ALL DETAILS for the
CHINATOWN
Philadelphia
(Soma)tic Poetry Workshop
for 9/9/10, 6:30pm
please click HERE

I interviewed Me

I interviewed Me on (Soma)tic SOUNDWAVES. Thank you Pam Brown for this publication, which everyone can read HERE!

#45 MUGGED into poetry

If you haven't been stabbed or shot, if they took your money under threat and left, consider a poem. After I was mugged recently in Philadelphia this exercise came to mind on the subway ride home, the post-mugging subway ride where poetry took it's rightful place at the center of my world where even muggers play a part in it, it being bigger than the knife, more concentrated and firmer than his cock which will have many admirers in prison. He's going to die. So am I. So are you. He could have EASILY killed me, he and his three friends BUT I AM ALIVE AND QUITE WELL writing for poetry as I willingly came to this cesspool of humanity to do. All the globe becomes a poem. It is enough to manage this small part, here, a body, in a body, stinking, beautiful, a bit of tormented, angry, tender, delicious flesh. It is enough. Each of us. If we can read this we are all alive and creative. Anyone who tells you that you are not creative is a coward afraid of his own potential, trust me. Ignore all cowards, they were born to be ignored. Find your strength, find your poems. Every morning for two weeks as soon as you waken PREDICT your death. And write it down. For instance, "by choking in 11 years, 4 months, 2 weeks, 6 days, 12:18 pm." THEN STARTING at the tips of your toes touch your cells of skin and nails, feel bones, your pulse, hair, feel your moving body in the morning ALWAYS moving as long as you live you are moving blood through veins moving thoughts through dreams EVERY morning for two weeks touch every inch of your body's surface and your holes moist and dry. As soon as you finish this reaffirming ritual write a poem from your moving blood in the thoughts of the dream, and combine that LIVING poem with the prediction of your death. Click HERE to see my poem from the execution of this exercise, "GUESSING MY DEATH."

08/08/10 workshop

(Soma)tic Poetry Workshop
CHINATOWN
New York City
August 8th, 2010

Limited number of participants
REGISTER at this link

#44 AIDS Snow Family

"The poem is restorative, rather than fragmenting."
             --Alexandra Grilikhes

for anyone who loved someone who died of AIDS

In January gather snow, this is intimate this calling to honor the shock of being alive. I made one tiny snowman named CAConrad, and one tiny snowman named Tommy Schneider. For six months they held hands in the privacy of my freezer while I visited the streets and buildings in the Philadelphia of our Love. Snow crystals travel miles out of clouds into the light of our city. My snowman read to his snowman the letters I brought home to the freezer. It's 2010, AIDS is different in this century you didn't live to see. The used bookshop where you worked on South Street is now a clothing store. Our first kiss in the Poetry Section is a rack of blue jeans and I resist hooking my thumbs in the belt loops to pull you in -- I FEEL you everywhere today. In March an old friend was visiting and she said, "But you wrote poems for Tommy after he died." I said, "But it's sublime retracing our love in this exercise." She shook her head, "No, it's sad, it's very sad. Can't you see this beautiful day?" OF COURSE I see the beautiful day, in fact I SEE IT MORE THAN EVER, and I don't need her choreography to enter it. The point of experiencing love is to engage the greater openings. It's important to ignore the directives of others when investigating the way these doors swing on their hinges. Months of spring into summer, my snowman told your snowman the memories. One night you had asked if I was upset at something. I said, "I have no right to complain, all the men are dying in our city and I don't have AIDS!" You said, "Well I have no right to complain because I have a wonderful boyfriend who loves me and I DO have AIDS!" Macrobiotics, herbal infusions, massages, sensory deprivation tanks, reflexology, music by Soft Cell, music by Siouxsie and the Banshees, music by The Thompson Twins, music by Patti Smith. Of course we're all dying, you'll never kiss someone who isn't dying, I know that, which is why the fear of this is not allowed to stop me from missing you the way I want. The streets were filled with men in wheelchairs that year. We were kids in love while you vanished in the funnel with them. The day after Summer Solstice I took our snowmen out of the freezer. 90 degrees, we melted quicker than expected, even sooner than I could have imagined. I burned the letters, mixed their ash with our slush. And I read to the puddle a poem that came to me years ago in a dream soon after you died: he wrote "I have AIDS / and kissed this wall" / X marked the spot / I wrote "I'm not afraid" / and kissed him back / wherever he is. I took many notes during the life of our snowmen in the freezer until they vanished. Those notes became a poem.

