tracks of ransacked land
past fruit stands & rvs threading thru aspen trees
and magnanimous pole pines
straight & tall
walk with power lines
carrying this access to 
all places at one time
and as the sun sets over germany
i look at the faces of my friends on this screen
and see an entire ecology.

a prompt for you…

Write a five line poem—

The first word of each line will form the phrase, “the world is on fire.”

So it will look like this:

1) the____(fill in the blanks)_______
2) world_____________
3) is_______________
4) on_______________
5) fire___________________

Share it here!!!!!!!!

xoxoxoxox