you awake into this emptiness where you are joined by everyone & everything
Other people's prompts & a bunch of my poetry from this season of exploration.
“THERE IS NOTHING FOR YOU HERE: GO AWAY!!!” I am screaming this over and over again in the back of my half-empty U-Haul.
The end of my year was full of dreams...
Three of them about moving— specifically about the final hours of that long, dirty, last day of packing before you can finally, finally shut the door and drive away. In none of these dreams did I arrive at my new home.
…I’m thinking January is gonna be this for me.
We’re not moving again (god-willin’-and-the-crick-don’t-rise!) but I mean this energetically. It isn’t that I’m not ready to move on from 2023— but that I’m just still pulling things out of the highest cupboards, sweeping weird shit out of the corners and deciding what to keep.
And because my lease isn’t up on reflection, refinement & rest, I’m letting myself linger in limbo for a while. I’ve already got the keys to the new place— I’ll get there.
Nourishing me right now is some creative newness.
I dedicated myself in 2023 to a deeply ritual return to form— writing close to 120 pantoum poems across three now-tattered notebooks. I fell in love with this form as a teenager and have penned many hundreds more over the last 25 years, but this was by far my most…intense devotion.
Pulling the black book cover open, thumbing to a fresh page: ABCD— writing this form down the left side of the page the same way every time— BEDF, EGFH, GCHA. So soothing to lay out this map. Thinking, all I have to do is write the first line…the rest will write itself. And my satisfaction and amazement every time when it does.
This was a dedication to practice, to self-trust, to flow. I rarely spent more than twenty minutes with a piece, and almost never went back to fuck around and make stuff “better” after the fact. I bowed to the gods of improv and said my thanks and moved along. It was perfect for me.
The resulting body of work & words contains a few heart-devastating wildfires, a number of throbbing poetic embers, and a lot of scorched dirt.
Now I’m craving some new terrain.
Dipping my toes into other writers’ prompts and new-to-me poetic forms has been the perfect recovery these last few weeks. So I thought I’d share some of these great resources— and my resulting exploration— with you this week.
[From Dec. 8th, 2023]
oregon was wet. now, it's ashes. then, it rained. the rain stayed the clouds stuck snow on mountains and in valleys. hard, cold run-off cattle hooves sank fence posts tilted fog kissed oak hoarfrost covered thistles everything smelled wet. everything drank deeply. i licked stones. i muddied feet. moss covered me. then- we burned. (we're still burning) lungs cough, cussing ash, not snow we know now-- white sheets blow there's no avoiding the other fires. some burn crosses. flames get fanned. some things grow. last night, home. field sprinklers pumping, wet grass bowing, the woodstove's glowing-- fresh black haircut my father's laugh he mumbles something like he's living! but, i'm dreaming. i sink in.
This week I’ve been writing along with this deliciously prompt-filled post by
. Ouellette reminds again and again to be literal and external in our observation before indulging in the heady & internal. I’m loving this.To engage with daily prompts at this level, I need to let myself feel awkward and just write something quickly before deciding if I want to give it a more crafted second or third session. (And I do suspect I’ll return to all of these multiple times over.) But the first pass usually startles me with something interesting, even if it doesn’t satisfy all of my poetic desires…
Exercise One: “Simple, Not So Simple” studies Margaret Atwood’s “You Begin” & asks for concrete observations of everyday things before revealing “something truer”. In my first pass I just started fumbling around about my morning coffee, the thing that felt so mundane and boring it would go nowhere…
[From Jan. 2nd, 2024]
here is the handle
here is the spout
you pour water in
you pour water out
you start cold & you wait - maybe you watch -
you're turning water into something else
into desire
to change states
you awake into this emptiness where you are joined by everyone & everything
waiting for the invisible
longing to be filled up.Ok! Interesting! Did I do it “right”? Eh? Did it get my pen moving across the page? Yes! *high five!*
When my friend Miles and I connected the other day on our New Year’s poetic endeavors I shared my form-wandering-desires. He mentioned working through the ghazal as a fun poetic challenge. So the next morning I read everything I could find about working with this intricate form in English & tried my hand. Hard! Funnnnn…
[From Jan. 4th, 2024]
your whisper, a bird song- not above, but below
i'm flying to find you, dropping through air below
in every direction i'm begging, "make me whole!"
sucking the thick heaven i find myself below
washing my tongue are the murmurs: un-ending need
do you taste & smell this where you're churning below?
green prairie waiting for fire & rain to grow
can you tell me the truth of what aches there below?
believe me: i've tried far worse things to be happy
calling & following, "as above, so below!"He also shared these links to a delicious menu of poetic form I suspect I’ll be sampling from over the coming weeks and months.
If you dip into any of these prompts or poetic forms, I really look forward to hearing what comes through for you, too.
[And if you could use some more support on your daily creative practice, there’s a crew cheering one another on over at the Vision Train— the 24hr Zoom call rolling down the tracks with visionary creatives from around the world since 2020. I’ve been blessed to call this community my home across these years, offering many workshops & rituals there — and making so many dear friends along the way. Their #dailyvision2023 invitation is what propelled me into my pantoum-fest last year. There’s nothing like simply gathering in a room with a bunch of people who prioritize making-the-thing. ]
I’ll close with this pantoum I wrote to start the new year & a new sketchbook. A contemplation on the Fool card of the tarot, the zero…
the fool looks out, not down.
feel that now.
shoulders fall like the horizon line
when you're no longer earthbound.
feel that now--
how what you carry really matters
when you're no longer earthbound.
the flower in your hand reminds you
how what you carry really matters-
in a song or on the ground-
the flower in your hand reminds you
we all so briefly bloom to die.
in a song or on the ground
shoulders fall like the horizon line
we all so briefly bloom to die
the fool looks out, not down.
[Jan. 1st, 2024]xo,
I followed Kim’s Restack here. What fun! I’m a northwesterner, and I love the soggy squish of your Oregon poem. You managed those 3-word lines like a breeze! My hair limp / from saturated fog / I sniffle once / protecting your book / against the damp.
Ooh Oregon. Such a good evocation. I feel that one in my skin and bones. 🌲