Philly & NYC 2016 Workshops

for 1/31 Philly cLick HERE 

for 2/7 NYC cLick HERE

POWER SISSY INTERVENTION #1: Queer Bubbles

for Candice Lin 

I occupied a busy street corner in Asheville, North Carolina to bless children with bubbles that will make them queer.  Not gay and lesbian, but QUEER!  Bubbles of course do not have such powers, bubbles have only the power to be bubbles, and some parents knew that and thought the whole thing was funny and would say, “That’s cool, I will love my children no matter what.”  I took notes for the poem.

But MOST parents were not happy about Queer Bubbles at all, “Ooo bubbles, look at the bubbles sweet heart, look at the pretty bubbles.”  I would blow bubbles for their little hands and say, “These bubbles will assure that your child will grow up to be a healthy, happy, revolutionary Queer who will help rid the world of homophobia, misogyny, racism and other forms of stupidity.”  Parents pulled away nervously saying “Sorry, sorry.”  One mother abruptly yanked her blond son’s hand, “C’mon honey ice cream, ice cream!”  The boy cried, reaching for the bubbles as she refused to look in my direction, pulling him from the queering of the bubbles.  Most parents though just said “Sorry, I’m sorry” as they walked away.  I took notes for the poem.

The fear of queer will not dissolve with sorry, the apology is not acceptable, especially if their children grow up to be queer.  Asheville purports to be a liberal, laid back city, but Queer Bubbles pulled the veil aside for a closer look.  One man said, “Jesus loves you.”  I said, “I don’t think so.”  His face screwed up and he yelled “YES HE DOES!”  Jesus loves the queers, isn’t that nice?  And his angry messenger roams the street to tell us so.  WE MUST INSIST that a redistribution of wealth always include The Love.  How can we be there for one another?  How can we be assured that everyone gets The Love?  Notes from the ritual became a poem.

HALL OF THE DECOMMISSIONED PANTHEON

(Soma)tic Poetry Ritual for the Pulitzer Foundation’s

2014 Exhibit “Art of Its Own Making”

for Nicole Eisenman

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.

(Aphrodite Microwave was my password.  Nicole Eisenman’s painting Breakup at the ICA in Philadelphia was my focus.  How far are the doors from where it hangs?  There is a subway entrance just outside the exit, but what if, and what if, okay, then here we go THIS WAY instead?  The notes became a poem titled “NOW THAT THE PRESENT IS SO ENDANGERED WE CAN STOP WORRYING ABOUT THE FUTURE.”)

BEE Alliance

MANY THANKS TO TC Tolbert for publishing this 

new (Soma)tic poetry ritual and resulting poem 

PLEASE CLICK HERE

(one of THE BEST THINGS i ever saw in this 
shitty world was a wild horse who never knew
the feel of a buckled saddle on her back)

#123: Bee Alliance

for Fred Moten

Lavender, roses, dandelions, squash blossoms, honeysuckle, sitting by flowers is where I waited for the bees.  My fingertips to their vibrating furriness, lightly brushing them, giving them some love as they tirelessly work for their queen.  I have been greeting not denying my gray hairs, my wrinkling, loosening skin of my half-century vehicle of flesh.  Dear Fred, I am forever seeking the strength to deserve poetry and if I do not have it some mornings I pretend I have it until I believe I have it and then I have it.  I took notes for the poem.

I pressed the tip of my tongue to the back of a large bumblebee and fell into the grass with eyes closed to savor the taste.  Blotches on my skin, waning sperm count, weakening eye sight, looking in the mirror, “I am made of billions of cells and we are now half way (or more than half way) through the magic of being alive together.  We will leave this world while living by the strength of poems.”  There is a mirror, flowers to smell, bees to pet and taste, and more notes for the poem.

