HEADLANDS CENTER FOR THE ARTS

It is an honor to have been selected as one of the 2015 Headlands resident artists!  Click HERE for details on my RESURRECT EXTINCT VIBRATION (Soma)tic poetry project.  

I love that they used my Montawk Crystal grid for my page's banner.  The green and yellow stone to the far left is Peruvian Jade WHICH I ADORE!

#116: MOUNT MONADNOCK TRANSMISSIONS

for Belinda Schmid & David C. Welch

In 1998 my boyfriend Mark Holmes gave me a clear quartz crystal before he went to Tennessee to tend gardens with a community of artists.  It was the last time I would see him alive.  He was bound, raped, covered in gasoline and burned to death.  I spoke with him on the phone several days before his murder and he told me about a cave he found for meditation, the very cave where his murderers would kill him.  The police ruled his death a suicide and refused to investigate, and many of our mutual friends believed the police, but the coroner and paramedics have always disagreed which is why the word “victim” is on his death certificate.

Delinquent Films is making a documentary about my books and life and they also agree that Mark was murdered.  More than fifteen years after his brutal death it is a documentary about POETRY that will now force an investigation so that Mark’s murderers can finally be brought to justice.  The day I left the filmmaker’s apartment after being told they agree with me about Mark’s homicide I felt lighter and burst into tears on the train ride home.  For years people thought I was crazy, that the police would never act the way they did.

In 2013 I was accepted into the MacDowell Colony.  Each day before writing I would smear sage ash on my forehead and meditate with the crystal Mark gave me.  Alone with the vivid falling leaves I would sit on a rock with my crystal and notebook, staring into the forest, locking eyes on the trunk of a distant tree.  Suddenly after a few minutes of staring, every falling leaf could be seen moving at once.  This is how I would write in the shadow of Mount Monadnock.  One day I saw something other than leaves move; it was a bobcat watching me from a boulder.  We sat looking at each other for a few minutes before she walked into the forest.  That night I dreamed I woke inside a tree, the wood surrounding me was a warm, fibrous silk and I could hear the sap moving inside a soft steady heartbeat. 

On the full moon my dear friend Elizabeth Kirwin communicated with me hundreds of miles away through rose quartz under the moon.  She also knew and loved Mark and wanted to visit me during the writing ritual on a shaft of light.  I had made dinner for the three of us the night he gave me the crystal.  I love and miss him and the rogue gardens we planted in abandoned Philadelphia lots and riverbanks.  After his murder I had a movie in my head, one that I played over and over on a loop of a courtroom where the murderers were standing trial.  In the movie I’m always angry while staring at the backs of their heads, angry at the police, angry with everyone who said Mark’s death was a suicide no matter how ridiculous and impossible the idea of his death being a suicide had seemed.

The most unexpected thing happened after several weeks of my crystal meditation.  The angry courtroom fantasy movie in my head vanished, it suddenly stopped, and it continues to be a relief to no longer vent anger toward anonymous, faceless people the police refused to track down.  From 1988 to 1998 I was macrobiotic, but when Mark was murdered in 1998 I stopped taking care of myself.  I was still a vegetarian, but a very unhealthy one.  My low-grade depression is lifting and I am happier and have since returned to being vegan and healthier.  My notes from this (Soma)tic poetry ritual became a serial poem titled SHARKING OF THE BIRDCAGE.  I am grateful to everyone who is helping heal this inconceivably brutal injustice.

MOUNT MONADNOCK

#115: EXIT ON FOREHEAD

for Anne Boyer

On a long flight I created a (Soma)tic ritual for my extraordinary friend Anne Boyer, but I only allowed myself 10-minutes to come up with the ritual once I boarded the plane AND I was forbidden to use former ideas I’ve developed on planes.  In the rear of the jet was an EXIT sign, the letters cut into a metal plate with a red light shining from behind.  Throughout the flight I would walk to the sign and SLAM my head against the letters, starting with E.  Each time I would steal a beverage or almonds or cookies and I had to share them with the stranger next to me.

