#58 DOUBLE-shelter

for Joshua Beckman

"thriving requires more than just survival."

       --Erica Kaufman

If you’re visiting someone far away, first spend time studying everyday structures of your own apartment. Where and HOW does the light hit walls? Press your ear to the refrigerator, taste the water with small sips, eyes open, eyes closed. Study the smell and temperature of rooms. Feel your pulse on the toilet, in the shower, by the oven. Cook broccoli with a little oil and salt. Eat it slowly.

As soon as you arrive at the house you are visiting cook broccoli with a little oil and salt. Eat it slowly. Do everything in reverse order, pressing your ear to the refrigerator. How is it different? Take notes while investigating THE TRUTH if there is truth. What does it mean to say THE TRUTH? What matters most? The water has what differences? Are they subtle? Metallic?

Listen to Philip Glass on the floor, on your back, very still, in, the, dark, just, you, and, Mr. Glass. I chose the song “MUSIC IN CONTRARY MOTION.” Reflect on a personal violence you want undone. Some terrible THING that removed the beauty you once lived with. My boyfriend Mark (nicknamed Earth) moved to a queer community in Tennessee to work the land. He meditated in a cave each day where homophobic men followed him, bound and gagged him, covered him in gasoline and set him on fire. For a long time I would go to sleep and dream of stabbing his murderers, shooting his murderers, drowning, choking and bludgeoning his murderers. Breathtaking dreams of retribution for the man I loved, which, woke, me, each, morning, more inconsolable than the last. I was never going to feel happy again it seemed. Take notes about how the violence in your life will not leave. How it may never leave. Take notes about how you are sensing the world differently since then.

6/5/11 (Soma)tic Poetry Workshop

for all details on the

JUNE Philadelphia
workshop "MASONIC SLUICE"
go to THIS LINK

#57 SPLAB Institute in Seattle

(the following exercise was created at the SPLAB Institute in Seattle, Washington on 4/30/11. This collaborative exercise was created by: Greg Bem, Alex Bleecker, J Chive, Adriana Grant, Armen Moradians, Meredith Nelson, Paul E. Nelson, Reshe Sabre, Stanley Sabre, Jeremy Springsteed, Ellen Welcker)

find a quiet room in which to lie down. it may be your bedroom
or living room. it may be blue. open all openable things. leave
open. place something pungent to eat near where you
will lie. it may be an orange. set an intention. close
eyes. seek sound. notice the first one you hear,
then the next. they may come either from
inside (house, room, you) or otherwise.
connect them in your ear with string.
it may be catgut. continue to
connect until you fall asleep.
wake up, hold nose closed.
as still as possible, take
a bite of the pungent
thing. release nostrils.
wait for something to
happen. resume
connecting
sounds.
fall ba
ck a
slee
p. re
pe
at.

(Soma)tic poem in The UPL

Click HERE to find the PDF of my (Soma)tic exercise and poem. This one was about sitting in a storm, EATING the storm. I loved doing it!

Click HERE to see other writing in The UPL: The Underground Public Library of NYC, edited by the amazing Greta Byrum!

MAY, 2011 PHILADELPHIA WORKSHOP

SUNDAY

MAY 15th

3pm

Philadelphia

NEW GROWTH

(Soma)tic Poems

workshop is $25

please use the Pay Pal button below

(if you miss the workshop you may use

payment as credit for a future workshop)

PLEASE USE PAY PAL BUTTON TO PURCHASE WORKSHOP

if you would like to make other arrangements to pay
please contact CAConrad888@gmail.com

CAConrad updates the (Soma)tic Poetry Exercises web page monthly. He has also conducted (Soma)tic workshops in Philadelphia, New York City, Seattle, D.C., San Francisco, and elsewhere.

SEATTLE WORKSHOP 4/30/11

details at SPLAB.org

#56 OIL THIS WAR!

for Jonathan Skinner

How is it where you live? If there are no wealthy people and/or the poor are nurtured and protected, then maybe this exercise is not for you? I have been littering in wealthy neighborhoods with JOYFUL PROTEST for some time now! It is exciting to SEE “refuse” in the open, not hidden in landfills, if only for a moment. Here in Philadelphia taxes pay for uniformed workers to clean prosperous neighborhoods of cigarette butts, cans and wrappers all day, each day, while completely ignoring working class and poor communities. Philadelphia public school students have a 51 percent dropout rate, and 25 percent of the city’s population lives below the poverty line (That’s 1 in 4 people THAT’S 1 IN 4 PEOPLE!). The police patrol and protect the rich while they INFAMOUSLY threaten, beat and rob the poor (just ask Philadelphia Daily News reporters Barbara Laker & Wendy Ruderman). WE MUST RESIST! WE MUST BE RESISTANCE! Take initial notes on the class structure of where you live.

