Biography
When I was a kid I used to write "Driven By The Moon I will Shake This Earth At least Once" on just about everything. So, I've been working on the shaking part ever since. I am an installation/fiber artist who also likes to write. These are things I have written through out the years, based on my experiences. Some take shape of poems, others are journal entries and many are side notes in free form expression. Sometimes I like to put a bunch of various words on pieces of paper place them in a bag and draw one and write what ever that word brings up. This type of writing happen to be my favorite exercise. It's freeing yet still contained .Feel free to leave comments or share your own writings. I will be adding random words to explore free form writing, please join me in these exercises or suggest words to write about. Thank you
Samples
BLEACH "Bleach kills everything" It’s time I shook you; shook my inner core till every last metastasized flake falls free. I know..... I’ll become a spelunker explore deep caves between new legs Hibernate in opium dens full of carnivorous souls, clamoring for expedited transcendental love affairs. I’ll look for sunken ships in sunken eyes. Stock up on dangerous libations imported from the south of somewhere you or I have never been. I'll Place brightly colored silk scarves over my lamps and wait for everything to catch fire. Setting flame, to the things I no longer need to hold on to. I’ll see if with all this Portland rain I can cultivate an even newer personality I’ll drive myself deep into the fertile earth with each new branch I will spring forth shoots of "back off", "fuck you" and "anything goes" I’ll busk naked on soggy street corners hula hooping, hard in drag. Become a street prophet raving mad with enlightenment, bursting from every orifice. I’ll give you a different name I’ll change your face your sex eye color I’ll create guerrilla billboard art in the midst of street night madness that will surely makes you itch with the sheer terror that I’ll never again be yours. I’ll do what ever it takes but, I assure you I can learn how to forget. I am determined to wash you away. They say, bleach kills everything! and, usually..... . I don't believe in using bleach. I know it kills unborn unicorns and promotes three headed centipedes. In fact ........I’m sure it's even responsible for your leaving, but I’m determined, so I’ll give it a go. It's raining again and I’m on the bus again Looking for my new home away from home She will have mauve lips the color of your nipples When he touches me I will know that I am enough They will make me smile like the sun lit laughter in those after school specials. Make me cut out construction paper hearts in every mushy color for them I will write sweet nothings on the back of Trimet bus seats and I will no longer have any need for bleach -BT CELLULAR MEMORY “One by one, we make our way to the swamp below. It is in this dark place, where they tell me that the Darlington’s grow.” The Darlington’s begin to sing. They are a choir of ancient peoples speaking a language I do not think I know. There voices familiar, they are each calling out, anchoring me to the earth. There voices become clearer. This is a feeling I am familiar with, a sound that resonated from within me. I am afraid. I do not dare move. Their wisdom transcends me. They have taken me over. The Darlington’s are questioning me. I am being baptized. I am being threatened. I’ve been caught trespassing. I am an intruder in a an ancient ceremony. I should not be here. I have been here before. The earth groans. Moving and straitening, She is stretching out her bones. They are in my head now. They speak to me. Calling me out. Saying my name, They are telling me to leave, To stay. I am stranger. I am there sister. There lover. I am rooted to them forever. Their voices are growing inside of me like tiny crystals gems, They are making sure that I will never again be able to forget them. They are building themselves into my walls. They are forming stalactites. Together they are a million hungry voices, shouting out, all at once. They are laying out my history, feeding me my past. I am full of thunder. My veins wet with river My teeth, rabbit bone They are telling me to remember. To be sad. To dig into the earth. To reveal what is lost. To tell the truth. To remember, that this is there place. These are holy grounds. These ceremonies happen. These songs are for the frogs and beetles, for the crickets and the reeds. These songs are of the Darlington’s. These songs are being sung nightly. But I can not hear them anymore. Somehow I do not fit. I am now alien. I have always been. They are telling me to leave. They are telling me to stay. Telling me to look inside myself, To remember that my bones are black basalt, my hair usnea. I must grow my roots into the ground. I will drink the earths red magma. I will pull down the heavens. I am remembering the taste of ocean, and the kiss of sky They are telling me to leave now, but I do. I remember. -BT
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.
Blog entries by BT
Fireflies in Glass Jars (30/08/2012)
Remember to Float (02/05/2012)
Spirit Animal (12/04/2012)
Forlorn (26/03/2012)
Chrysalis (21/03/2012)
Krilian Photography (16/03/2012)
Vertigo # 2 (14/03/2012)
Vertigo #1 (14/03/2012)
Don't Forget (09/03/2012)
These Days (08/03/2012)
Blog link: https://www.writeoutloud.net/blogs/bt
Audio entries by BT
Fireflies in Glass Jars (30/08/2012)
Favourite Profiles
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Comments
thanks for your comments on 'cacti plant' just when i was thinking it rubbish. there is a lot in there if you get the references but also just a simple write about the very complicated feelings surrounding exes.
Hi , thanks for your comment on Compassion, I agree.
Regards Hazel
<Deleted User> (10123)
Mon 9th Apr 2012 10:13
hi, glad you enjoyed 'Space Knits' just a spot of this nutter seeping through. I'm not always about but I'll see thee - awfully Yorkshire, What! tara for now, Nick.
barbi, thanks for all your supportive words. i too love your poetry and am happy that love is the thing. i love writing. i love reading. i love, you love, we love, loves up. i just posted a poem about love. xx
Hello lovely!
