My children are taking a poetry class and in studying the lovely forms within, I've reawakened my fondness of stanza, meter, rhyme and sound.

The latest chapter was on the sonnet, and it is indeed Mother's Day, so off and on today I wrote a sonnet for my dear momma. Here is the completed version, which I've printed and will decoupage into a weathered cigar box:

A Sonnet for Mother

      

Mom I am taken with your love and grace,

And Godly wisdom gleaned from living life;

You always see the flowers through the strife

And comfort all with kindness from your face.

Gather your love like roses in a vase

And give away the sweetness ever true;

And those who walk in sorrow are renewed

Reborn joyfully shining and steady in their pace.

Little gifts of sugar that you make

And give away as Thank Yous made with care;

You’ve taught me how to show love when I bake,

And appreciation just by being there.

Pray for me ev’ry morning when you wake

And in return I’ll lighten which you bear.

Endorphins, Sensuality, and Lucid Dreaming: What I'm REALLY Doing While I'm Sweating

I don’t know what it is about twenty minutes. Twenty minutes in and something changes. The heart rate increases, the sweat  comes, and it seems - at least in my case -  the nerve cells in the brain become momentarily more robust, more communicative, running like speedy little rodents, back and forth, chasing their tails, chasing each other. The firing rate speeds up, boils my creativity to a twinkling, orgasmic, critical mass. This process never fails and I’ve really begun paying attention to, and capitalizing on it. It is sort of like finally gaining access to a secret meadow you’ve heard about, where the fireflies are always sailing about, waiting to be swept into your eager, swooping net.

My idea factories are surprisingly easy to come by: trail runs and zippy, sweaty rides on my road bike. There’s also my high intensity, music-flooded cycle class at my gym. However... those classes would be more conducive to creative problem solving if the cycling room had no ceiling…

When I’m jogging in the crunchy, leaf-littered trails by my house, my eyes are usually tipped toward the sky, absorbing the sensual energy of the clouds and the sun’s rays slanting toward me like long, fuzzy lazers.  When I am outside there is no cap on the ceiling - the lid is always off - and I can feel my connective capacity following suit, reaching farther. It’s an Inspector Gadget-esque reaching, wherein my go-go-gadget neurons (commanded by my increasing heart rate) strive and strain to mentally go where no other jogging blonde has gone before.

I consistently feel that creative connection twenty minutes in. I feel the buzz and check my watch, or I check my watch and if it’s time, I literally open my mind like the ramps on a drawbridge, welcoming ships of ideas in on a wave of adrenaline.

I’ve had sudden ideas for art pieces, lines of perfect poetry which assemble themselves in rhyming order, or solutions to ongoing projects, all fall effortlessly into my jogging or pedaling lap.  I’ve started bringing my pad and pencil to catch these hot, elusive ideas before they cool down and evaporate like sweat.

I realized the other day that this whole process reminds me of lucid dreaming, and of what are called hypnagogic hallucinations (things you imagine as you are falling asleep). When you become aware that you are hallucinating in that “middle state” of consciousness, you take risks. You are operating void of logic, void of mental gravity, void of convention. You yell, you outburst, you fly into fires. You choose to go toward what you might normally run away from.

I once heard a podcast about a kind of “school” you can enroll in to learn how to dream lucidly. People who suffer from recurring nightmares can learn a gradual process of awareness similar to that learned in meditation. You are taught how to control what goes on inside your dreams. They teach you how to do this gradually, first by learning to manipulate one small detail at a time. This would be in a dream you have all the time, a dream in which you know what is just around the corner, that way you can go in and make changes, or at least plan for when and where you’ll try to do so. Kind of like learning the Jedi Mind Trick to move the intangible. To move thoughts, ideas, scripts, you have created and for some reason keep playing over...and over...again...and again...

Eventually, while dreaming, participants will be able to first speak to their tormentors. Once this is mastered, they learn to physically interact with him, her, or it, until at last, when they’ve advanced to “dream Jedi” status, they go for it and take drastic action to fight off and kill their dream “monsters.”  

Although I was deeply intrigued by that podcast, I don’t suffer from nightmares so therefore I never conducted further research on the lucid dreaming school. I never thought much about it until I discovered - and started toying with - the notion of my “runner’s high idea factory.”

I think those dream coaches start by teaching participants to notice the particulars of reality; something I do especially well when I’m running and cycling outdoors. I start by being sensually, qualitatively, more AWARE: aware of smells, sights, little sounds in the background, murmurs first, then pieces of distinct words. Water running, birds chirping, sneezes, a siren up the street, dogs barking in the neighborhood. When you know how to do this - during meditative practice or while lucid dreaming - you have graduated from level one: increasing awareness.

Awareness brings me to yet another connection. The chairman of the psych department in my graduate school (a short, grey-haired, former hippie) used to say to us students: awareness leads to change. I’ll always remember that line, because it applies to almost anything. Once you’ve broadened your awareness, almost like expanding an invisible net that emanates from your senses, you can start to notice how things make you feel. Specific things you may not have noticed before. You’ll find that there are little invisible threads, like fishing lines, connecting your eyes, your ears, your feet, your genitals, to stimuli around you.  Because they are connected, they control you and you control them (to a degree). It is symbiotic.

