inane conversations; poem from details of experience (Zelda's Inferno, Sep. 16)

Posted on: Sun, 09/16/2007 - 23:44 By: Tom Swiss

Getting dinner at Donna's before Zeldas. Three college girls at the next table, talking non-stop about who's drunk, who's a slut, dresses, who's a natural blond...do my conversations ever sound so inane? Well, probably so. But that's my inanity...

Had about a dozen people over last night for the second annual Emperor Norton celebration, a nice little party. Think I'm going to try to spread to meme of making September 17 a holiday.


writing exercise: poem from details of experience

1) write about a pivotal experience, with as much concrete as possible:

The silence of a snowy day as I lie on my back, looking at the clouds. I've just made a snow angel and the chill of the ground seeps into my back. My friends, on the ground nearby, are silent; maybe some vague road noise from Greenbelt road in the background, but the breeze in the tall dried grass stalks and the scrub trees is louder here in the middle of this empty field. The LSD vibrates my body like almost too many cups of coffee, my bodymind rings like a bell. The sky is bright cerulean with white frosting, a party cake, when the dragon forms from the clouds and smiles on me, a bright hexagonal rainbow tunnel connecting us, a blessing.

2) collect the images and make a poem

silence near at hand

then the wind blowing across snow, stalks of dried grass, scrub trees

then farther away the sounds of an occasional car

(not many today) from the main road



the chill soaks into my back, just a bit of snow getting in around my neck

but I am too fascinated by the sky to rise



bright cerulean frosted with glowing white

my bodymind prism vibrates this view into visions, a dragon, rainbows

visions reflecting internal truths

my friends lying nearby see their own rainbows

not mine