#43 UNEASY RIDERS

Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young invited me to create (Soma)tic #43 for their piece A MEGAPHONE, forthcoming in CHAIN Magazine. Many thanks to Juliana and Stephanie.

"If you are very frank with yourself and don't mind how ridiculous anything that comes to you may seem, you will have a chance of capturing the symbol of your direct reaction. The antique way to live and express life was to say it according to the rules. But the modern flings herself at life and lets herself feel what she does feel, then upon the very tick of the second she snatches the images of life that fly through the brain." --Mina Loy in a 1917 interview

Gather twelve of your favorite books of poetry by living women poets. Divide your copy of Maria Raha's HELLIONS into twelve parts ("Uneasy Riders" is the name of chapter 7). HELLIONS is the perfect book to accompany this exercise. Talk to twelve women about visiting them. Tell them you will bring a box, and ask them to place a small object inside the box, something you're not to know about. It can be anything: a stone, button, shot glass, comb, lipstick, dildo, chalk, etc., but ask them to not tell you what it is. Ask them to sleep with it under their pillow the night before you visit. I told Maria Raha about this (Soma)tic exercise and asked her if twelve was too many, and she said, "If you don't know twelve women you need to SELF EXAMINE!" This is why it's good to ask Maria Raha. Twelve women it is! Take notes through the process of choosing the books of poetry, and visiting the twelve women to gather the objects. Write write write notes notes notes. After you have gathered the books by living women poets, and the box of twelve objects, set aside twelve consecutive days.

DAY ONE: As a preliminary, read the Loy quote aloud, then immediately watch Mary Wigman's 1914 dance HEXENTANZ on You Tube, and watch Wigman with the volume as LOUD as possible. Then read the first of the twelve sections you've created in HELLIONS. Climb into the bathtub, turn on the shower, open an umbrella, and lie down to read the first book of poems, pausing from time to time to YELL the poet's name! Take notes take notes. Reach inside your box and choose an object, but don't look at it. Smell it, rub it against you. Meditate with the object in the middle of your chest while thinking of the twelve women, water beating against the umbrella. SCREAM YOUR NAME with eyes closed in meditation. SCREAM YOUR NAME with eyes open. Harryette Mullen says, "proceed with abandon / finding yourself where you are". Look at the object. Do not put it back in the box, but do take more notes.

Choose a different location for each of the next eleven days. Stand in mud, hunch in the back seat of a car, in the basement with a candle, sit in a graveyard, on the steps of a courthouse, or stand facing the statue of a very dead old man. But be somewhere completely different each day. Before reading from HELLIONS, and the next book of poetry, and fondling an object in your box, read the Loy quote aloud, and watch Wigman's HEXENTANZ dance. Let these brilliant grandmothers loosen any knots, and always remember as Laura Riding says, "the words are only part of the poetic formula: the rest is ritual, and the reason in them must contend with the mechanics of magic-making in it – and must not win." Your notes might seem an endless chore of notes once you've completed your twelve days, but carry them around with you, and take more notes while reading them, putting them into a frame. The poem will come to you from those notes, it's in there, no doubt about it. You've infused the (Soma)tic with these others, and now your new poem is waiting.

#42 TRECARTIN ALLELUJIAH DEVIANT

for Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch

(Soma)tic #42 was written by CAConrad & Debrah Morkun.
There were three Trecartin films in Philadelphia in May of 2010 at The ICA, VOX Populi, and The Fabric Workshop Museum.