Dear Fred, sometimes trees clear as I drive along rivers and I glimpse the veins of our planet pouring over boulders with green scum and fish.  Anne Boyer taught me the Latin for “learn to die” and I shout to the water “DISCITE MORI!  DISCITE MORI!”  Bloodletting rivers of us cavort downhill in a world of distraction.  Behind a Frito Lay truck, imagining the delicious Frito corn chips in boxes and crates as I pass him on the left to catch his beautiful smile.

Dear Fred, sometimes the bees out here taste like an insecticide a poet wrote the advertising jingle for.  Taking notes for a poem, aging each second.  Horses and new colts race past a patch of wild violets I found on a clump of sun-warmed earth.  This is when I found a hive.  I could hear them at first.  They must have known I was completely at ease, landing on my eyebrows and toes, dancing, but no stings.  My final goal was to have sex near a hive but my boyfriend Rich backed out at the last minute.  I placed an add, “Queer seeks man for sex next to beehive.”  Some responders said they would have sex with me in the woods, but minus the beehive, and one said I sounded weird and he had to meet me.  So I was on my own, masturbating next to the purring honeycomb. They were curious of my activity dancing on my shoulders and thighs, but no stings.  It took me five decades to have sex with bees.  That’s too long to wait.  My notes became a poem about horses titled “Bug I Love You.”

(Soma)tic Ritual Collaborations

for Jason Dodge

We poets have been the ugly cousins of the arts for years, painters asking us to write poems serenading their paintings.   Collaboration can mean creating together, but it can also mean being a traitor and working with the enemy.  Let us honor the first of these definitions.

(Soma)tic Rituals can fuse with any artistic discipline.  For instance, the poet creates half the ritual, the painter the other half.  The two halves are then combined to make one ritual we both perform together to write and paint.  I have created (Soma)tic rituals to collaborate with such artists as Candice Lin, Yuh-Shioh Wong, Jonas Slonacker, and others.

Here is an example.  The poet and the painter deposit letters for one another inside newspaper boxes on opposite sides of a street.  We wave to one another then begin reading the letters, which explain the ways we would like to die.  Found in the morning on the floor of a boat after being impaled in the chest by a swordfish while night fishing.  Or fragment of my bloody shirt found after having sex with lions.  We read our letters then begin writing or painting in view of each other. 

An hour later we meet in the middle of the street to embrace and dance the Foxtrot with the painter leading, then switching with the poet leading.  We return to write and paint within view of one another.  The experiential collaboration of (Soma)tic Rituals has infinite possibilities and there is no reason for poets to ever again subjugate ourselves to other artists.

Podcast for The Poetry Foundation

PLEASE CLICK HERE

to listen

INTERVIEW on Tarot & (Soma)tic Rituals

Please click HERE to 

read the interview

Felix Bernstein interviewed me for The New Museum on Speculative art and praxis

What’s death and destruction got to do with your art?

“From Whitman to WalMart” is a new poem I am writing where I start at Whitman’s doorstep viewing him as head cheerleader of empire with his essays calling African Americans “baboons” and his poem for the western pioneers written during the great extermination of Native Americans.  80% of WalMart stores allow sleeping overnight in their parking lots, which I do, meeting homeless families stretching across America, the true results of Whitman’s love of Manifest Destiny.  I show Whitman’s writing as the original TV commercial hiding the true body of unbridled greed that continues to destroy everyone and everything in its path.  I refer to myself as an intestinal expatriate poet.

“Resurrect Extinct Vibration” is another new poem.  In this one I saturate myself with field recordings of recently extinct birds and animals while taking long naps on the earth across America.  I begin writing as soon as I wake, but in the sleeping I return the vibrations of these creatures to my cells, viewing a degraded ecology as vibrational absence along with its poisoned air, water and soil.  In September 2014 the World Wildlife Fund’s biennial “planet index report” claims 52% of wild animals have vanished in the past three decades.  I am accepting and recording the sixth mass extinction currently underway.

Since 2006 I have stopped cutting my hair as both a reminder that my nation is at war and to use as a measuring device for the latest body count for a long poem now over 3,000 pages long.  We are currently bombing six nations simultaneously where we were bombing two when I started.  

