Humanyms

Random Acts of Poetry

The Be Blank Consort performed Saturday with 5 Ottawa people lending their voices to the sound pieces. (More pics on FB and in the Flickr stream).
[I was considering offering a prize for who guesses all the names but maybe I'll just unveil instead: John Bennett, Amanda Earl, John Lavery, Sandra Ridley, Scott Helmes, Colin Morton and Max Middle]

It’s Random Acts of Poetry Week in Canada. In light of it, I’ll give a sampler from what’s on my desk…

fold it in thirds
our yoga teacher says
the blanket, that is

- Margaret Chula, The Smell of Rust (Katsura Press, 2003), haiku, p. 78

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- david fujino, hangnail (fmachinery, sept 2009)

Arm in Arm

Along the Tolka in the Botanic Gardens
my father and I stroll.
The sun bursts through
and blends him into itself.

- Mary Melvin Geoghegan, (Summer Palace Press, 2009) When They Come Home, p. 48

moon at dawn
two birds answer each other
in the graveyard

- Ion Codrescu, Mountain Voices Vocile muntelui (AMI_NET International Press, 2000), p. 61

He leaves a candle where the future died.
There still are things that he can never say.

- Jim Knowles, Poetry Superhighway contest winning poem

there’s your hand again. Did anyone notice how close our
knees are? Did the light turn apricot to emphasize your eyes?

Are you a plot against my past, color and curl designed
to entice me from my path? The questions logjam:

- Sina Queyras [who's speaking at the Writers Fest soon], Slip (ECW Press, 2001) excerpted in Prismatic Publics, p. 331

My breasts have held milk
and expressed milk and
held language by the tit
so to speak attachment

The modification of any object
by who own it
I mean the person thinks
they can own something
and then there must also
be things not owned

- Margaret Christakos, [who is speaking at AB Series soon], What Stirs, excerpted in Prismatic Publics (Coach House 2009), p. 131, edited by Kate Eichhorn and Heather Milne

At dawn, a white light on the top of a mountain / things start to move / an old woman side-flank on a donkey at dawn / wobbling up the mountain, picking over the stones / a Mercedes glides past, the light there / in her eye ever shining / / Slowness of the dawn beetle / western promise / worth goat-dung

- Peter Riley, Greek Passages (Shearsman, 2009), p. 9

She listed her hobby as disclosure. Many of the new remarks unfolded as she pressured silence to relax its throat hold on her policies. One of the immaculate new moods undressed as a neighbour’s eloquence [...] One of the falsehoods I unraveled was a synonym for gravity.

– Sheila E Murphy, Letter to Unfinished J (Green Integer, 2003), p. 33

you tell me the tale of our shoulderblades,
how they’re traces left over from seraphim wings
or their reticent buds, their seeds,
so either we’ve fallen, or feathery inklings
are waiting inside us to lift us to and guide us.

Science has measured the sole distance
left for the mad, that span from moon to earth,
to the nearest inch.
They beamed lasers at mirrors placed n the surface.
How strangely unwavering light is.

– Nick Laird, To a Fault (Faber & Faber, 2005) p. 47

birch-waver, pine-sway. animated talk of struck glass. rhythmic gusts bending the lengths of trunks awat from our neighbour’s porch.

a gust, a new one, bends them violently again, again, and back to still

- Daphne Marlatt, The Given (McClelland, 2008), p. 13

Applewood, hard to rive,
its knots smoulder all day.
Cobweb hair on the morning,
a puff would blow it away.
Rime is crisp on the bent,
Ruts stone-hard, frost spangles fleece.
What breeze will fill that sleeve limp on the line?

- Basil Bunting, Briggflatts, (Bloodaxe, 2009) p. 28 and CD (1968 recording)

This is it. The pendulum is swinging back from doomsday sayers and I can’t-do-anything-so-why-bother apathy. Commit random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. It’s coming back around. We will have to care in order to rebel. So go into the streets and smile. Talk to people in bus stops. Reclaim your community because when we stop being afraid of truly connecting is when we will belong.

- Danielle K.L. Gregoire, Optimism is a Constant Struggle, (Vanorange, 2009) CD, track 7

Fallen dynasty–
from the rubble, children
gather hopscotch stones

- John Brandi, Stone Garland: a haiku journey: northern Viet Nam (A Tooth of Time Book, 2000), p. 14

Links: Child Parliament in Congo speaks up for ethics and in Beni 80% of the brothels were closed by the mayor. Worldwide, making a different angle of difference to establish new patterns is Kiva doing microloans [via]

A photo from Dusty Owl yesterday with Danielle Gregoire holding Fiona while Steve assists as a music stand.