2 DAYS viewing Trecartin's films. DAY ONE: Before leaving home read from Franz Kafka's short story collection, if you don't own a copy, STOP, go buy one. Find a favorite sentence, like this one from Kafka's In the Penal Colony, "The Condemned Man especially seemed to be struck by a premonition of some sort of significant transformation." Cut this favorite sentence out, then cut this favorite sentence in half for later. Shred the rest of the book, pausing to TAKE NOTES about the love it takes to chop a book to pieces. Pages torn, sliced, then stuffed in your underwear, socks, bra (if you're a "man" get one, or find something to hold shreds of Kafka around your nipples). Wear something LOOSE so ONLY YOU know you are wearing Kafka, and let bits of the paper fall to the sidewalk as you walk to the gallery. And DO WALK to the gallery, working up a sweat with Kafka stuffed in your arm pits. At the gallery go into the restroom and suck on one half of your favorite sentence you cut earlier, then wrap it around a jelly bean or other candy YOU LOVE, making a Kafka candy decoupage. Do the same with the other half. NOW DRINK A FIVE HOUR ENERGY DRINK, then shove one of the Kafka candies up your ass, the Kafka candy decoupage now magically transformed into the Kafka candy decoupage suppository. Pop the other candy in your mouth. You now have your favorite Kafka sentence in you mouth, and up your ass. Sit down and watch the Trecartin film. TAKE NOTES TAKES NOTES. Grind
slowly in your seat, HOW DOES IT FEEL to have Kafka up inside your asshole while watching the Trecartin film? How does THAT feel? How is it? TAKE NOTES. When the Kafka candy in your mouth is gone TAKE NOTES and then suck the end of a chocolate bar, then write instant commands on your arm with the chocolate, like, "ENGINES RIP A PURR," or, "CRYSTAL FREQUENCIES," or "MAGICIAN'S ELIXIR," or, "ASCENDED BLOOD," then lick it off, suck it off, eat if off your arm your words. TAKE NOTES. Where are you in the film? Where are you actually? TAKE NOTES. Chew strands of Kafka shreds, then shove the wet balls up your nose. Breathe through your mouth and TAKES NOTES inside the Trecartin film, the film, Trecartin, it's there THE POEM IN THE NOTES. DAY TWO: Of course, it all starts, then, with a vision of Huckleberry's pelvis. & you're under his blankets, but those blankets are really the Mississippi River. For a moment, too, they are the Delaware, & then the Schuykill. And you're swimming but floating. This is to visualize first thing in the morning on the day you set aside for the (Soma)tic. Breathe thru your nose, and out through your mouth, and picture Huckleberry and then a boy from the future, however you imagine him. Become him and become the eye thru which he sees. See Huckleberry and then the boy from the future and then yourself getting stuck in the Mississipedia... or web-internet river, for lack of a better term. Feel your body turn to cobblestone and then to rust and then to internet marginalia. Say your favorite god's name three times, and then light a candle. Go to the computer screen and dial up Youtube. First watch Nick Cave singing "Saint Huck" live. Then, watch a video of people voguing. Next, leave your home. Walk to a store where they sell balloons, and select a balloon that speaks to you. It must be one you can blow up yourself. Then, go to a Philadelphia tourist shop and buy a fake copy of the Declaration of Independence. Write the words "Jingo," "oil spill," and "hallucinogen" somewhere on it. Then, roll it up like a scroll and put it in your underwear. Next, as you walk or ride to the museum, appreciate your body as a steamship. Feel steam emanating from all of your orbs. Buy some Wild Turkey whiskey on your way. Take a swig in a secret location of your choice somewhere near the museum, and spill an offering of it on the ground. Say, "to the cattle. to crazy horse." Go to the museum. Sit and watch the Trecartin film transfixed. Take notes that feel like ether. Take notes that feel like gut dust. scattalogical notes. remember there is the declaration of independence at your base. write about this. let your writing come from the steam of the body and from the base of the heart. take notes until you feel like you might disappear. Somewhere in the middle of all this writing, take a break to blow up the balloon. Notice your breath and how blowing up this balloon relates to the film at hand. Write about this. Know that you are every person in the Trecartin film. When you are finished writing, prick your finger with a small blade of some kind, and mark the last page with your blood. Become blood brothers with the page. Dot the page with memory blood. NOW take your notes YOUR NOTES from both days of TRECARTIN ALLELUJIAH DEVIANCE and find the poem that poem, find, it, it is in there, the poem.