To directly answer your question: everything.  I am a queer American who had a boyfriend I loved but someone bound, gagged, tortured and raped him, then covered him in gasoline and burned him to death.  His name was Mark.  He changed his name to Earth.  He was beautiful.  Do not forget this.  The artist Jason Dodge published my serial poem about this that you can read to not forget at fivehundredplaces.com

What’s philosophy got to do with your art?

Well I believe poetry is strong enough.  The power of poetry has not failed me like it has failed some poets in recent decades who hoist philosophy to buttress the poem.  It feels misogynistic in a way, like poetry is too feminine, too weak, needs a man’s ideas to move forward.  Love philosophy -- go ahead, I’m not an anti-intellectual I simply don’t need it to make poetry appear more vigorous.

Sigmund Freud said, “Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.”  Not philosopher, but poet.  And you can have whatever feelings you want about Freud but no one can disagree that he changed how we view the landscape of human emotion and the origins of feeling.  “Everywhere I go” is bold.  It’s direct and from a man who was as careful with his words as a poet.

#121: MY FAGGOT KANSAS BLOOD CONFESSIONS TO THE EARTH

for Anne Boyer

In a Kansas field I spent several hours burying my feet in the soil while listening to the insects, birds and cars on the highway beyond the trees.  I was born January 1st 1966 at the 838th Tactical Hospital, Forbes Air Force Base of Topeka Kansas.  My mother said the doctor held me by my ankles and announced, “ANOTHER FINE SOLDIER FOR JESUS!”  And I say FUCK YOU to those first words said to me!  My mother ate food grown on this land when I was inside her; we drank from the same aquifer, the sky was as big as it is today.  I took notes for the poem. I dug a hole and deposited shit, piss, vomit, blood, phlegm, hair, skin, fingernails, semen and tears, and in that order. I apologized for being alive.

I apologized for the animals I shot and killed to prove I could provide dinner.  I apologized for having no answers on how to stop the hyper-militarized police on the streets of America while the US military is on the streets of Arab nations. I apologized for paying taxes that purchase the bullets, bombs and drones.  I am a citizen of the United States my nation is guilty of war crimes.  I apologized for not convincing my queer sisters and brothers that repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was only putting a sympathetic face on a multi-trillion dollar military industrial complex.  I apologized for not finding a way to protect Chelsea Manning.  I apologized for not preventing my boyfriend Mark from moving to Tennessee where his murderers awaited.  I am a citizen of the United States my nation is guilty of hate crimes.  I apologized for many things for a long while then covered the hole with my offerings and took more notes for my poem.

MY DIARY IS UP FOR AUCTION
AT THIS LINK (a RADAR fundraiser)

SLEEPING AT WalMart

A few people have written to me about my “From Whitman to WalMart” (Soma)tic poetry ritual I am currently doing.

Part of the ritual involves sleeping in my car in WalMart parking lots.

Some poets have written saying they also want to do this.

Please let me share some information with you.

80% of WalMarts allow parking to sleep, but make sure you are parking in one of the 80% that allows this.

Always sleep in the drivers seat.

Always have the windows all the way up.

Always have keys in the ignition READY to go.

Please ALWAYS park so you have a straight shot out of there, and please don’t ever park so that you

need to back out.

I made the mistake of parking at a WalMart among the 20% that doesn’t allow parking to sleep and I woke to find a group of men (I don’t know if it was five or six of them) around the car looking in the window at 3 in the morning. 

One of them had either a baseball bat or 2X4. 

But in just a second I pulled myself forward with the steering wheel, turned the ignition and floored the gas to get out of there.

Close calls are part of living on the road and should be expected.

Please consider my advice because you never know…

Also it is important to have conversations with the other people parking to sleep because most tend to want to talk, especially the homeless.

The retired folks parking their campers and RVs seem less interested in talking, but the homeless, especially the homeless families want to talk because they share information with one another about how to survive out there.

For the better part of 1970 my mother and I lived in our car.