However, the boss is always changing: sometimes the stimulus has the control, sometimes you do. For me, it depends on how weak or how strong I’m feeling on any given day. Or, sometimes, I want the stimuli to control me, such as a sunrise or a sunset I’m looking at. I WANT it to move me to a place of inspiration. It might be the way the color of the leaves change at dusk, the shift that occurs in the cells of the eyes as they struggle to interpret color coming into them under the influence of the changing light of the setting sun. My exercise-induced endorphin rush, coupled with my heightened “sensual” awareness help me to strengthen the connections I desire, whereby allowing me to then harness the driving force of my creativity.

There is beauty and pain all around us. We can let it influence us as much as we are willing. However, if you can learn to open and close the filter between yourself and the stimuli, you’ll be amazed at how much more you are capable of. It all starts by taking a jog outside while keeping your senses wide open. So the next time you see a sweaty runner, or one of those sinewy, bent over cyclists, don’t write them off as dumb jocks. They might be in the process of curing cancer.

The Wu-Tang Clan Helped Me Edit My Poetry

You've heard me say it before: hip hop can inspire, can get you wired, float your boat down a sacred river of liquid purple inspiration you can't exactly access in any other way. That's just my opinion.  I read poetry, books, short stories. I listen to audio books and music most hours of the day. I want words in my head, words that rhyme, words that wow and evoke wonder. It is a constant education, a vocabulary lesson within a fun, surprising context with a catchy beat. 

This week, while my nightstand featured "American Sideshow," an incredibly fascinating book about the myriad assortment of carnival freaks of the late 1800's- my car stereo featured Wu-Tang Clan's '93 album titled "Enter the Wu-Tang" which is - and I concur - regarded as one of the greatest hip hop/rap albums of all time. I'm not going to claim to be some sort of hip hop super fan nor do I thump down the streets of my smallish suburban town with my windows down, aching for slanted glances, for recognition of my incredibly sweet taste in tunes. No, I mostly listen to punk rock, rock and roll, alt rock, talk radio (NPR), and currently, with my kids in the car, Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book (all hail Shere Khan - the ultimate in "Tiger Style!"). But every time I take a musical side road and dip into my hip hop collection, I always find myself simultaneously dipping into my poetry journal to re-work and revise poems I've written on the fly, in moments of white light-pure, blinding inspiration. These are the poems that I know have gold in them - nuggets of value scattered about my scrawl -but they need some sifting, sorting, before they can land here on my laptop in what I feel is a jewelry store display case of perfectly placed words and spacing. So thank you Wu: Ol' Dirty Bastard, GZA, RZA, Raekwon, U-God, Method Man, and Ghostface Killah. When you brothas from Brooklyn made your soon-to-be legend album in the early 90's, would you all ever have guessed that you'd be - in effect - facilitating the editing process of an aspiring middle class white female poet!? You tell me: "Can It Be All So Simple?"

Poetic Voice by Jennifer Jones

If you read enough poetry,

your voice takes on a musicality

of speaking in beat, pacing,

perfect pauses,

then up and down

your sound begins

to dance.

You’re a singer of words,

think in rhyme,

align

blocks

of letters that settle in gutters

and funnel like drops of lettered rain

onto the

page.

Funnel your rage

push passion through pen

a dragon’s exhalation, a snake’s shed skin.

Hands hover over a vacant keyboard

ready to be a better builder.

To mother a novel -

not borrow from another’s

shed skin.

You’re a dragon hoarding word-treasure

wagons of rhymes whipped in your listener’s ears

shiver up their spines as

little dancers that shimmy and shake.

Take those precious stones, those

well chosen words

(that tap like tiny shoes

on the cillia, the cochlea)

up the spiral cartilage

knocks at the brain’s door.

Skates its neuron-rich dance floor.

Words reach that tender pink place

strike a chord with what sounds oh so right.

No end in sight (just echoes)...

Music on strings of light 

strung together,

walked by, witnessed at night.

Stars strung together

as constellations of light

our eyes

fight over.

Want to see, want to hear

these golden lights

these golden notes

that flake into being,

into sense-making glowing

strands.

Your head threading, your hands weaving…

So read and train that tender pink brain,

that dragon that is waiting / racing.

Learn to listen, weave the strands

of musicality,

rhyme,

perfect pause,

and pacing.

Owl by Jennifer Jones

Mysterious and lovely, fluffy and deep

He sweeps the misty grey meadow.

Searching for scurrying low-legged meat

He dips, dives, hides from view

swings on silent wings.

Night things cower when he sails low...

                                                lower,

talons skimming grass and frilled weeds.

His eyes widen - frighten - pupils big as midnight.

His target is seen.,

yellow eyes like slits of moon

                                       -swoon-

                                               catch fire.

Head down to aim his laser sight

                                  then plummets with a rocket’s flight.

Hooks grasp - squeeze - close tight

forming a horrible cage.

Tiny heartbeat pulses.

Mammal mouth pants.

Sucks short bursts of its last air.

Owl closes his cage.

Brings warm body

to open beak.