Poems in/from dreams...we're talking about extra-ordinary states of
consciousness? Yes, I recall golden strands of poetry like DNA unwinding in
a dream, waking to a feeling of exhilaration, lump in throat, grabbing a
pencil and pad, scribbling the equivalent of a treatise by Donald Duck! Yet
something had cleared the layers of usual ego and lept fully realized into
being and I was both witness and author.
In my everyday consciousness I work sometimes very hard and over long
periods of time to enter something of that space, that 'poetry head'. Sure,
there have been moments when the 'poem' flowed right out, but even that has
been, at least in part, because I'd been engaged with 'the poem' or poetry,
greasing the machinery enough to get out of my own way.
And like Philip Whalen once told me, "I write and I rewrite until it looks
like I wrote it (the poem) all at once."
Diane di Prima was shocked to learn that I don't keep a pad and pen next to
my bed because she regularly wakes to recount her dreams, a quantum source
for her (though certainly not the only source for her writing).
Poems in/from dreams...we're talking about extra-ordinary states of
consciousness? While not a dream, the first part of my poem Heart Shaped
Blossoms is an actual account from an acid trip thirty odd years ago first
written twenty years after the fact and tweaked only for he sake of clarity
in this consciousness. I used to see in that manner frequently and only wish
now I'd trusted enough then to scribble those perceptions in a pad. If
poetry is a different way of 'seeing' among its other attributes then all
manner of seeing is of value.
Rabbit lays out in the backseat of the Galaxy
snared in the rush of auto lights flashing wave
after wave across the interior ceiling. All of his
muscles, even his teeth, begin to relax. He sud-
denly knows. He's lifted out of his hide into
The Light!
"We are already where we've been going!"
- Frank
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Frank Parker
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http://now.at/frankshome
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