Circumpolar Satellite Telephony Mine

Birds, Bonds & CA

In a mythical word jumbled world
St. Louis becomes heaven
The middle kingdom of MLB
Where the ruler of Blanco hell dare not go
So far from California
Pelicans cannot see the coast
Finnish is a difficult language to master
Encoded on the sports page
Where San Diego Gulls confuse pucks with goals

Givers and takers, Quakers and Shakers
Induced ecstasy drug trips from reality
Scan the sky with disembodied eyes
Fan belts of believers
Break, lose their timing, dim the lights
Safety is a high school dream of
Overhead Camden yards
Overflowing with American League birds

Newfoundland oysters drive
Fords on moonlit neap tide rides
Dreaming of Pontiac Firebirds
A leap of faith
Resurrects Evel ... and all is well
You can read it on the Internet
Verizon: you make the call

Back a couple of weeks I got tagged by this girl with the task of explaining to others how to become a better poet or something to that effect. Well I am certainly no expert on poetry, but I do know that creating is about contemplating the world around you. So I guess it would make sense to be an interesting person and don’t forget to look for all kinds of different perspectives on the ordinary. Ask questions, especially the dumb and naive ones, even if only to yourself. It is good practice for when you go public. & Explore ambiguity.

I can also can give some hints about how I work. For example this poem grew out of my fascination with the dada desire to recapture humanity from technology. When I read the prompt for this week I thought of being up in the sky looking down. I mean way up at the level of the low orbit satellites that play such a large role in human communication networks. These satellites are in circumpolar orbits and the earth turns below, for example the Landsat satellites only fly over the same path every 17 days even though they make an orbit every 90 minutes or so. Sometimes the view is obstructed by clouds.

In addition, signals “bounced” off the communication “birds” are sent in packets that may or may not have a continuous stream of intelligible content. What if at any one instant you could look down on the world, in this case North America, talk? At least where the view was unobstructed from your point of view. How would it sound? Would it make any sense? Could you make any sense out of it? How?

For additional reading I would suggest Crossings, v5 "Reappraising the Disappearing Body and the Disembodied Eye through Multisensory Art to get an idea of how a multisensory artist thinks.

ab