I keep trying to think if it was easier then or now and my conclusion is that it’s a little of both for both.

If you get a WalMart that allows sleeping you are safe so far in my experience.

In 1970 my job was to take care of the can opener.

The can opener was a valuable tool back then but not so much for my life today.

Restrooms are much nicer today of course.

In 1970 gas station bathrooms had a kind of abrasive, toxic powdered soap that came out of a dispenser and it seemed to take a lot of water to remove the oily film it left on your body.

There were far less cars back then and it seemed easier to sleep in out of the way locations.

My one cousin in the army is giving me a camouflage net to throw over my car so I can park off-road and this is not ideal of course, but might be useful.

I hate to make this JUST about survival because it is a beautiful thing to be living on the road, meeting new people, stretching across the belly of the planet.

New (Soma)tic poetry book

MANY THANKS to artist Jason Dodge

for publishing my new book 

DETAILS AT THIS LINK

poems I wrote about my

boyfriend Earth's (aka Mark's)

murder in Tennessee

R.I.P. dear man

#120: SUPERBOWL BASEBALL

for Kevin Killian

I went to a sports bar during SUPERBOWL SUNDAY wearing a Phillies baseball cap and ordered vodka with orange juice.  Every once in awhile I would raise a fist and yell “GO PHILLIES!”  At first people around my table murmured.  Then I was told to shut up while taking my notes for the poem.  I was waiting for the person in the room who would confront me and I finally found him.  AG = Angry Man:

ME:  WOO HOO PHILLIES GO PHILLIES GO GO GO!!

AG:  HEY BUDDY WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU IT’S THE SUPERBOWL!!

ME:  YEAH MAN I KNOW, WOO HOO HOO HOOOOO GO PHILLIES!!

AG:  DUDE ARE YOU FUCKING HIGH!? 

ME:  What?  HEY MAN this is PHILADELPHIA YOU CAN’T DISS THE PHILLIES WHEN YOU’RE IN PHILADELPHIA!!

AG:  I ROOT FOR THE PHILLIES WHEN IT’S BASEBALL SEASON DUDE!!

ME:  WhaaaaaaatEVERRRRRRRRRR!!

Some of the others had been waiting for the brave man to confront me so they could be louder with their condemnation.  THESE were the men I wanted to look at, the weak ones, the bottom feeders who need someone with more nerve to step forward and speak for them before they open their mouths.  A brave man has never once frightened me.  Weak men are the danger, always seeking ways to hide their cowardice at the expense of others.  And there they were, all around me, and it was just like old times.  I held out my hand to the brave man and thanked him.  “YOU’RE THANKING ME!?”  “Yeah, thank you.”  He shook his head, “Okay man.”  I took more notes and my notes became a poem. 

#119-A: Denzel Quartz

Celebrity Crystals is a (Soma)tic poetry ritual where clear quartz gems absorb several full-length films of a celebrity, and are then stored in a box lined with their photos. Denzel Washington quartz is underway, currently soaking in the images and sounds of the 2010 film THE BOOK OF ELI.

#118: Déjà Vu Bus Ride

For over a decade I would see her on the bus or in the vegetable shop near my apartment, always looking at everyone and everything, never on the phone or listening to music.  One of those rare people who is truly present, I would see her see me and when I smiled she always returned the smile.  We have observed people and things together for years, but never met, never talked, not once.  We have never heard one another speak.  In my journals I refer to her as my déjà vu friend because seeing her destabilizes my reality the way déjà vu will do.

While house sitting in Philadelphia after many months of being on the road I went to my old neighborhood in search of her.  She was waiting for the number 21 bus and it was the first time I was getting on with her deliberately.  I didn’t want to break our pattern and introduce myself, so instead I occupied the space as a fellow observer of the world.  I took notes for the poem while studying the many hair wraps, shirt collars, and a myriad of expressions often in the same face.  After a few blocks our eyes met as usual but she not only smiled she nodded.  When I returned the nod my smile was one of my favorites because it was for my déjà vu friend.  She got off the bus at 36th Street and I continued to write and observe to 69th Street.

poems in Cosmonauts Avenue

Click HERE for 3 poems from 
my (Soma)tic poetry ritual

MOUNT MONADNOCK TRANSMISSIONS

MANY THANKS to the editors!

