poems, etc.

Zelda's Inferno exercise for June 22: freewrite on the phrase "She told me God spoke to her and I believed her"

She told me God spoke to her and I believed her. But then I try to believe six impossible things before breakfast, so I've had lots of practice. I believe in the essential goodness of man, the Easter Bunny, the Mothman, six different theories about UFOs, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, the forgiveness of sins, the existence of honest politicians, that light is both a wave and a particle and something emitted from the eye, astrology, palmistry, the Tarot, the I Ching, angels, auras, cosmic vibrations, mystical visions, Bigfoot, the headlines of the New York Times, and the moral superiority of rock and roll to country music. So God speaks to you? Sure.

She told me God spoke to her and I believed her. God spoke to me, in the wind, in every sunbeam, in the mingled scent of sea air and piss, in the dance of trees before the thunderstorm, in the dusting of freckles on the shoulder of the pretty redhead ahead of me in line for coffee...and why would She speak only to me?

She told me God spoke to her and I beleived her. 'Cause I'm a sucker like that. She told me God told her I needed to give her $5,000 in small unmarked bills, and I believed her. She told me God spoke to her of a great tribulation, of the fire to come, and how only a few would be spared, and I believed her. She told me God spoke to her of death and destruction and the salvation of True Beleivers who Gave All for The Cause, and I believed her. Sucker.

Tonight's Zelda's Inferno exercise: a free write on "why don't you have a Christmas tree?" (random phrase from today's New York Times)

I don't have a christmas tree because it's june. But I don't have a christmas tree in December, either - cutting down a tree just doesn't seem celebratory to me.

And of course I don't have a Christmas tree because I don't do Christmas, don't do the whole Christianity thing.

Why don't you have a Christmas tree? Why don't you have a cup of tea? Why don't you have an orgasm? Why don't you have a better idea? Why don't you have a heart attack? Why don't you have a six foot tall blow-up Godzilla doll? Why don't you have a nice day? Why don't you have chills up and down your spine? Why don't you have a photograph of your own gall bladder? Why don't you have your homework? Why don't you have a birthmark shaped like the letter Z in 16 point bold Helvetica? why don't you have a cup of tea? Help yourself.

Today's Zelda's Inferno exercise was pretty open-ended: take something unfunny and write a funny poem, or vice-versa, or write about you relationship with an inanimate object. This is what came out for me...

She died in a bizarre vibrator accident. There was a power surge - what a way to go.

The undertaker couldn't get the grin off the corpse. So her family thought about making it a closed-casket service, but decided that this would raise more questions and speculation.

the memory of pain fades quickly

the mother giving birth for the second time
in the throes of labor thinks
If I remembered it was like this, I'd never have gone off the pill

the fighter in the ring thinks
as his opponent's glove finds his chin
I've never been hit like this before!
but seconds later the blow is forgotten

Today's exercise was to write a poem suitable for use on a mobile: a list poem, with lines that can be read in any order, on the theme of motion or movement. I scrambled the order of the lines; the numbers give the original order, starting (in good C hacker fashion) with 0.

1 a child waving out the back window of a schoolbus
0 no electron
     remains the same
       from moment to moment
3 trees pre-thunderstorm
    lifting skirts to show
       silver underside of leaves

Zelda's writing exercise: write about food

rice and sweet potatos
it's easy, cut up a sweet potato, put it
a half cut of sushi rice
and about three quarters of a cup of water into the rice cooker and lt it work its magick
a little soy sauce, sprinkle some sesame seeds

and I am back in a Zen temple outside Kyoto

to keep vegetarian in Japan is not easy -
fish works its way into everything
but I did my best during my months there -

"They call all experience of the senses mystic, when the experience is considered.
so an apple becomes mystic when I taste in it
the summer and the snows, the wild welter of the earth
and the insistence of the sun.

All of which things I can surely taste in a good apple...."

-- D.H. Lawrence, "Mystic"

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?.

Tonight's Zelda's exercise: given the ccupation of "astronaut", we generated a list of nouns: cup girl dog sunglasses road water lamp-post police chocolate whiskey

and one of verbs: fly explore orbit launch land train whirl vomit experiment crash breathe navigate float repair walk

and put them together in interesting combinations, like so:

I wanted to explore that girl, like a strange new world.

Whirling around the lamp-post like a stripper around a pole.

Breathing whiskey, the fumes rising from the glass.

Dog vomits at 3 a.m. Not a good night.

As part of my "Cultivating Creativity" workshop, we did a little writing exercise, describing a balled-up piece of paper.

I see a shadow, black, cast by a crumpled piece of paper,the shadow crossing a join line of the fake wood floor. The line is dark against dark, straight as artificality, contrasting wiht the curves of the fake wood grain, the curves of the shadow, the wandering crumples and creases and flods of the paper.