in poiesis:

2010-04-03T04:43:00.000-07:00

Regular white paper

I have given most things
back to the ground
love/cost/memory
root to root, by
root, ritualistically
things that are buried
should rightly grow
All else should be lifted
into the otherwise invisible air
Cheap but apparent
as meaningful
as smoke

ReadWritePoem Challenge #2 RWP/Acronym

Love: Son Clave

2010-04-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

Come with me, sigueme
In the wee small hours
of the morning, god
only knows love
tastes of earth
and the wild beautiful
Come with me
Sigueme
sun & moon
We are born this way
troubling the gamelan
with our musics
calling dreams out
in the porcelain clef
of a sapient voice
fired up from the bone dry
mouths watering with life
once trickled down
into the trees
Come with me
Come with me
The drum still speaks this djembe
sings of the sugared flesh
sings of fruit sweet to be broken into
i remember being wooden with you
twined together, standing
until we dropped our seeds
and wandered off
sigueme, sigueme...

Song list
Sigueme by Camiel
In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning by Echo
God only Knows by Shrift
Gamelan by Cantoma
Porcelain by Moby

NaPoWriMo Read Write Prompt #1: Pod Shuffle
Hear the Entire Playlist?

untitled

2010-03-29T22:34:00.000-07:00

i will tuck the feathers from this line into my socks. warm feet warm heart. better these against the cold, tenderness of the soles is lord-like. subject to stone crucifixion. humble in these ways. and, i hear~eros~is dying.

play the downfall of illusion in the background~slow promises~drape the silk of our existence over the ceilings, like mirror, like sky. were we careful ~~enuf~~ blackening the fact that life goes on? there is still the expense of wings to consider. tell me this!

commonly, things are not the same the elephants have mostly forgotten this~remembering nothing remembering everything~long nights, and the arrogance of darkness~how what moves the mountain stops the river too, equally, although impermanent, love without a fortune of circumstances requires everything, but time.

i breed myself up from this; the force feeling, the taste of you, smiling-eyed. pushed back belly and reason from the table, before the edge, or, my stolen will came, and went. i retrieve faith without the sweet ceremony of roses. brewing. i can dance well in the place of candlelight. bell a bell. solitaire. todays weather is partly sunny with the chance of rain...

The ipoem:

2010-03-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each of 25 songs
3. Use each song title in consecutive order as one line of the poem.
4. Press forward one last time and use song #26 as your title.
5. Follow any other language title with its English translation.

The Playlist

Loving You

Life is good
Meu Bem Querer, My Good to Want
Simple Life
Se, If…
Contrast
I Loved You
One Dream
Calling
Tears for Mother Earth
So Far To Go
Spiritual Home
Muna Xeia, Full Moon
Love Tribe
Six Days
Consider My Love
Stratus
Chronic Intoxication
Lady Brown
Miracle
Vision Eyes
Linha Do Equador, Line of my Equator
Nha Cretcheu, My Love
I Miss You
The Disconnect
Born Feeling
ai~

Muliebrity

2010-03-28T19:28:00.000-07:00

• The female body is a public space.
• The violation of the sexual nature upon the female body is a public act.
• The rejection of nature in favor of synthesis is destruction of public property.

ai: Azha irving (me)

2010-03-28T17:40:00.000-07:00

Artist, Writer, Thinker...
not to be confused with AI, A.I., Ai, or ai, which may also refer to:

Artificial intelligence: a branch of computer science.

Amnesty International: an international non-governmental human rights organization.

American Idol: a reality competition to find new solo musical talent.

AI: American basketball player, Allen Iverson (born 1975).

Ai (Biblical): a religious sanctuary founded by Abraham, the exact location of which, is unknown to date.

Ai Ogawa(poet) (1947 - 2010): American poet Florence Anthony.

aì: (愛)Love, (藍) indigo, (亜衣) nothing; in Japanese.

Zuihitsu Who?

2010-03-28T06:03:00.000-07:00

Zuihitsu (随筆?) is a genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author's surroundings. The name is derived from two Kanjis meaning "to follow" and "brush", and thus works of the genre should be considered not as traditionally planned literary pieces but rather as casual or random jottings down of thought by their authors.

Its what I hope the style of this blog will ultimately be somehow.

THE I*AM SPEECH

2010-03-26T23:27:00.000-07:00

i*am remembering my mother; standing with her right hand firmly fisted & nailed to her right hip....Right! Posing her favorite trick matter of faith question. "Do you know who you are?" This crazy question was a catchphrase in our household language. A verbal love-note-reminder we would send when facing the unknown. It kept me questioning and affirming who i* am. And, although the answer has long seemed impossible to state succinctly, beyond the simplest of roles played over time; the good daughter, the young wife, the wicked lesbian ex-wife. Artist. Poet. Writer. Blind. i* have been called: deep, sweet, smart, stupid, and strange, not to mention the list of expletives regularly applied to women like me. But, mostly i*am still affirming. Still quest ~~ion~~ ing. Still be-coming who i*am.

While dream-conceiving this space and wondering who i*am that would prompt anyone to read my mind, the introduction to Toni Morrison's Nobel Laureate acceptance speech howled from the pages of the book i read, leaving me drop-jawed. It spoke eerily and intimately of me. Succinctly. Factitiously?! Unrefined. i can think of no better way to answer any question of who i*am for those who may care to know.

The Following excerpt is reprinted with permission from the Nobel Committee (Sweden). Copyright©1993.

"Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise." Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures.

"Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise."

In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.

One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, "Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead."

She does not answer, and the question is repeated. "Is the bird I am holding living or dead?"

Still she doesn't answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.

The old woman's silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.

Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. "I don't know", she says. "I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands."

Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility

POIESIS

2010-03-26T21:35:00.000-07:00

Meaning to make, poiesis, the root of our modern poetry, was first a verb, defining an action that essentially transforms and continues the world.

This making is neither technical production, nor, creation in the romantic sense. Poïetic work reconciles thought with matter and time, and, (wo)man with the world _{(above and beyond booty).}

In Plato'sSymposium, Socrates expresses the teachings ofDiotima, who describes how mortals strive for immortality in relation to poiesis. In all human begetting and bringing forth upon the beautiful there is a movement beyond the temporal cycle of birth and decay. Consider the abstract according to Jackson Pollock, or, the birth of Hip hop in the streets of NY; each aesthetically applied to the nature of life eternal, i.e., the world, transforms and continues it further along the path. There are 3 ways in which poietic movement can occur. (1) Natural poiesis through sexual procreation, (2) poiesis in the city through the attainment of heroic fame and,(3) poiesis in the soul through the cultivation of virtue and knowledge."

Heidegger refers to it as a 'bringing-forth', using this term in its widest sense. He explained poiesis as the blooming of the blossom, the coming-out of a butterfly from a cocoon, the plummeting of a waterfall when the snow begins to melt. The last two analogies underline Heidegger's example of a threshold occasion: a moment of ecstasis-- (Philos: ecstasy) when something moves away from its standing as one thing to become another.

I believe that we are all in poiesis... so I'm taking notes!