#117: MoMA’s Office of Paranormal Activity

--for Kenny Goldsmith

Poet Kenny Goldsmith invited me to perform at the Museum of Modern Art, but instead of squandering the time and space on YET ANOTHER poetry reading I turned it into a writing performance ritual for new poems.  After calling a few talented friends to help me I went to work.  Everything was invented, including the poem that resulted, titled SLAVES OF HOPE LIVE ONLY FOR TOMORROW. I downloaded the MoMA masthead from an online press release and created a flyer to hand out in the main lobby:  A MoMA EXCLUSIVE, 12:30pm TODAY!  THE REINCARNATED SOUL OF FUTURIST PAINTER GIACOMO BALLA IN THE JOAN AND PRESTON GALLERY ON THE 6TH FLOOR!  PRONTO!  INTRODUCED BY CAConrad. 

Two security guards tried to stop me from handing out the flyers.  I said, “But I work for MoMA’s Office of Paranormal Activities.”  They said, “There is NO such office!”  I said, “It’s in the basement, a little like X Files for art.”  They were much angrier than necessary and were ready to throw me to the sidewalk when Kenny intervened just in time to assure them that this was part of my performance.  I am not complaining at all by the way as the one guard was quite handsome, his beautiful flaring nostrils showing that he was ready for ACTION, ready to put me in my place!  How thrilling!

At 12:30 a large crowd gathered.  “Thank you all for coming, my name is CAConrad and I am the director of the Office of Paranormal Activity at MoMA.  I was first hired after the 2008 Wall Street collapse when many of the paintings in this particular gallery were found stacked neatly in the corner each morning.  Security camera footage shows the paintings floating across the room, most likely carried by the disturbed souls of recently departed millionaires.  After our successful exorcism I wanted to preserve the integrity and viability of my office so I found new projects for my staff.  One project was to search for the reincarnated soul of Balla whose paintings surround us today in this gallery as part of the Inventing Abstraction exhibition.  It proved to be our most challenging project

to date.  After exhausting the efforts of several psychics we asked MoMA friend and Andy Warhol Superstar Penny Arcade for help.”  I turned to Penny who waved.  “Thank you so much Penny for putting us in touch with your psychic friend in Belize who was our big breakthrough.  He told us that the reincarnated soul of Futurist painter Giacomo Balla was right here in New York City all along.  He is now a poet living in Brooklyn named Ariana Reines!  Please welcome Ariana!”

Ariana walked from the applauding crowd to join me where I asked her what she thought of her paintings from her previous life as Balla.  She said, “Oh I’m a much better poet in this life than I was a painter in that one.”  A few audience members mumbled their disapproval of the poet daring to measure her different lifetimes of art in public.  I said, “MoMA Honorary Chairman David Rockefeller was so excited when we finally found you that he and the board of trustees have graciously offered to let you take one of your paintings back home with you.  Which one would you like?”  She shrugged and said, “Well I don’t really like them, but the diamond shaped one is nice I suppose.”  I said, “Well let’s get that off the wall and wrap it up for you.”  When I walked toward the painting the handsome nostril flaring guard shook his head with a scowl.  I said, “Ariana Reines is also a healer.  Is there anyone here today who needs healing?”  The poet Stephen Boyer popped up in a BEAUTIFUL dress he made with plastic flowers from the dollar store.  Ariana had him lie on the floor below her painting she painted in 1903.  She instructed me to work with her to heal Stephen, doing a beautiful dance with her hands over his head and body, an energy work not unlike Reiki, chanting.  What a marvelous experience and I feel very fortunate to know the talented poets that I do, the kind of people who augment the spirit with their very presence.  Notes notes notes, I took notes, and the notes became a poem.