Save your “garbage” for a week, packaging, and containers, especially plastics. Take notes about each item, tracing its origin of production from label information or the manufacturer’s website. Find other companies they work with, for instance a candy bar needs chocolate from South America, and plastics, inks, and glue for wrappers. Trace on a map the distance each item needs to travel to the candy bar factory, then from the factory to your city. Calculate gasoline and oil consumption per mile. And consider that plastics are petroleum byproducts. And not just the packaging, but in fact many goods themselves are made from oil: hand lotion, shoes, ballpoint pens, disposable diapers, glue, rubbing alcohol, soda and milk jugs, credit cards, nail polish, ink, crayons, and more. Much of the modern world IS oil. Toys, televisions, telephones, microchips, luggage, cars, condoms, it’s in the air, water, soil, food, IT’S IN OUR BODIES! Take notes about oil, take notes about your discovery of oil consumption in ways you had never considered or realized. After immersing yourself in this information STOP! Then write nonstop for 30 minutes, WHATEVER comes to mind, just write! Let it flow! THIS is where the best language for our poems will arise!

Real change needs creativity and action! Using a black marker write suggestive notes on your “garbage”. Littering in wealthy neighborhoods is precarious but gratifying! Just IMAGINE them reading your used tampon marked US WAR! and puzzling over the message. Make the rich THINK! Or at least make their children think! OIL OIL EVERYWHERE! Write on old shoes, sandwich wrappers, cans, bags, snotty tissues, used condoms, THIS OIL WAR! On an empty bottle of hand lotion OIL THIS WAR! On a cereal box THIS FAGGOT WORLD VICTORIOUS! On a soda bottle YOUR SISSY CHILDREN SAVE THE WORLD FROM YOU! As citizens it is our duty to communicate the temperature of SUFFERING! Littering helps us SEE our planet’s transmuted elements before they’re swept into trucks and hauled to the dump, far, far away, leaking toxins into the water and soil. A tidy sidewalk does NOT EQUAL thoughtful, mindful citizenry! CITIZENS OF THE WORLD RISE UP AND FILL THE STREETS OF THE AFFLUENT WITH YOUR SHIT AND “GARBAGE” TODAY! Let them SMELL and READ the products of THEIR WARS! Write on your “garbage,” WE DEMAND A PLANET SAFE FOR ANIMALS AND OTHER HUMANS! Take notes about your littering excursions. Take notes about the neighborhoods you visit with your deposits. Take notes, take MANY notes, then STOP! Write for 30 minutes on autopilot. Always remember to carry your notes with you wherever you go to pull and wrench your poem into existence.

new (Soma)tic chapbook!

I'm very excited about my new chapbook MUGGED into poetry from Cannot Exist Press! And it's only $5 for pre-sale now. All details about the chapbook, as well as other new chapbooks and issue #7 of Cannot Exist Magazine, please click HERE!

APRIL 2011 (Soma)tic Workshop

SUNDAY

April 10th

3pm

SPRING, WHEN SOMA

OVERTAKES SOMATIC

the poetry in everyone

workshop is $25

please use the Pay Pal button below

(if you miss the workshop you may use

payment as credit for a future workshop)

PLEASE USE PAY PAL BUTTON TO PURCHASE WORKSHOP

if you would like to make other arrangements to pay
please contact CAConrad888@gmail.com

#55 AKILAH'S LEGACY

in memory of Akilah Oliver

(1961 - 2011)

"...but I think also death itself, as an event, as a limit, as a field of investigation, is too many things at once. It's solid and it's slippery." (in her interview with BOMB Magazine)

