I think all poems
come from caves
(murmur)
& poems pop from
their pods in the half

light, the quarter light,
the whole light
(murmur)
my feet are loose
in their stitches

oh antsy sullen
trampled apple
i think all poems come
with their own arrows,
marrow
murmuring in
the bones
(murmur)
i think that i
am exploding in
the night, sullen,
moon in its
coyote hole

but oh, the sun is alive
with yes, talking to us
as we cross the broken
place of the relation
ship
(murmur)
i want the red
i want the no
(murmur)
who is singing?/


[this from poetry workshop just led tonight,
in which we scrawled, tore, wrote, drew & later
deciphered the side-parts of brokendown brown paper
bags; then orchestrated poems from them
in the half-light]

from a book called trust the process

We are always arranging things in our environments with
the goal of achieving expressive effects. If you approach what
you already do on your desk or in your kitchen from the pers
pective of artistic expression, you experience yourself as
a participant in the creative process as opposed to an on
looker. So much of art involves moving materials that al
ready exist into new relationship with one another

Explore the widest range of marks & possibilities for
changing the visual & tactile appearances of a surface

One of the best ways to access your innate expressive
style is to draw in a way that is graphically consistent with
the way you write

Find other nature markings and reflect upon their aesthetic
qualities... Although art has room for many ways of creating,
the person beginning to create and the experienced creator
seeking renewal will find freedom of expression and surprisingly
beautiful configurations in the unaffected ways of making marks
that we all use in daily life

pulse - lupes - (loops) - spool - pools - pulls

"but then you have to widen the understanding of art... I am really convinced that humankind
will not survive without having realized the social body, the social order, into a kind of artwork.
they will not survive." - joseph beuys

the glass of tea glows in front of me & i am thinking about decay, rot, atrophying. (ATROFEEN)
wondering if, as the ground beneath me hardens into my summer, my hands are hardening into
how they will be when i die, stiff. someone just told me today that they drowned once - & i knew
that meant that they had died, they had been dead. some miracle had brought them back.

i am thinking how i began my life by drawing, that -- and here is my personal mythology -- "I drew
before I walked." i am equating drawing with writing, as they are both marks made by the hand, using
a tool which somehow engraves or enscribes or realeases a staining - dy(e)ing a substance onto something
else. so there i was, not yet speaking, not yet walking, but both hands moving, writing at once.

so what is it about me & mark-making?

& why is that usually when i have "forgotten myself" i am also forgetting to make marks?
hands in a sort of dumbness.

i want to do a ceremony & invite my hands again to life, as i have done times before. i want to do
a rising, a resuscitation, a pulling up from the lake where perhaps they have seemed to drown, &
then to see what other parts, what dirty fabrics & scratches, come with them.

FOLLOW THE HAND
INVITE THE CALLOUS

What My Eye Seeks

arrange-
ments, leftovers, patterns
THE SKIN OF THE EARTH
the things that things say
when all the people have left

texture within text

the way we treat our streets &
our ways of walking
what we walk on & past everyday.
markings made by humans in their
movements like birdspeak in
wet concrete, any city or street
before it is pulled
into self-consciousness

BONE MEAL

Bone Meal
Burn Pile
Junk Heap


(spur
shoot
give up
the ghost)

hallucination:
CHANT/SCRIBBLE

i love you so much
i can't stand it

INNARD
ACORN
sprinkler hitting
watering can

*footnotes*

The Seamy Side

reading joseph beuys who is also
an enamorer of paper, scraps, oil,
the element of iron

thinking about the materials that
are here: brown paper bags (soft,
creased) green garden hoses (given
up the ghost) cat hair butter
(c)old books photographs in
suitcases some stained silver
ware wine that cannot be drunk

the word?

some types of hummingbirds
must consume their own
body weight in nectar each day