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poetry and kava

kl.Lente

Kava Curious
I enjoy, very much, writing under the influence.


Once I finish my next chapbook I will post it here for everyone's reading, and no one will read it. (I've been around the block before on this one.)


But Kava makes me feel connected to other people, even if it's not artistically. I mean, as my old teachers used to say: more people write poetry than read it.


In fact, the one poem I've been having trouble writing is the one that describes taking Kava. It's hard to put into words. The mental nuances, the strange but beautiful connections, the regular beautiful connections, the white snake talking to animals effect....crazy.



-Lente.
 

kl.Lente

Kava Curious
[edited because my line breaks didn't copy over.]

So my little chapbook has spiraled into a poetry cycle, with Kava as the unifying theme. But since I started this thread, here is the poem I was referring to. At least now this won't just be an empty testament.


So this won't be the only Kava mention in the little work.


My Dad always told me to never tell anyone you have started a creative project. Tell them when you have finished one. Smart man.



Kava: Earth is a Gourd Floating Filled with Seeds in the Space Ocean 


a casket filled with earth

grew a coconut tree

floated in the ocean

where painted men paddled

melomelo from island to island


last night my people brushed out of the brush

from their shoulders to sit near

the little lines of kava dust sand on the evening 

the door split wedge tracks of

still deer leaf junctures 


the dust could not be the debris

of the shadow seen spirits

air's flooding 

the peregrine sapling flowed with circumambience

in epistoloary patterns of the sentient

brushwood heather wildwoods sycamores and the kava

settled like mottled white recumbent pollen

on the chairs that arch over tables

on the muddy pool 


the rabbits come up to the strong air houses

and rock mountains

wedged in the valley side

around doors and windows lined with trees 


Dionysus and Apollo

crocheted their limbs

into a pentagram

of sonorous skin and veins

the resonance of

the planets' sphere's

harmony in geometric

temple tree columns 


the kava came fresh and green within

so thinly that spring lower window light sands

in the sunlight could not spread beyond

before reaching the narrow yards

of the root dust evenly in the rivers

mixed with the golden air foothills slopes,


curves of emulsion 


when the root came to the hillside bank

again the air was black

running deep and green night

for the stars and planets


the water is warm

it has slipped to kava dust

to get downy twinkling

over the yellow

kerosene lamplight through the mosquito net
 

Prince Philip

Duke of Edinborogu
In Hiroshima

Green plants push up through ashes

To see the sunlight


(Adapted from page 287 of Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris).
 

kl.Lente

Kava Curious
Thanks for the kind words. I will post the rest when I finish it, whenever that will be. My attention right now has been on a musical project that popped up.


You have less free time during the school year as a teacher than some people think. And I work summers. But I digress.


As for where this poem is based on, it is loosely based on drinking kava where I live. I live in a strange part of southern Virginia, in that it is coastal but remains rural and poor. That is all I care to reveal, lest one of my students should happen across this forum.


It is strange, I make about 30 a year, but can see the ocean from my house. And I don't have to feel like a total sell out, because no one except freaks and weirdos wants to work in a school like the one I am in. Fear of youth violence and all that. But I digress again.
 
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