JULY 2010 Philadelphia workshop

REGISTER SOON

There are a limited number of participants for the July 11th (Soma)tic Poetry Workshop. ALL DETAILS ARE HERE.

Thanks, see you soon,
CAConrad

COURTNEY, thanks again!

Courtney Shumway continues an amazing (Soma)tic study through film. This is with Jordon Cecil, and is based on (Soma)tic Exercise #23, click HERE. Thank you for this!

#41 MOTHER TASTES FAMILIAR BECAUSE SHE'S MOTHER

for David Wolach & Elizabeth Williamson

Before taking a trip to San Francisco I purchased garlic and crackers from plants grown and harvested in California, then shipped 3,000 miles to Philadelphia. I asked the pilot to tell us when we were over California, and he was nice and did so. After millions of years of evolution we can fly thousands of feet above the earth. NO I don't want to watch a stupid movie during the flight, NO I don't want to read a stupid magazine, I'm THOUSANDS of feet in the air LOOK at those clouds! Don't be so stupid, look at the clouds! When our rotten bodies die and evaporate we will join them. Clouds are trillions of cells of water who were once dinosaurs, eagles, and many stupid and brilliant people. All rotten in the end, festering into a final breath, the final breath itself a wisp of vapor that rose to join our family of clouds. It's so disgusting it becomes its own special beauty! I want to vomit, a sickness the ultimate honor bestowed! Is there something wrong with the word "nice?" Well I like it, and the pilot was nice and announced when we were flying over California. Everyone around me was hypnotized by the stupid movie, the beautiful actors speaking the writer's boring script about relationships and dishonesty. It's true, as a species we are so narcissistic the planet stands little chance surviving unless it can prove to make us more beautiful and improve our love lives. And I pressed the garlic against the window, garlic that traveled 6,000 miles round trip, California to Philadelphia, and back again, what a ridiculous world! Little bit of garlic soaring thousands of feet above the fields where it was born, and I licked it and sucked it, finally bit it in half and chewed it. I brought it all the way back home to eat it and make it become my body, feed my cells. And the crackers. Chewing and slowly tasting the soil and texture of the land. Tasting the wind that blew its fingers through the stalks and stems, cricket songs, birds, all these vibrations are in the plants quietly growing with an enormous family of plants in the moonlight and rain and metallic scent of lightning. It's all in there, chewing it all in there. I chew it and chew it and my rotten body will die one day but I love it here. I love this world, I'm so angry that I have to die and leave it. Suicides irritate me the most, I wish I could take their unwanted leftovers, stupid fucking idiot suicides as though life isn't short enough. Chew this world, it's incredibly delicious. Fuck you for not paying attention. Don't speak to me if all you have is something stupid to say. I chewed the inside of my mouth, chewed some of my meat loose and mixed it with garlic and chips, went into the bathroom and spit it into the toilet, added piss, snot and semen. Then flushed it into the sky, rushed back to the window as the movie credits played and everyone told everyone how good the movie was. My notes from practicing this exercise became a poem.

