The Promised Return to CAConrad

I have to finish the CAConrad sequence I started on quite awhile ago now. Two Post ago I introduced CAConrad as the lyrical Chuck Norris. Boom! I also posted one of his exercises and my poem that followed from his exercise. But I was tired of being Robin and stole the keys to the BATMOBILE! (Or  more accurately just wrote my own Somatic Exercise.)

The

Rub-a-dub-Grub Exercise

            Go to your local super market, the store you shop at regularly where you know exactly what you need on each aisle without even making a list. Preferably go at a time when you are not extraordinarily famished. Spend a bit of time aimlessly wondering the store, shop with no needs. Shop with no shopping list. What does the grocery store feel like when you need no groceries? Pick a smaller section of the store, one aisle that contains one of your dietary staples. Observe all you can about this aisle. How are the foods grouped? Do they all look the same? Are they all the same product just with different brands? Pay attention. Write. As you study your aisle try and find something you have never noticed before. An item you did not ever see sitting right by your regular stop on this aisle. What is this item? Describe it. Really describe it. Think about all the people that mindlessly zip down your aisle grab this item and run past your go-to food. Do you think lots of people have missed this item or just you? Purchase said item and bring home for part B.

            As you bring your new food home think about all the people who cannot leave the store without this item. Who do you think puts this item at the top of their grocery list every week? Now open the food. Close your eyes and smell. Write. Does it smell familiar or foreign? Stick your finger in the item, what do you feel? Does it feel weird to play with this food? With your eyes still closed try the item. Be aware of the full orgastic pleasure palate of eating. Texture, temperature, taste, write, write, write. Where do you think this food is made? Are the workers happy to be making X, or is the kitchen it is made the pits? Who is working in this kitchen? Can you taste the temperate of those who prepared it? Now eat it with a few things you typically eat with say lunch or dinner. Make it a part of a normal meal. Now eat it with what you think the people who regularly buy this item typically eat it with. Who are these people? What does their dinner look like? Do they eat alone? In front of the TV? Full course meals or frozen meals? Imagine, be the voyeur of voyeurs. Be Whitman magically flying table to table. Be them. Eat. Imagine. Write some scribbles. Transcend one final time away into the world’s dinner table.

            Now write a poem.

Usually I detest Puns, but its Friday...

And here is what my own Somatic Exercise lead me too....

Skinny Love

All the hands that touched—

a hand for every curl

my hands empty

hearts bare

your hands scented

hearts bare

The last of a generation that believes

it IS a truth universally acknowledged

spritzed and stacked on the hour

motion sensor lights and desire on the first aisle

we are not allowed to be here

only what I can carry in my two hands for every curl

Will you stand still

open yourself to the gentle indifference of the world

native moments             our indecent calls

                                                                        Silence           

            pour a little salt

            we were never here

all my hands for one curl

to which you reply:

“yours is a responsive part in the litany of love”

A hand for every curl

Crawling back and the Ukraine

Well.....
Posting every Friday lasted about as long as I expected it to.... not very long. School got real, training increased and writing sadly is often the first thing to go. I was also bummed about breaking my every Friday promise (even if it was only a promise with myself). But I am back, and with a new shame-free promise, to post as often as life allows.

 To Kiev....

Freedom Square-Kiev
or
"Freedom Square"

I want to post a poem that is not as urgent now, but none-the-less I believe very important still. I watched closely the violent protest that rocked Ukraine over a month ago. I was heart broken as I watched video's of people protesting for their freedom being dragged out of the Square riddled with bullet wounds. Hotel lobbies lines with bodies of dead protesters. As I scrolled through news stories it also became apparent to me, that not all that the "freedom fighters" claimed was true. They claimed peaceful protest, yet nearly every news clip shows men firing make-shift shotguns and throwing Molotov cocktails toward the soldiers. It was violent all around. And it broke my heart. So I wrote a poem.

A video that went viral and I have thought a lot about. Yes fighting for freedom, but by what means, Ukrainian Angel Headed Hipster?

I read this poem out-loud at a poetry event. As I read I had the image of Freedom Square seen above projected on the screen behind me. About a third of the way through the poem I turned and began directly speaking to the image, with my back to the audience. It was extremely freeing and cathartic. There is not much I can do about the freedom of Ukraine, but say what I feel must be said. And this is what I feel must be said.

I was reading some Pablo Neruda at the time and the poem is heavily influenced by some of his poems on a similar protest in Chile. The italicized lines are directly from his poem, "The Dead in the Square".

The Dead in The (Freedom) Square

-Reflections on Pablo Neruda’s The Dead in the Square

This crime took place right in the open Square.

Not in the forest was the innocent blood spilled,

not in the thirsty concealing and sand of the pampas.

No one made any attempt to cover it up.

This crime was done in the very heart of the country.

I do Not come to weep here where they fell.

I do not come wearing the war relics of our

grand-fathers, tin hats and car-door shields.

You have been screaming in the square so long—

you have forgotten your voice.

I have come to speak.

I have not come with a Molotov Cocktail,

I have come with a voice. Kiev:

Tune your ears to my voice.

To those dragging bodies out of the Square

I have come to speak—

To those dragging bodies into the Square

I have come to speak.

You have burned Freedom Square—

the angelic topped hallmark of your nation,

chard black—

            grieving Square

                        grieving Kiev.

With your hands you have torn

down the monuments

of your Oppressors but your hands

would tear down heaven if only they could grasp.

But you cannot grasp—

only shout.

You shout out in the world’s newspapers:

Look at the President he fired LIVE

ammunition.

Your twenty-five year prophet says:

            We want to be free.

I want to live a moral life

            We want to be free

Build this freedom in our country

            We want to be free

It is the gift of a free Kiev—

We fight for the gift of a free Kiev

But you have forgotten the blood

that gushed forth in the middle of the street

right in front of the palace,

your red stains remain there

like stars, fixed and implacable.

The blood that built the square you burned.

A Kiev freed with a bread-basket

of Molotov Cocktail’s  and

improvised munitions is a

dead Kiev.

I speak to the old generation:

In the name of those dead—

I demand punishment.

You have given them life but on

the rim of hell. They feed on roots,

while yachts sit moored outside

your courts. Your ceilings reach toward

the heavens, but surly you are not above

the angel that crowns the Square.

You sent the men with loaded rifles—

with orders to kill without mercy,

then you ran from the blood that

ebbs to your feet—

I demand punishment.

Kiev tune your ears to this voice.

O fallen brothers, out of the silence

your voices will rise in the mighty shouts of freedom

when the hope of the people flames into paeans of Joy.