3:15 Experiment, Day Twenty-five

Until the matter's settled
we will wait here and expect
something amazing will happen
and waiting's not so bad as it used to be

3:15 Experiment, Day Twenty-four

temperature find temperateness
the polarized degrees
hit the skin like poison
that book- ingested via the skin
my pores and lungs
in comes the wild change
the night is a strange time to live

Magnificat

*reposted because it is too amazing to be buried

Magnificat
(for Sian, after thirteen years)

oh this man
what a meal he made of me
how he chewed and gobbled and sucked
in the end he spat me all out

you arrived on the dot, in the nick
of time, with your red curls flying
I was about to slip down the sink like grease
I nearly collapsed, I almost
wiped myself out like a stain
I called for you, and you came, you voyaged
fierce as a small archangel with swords and breasts...

you commanded me to sing of my redemption

oh, my friend, how
you were mother for me, and how
I could let myself lean on you
comfortable as an old cloth
familiar as enamel saucepans
I was a child again, pyjama'ed
in winceyette, my hair plaited and you

listened, you soothed me like cake and milk...

when we met, I tell you
it was a birthday party, a funeral
it was a holy communion
between women, a Visitation
it was two old she-goats butting
and nuzzling each other in the smelly fold

Michele Roberts

3:15 Experiment, Day Twenty-three

the trouble with two
is that two become interchangeable
equally loved/needed/whatever
the possibility of not

necessity of watching
need to know need to know
employees only
do not disturb, DNR

the thing about poetry
growling imagination imagery
open yourself up to terrible thoughts
let the witch lead you to her den

3:15 Experiment, Day Twenty-two

intricacies of a firefly
how does she glow?
take flight to spread messages
not all night power rests
with moons and stars and men

3:15 Experiment, Day Twenty

eugenicide
postpartum
stuff us all back
in the mother womb
patron saint of gimps

Handwriting

The big trouble with the 3:15 Experiment is that I can never seem to read my handwriting when I wake up.  And I do a lot of typos and misspellings (i.e. "two" versus "too") but feel I shouldn't correct them if I'm to keep them in the raw.  But what to do when I can't read what I have written?  Especially when I write something phonetically similar but with such a different meaning ("con-like," I'm pretty sure, was meant to be "dog-like").  Something appears to say "askance" but I didn't know what the word actually meant until I looked it up ("With an attitude or look of suspicion or disapproval"), which doesn't even make sense in the context.

In any event, the month will end soon and I will fix up the poems all pretty.  I like that I'm getting many night poems again.  I might try to put together a chapbook on night meanderings.  Which may mean extending the 3:15 Experiment for my own personal use.  Lack of a collective wakeful writing mind, but still that stealing intention from dreams.  Or, as of late, nightmares. 

3:15 Experiment, Day Nineteen

The morning comes with scythe
A dark cloak and metaphors
Fancies herself a god or mother
Rebirthing some into the waking world
The somniad can only fill his bag
Tremble sand flakes on the grass

3:15 Experiment, Day Eighteen

askance
butterfly effect
pinned to a wall
bought yellow tag
at a thrift shop
where he sold it
to finance
more divergence

3:15 Experiment, Day Seventeen

I dreamt (again)
    I won the lotto

except it wasn't the lotto
    but a grant
and it wasn't for me
but a group of us

Giant stacks of papers
    Good news
Where is PR to document it?

3:15 Experiment, Day Sixteen

They lied to us, didn't they?
the new tomorrows
live next door

integration into our lives
was never the intention
survival of the violentest

They will never take us to space
the poor, the hovering masses
the lying on the floor reaching up

next door will live forever
with a robot heart and mind
supercomputered into infinity

it's like cats' lifespans
humans live so long now
but cats still live so briefly
someone should get on that

I sometimes wonder if that's the trouble
humans were never meant to reach Babel's top
but no cat I know of ever committed genocide

the next door neighbors have no pets
but they type 200 WPM
and live on green leafy vegetables

the future is pleasureless

then again, we won't be there, will we?
a living eugenics
survival of the richest

Maybe Leona Helmsley's dog can stay
maybe Astro was wishful thinking

3:15 Experiment, Day Fifteen

gnawing at night
the bones the bones the bones
sinewy tasty bits
propensity to slurrrp

a thousand tiny teeth
pointy- slump and shine
typewriter clicks
piranha intact

egalitarian mouth
indiscriminate munching
necks and hands and backs and shoulders
frontal lobe to boot

gnawing at night
chewing con-like by day
regurgitate my sanity!
at last some part of "me"

3:15 Experiment, Day Twelve

inutil
never associated

3:15 Experiment, Day Ten

sometimes
it feels
fishes in the ceiling
tons and tons of pressure
just above
my head

