CLOUD ACTION
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
In the early 1980s, Eva Poole-Gibson managed to pull together enough resources to have poets come from all over California to participate in a large-scale poets-in-the-schools program. Some of the poets who were part of this event were Gail Newman, Kit Robinson, Katherine Harer, Jack Grapes, Duane Big Eagle, John Oliver Simon and myself. I don’t remember off-hand whether this gathering happened two or three times. At one of the meetings, all of the poets contributed to a group poem, which was run off on orange paper without much of an attempt to establish consistency. Some line start with capital letters; others don’t. I’ve tried to reproduce the poem’s wording as accurately as possible. This collaboration remains one of my favorite instances of working as a poet.
CLOUD ACTION
That fleck of snow especially
I can ride my purse like a butterfly
The seconds watching the sky and the clouds
trying to find odd pictures
My home, where, in the theaters, the audience is
the performers and the performers, the audience
I smell what people are thinking
Clocks like to tick and tock helplessly for people
Air like whisper of cloud but not very loud
Animal land is as big as ten football stadiums
It’s actually a figmentation of your imagination
Planet 1981 is old and fake
Mountains look like clay shaped objects of glass
Your voice crying out in a dark closet
Listen to the birds sing and cheer
I’m battered by the question
My chair is hot and tired
I feel like needles
Some feelings I have never talked about in my life
The cat whips by as fast as the noises
of an ocean a million years ago
Because he is very very skeleton
this bed has an eye I’ve never seen before
the size of the rag is 20
executing the unknown through passion
a shaver for Bob Hope
inside this balloon I have a big safe
made of grey steel
the iron wings of time
nausea is a season, it’s winter
my book loses its letters
inside my heart it’s the shape of a fist
my days will be exciting
as big as a young world
it smells like a dog’s breath
with no color, it’s just glass
beside barracuda Connecticut come a cut
a cake of half a cab
he always would turn ten times and spit
a bucket is like an image in the grass
to tease a nervous grandmother is like a neon sign
my feelings are the color of the walls
a screen burst out, a hint to a mystery
we wallpapered the house and found the key
a murmur is heard as a flavor seeps through
a black rose, its thorns tearing at your heart
salamander stilt damsel flies
tunes, tunes that name
waves, waves of yards
what we feel is real
I’m a big one in space
running fingers stumble, cry out, talent, no!
yes yes YES!
baseball feels like tension in the worst degree
if she’s running from the sun, what’s she doing
living in a lightbulb?
and then the eagle turns back to a statue
I then lit a bulb and saw thousands of hands
mountains looking down upon the people like bald eagles
unneeded horses munching contentedly
it has no hair and funny symbols like this: SUN WORLD
my hair is stubby because I have to shave it off
when I wear shorts
I believe in dinner
I sit in a chair and look at the door
my flat ball feels like a rotten smashed egg
the right eye keeps getting in the left eye’s way
like a curious giant they bend across the path
at the beginning it was joyment
it was the truth of my mind
in the back of the truck a carpet on top of the mattress
I can sleep without blankets
blankness freezes your mind to an embarrassment
poems taste like ice cream
the spider says, until I have a cobweb I will not eat
the bushes have clouds in them
Two birds lift an interchangeable color
MY OUTSIDE SELF is as flat as can be
I poured popcorn on the lion’s head
Watermelons are growing through the
windows of your house
a single fragment of nature’s imagination, yet so am I
shadows that talk harshly
cowboy likes his sister’s horse
he was getting tires at school
all I do is watch a white horse run
through orange poppies
my special power is the way I live
my hair is blowing like a tornado
leaving behind the song of walls that go
to and fro over the places of room
maybe nobody is magic but it wouldn’t hurt!
heat ripples in the air and sand
hitting the glass of my helmet
I see sun birds
a lady with antennas in a glass rocket
having those stars twinkling in your beautiful face
my dreams are in a bottle with 100 red doors
many lost games led to perfect perfection
nobody knows except the spiny shadow of the moon
my face is in trouble, red is the mask of reality
I feel like I have a bone in my head
the dinosaurs were good at first
I want the world to turn faster