It was my lucky day as the man next to me never shut up and no matter what I threw into the conversation he was game.  At first he annoyed me, but soon enough I became fond of his long stories about asbestos.  SLAM the E, “When E was first invented why did they shape it like that?”  He answered, “E is for Elephant!”  I said, “E is for ELVIS!”  YES we both said YES ELVIS.  He enjoyed my theft of cookies and tiny bottles of rum.  SLAM the X, SLAM the I, missed the I, did it again, SLAM the T.  He answered T was for the crucifix.  Why, I asked.  “Because Christ is our savior.”  “Oh, I see, it’s like that is it, JESUS, we need to bring him up DO WE?”  We both laughed because in the end it was clear I didn’t mind his flux of Jesus as we drank our rum and talked of asbestos and Elvis and the shapes the alphabet has rendered us all for centuries FULLY COOKED HUMAN BRAINS.  My notes became a poem titled, "HE CALLED ME A MORBID SON OF A BITCH AND IT GAVE ME PAUSE"

YOU DON'T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BE MY NEMESIS

8 new (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals

& resulting poems

CLICK HERE

for details

on the Academy of American Poets site

CLICK HERE 

TO READ

RESURRECT EXTINCT VIBRATION:
A (Soma)tic Poetry Ritual
By CAConrad

(Soma)tic writing rituals provide a window into the creative viability of everything around us, initiating an extreme present. This new ritual will be customized to the winner of the Bombay Gin fundraiser as well as dedicated to them. The sound of a favorite extinct animal and how to return the vibration of that sound to the world around us is the foundation of the ritual. CA sends his love to Bombay Gin, Boulder, and the magic that is Naropa.

To place a bid on this for the November 13th auction please contact Ella Longpre at bgin@naropa.edu

(Soma)tic in BORT Quarterly #3

CLICK HERE PLEASE

9 (Soma)tics for FLYING OBJECT

VERY LIMITED EDITION of

handmade letter press chapbooks

9 (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals for

FLYING OBJECT of 

Hadley, Massachusetts

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

(SEE SAMPLES BELOW)

#105: HANNAH WEINER Double Life

Flying Object (Soma)tic Poetry Ritual 1 of 9

Poet Hannah Weiner saw words on foreheads, and so we will honor her poetic perceptions today. Poet Eileen Myles tells the story of attending a party years ago in New York City and seeing Hannah Weiner across the crowded room. Myles thought to herself, “I wonder if she sees words on my forehead right now?” Weiner looked at her, walked across the room and said, “I see no words on your forehead Eileen.” The poet, the psychic, the prophet, we give these words to you.

Blue lace agate is a gemstone used to expand and intensify communication faculties. Borrow one of the pieces from the table at Flying Object and walk to a bookshelf. Turn to page 36 of a random book, choose a word on the page then use the stone to write the word on your forehead. Do this 36 times with 36 different books; the number 36 depicting the ancient signifier for Double Life. Pause every ninth time to take notes for your poem. Take the notes as fast as you can, allowing the experience of the ritual to wash over you, writing faster than you can even think about what you are writing.

CATHETER ENJAMBEMENT in Evening Will Come

CLICK HERE TO READ IT 

MANY THANKS TO EDITOR LARA GLENUM

New One & THIS TIME with John Wieners POEMS!!!!

so the cops shut me down on the Alaska (Soma)tic at the airport
they ran me off
I came back, they ran me off again
the 3rd time they cuffed me and searched me in a special little room
PLAN B for ALASKA coming soon

in the MEANTIME
I'm driving to Tucson starting Monday, August 11
reading John Wieners poems at truck stops
in men's rooms
in diners
reading to as many folks as I can find in our beautiful country
and getting signatures for this petition

HALL OF THE DECOMMISSIONED PANTHEON

(Soma)tic Poetry Ritual Response To

Art of Its Own Making
for the Pulitzer Foundation

  Thinking within strict limits is stifling.

--Christian Bök

The Mona Lisa was wrapped in fine red satin and sealed in a specially designed wooden box before being transported to the countryside in 1939.  Art in the middle of war needs dedicated stewards to keep it hidden from invaders.  Even with the most trusted well-trained people a museum’s curators and other staff can fall prey to enemy gunfire, poison gas or drone attacks.  You are in the museum alone at night and the staff’s dead bodies are stacked in the basement.  You have a chance to save one piece of art before the looting begins, what do you save?  What are your criteria for choosing which to save, because it’s the most valuable, the most popular, because it’s your favorite, or what?  Take notes.

