unreasonable.org

Poems! Songs! Stories! Writing!

See the local stuff here.

Links outside:

• Some of Tom's poetry
• Zelda's Inferno, a poetry workshop
• PoetryInBaltimore.com, what the name suggests
• Stuck? Need a word? Zokuto kindly provides a random word generator.

Put drafts of three more chapters of Why Buddha Touched the Earth on-line: The Mystical Sense, So You Think You Can Tell Heaven From Hell?, and What Would Buddha Eat?.

With my workshop at the Well this Friday, May 16, I'll be launching a new venture: Warrior Poet Consulting. Under that brand I plan to provide workshops and other training and coaching to help people develop their creativity and cultivate personal excellence.

We'll see how it goes. Still trying to figure out step 2 of the business plan:

1. Relentless self-promotion.
2. ?
3. Profit!

Went to the open mic at Cacao Lane Wednesday, played a few songs - longest I've played since I crushed my finger, and didn't have any pain. Hooray!

Interesting episode afterwards:

---

the Buddha said, "do not drink alcohol"
I've never quite agreed with the Buddha on that one

and he's not
here, now
sitting at this bar
next to a young man who wants to buy us all shots
to toast the memory of his dead girlfriend

if I were the Buddha
maybe I could say something amazing about the
illusory nature of birth and death
that would help ease his pain

but I am not the Buddha

St Paddy's Day - or Irish Pride day, as I prefer to think of it... down to Leadbetters for a few in honor.

For a while I've had just a line or two from a potential song about me sainted Irish grandmother in the back of my head...

This is a song about Marion
A girl I never knew
An Irish lass from Baltimore town
With a heart so sweet and true

Now Marion could play the blues
In a dark and smoky bar
Or she could sing a hymn so sweet
T'would make your soul see stars

This is song about Marion
A girl I never knew
An Irish lass from Baltimore town
With a heart so sweet and true

Today's Zelda's Inferno exercise was to write something that included or was inspired by "fascinating facts" that someone else provided. I drew:

1. 1 in 20 African Americans have Native American blood
2. The 2 South American countries (due) south of Miami are Peru and Ecuador
3. The largest fish is a whale-shark.

used the first one, and came up with this:

---

we build identities on the stories we are told
ancestral tales handed down through generations

but these leave out so very much...

Cherokees on the Trail of Tears
took their slaves with them

Today's Zelda's Inferno exercise was to create a collage. Here's an attempt to flatten mine into a linear text:

---

castaways
anonymous middle-aged white business man
disaster
shoot
rifle
unfair battle
another anonymous middle-aged white business man
computer skull
moon
amish wheelwright with pneumatic tools
how you survive
(words on fire)
best energy exercise
it's extraordinary special expanding satisfaction
enjoy!
all through the night take it...easy

the tree outside my window
is god

the sparrow in its branches knows this
the hawk that takes and tears and rends the sparrow's mate as it sits in the branches knows it too
sometimes I know it
sometimes the snow sitting on the branches tells me
sometimes drops of rain hanging pendant from the buds reflect the universe
sometimes its green shade protects me and my house, watching over us tenderly, a guardian, a savior
sometimes it is the dying and resurrecting god of a thousand myths

mostly I look past it, walk under it, without seeing
but every once in a while
every once in a while
it lets me Know

The Times (London) considers presidental poetry and notes that Barack Obama "may be the best amateur poet to run for president since Abraham Lincoln, which is saying quite a lot." Obama had two poems published in a college magazine back when he was 19.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write about the coming of spring

---

not here yet but pregnant in the buds
leaves sleep curled like embryos

daylight lingers until almost 6pm again
and the promise of the return of warmth hangs in front of me
I follow it through the dregs of winter like a will-o-the-wisp

the dogs are shedding -
every time I pet them handfuls come off
and the carpet is becoming covered in fur

and back at the trees
you can see warm brown color returning to grey branch-tips
as the sap starts flowing again

and I can feel my own sap start to flow again

standing in line yesterday at the department store I remembered that my heart is broken

I hadn't thought about it in a while -
in the cold of winter it hadn't much mattered
cryonic suspended animation, the heart slows, stops
and winter ices the wound

but warmth and movement take away the numbness
brings back the pain -
and also the possibility of healing