It is horrendous, this world's condition of dying. Loss of life is the most arduous vista of pain. Let us honor Akilah's life and legacy, and honor her advance toward death as "a field of investigation" by writing a poem. One of her many appreciable gifts was her encouragement of others. Years ago when she lived in Philadelphia she taught workshops at the LGBT bookstore I co-managed at the time. Her students always seemed some of the most jubilant, motivated people entering the store. Let's share their enthusiasm TODAY! Bring your favorite Akilah Oliver book to this exercise. Consider creating your own (Soma)tic Reading Enhancement for the book you choose. The enhancements are to be created intuitively, a structure derived from initial sensations upon receiving a particular book. It is my wish as a poet to motivate readers to not be passive, and to take credit for a poem’s absorption. After all, we each bring a unique set of experiences and circumstances to filter and digest poems, making them part of ourselves and entirely in our own way. In honor of Akilah Oliver let’s inspire one another to have full participatory reading! Take NOTES while engaged in this exercise, notes you will later pull from to shape your poem. A couple of summers ago I created the following reading enhancement for Akilah's book A Toast in the House of Friends. Wanting to get OUT of my city for it, a visceral reaction transpired:

Maybe it was the trees on the cover, or the NEED for something MOVING around me, but I took this book out to the protected wildlife parks around Philadelphia and found a secluded stream, first for my feet, then…. Bring a battery-powered radio, turn it to a talk radio station, but put it far enough away from you that you can hear it, but can’t make out what it is they’re saying. Faint, keep it faint, go and adjust it if you can understand them, as we want the voices to be clearly voices, but the words unattainable with our senses. Get your feet in the moving water and start reading, “language is leaving me: ahhhhh—this victimization shit / is not stable and the victors: / when are we going to safari / we: [astounded exclamation] / nancy reagan out of my head” This is a book, and it feels like it is written right into your skin when you read it. I found an old scuba mask, and if you have one, please wear it and rest your head in the stream, submerging your ears at least for the reading of one poem, “well the point is, things were calm down / here for a while and the world was little. i want to be big like you. or i / want you not vast, not dead, not gone, but human small and here. i am / so selfish. that is what i really want. to see you again. to oil your scalp. to / hear you walk in the door, say ma i’m home. give me a chance to say / welcome home son. or when leaving, don’t forget your hat. what do you wear / out there?” That was the one I read underwater, under running water. This book needs time to be alone between poems. How is the water? How is today for you, reading Akilah’s poems? “i’d like all the stone butches to wave their hands in the air right now, wave em / like they just don’t care / (it seems to be unfortunate but true; corporate spell check does not recognize you / we are all too young to remember this”

Now let's listen to her voice! There are marvelous recordings of Akilah available online, but my favorites are on MATCHING HALF, poems written and performed by Akilah Oliver and Anne Waldman, with the exquisite music of Ambrose Bye. This is A MUST, find a copy! Borrow a copy! LIE FLAT ON YOUR BACK IN THE DARKNESS and listen to the entire CD from beginning to end without stopping. GO TO THE BATHROOM BEFORE you begin, do NOT interrupt the flow of the CD. Do NOT answer your phone or the door!

Prayer is palms pressing together, directing the circulating energies in the body through the extended fingertips and OUT of the flesh. Let's redirect that energy while listening to the CD. While on your back fold your fingers with fingertips pressing into your chest, this way you conduct the flow of energy back inside you. Occasionally PRESS your fingertips deeper into your chest to better sense your recycled circuitry. Listen carefully to the CD, let their voices SHAKE you out of the landscape where you meditate. Let the poems and music become an entirely new PLACE you go to. When the CD ends light a candle. WRITE THESE PARTICULAR NOTES BY CANDLELIGHT ONLY! Have the candle, paper and pencil sitting beside you so that you don't shift out of position. Notes about death, notes about living with death, notes about the topography of grief, of darkness, isolation, forgiveness, and what it means to give and receive mercy. For the next week keep your notes on you at all times. Walk everywhere with them and BE READY to add to them, or to begin PULLING them and kneading them into a poem, a poem you write for the living who are dying everyday. And STOP sleeping so much! We sleep TOO MUCH!

Philadelphia (Soma)tic Workshop MARCH 6th

3PM

at the FREE Library

DETAILS AT THIS LINK
Hope you can join us!