(Soma)tic poetry rituals provide a window into the creative viability of everything around us, initiating an extreme present.  Documentary notes are not important; in fact the movements we make inside the ritual inform the way the notes come out of us, no need for exacting detail.  Take notes as fast as you can, faster than you can think about what you are writing.  Later type the notes into a single document, print it out then carry it around to extract lines and words to shape your poem.  Approach your chosen work of art, thinking about the safest way to remove it from its mount on the wall or floor.  What tools do you imagine needing?  Stop to take more notes.  You will live with it hidden in your attic or as a lover under the covers next to you.  How will it feel seeing this coveted object each day?  Take notes.

Create a password for your hidden art by first choosing an ancient god or goddess.  What is your favorite home appliance?  Think of the nights you turn them all on to sit and listen in the dark for the most pleasing of the chorus.  Combine the god to the appliance, like Jupiter Egg Beater.  Take notes.  Go into a stall in one of the museum restrooms and write the password onto your naked flesh.  Take notes.  Write it again harder, then harder.  Take more notes.  Walk up to a stranger and say the password.  Just say it.  How do they react?  Take more notes.

Future Wilderness (Soma)tic Pt.2: ALASKA

STARTING JULY 15, 2014

I WILL BE OUTSIDE THE

PHILADELPHIA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

WITH MY SIGN FOR A TICKET TO ALASKA

my suitcase packed and ready to go I WILL BE THERE FOR 7 HOURS A DAY FOR 7 DAYS writing for this new (Soma)tic poetry ritual or until I get a ticket and go directly to security to check my bag of clean socks crystals rice cakes MUJI pens and notepads ONE WAY OR THE OTHER I WILL WRITE POEMS FOR MY FUTURE WILDERNESS PROJECT which is the followup to my new book ECODEVIANCE forthcoming in September

celebrating Hoa Nguyen & GHOSTS

CLICK HERE

for Scryer's Invitation

(Soma)tic Ritual

and poem

#103: Calling Across the Watermelon Field For You

Titling Yuh-Shioh Wong’s Paintings

We met in Marfa, Texas when I was on a Lannan Fellowship and Yuh-Shioh was painting in Marfa Book Company’s gallery provided by Tim Johnson. Murder Prevention was how I thought of her work when watching brows soften on anyone who walked into the gallery. All who visited felt the soft penetrating light of her paintings enter us to recalibrate our tools for examining the human condition. She shows us art can provide autonomous worldviews beyond formally designed perimeters of culture, letting us be free in the internal terra incognito.

We became friends and on one trip to an ancient petroglyph cave we were looking at bite marks on cactus made by javelinas. I said, “Javelinas are made out of cactus because that’s what they eat.” She asked if she could name one of her paintings this. A few months later when I was on a Tripwire residency provided by David Buuck in Oakland, Yuh-Shioh invited me to her house in Berkeley to name the other paintings from the new Marfa collection.

We spent eight hours with Yuh-Shioh bringing paintings out one at a time, perched on rocks against the

wall. I would meditate with cactus quartz, known as a collaboration stone, then hand it to her as I approached the painting with my deck of Dakini Oracle tarot cards, rosemary, lavender and Mercury’s fennel sprig in my hair. We built the concentration, always in the room together, and I would stand with the cards close to the painting, then cut the deck nine times. Of the sixty-five cards, only five kept repeating, and I would sit at my computer to begin hammering out a block of text. The title usually appeared at the end of a text block. I would read it aloud and it always connected. For instance, “framing vapor of the departed” came at the end of a text block and Yuh-Shioh explained that this painting was created after an encounter with a ghost in the house where she was staying in Marfa. The eight hours we spent for the titling ritual was the opposite of draining as we burned Palo Santo wood chips and used Steve Halpern’s DEEP THETA music as a trance vehicle. It was an honor to collaborate with an artist creating some of the most astonishing paintings I have ever felt enter me to transform me.

Title samples:

writing the letter of your life in the clearing

flying over the transmutation of the quiet

stethoscope to the petroglyph

the horns in the distance when we leave for the mountains

thinking with the longbow

bending the muscle of light