Loose Leaf Notes

1. I used to say the Trump administration is a house of cards but now I say it’s a house of flaming cards.

2. The words candle and clandestine seem strangely related.

3. We wait for poems that fit like skin / We dream them from a distance / then write them close in / We wear our berets / whether asleep or awake / until our dreams and poems / are inseparable – Read When We Wait More Than We Write, Aka What to Wear to a  Dream HERE.

4. One of my poet friends from Poets United commented on the above poem said:  I wonder – if one begins to associate a particular hat/cap with writing poetry, would poems flow much more easily? I understand waiting for a poem to fit like skin. Sometimes the wait is a long one.

5. I answered: That’s a great question that I’ve been asking it myself.  Could the beret be kind of like a poet’s thinking cap? I have a real purple beret as well as the one I wore in that dream that I could try wearing during the day to see if it could help the writing be at least equal to the waiting to write.

6. Another poet said, “The beret works so beautifully to anchor the ethereal in this tale as we wait for inspiration to fall in our laps,” which makes reference to this line: They never fall or burn in our laps / We have to wait for them / like we wait for the dreams / that know our names…

7. MC Yogi’s Saturday Yoga class, Super Yogi Blast Off, filled the Brahma Nirvana Blissland Tent capacity of 300 and spilled out onto the grass and the shaded grounds along the creek. “Everything is humming and singing.  Can you hear it?” he asked the crowd. “We’re going to come together and plug into the grid, which is nature.” He rapped some of his instructions and had the class howling like wolves. “Turn to your neighbor and give them free compliments,” he said at one point during the class. – More from Floyd Yoga Jam 8 Shines On HERE. 

8. Remember when we had to raise our hands to speak?

9. “To make a point, whether on a stick, in an essay or discussion is to pare away absolutely everything that is not essential. Do not use the resulting tool as an offensive weapon to jab in people’s eyes or egos. Use it as a maestro conducting ideas, or like a professor at a blackboard pointing out elements of an equation or theory. Use it as planting stick to make a little hole to plant a seed.” – From my Dharmacratic poet friend Will

10. I like to stretch out on a sofa like an empty page waiting for poems.

11. I consider the majority of my poems as body-based poetry because I have to go into myself to find them.

12. I went to an open house at Springhouse Community School’s new location last night. The evening ended with a dance party with Los Marino. Don’t Steal the Land is up below.

13. And here is what happens when I don’t know my camera is running.  I call it “Feet.”

__________Thirteen Thursday