Julie Shavin adopted the Rocky Mountains as home in 1993 (and they are still looking for their real mom). She is a classically-trained pianist who began writing music at age 10. Her degrees are in Philosophy and English. Many of her artworks are enhancements of her photographs, drawings and paintings. She has four books of poetry and is working on the next, tentatively entitled "Closet Optimist's Creed." The Pikes Peak Arts Council has conferred upon her its annual Performance Poet and Page Poet awards two years consecutively. In 2016 she won the Mark Fischer prize, out of Telluride, Colorado, and she publishes often in literary magazines. She currently serves as president of Poetry West in Colorado Springs and describes herself as a nihilist/absurdist/synesthete of the best and worst and whatsitmatteranyway sorts. She is way weirder than her stuff and hopes for soonish congruence.
***
1. Euphemism for a Poet: Experiment in O Flat
a tutorial
easy he says _________ ditch excess for instance
_______________grotto I add green ____________
_______like
a body rubato_______ ponytail
________es
gold upon
a shoulder _________________
____his
smoke__________his smoke like
my grandmother s curls_________died when
_________________in her curls it seemed
___________d minor I sighed
white space he says
_________his
cheek a long dimple, and _________
moon in dark adders of tree____________let the reader
the reader will bring insists because__________________
_____________and
too the blood of memory
amidst
a garrulous geology of desire ___________those halcyon days
_________________as it goes since
______________
oh my ___ your
mussssiccccc he exclaimed
white
waning in
limbs of the near tree _______________silk
texture of despair
__________elephants
I say babies_____________yes
___torture
__________ dim dungeon of the filthy east
where
even
though they ______________________my
father's wrong side of tracks
_____eyes
blue ______ A-major but paler possibly due to ____________
sad admixture of joy__________good, he says, perhaps______________
and I
could love____? No, don't go there__________the possibility
o fpoetry
if only _________________________under this
kind sky of no snow
never forgetting the heart luffs its blood
which_____________
and then ___________s to the last algid
shore
we assumed
the _______ of receding cacti, grope
forward to new conclusions
like_________ing
in a sagacity of surrender perhaps
due to __________ing
backwards
in car reclining under a horizontal moon _____________
I wish
that ____ had _____________ ed the
calligraphy of blue lies
and__________________
the dog s soft snore _________
rabbitnose twitching the _________
moonlight
long the door's P.S. was before we noted ___________
and the crisp technique of death ___________impostor
in my own life
even as
________ let the sussurous words_______________even
as you ___________
cartwheels
to car as if _________remember what I
______________center yourself no need to justify
lose punctuation
***
2. Occlusion
bulimic
alpine
nights
gardens die
two-step/one
(Sisyphean)
parched
(hairshirt dirt)
nervosa vines
weedwrestle
pull
pull,
(neverlasting)
water
water
(neverlasting)
persist
in
blue occlusion
(cue-less)
bad nomads
(doing undoing)
jade aprons
(stains & flakes)
seeds spitting
(wayfaring)
we pray
in whispers
(and in wakes)
***
Tablet Smoker Ink Outlines 2
***
3. A Half-Dozen or so Thoughts on Solipsism, Self (and so forth) in re This Thing Called Life
1. The
Dead Hemispheres
Catches in the throat / sobbing,
railing / mother and daughter / over the son, brother /you're the only one,
they say / yet I cannot feel, am a pebble, a mountain
2. Equanimity
It has escaped me until now / or me is no longer / but
things come back to haunt / like a me
3. Caprice
Regarding those who love you / some things would seem
obvious / but this is you talking
4. Philanthropy
Each creature suffers alone / better to save a hundred /
than one? / the demise of one is less? / each survivor suffers alone / and etc.
5. Age
I was your age once / I know, the child says / but you see
he doesn't believe / any more than you believe it is you / old hag /
admonishing
6. Bastard
Why I lay on the picnic table / those summer mornings of
spangled sun / looking at sky / but never at night / at stars / now so cold /
if one could only regret in advance / if logic could lose its body
7. Squared Back if
Not Away
Summer
breeze / in a glorious green tree / what you / you call singing, dancing / I
sense a cold beyond cold / I say even the w-w-wind sh-shivers-s-s
