Produce Sweetheart
Compose a love letter to the person who made eye contact with you today at the grocery store.
Fold it up and tuck it in between the pomegranates.
Check back next week for a reply, or for another passing love.
The fruit is as sweet as ever.
Reel in the years
Paint a canvas using only the colors of your bedrooms throughout your life.
Cut the canvas into several squares.
Fold each square into a different animal.
Ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse.
Leave an animal in every place you visit this week.
If the only place is your bedroom, find a new color to paint it.
Repeat with a new canvas.
Goat, monkey, rooster, dog, pig, rat.
Sound Painting I
Open all the doors and windows in your home, day and night.
Settle into a gentle equilibrium with the outside world.
Categorize all the sounds you now live with.
Rain alarm clock tea kettle passing car turning pages /
Idle chatter bicycle tires laughter dog’s bark sigh engine running /
Faint music tree frogs snoring rustling leaves baby’s cry breathing.
Let them overstay their welcome, and don’t pay your heating bill.
Looping Piece
Write the same song every day until it sounds new.
Cook the same meal until its taste has changed.
Have the same conversation until you can’t find the words.
Awaken with the same dream until it becomes memory.
Repeat until you’ve forgotten how life was at the beginning.
Sound Painting II
Play music in one room of your house from as many sources as you can.
The record player on the coffee table, the cassette player on the shelf, the CD player in the corner…
Make sure each has its own song.
Walk circles around the room and sing along.
Jewelry Piece
Stay up for the entirety of a cloudless night.
Watch how the constellations move across the sky.
String together your favorite stars and wear them as a necklace.
The cosmos is yours for the taking, if you want it.
Heliocentric Piece
Collect the summer air at sunset in a jar.
Open much later on a particularly cold winter morning.
Count the number of sunsets that have already passed in your life.
Be grateful to have lived that one twice.
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To “perform” these poems, I read the first two out loud on the phone with my friend. I found it a little strange and not as gratifying as I thought it might be. Writing the poems was a challenge for me, because I couldn’t quite figure out how to mimic Ono’s style and I couldn’t come up with ideas very easily. I still have no idea if they’re any good. As I was reading them, I felt like I needed to justify all the words I chose along the way. I’m not really used to performing my writing, much less writing I’m not totally satisfied with, so I felt self-conscious. I did enjoy the process of writing these pieces though, and I think I just need to get more comfortable creating and sharing poetry. :^)