#40 BETWEEN CORRESPONDING WAVES

for Jocelyn Saidenberg & Rob Halpern

Gather sand from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. When I collected sand in Atlantic City I meditated with the ocean for an hour, then dug a hole, placed a quartz crystal in the hole, covered it with sand and crystal-infused water (Fiji water). I repeated this ritual at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. During both rituals I was conscious of facing AWAY from America. East and AWAY! West and AWAY! Migration of senses, their capacities perceived and pursued. Back home, using a compass, I positioned the head of my bed north for 4 nights of concentrated ocean dream enhancement. Night 1: Atlantic sand in a cloth under my pillow with a continuous recording of ocean tides playing from the east. I drank crystal-infused water to better remember my dreams. As soon as I woke I took my notes DO NOT DO ANYTHING PEE CRY ANSWER THE PHONE MAKE LOVE until you have taken your notes. Night 2: Repeat ritual, except use Pacific sand in a fresh cloth under the pillow and play ocean tide from the west. Night 3: Repeat ritual, except have both cloths of sand under the pillow and play ocean tides from east and west. As you begin to doze, listen for when the tides match pace, your body between them, America between them. Night 4: Mix the sand in a fresh cloth for the pillow, then play ocean tides from east, west, north, and south. Set the alarm to wake in the middle of the night, move your head south, sand now at your feet in the north. Gather your four rounds of notes and sculpt your poem.

THE AMAZING Courtney Shumway!!!!

CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO READ THE WORDS

This beautiful digital art is by Courtney Shumway, using a bit of my (Soma)tic text. Below is Courtney's (Soma)tic Project with video! ENJOY!

Thanks Courtney for making my day!!!!
CAConrad

-------------

The first in the new series of videos is up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKAuTMk457Y&aia=true

For those of you who I haven't talked to about this project, I am working on a series of videos based off of poet CA Conrad's (Soma)tic Poetry exercises - more information on these works can be found here:

http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com/

For the videos, I am engaging in each of the (Soma)tic Poetry Exercises ( http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com/ ) with individual artists, in whatever way seems appropriate, remains true to the practice, and results in some digital poetic love.

Ideally, each experiment will result in:
1) a unique interpersonal experience
2) a poem
3) a video

As with the Four Seasons piece, this project is being organized in an "Object-Free" manner, so if you are interested in participating, however you choose to interface with it will work. For example, here's a link to a video my friend Narayan did to kick us off a few weeks ago:

http://www.youtube.com/user/narayanr#p/u/88/-XBY1dL-0lI

Does it fit the structure of the piece? Not a bit. Is it part of the experiment? Obviously...

I hope all of you will consider joining this project as participating artists. There is room within the structure for all manner of performers, artists, dreamers, and risk-takers, even if you have never identified as a poet. Keep in touch regarding scheduling over the next several months. If you are out-of-state...whatever...let's work something out...we're creative people, right?

Incredible, abundant love and thanks to Quinn Myers, for being the first to offer up his time, experience, and poetry to my digital machine.


Let the new cycle begin!
~ Revolotus

#39 EVERGREEN SENSES

This new (Soma)tic was created by THE AMAZING students at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington. Students who created it include Camille Euritt, Maren Anderson, Jane Rubinstein, Ally Simmons, Will Owen, Franny Waldear, Zoe Hosmer-Dillard, Erin Tanner, Paige Clifton-Steele, Brian Fligner, Alexa Carson, Maryam Gunja, Kate Robinson, Nicky Tiso, Nicolas Lofredo, Adrienne Wilson, LeiF NePstad, Alex Dreyer, Maxamia Codella, Zach Fraser, Aba Kiser, Philip G. Taylor, Sean Ray ariel Caining, Duncan Wold Marsh. Many thanks to professors David Wolach and Elizabeth Williamson for inviting me to conduct the workshop.


Find something in your fridge. Smell it. Listen. Find a sound. Get as close to the sound as possible. Imitate the sound as you smell the object. Take notes. (Notes should mimic the sound. Continue taking notes until the smell has faded completely.) Leave the object, go to a familiar place with grass in an urban environment. Think about how it would taste. Now taste it. Lie on the grass and look out through the grass. Slowly tilt your head upward – expanding your horizon. Close your eyes and chew the grass slowly. Spit the grass out and look carefully at the grass, the dirt, the grubs, the sky. Alternate between seeing and tasting, tasting and seeing, both, neither. Taste the grass at a variance of altitudes. Standing, sitting, kneeling, prone. Taste all the parts of the grass, leaf, stock, root. Clutch the grass in your hand while concealing your left eye. Migrate the grass from your navel up to your pupil and then exchange the role of the hand from covering to embracing the object. Take your notes and using the THE FILTERS "Crystal" and "Altitude" write your poem.