#54 Crystal Nexus

for David Buuck who eats the dirt

Find a gemstone speaking to the YOU you are today. RHODONITE speaks to me today. (STUDY THE MAGICAL PROPERTIES OF YOUR STONE). Sleep with it under your pillow. Ask 3 friends to take turns sleeping with it but be certain you 4 are 2 women and 2 men. If you don't have this many friends we need to work on getting you more love. You don't need to share information, you don't need to share dreams, you don't have to all write poems, JUST TRUST the stone to carry the nexus. After each friend has returned the stone keep it ON YOU all day. Rub it along your ears, bridge of your nose, your forehead ESPECIALLY your forehead. The shared dreams of you 4 will coalesce WILL ENGAGE newer spaces inside your stone. Wash it thoroughly after all 4 of you have DREAMT INTO IT! Then swallow it. Be certain to purchase a smooth, tumbled stone of course, NOTHING WITH SHARP EDGES. Don't die. Please. We're here for poems, this is not the time to die. Swallow your small gemstone. Don't worry you will pass it out the next day. But while you SLEEP with the stone in your belly IN YOUR INTESTINES moving to your lowest chakras DREAM with your crystal representative inside you INSIDE YOU. What is it like the next morning? What notes have you been taking? Take notes about your notes. Take notes about how you hold your pen. This is a beautiful moment, having the Earth's hardened gem travel through you after friends have dreamt into it with you. What do you have to say? What plan do you have for the stone? What area of your life has it covered? What stranger can you approach tomorrow and make a new friend from? PULL THE POEM OUT OF THE NEW FRIEND AND THE STONE. You are REQUIRED to make a new friend. Your love will INCREASE! Let your love increase. Let the poem shape itself from notes of your stone, your old friends and your new friend.

FEBRUARY PHILADELPHIA WORKSHOP

2/20/11
details at THIS LINK

TO CELEBRATE MY 25TH YEAR

LIVING IN PHILADELPHIA

I'M OFFERING

one (Soma)tic Poetry Workshop

every month

for $25 each

(or take all 12 for the price of 10)

for ALL details please
click HERE

#53 your ZOE magnifier

What is your favorite Zoe Strauss photograph? Everyone has one, or two, or many. For this exercise get your copy of her book AMERICA and find one. “STAY ALIVE” is a favorite of mine. What is your favorite canned vegetable? I love canned peas. Canned peas would make a lovely pillow in a coffin or dream. Think about your favorite canned vegetable in your life, take notes. This exercise needs three consecutive nights. ONE: BOILED canned peas, very simple, careful to carry the scent and texture through the mouth, sinuses, and let’s be CHEWING while looking carefully at Zoe’s photograph. Eyes open WIDE, look through a hole in the bottom of a box. ALLOW ALL MIXTURE of senses to explore. Take notes then go to bed. When you wake, what dreams did you have? TWO: FRIED canned peas, in olive oil, a little toothpick to eat them one at a time while looking at Zoe’s photograph with a magnifying glass, then through panty hose. The clouds in “STAY ALIVE” move over the trees in my dreams. One night my old boyfriend Tommy who died of AIDS was in Zoe’s photograph, standing near the yellow sign along the highway, its black letters commanding “STAY ALIVE.” He pointed to it, “Did you read this today?” THREE: FROZEN canned peas, spread out with salt on wax paper in the freezer, QUITE DELICIOUS! Tonight stare at one part of the photograph, STARE without blinking for as long as you can. Then pop a delicious frozen pea in your mouth and close your eyes. SEE the details of the photograph in your mind. Open your eyes, focus on another detail of the photograph, then pop another delicious frozen pea in your mouth. Close your eyes and THIS TIME imagine someone you love thawing from ice as the pea warms on your tongue. How are they doing? What do you love most about this photograph? Pop another frozen pea, keep your eyes OPEN, but shut the light off, then back on, off, on again, over and over, all the while popping delicious frozen peas. EYES WIDE OPEN in light, in dark, seeing, chewing, then suddenly STOP in the dark. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness, the photograph taking shape in the shadows around it. Staring at the unlit photograph look for MOVEMENT and take notes about what you see. Dreams this night for more notes the next morning. All the notes from this exercise will come together into a poem.

#52 vibrAting dAys

A collaborative (Soma)tic by CAConrad & Bhanu Kapil

DAY ONE:
Rest your hands on a vibrating machine: car, fan, washing machine or dryer, anything with a motor that vibrates. Take notes after a few minutes, spontaneous notes, write with one hand still on the machine. Rest your cheek and other body parts against the machine, close your eyes and allow a low hum to build deep inside your body. Deepen the hum and allow it to rise. Open your mouth to release it. Take notes with your forehead against the vibrating machine. What is a favorite song from your childhood? Hum that song (don’t sing the words) with eyes closed with as much of your body pressed against the machine that you can manage. HUM HUM HUM THIS SONG LOUDER AND LOUDER AND LOUDER. Take notes about the song about the time in your life when you first heard it and take notes about now take notes about your life that is now.


