Friday, March 23, 2018

Weighing WANT

Another ingredient to my "Resurrect Extinct Vibration Ritual" is "Weighing WANT."  My life has become streamlined since beginning this ritual.  I know every single thing I own as I have continuously gone through my belongings to recycle what I do not want.

Once a month, wherever I am in the United States I empty the contents of my car to reorganize my belongings.  I also remove everything I no longer want and weigh it before recycling plastics, clothing, (non-poetry) books, and other odd things I accumulate.

After weighing what I no longer want I write in my notebook raw notes for the poem.  After visiting the local recycling center or Goodwill I write more notes.  I keep a very thin digital bathroom scale in my trunk for "Weighing WANT."



Monday, March 19, 2018

(Soma)tic Poetry Crystal Grid Ritual, 2018

Part of my "Resurrect Extinct Vibration Ritual" involves building and writing inside a crystal grid that spans hundreds of miles.  I'm currently in the planning stages, but will be ready to build the grid and write inside it this summer, 2018. 

A combination of 9 different crystals (more to come on the combination) will be buried in three different cities:  St. Paul, Minnesota, Memphis, Tennessee, and Cheyenne, Wyoming.  The same crystals will also be buried in Omaha, Nebraska.  For 9 days I will sit on top of the crystals in Omaha, facing St. Paul the first day, then Memphis the second, then Cheyenne, and continuing until I have written through the triangle facing each location three times.  With the buried crystals will also be bits of my skin, hair, spit.


The Omaha portion of the ritual also includes eating samples of dirt from all three locations, listening to ambient recordings from each location, tuning in with my voice and body to deeply hum the pitch and vibration of each different location.  Samples of finished poems from this ritual so far at THIS link and THIS link.


"Resurrect Extinct Vibration," is a (Soma)tic poetry ritual in 9 parts.  The main ingredient involves inducing a trance by saturating my body with recordings of recently extinct animals while lying on the ground across the US.  Another ingredient is drawing the animals on index cards with request for correspondence, leaving them across the nation in laundromats, coffee shops, etc., and I reply as ghost animals. "Saint Francis Safe Passages" is an activist ingredient, writing to elected officials to convince them we need thousands of land bridges across the US-highways for animals to cross into safety.