In less than three weeks I'll be getting on a plane to London where I'll be starting a three city, three country journey for 17 days. I'll be getting off the plane, getting into a car and going straight to STONE HENGE. I'll take some notes and at some point write about the experience in a poem. After that, its off to a pub before my wife and I go drop off our bags and rest up for an amazing trip through London, Paris and Rome.
Obviously, I'll see some historical sites and I'll definitely come back with some new spoken word that reflects on what I see and experience. Most importantly, I'm currently writing new work that I'll put on CD to spread around throughout my trip. That will be ready to go in about a week or so and I'll have an official Twin Cities release for that sometime in January or February. So stay tuned for that, cuz 2013 will be coming in hot!
Here's one I finished last week, from the "dream sequence" series about dreams of mine:
Through miles of jagged rock like a sky of broken shark teeth
there is a pocket of earth and rock smoothed into a home
a clearing with an air of humble majesty
and the every day sacred
ecstatic truth wrapped in the mundane
there are two inhabitants here
one, a custodian of sorts – a ragged man committed to a singular purpose
and the other, an ascetic of the highest order - living wisdom and compassion
there is an immense statue there of the greatest buddha
soft, milk white marble contours the imagination into a smile
just smaller, immersed and emerging from this supple colossus of knowing gentleness
is a golden, shimmering figure like the sun snuggled in a comforter of fog and sky
days pass and the old, kind worker tends to the dirt and polish and broom
he is lava, slow but certain
the enlightened one walks and sits, filling the newly dusted grounds with ubiquitous thought
days pass in their clearing amidst the rocks and nothing changes, save where the dust gathers most
and where the thoughtful old gentlemen begins with his broom
days pass and an otherwise invisible fact emerges - these two characters trade places every day
one always the custodian and the other always the holy man
as if two sides of coin
I am an observer on the wind of this quiet, magical place
my presence a still water tension, my breath held as to keep this constant, silent peace
suddenly, something occurs to me like the first breath to the drowning
these are not days that pass in the animated amber of this experience, they are lifetimes
centuries have lived and died over the course of this dream
there is a gift in this realization that is not meant for my waking hands
I learn something I cannot exactly bring with me as these tides of knowing and wakefulness wash over me simeltaneously
I am pitched out of this knowledge, Hurling through the last moments of understanding
I hit the ground running
My wholeself aimed at this lost truth
Strides of thought stretch toward that gasp of realization
And I am still running
If you missed them, here's a couple other pieces from the project about dreams, cultural traditions, folk and tall tales and my journey as a person and as an artist. It might sound all over th eplace, but it really is going to make sense and I'm so proud of the poems I'm writing.
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