JaJas is back.
If you don’t know what JaJas is, it’s an art studio in eastside Portland and the hub where I do much of my fire spinning practice. Last Wednesday, however, I took a new approach and did something I have wanted to do for a while now.
I took my typewriter and stuck a kevlar wick to it and set that thing alight.
Then, as the wick burned down, I began to improvise poems for friends within and around the fire circle.
I’ve only done this once before at Oregon Country Fair during the summer. I was confident that I could do it, but I wasn’t comfortable while I was out there. Same story at JaJas.
But as David Bowie once said, “if you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area; always go a little further in the water then you’re capable of being in… and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
Well, this was my moment to be uncomfortable. And I quite enjoyed it.
The title poem comes from one I wrote during the experiment. The original is quite shorter and doesn’t have the same ending punch as the final version. But it is living with a friend who cherishes it, which is all that matters.
Moreover, the poem the original idea became is something I cannot help but love. As did the other poems I wrote over the past month.
Taken altogether, I hope they create a picture of my experiences over the last month, which saw two car break ins, a state of limerence, and a night spent at JaJas.
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Last Night at JaJas
I thought I saw God, but now I’m not so sure, it was dark
and your light was all I could find
As I worked and wrote and smote these words upon a page
that no longer could be mine
I stole these sentences from poi, from staff, from fire torch
and flaming fan,
I loot these lyrics from language spoken in your darting tongue
that Babylon could never understand
For if these runes had stones, then their tower mighty would
sooner shudder and fall
But we would not be there to see it ruined, for you burned
and danced and wrote it down before me,
Last night, at JaJas
To My Dearest Yuri, Beware,
Beware the stars you seek
And the bodies you orbit
Beware the void between the two
Beware the weight they will take,
Lest they make a moon of you
This Regulated Form
This safety shattered
And stolen through
The rear-view window
To the dashboard
A mountain summit stack
Of letters and bills
Avalanches to the floor
As a days old text holds
On bated breath, gasping
For some regulated form
For this alarm unceasing
Sounds without a bell
Hung from flesh yet
Rung through bone
As this temper airy
Twists and rips and
Whirlwinds through
Fencelines, barnsides,
And a living room
We once called home
As these winds whipped
Hyper bear it,
This catastrophe—
A hurricane eye
Once called me—
Departs for the park
To burrow by the trees,
Splinter-bent and prone,
Searching fallen leaves
For read receipts
Folded long ago
Parking Lot Poetry (or An Emotional Vacancy)
The sky has not been this clear
all month
It’s a shade of blue I have since
forgot,
Hiding from a winter sun that shines
yet never runs hot
As this terror of a text line hanging
on a dot
But if they bottled this kind of
adrenaline
Then I would drink it and sup,
I would drink it from the bathtub until
my face went flush
I would match you, bottle to bottle,
shot for shot,
Until the sun went down and this
neon sign lit up
And then we could leave this
vacancy
For another parking lot
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