green mtn state

I'm finishing up a visit to mom in VT; tomorrow to NYC to be with Ava, my elder daughter, as she graduates with a masters in education. Here's a short poem inspired by eastern hiking:

Birch Poem

Suppose that old birch, its bark rolled
like a papyrus scroll, sent out its skin
for publication. What might a birch
poem say? It might reveal
the mystery of trees, not how
but why they breathe our poison,
exhale it as oxygen. How it hurt
to have that heart carved in its bark.
Reveal that it loves even the grubs
who chew its wood,
the woodpeckers who
poke holes to eat the grubs.
It might say simply:
I tend my roots
as I reach for the sky.


I'm waiting for someone to join the conversation - meanwhile, I'm working on the 2010 schedule. The objective is to have no objective. I'm not working on it. BeWell!

rain rain

blogging seems to be the process of finding out whether you have anything to say. that's all i've got to say for now. what about you?

Poet en route to Mongolia

Bother bother bother. I'll bother you! I'm alive, but I'm stowed away in a hold on Capitol Hill. I'm alive and living in a stuffy, windowless, lightless hold in a studio in a warehouse in a city block in Seattle. I'm en route to Mongolia. Out of this world, going by boat. I'm more than halfway there. LitFuse is over the horizon. Tieton, place of open air, fat brown hills, dusty roads, bright red globes. Wind. I could use your wind now. Push me on across the Pacific, over top India and China to Mongolia. I promise, I'll come home. I'll be there in October, in my leather coat in my striped blue scarf, standing out on the town green, whispering what the wind told me, harking what the birds said. Whispering why. Harking the sky.

A K Mimi Allin, three times LitFuse faculty member, is the current artist-in-residence at Project: Space Available on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Her project is called HAM--Hold All Movement. For this, she earned her Ham Radio License, built an 8x11' hold and outfitted it with a cot, teapot, personal library & communications station (shortwave, marine VHF & HAM radios). She's residing full-time in the hold, listening to radios by night & turning that info into gestures by day. Radio gestures. Mimi is hoping to explore a continuation of this work for showing and sharing at LitFuse and hopes by October to have her General Radio License and to know some Hams in Yakima. Given that public broadcasts are illegal, what would Ham radio poetry look like? Leave it to me. I'll figure it out.

"oh bother" said pooh

wow even i don't know what i was saying with that last post
what i'm doing now is opening the litfuse blog to other voices
litfuse itself is more choral than solo
more cacophony than monologue

i'd like to ask you (yes, the ubiquitous as yet invisible you)
why bother write / read poetry?

ribbon candy

?litfuse is what ?workshop poets' a - did you mirror write when you were young - or even write in ribbon candy forward & back & fore & back, free as a river flowing to the sea? you can we can

I that determined is technology this though can I even maybe

good soldier return left then march right, one can't hear you!

tree to count, three a climb

we will get together in tieton octoberpus eight - 10 / more info www.litfuse.us

soon soon

be won't i

talking to

self my

all this buttoning & unbuttoning

how they work, ed, is a mystery to me too, though apparently i'm "in charge" of this little cybershack. but one thing i suspect is that you have to become a follower to know that a new post is up. without followers, there's no conversation. to become a follower is a devotional exercise; not subservient but reverential in the true manner of reverence - a surrendering to . . . the uncertainty of relationship. in cate's profound idiom, an unbuttoning. ahhh, for a fruit fly - only a poet would wring ink tears for a sucked & dusty fruit fly. let's embrace that poetic impulse.

in a poem i once said

Dead poets like religious zealots

sure beat living ones,

their stock trades higher

they’re less ANNOYING,

they ask for nothing

no grants readers sex

proofs breakfast adulation,

even the big lie

TRUTH

is now a matter of complete

indifference to them;

they never bathe

leave no wadded towels

no toothpaste in the sink

don’t howl, don’t stink

(except the newly extinct),

they’re loyal as the dog,

they don’t blog.

ergo, live poets of the 21st century BLOG - come hither, LiTFUSIANS, annoy me out of my coma. once we've got uncritical mass (vernacular), we'll talk about ingrid, this year's featured artist. about how grateful we are that she will be joining us. about inspiration without ostentation. about poet stew. but first, we need YOU.

Launching the LiTFUSE blog

being intrinsically a mugwump aka luddite, the time-suck of blogging has deterred this step over the digital precipice . . . but, the enticement of hearing back from LiTFUSIANs in a truly interactive environment has - tentatively - won my heart, if not my mind. PLUS this might just be the ticket to tickle other like-minded and unlike-minded spirits hither to TIETON which is in an unknown corner of central WA-WA, and if the center how could it be a corner? well that's part of the fun, and so I invite you to chime in with your views of the matter: what has LiTFUSE meant to you? what do you think of LiTFUSE 2010 so far? what shall we do? who with and will you please be there? & most of all, the work, the work, the work. post a poem, and fragment, an insight, a slight of hand. be not merely the FUSE, but the MATCH. yes, at last, it's ok to play with matches. please visit our website - do I need to post the link here? www.litfuse.us