#38 RADIANT ELVIS MRI

for the psychic legacy of Hannah Weiner

Don't be afraid of the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine, it's an amazing opportunity for a poem. I created this exercise after my knee was injured by a homophobic bus driver in Philadelphia. Astral travel is possible with some dedicated preparation. The MRI machine needs our water molecules in our bodies for the imaging process, the electromagnetic field literally shifting the alignment of the protons of our body-water. Drink only crystal-infused water for a week before your MRI, drink no other water, and drink it as often as you can. Look at the label for "silica" content, found in such brands as Evian and Fiji. It's important to saturate the body with as much crystal water as possible leading up to the day of the MRI. Choose a place you will visit for your psychic or astral visit (a room in your home for instance). For the week leading up to your MRI, each time you enter your chosen space STOP at the entrance, and take a long look around. Then close your eyes and imagine what you saw. Open your eyes and notice what you missed when imagining what you saw, for it is the missing things you will incorporate each time you repeat this exercise until you have gathered the entire space in your mind. The space I chose is a street in Philadelphia, a place I know more than any other place on our planet. For years I have been gathering the minute details of this one stretch of street: gutters, glass, bricks, trees, newspaper boxes, all the many details. Every time I walk to this street I prepare myself to STOP and drink it in, and notice something new to add to this growing landscape in my mind. On the day of your MRI sit and listen to music by Elvis Presley for an hour or so. Elvis Presley is being used ALL OVER OUR PLANET for healing. When I wrote my book Advanced Elvis Course there were many people I met who use Elvis to heal bodies and spirits, and when you listen to Elvis you tap into that collective use of His powers. The song I listened to on repeat before my MRI was "I Got A Feeling In My Body," with the refrain, "I got a feeling in my body / This will be our lucky day / We'll be releasing all our sorrow / Leave it layin' along the way." Elvis assists in setting the crystal-infused water molecules right for the MRI machine. Take notes take many notes all week long leading up to your RADIANT ELVIS MRI. Depending on the type of scan which is needed you may have as much as half an hour in the machine, and this is good! Let yourself relax for a few minutes. Take some deep breaths and relax. When the pulse of the machine amps up and begins to shift the alignment of your crystal-laden water molecules SEE the space you have been memorizing for the past week. SEE IT. Look at all the details you have been studying. The longer you keep inside this space the quicker and easier you will GO THERE. Go, and don't be afraid to leave your body behind you to do so. Make yourself sit, stand, jump, float, BE in that space in all ways. Find words if you can, like Hannah Weiner found on foreheads, look for words to remember. You'll know how to come back, don't worry yourself. Make sure you have a notebook ready to write in as soon as you get out of the machine. Leave the office and find a place to sit and take notes about your experience for your poem.

#37 TOUCH YOURSELF FOR ART

for THE AMAZING Penny Arcade

(this exercise's poems are a chapbook from MONDO BUMMER)

(the photo of Penny by Jasmine Hirst)