3:15 Experiment, Day Eight

nociceptors 3

feathery touch
breeze, goose pimples
two hard "two hard"
one must be fragile
hand tearing specters
stalks and sucks of the wounds
filing "don't forget me"

3:15 Experiment, Day Seven

(wow, I plagiarized from myself...)

she had one of those accents
like she could be a host
on Saturday morning TV

one of those hairdos that
must have been chosen by
her mother back in the day

those nails that one both bites
at and peels away- thin
from too little calcium

earring holes in her lobe
stretched from too heavy
of hopes

I'd like to say she was
smart or funny or charming
or even interesting

Lord knows her mundaneness
was enough for me

a song I know all the words to

It took me awhile to get back to this exercise.  It must be a measure of youth, a rite of passage if you will, to listen to the radio and devote to mind the lyrics to two thousand terrible songs.  I feel old now, but those songs that made the top 40's lists in the late nineties have made the "golden oldies" station.  The eighties has been solidified melodically among the ranks of Frank Sinatra and the Beatles, so it was only a matter of time.  Still, I can begin to imagine what it will be like in forty years when I'm beginning to get old.

In any case, there are literally thousands of songs ingrained in me.  Remember back in high school or maybe community college when they'd tell you about oral story telling and you couldn't even imagine having not only the Iliad but the Odyssey memorized as well?  Going around town to town selling your wares in the form of a well-told story, sending out a brass bowl to collect the days coins.

Maybe in the future all of us of the MTV generation will travel around singing out those many songs whose lyrics probably amount to an epic poem or two and whose many tones have the true feel of an emphasized tale.  Sure, hats are far more in fashion, "pass the hat" and all that, but it all amounts to the same.  Even Homer must have been kicked from a street corner or two for "loitering."

Unfortunately, so few of the songs etched across my brain pan have any true effect.  And perhaps this, above all things, is the tragedy of my generation.

3:15 Experiment, Day Six

the good feeling
    is warm like
a cat on the hottest day of the year

it evelops fast and
    uncontrollable, sunrise,
that night has ended

the knowing that loneliness
    has passed affects
the retinas first

when they ask, they,
    a thousand years from
now, you'll remember only sun

ears, you command, stop
    your searching
wind is simply wind

the tiny cat tongue
    can cut in a way but
recognize this is love

the purring is not
    a sign to self loath
a message from an angry world

feeling those vibrations
    under empty hand
the heart's trembling will calm

and that good old feeling
    is the universe ever expanding and large
and always inescapable

3:15 Experiment, Day Five

the Truth

capital T

spills more like

puked out

food poisony

but longer

dream a little dream of me

then nothing

silence in chest

mind whirls

be still

I've fallen and I can't get up

expectations

talk talk talk

not enough, T

or too much

just human

little more

lot less

take a pitcher

scoop it up

carry it all

to the water

pour it away

capital t Truth

drown away

3:15 Experiment, Day Four

She couldn't say no

when asked directly

the thought of being nuisant-ly

was enough to drive her outward

abandoning the thoughts of the self

and all its many idiosyncrasies

the self-born inability to be burdensome

facilitated the transformation of self

into someone else

who was still she-y

but also very much

an apparition of the requester

with all the touch

of a Tokyo godfather

Yakuza bossesque

she maybe would cut off the fingers

of her lieutenants and her clients

saying it's all the same

even as they morph themselves

into someone very much her

only an exhale before

3:15 Experiment, Day Three

night noises internal

one knowing, the certainty.

"the cat plans to eat me"

not simply when I've

gone and

"shed this mortal 

coil" but with the

knowledge that mortal

coils are a rare

delicacy themselves

3:15 Experiment, Day Two!

Note: I remember being super sore from yoga....


Step forward, slide right
Weight carries forward, diagonal
To the closet, to the mirror, to the door
Breathing meticulously
Straw with hole sound
and a tuff tuff tuff
depend upon your stomach
much like a hair tie
snaps so often and fails
the floor does not
h-a HA! six seconds
fingers tied beneath the chin
and shoulders low
elbows elevated
meditation is sometimes
quite a bit like dying
in all its many forms
weight to left let
weight to right leg
balance, breathe
go back, far back, way back
change

3:15 Experiment, Day One!

Note: Remember, this is unedited stuff-- I haven't even read it yet!  The 3:15 Experiment has a bunch of silly folks waking themselves up at 3:15 a.m. all through the month of August to write random dream thoughts down.  The whole point is not to edit them or even read them 'til the end of the month.  Cheers!

Silence would be best.
In truth, it mostly succeeds.
But then, where it fails
the end slowly wanders in
more oozing or dripping
than anything human
and what it ends
one couldn't say, mostly
because the fear is there
intense and coming
from someplace deep
making it feel profound
but truly more profane
we sleep to forget
the confusion of change
occurring far more often
than anyone, anyone
would ever care
to admit.