DAY TWO:
River Inversion. An experiment in cadence. Walk to the nearest river. This may take you days. This may take you minutes. Invert yourself above this river. Let your hair go into the river. You are face up. If you do not have long enough hair, or hair, then let your hands go into the river, above your head. You are lying on the ground as close to the edge as you can get. You walked here. It's snowing. It is winter-time. It is spring-time. You live in the country you were born in. You are in India. You are far from home. Perhaps there is no river. Perhaps you are at the sea. A river is more stable, yet runs shakti. Shaki is the primordial vibration. It is the divine feminine vibration, and I have found it in the rivers of North America as much as the Ganges or Thames. Some rivers are very powerful. I went to Chicago and the river below my window was a toxic river, but I felt the shakti like KALI. An oblivion. It doesn't matter if it is pure river or a toxic river or an ordinary stream with mixed qualities. As an extension of your body you could use, instead of hair or hands, wool, or branches -- something that you will feel in your own body when it moves in the current. This is the current. Wait until you feel your breathing and spinal flow mixing with the riverbank or shore. Your throat is open. Your head tilted back. At the same time, you should feel almost slumped. Very relaxed and free. It is hard to experience a physical feeling of freedom with someone telling you to feel that way. But nevertheless, this is the path of descent. It is not about posture, it is about the surrender of posture. I am sharing with you what I learned at the ashram in Kankhal. Stay there as long as you can, until the vibration of the river has mixed in with your body. Inside, with your lips zipped shut, repeat: "Ram." A long central syllable: "Raaaaaaam." Like an "a" version of OM. This will run the shakti through you even more. You could say it 8 times aloud, then zip your mouth shut and repeat/chant the syllable inside you. This will increase the power of your mantra. You will now when you have softened. If you have recently suffered a heartbreak, or find yourself unable to shake the sense of loss following a broken love, visualize, too, a stream of light as gold-white as the sun coming into your heart center. Sometimes, if I have a lot of anxiety, I bring the parallel shakti of the sun into my forehead. In-breath: the light comes in. Out-breath: the light softens out, filling the chest or the brain. The brain is very real. I know you are not meant to think of the brain as a reservoir of thought, but lately, I have been thinking that the brain is, in fundamental ways, that cave. Of red things. But in the river inversion, the brain is surrendered to the larger flow of images.

Now it is time to go home, or to a sheltered place. Sit up gently, and take in your hand some of the earth of the riverbank. Just keep in it in your fist until you reach your home, or the the sheltered place. Try not to speak to anyone. When you have reached the next place, put the dirt on the table where you have sat to write. Take out your notebook, or its equivalent. Now write the beginning of the book you have wanted to write for much of the last five years, or more. A poet's novel. A page or two. A map. Day Two is for cleansing. Day Two is for beginning something new.

on 2nd Ave. Poetry...

Frank Sherlock interviewed me on (Soma)tic practice and the occult
for 2nd Ave. Poetry (many thanks to the editors!)
Click HERE for the interview.
THANKS FRANK,
CAConrad

#51 a Mercury Retrograde FREE FALL

Let’s surrender to the turmoil, find a poem in the clattering increase. Mercury is communication, Mercury’s retrograde has grades of dysfunctional communication. Enhance these troubles with food from Mercury’s temple: dill, carrot, celery, and LEMON lots of LEMON. ENHANCE close listening in this time of hard listening. Carry an agate, wear yellow, lots and lots of yellow. Take careful notes through the three-week period of the planet’s retrograde cycle: arguments with others, miscommunications, or HOW MANY TIMES did you feel thwarted unnecessarily or jealous or angry or confused and stupid? Careful, thoughtful awareness of WHAT EXACTLY IS our listening? What are these ears? I remember a particular venison stew as a boy, meat from a young stag. Later I saw an old doe by the creek, she caught my eye, tilted her head, twitched her tail. She KNEW I ate her son, her delicious son, and it was horrible. FILLED with his spirit I leapt from stone to stone to fallen tree. HOW do molecules of a digested Being reach AND BECOME our own senses? How? Through blood? Gliding the aura’s taut surface? We walk through waves of sound all day long, birds fly through them, dolphins SEE with sound. SEE with sound. Dolphins SEE inside structures with their sonar. Engage with animals, in fact allow ALL communication doors wide open. Willfully take the flood into your life and into your home. Notes notes, take many notes, the poem will follow.