There must be a piece of art near where you live that you enjoy, even LOVE! A piece of art that IF THERE WAS WAR you would steal it and hide it in your little apartment. I'm going to PACK my apartment TO THE ROOF when war comes! This exercise needs 7 days, but not 7 consecutive days as most museums and galleries are not open 7 days a week. At the Philadelphia Museum of Art hangs the Mark Rothko "Orange, Red and Yellow, 1961," a painting I would marry and cherish in sickness and in health, have its little Rothko babies, hang them on the wall with their father, and a portrait of my breasts to feed them at any hour. For 7 days I sat with my dearest Rothko. The security guards will think you're odd when you come for 7 days to sit and meditate. Never mind that, bribe them with candy, cigarettes or soda, whatever it takes to be left in peace. Bring binoculars because you will get closer to the painting than anyone else in the room! Feel free to fall in love with what you see, you're a poet, you're writing a poem, go ahead and fall in love! Feel free to go to the museum restroom and touch yourself in the stall, you may not be allowed to touch the paintings but they can't stop you from touching yourself, fantasizing touching and being touched by them. And be sure to write on the restroom wall that you were there and what you were doing as everyone enjoys a dedication to the details in museums. And be certain to leave your number, you never know what other art lover will be reading. When you return REMEMBER THAT there is no museum in the world with rules against the use of binoculars, information you may need for the guards if you run out of cigarettes and candy. Map your 7 days with extravagant enhancements: mint leaves to suck, chocolate liqueurs, cotton balls between your toes, firm-fitting satin underwear, things you can rock-out with (in secret) for the art you love. Take notes, there must be a concentration in note-taking in your pleasure-making. Never mind how horrifying your notes may become, horror and pleasure have an illogical mix when you touch yourself for art. Once you gather your 7 days of notes together you will see the poem waiting to be pulled out of a long and energizing dream.

...in Scythe Literary Journal...

Scythe Literary Journal has just published 2 (Soma)tic Poetry Exercises and their resulting poems. Click on "Scythe Volume 1" and then you can click on my name to read. MANY THANKS to the editors and publishers of Scythe Literary Journal

#36 CONFETTI ALLEGIANCE

Is there a deceased poet who was alive in your lifetime but you never met, and you wish you had met? A poet you would LOVE to correspond with, but it's too late? Take notes about this missed opportunity. What is your favorite poem by this poet? Write it on unlined paper by hand (no typing). If we were gods we wouldn't need to invent beautiful poems, and that's why our lives are more interesting, and that's why the gods are always meddling in our affairs out of boredom. It's like the fascination the rich have with the poor, as Alice Notley says, "the poor are more interesting than others, almost uniformly." This poem was written by a human poet, and we humans love our poets, if we have any sense. Does something strike flint in you from the process of engaging your body to write this poem you know and love? Notes, notes, take notes. The poet for me in doing this exercise is Jim Brodey, and his poem "Little Light," which he wrote in the bathtub while listening to the music of Eric Dolphy, masturbating in the middle of the poem, "while the soot-tinted noise of too-full streets echoes / and I pick up the quietly diminishing soap & do / myself again." Take your handwritten version of the poem and cut it into tiny confetti. Heat olive oil in a frying pan and toss the confetti poem in. Add garlic, onion, parsnip, whatever you want, pepper it, salt it, serve it over noodles or rice. Eat the delicious poem with a nice glass of red wine, pausing to read it out loud and toast the poet, "MANY APOLOGIES FOR NOT TOASTING YOU WHEN YOU WERE ALIVE!" Take notes while slowly chewing the poem. Chew slowly so your saliva breaks the poem down before it slides into your belly to feed your blood and cells of your body. Gather your notes, write your poem.

#35 ANOINT THYSELF

for John Coletti & Jess Mynes

Visit the home of a deceased poet you admire and bring some natural thing back with you. I went to Emily Dickinson's house the day after a reading event with my friend Susie Timmons. I scraped dirt from the foot of huge trees in the backyard into a little pot. We then drove into the woods where we found miniature pears, apples and cherries to eat. I meditated in the arms of an oak tree with the pot of Emily's dirt, waking to the flutter of a red cardinal on a branch a foot or so from my face, staring, showing me his little tongue. When I returned to Philadelphia I didn't shower for three days, then rubbed Emily's dirt all over my body, kneaded her rich Massachusetts soil deeply into my flesh, then put on my clothes and went out into the world. Every once in awhile I stuck my nose inside the neck of my shirt to inhale her delicious, sweet earth covering me. I felt revirginized through the ceremony of my senses, I could feel her power tell me these are the ways to walk and speak and shift each glance into total concentration for maximum usage of our little allotment of time on a planet. LOSE AND WASTE NO MORE TIME POET! Lose and waste no more time she said to me as I took note after note on the world around me for the poem.