Aye, she was an older woman, very beautiful inside and out. She was actually a friend of my mother's, but she let me have the run of her wonderful house whenever we visited, which was incredibly rare back then. Usually I was made to sit in one place and told not to speak or move, so for her to let me do all that was just so liberating, exhilarating. I didn't know anyone else with a house like that. Like being in paradise :) And her handbag always smelled of posh perfume :)
<Deleted User> (10123)
Thu 22nd Mar 2012 20:06
The dead postman strikes again. Ta muchly for comments. Tara, Nick.
Cheers me dear, for your note on Tickling Fish :D
Hello lovely - thanks for your comments, am glad you enjoyed them. That's proper shocking though about the water!!! Jesus wept!
Ha, yeh, trust - just can't find it these days eh? ;)
Keep writing chuck xx
Hey Barbibarbie ;)
Ooo I've only just seen your note re BO heh - handy hint of the day...if you're replying to me, do it on MY profile otherwise I most likely won't see it unless I keep checking yours. If you reply on mine I get an email message :)
Anyhoooo...thank you very much for your notes on If and Inauthentic. I'm trying new things at the moment, have forced open the mental/creative doors that usually open just when they fancy, in order to use some spare time 'wisely' (that'll make a fucking change then), and blast out as many ideas as poss. Trouble is, now I'm fucking DELUGED with words and ideas and some are good and some are shite ;D but they won't leave me alone!!!
Ahh and I've just read your note to Anthony Emmerson up there - seems we may be doing the same sorta thing!
Haha re BO and standing next to people :D I usually nip to the shops on my way home from festies and I get the same reaction...people literally swerving around me with their faces wrinkled up :D Hehehe :D
Reet, seem to have written an epic! Best go do some work then. *cough*
Epic intriguing poems - look forward to reading more - and thank you also for your kind comments PS
Lizzie
Thu 23rd Feb 2012 18:50
Thank-you for your comment, I think your writing is amazing so it is much appreciated. The images you create in my head are unreal.
Laura- I always smell of BO and what ever herbal oil i can come across that day, my friends, some just like me, some to polite to say anything about it. i like it the earthiness, sometimes on the train i stand a little to close to people just to watch there reactions. i like how they back away.
Yes, please, I have the tea cup and this winter is maddening. Let's have a party!
Well you know how X mas tress are, they can be very picky and quite particular with what they will and will not wear. Thank you, for your very nice words.
Oh - and your pics...wow, you can do visual AND linguistic, that's brilliant. Some can, Rachel can, but I can't take a photo or draw or decorate a room for nothing. I can't even 'dress' christmas trees - it's fucking woeful!
Hello again! Thanks for your notes on Serendipity and Leaving Home. Heh - I knew SOMEONE reading it at some point would have done the egg-whites trick :D Strange that it should be someone from all the way over your side of the pond!
Yeh, the pheromones thing is very interesting. There'd be average 15-20 of us lot roaming from squat to party to squat, and we were all strangers to the bath, and yet...I don't remember ever once thinking 'god we stink'. Just didn't even think about it. Course, we must have done! But it just wasn't important, the whole being clean thing. And, just like at festies where no one washes for 3 days and no one seems to smell, just as it was back then. I still love going to festies in the summer - come back smelling of sweat, and woodsmoke, and happiness :D :D
The freedom WAS immense - getting older brings wisdom and confidence sometimes, but it also brings literal baggage. Meh. Let's have a fuckin party! :D
Thanx for your comment Barbi on my Alien poem, will have a look at your work soon, welcome to WOL! Jeff X
Hi Barbi - many thanks for your kind comments about 'The Future Is So Near' - I'm enjoying adding the audio to more of my poems, will upload those soon. :) Best wishes, Dave
Hola BT - many thanks for your note on Tigerella - I'm glad you enjoyed it :) I will have to have a look through your offerings
I like bleach poem. You have an original style impervious to germ killers x
driven by the moon i will shake this earth at least once
powerfull words !
nice on !
Hi Barbi, welcome to the WOL site. Thank you for picking out my poem to comment on. There was a write out loud weekend I attended. I don't go to much workshop stuff but it was a good experience.
I love the wildness in the poems on your profile. Go with the flow.
Freda
and thank you for your powerful comments x
Hi Anthony Emmerson,
Thank you for welcoming me. Since the words are chosen at random and done each week,the pics are a bit vague. I try to get them to correspond loosely. Giving any interpretation to be left open, but I don't think that they necessarily have to match the poem/poems completely. This way the reader can read into it however they like.
As far as my methods or writing goes, I'm just coming out of the closet as a writer. I'm still a bit shy,I find writing poetry to make me feel bit vulnerable. I am a visual artist as well and In that world you expose yourself, but I feel a bit more grounded there. The thing is I love poetry and I want to get better at it. I also like to work on group projects, so taking a theme and everyone writing on it, I find to be inspiring and freeing as well as a way for me to find my voice.
I do have a lot of other poems that have not been written in this way (found word), but since they have been already written, I thought that challenging myself with a new theme each week would allow me to grow much quicker than just waiting for the emotions to pour out onto the page, instead in this way go looking for them. So for me it is an exercise as well as a way to find and sharpen my voice.
I hope that this answers your questions.
Wishing you well,
Cheers-BT
Thank you Ann Floxglove for all your help. I'm really enjoying this website. Best Wishes.
Hi BT,
And welcome to WOL. I have to say I'm curious re your methods. Are the images also chosen at random, or do you choose them for a particular reason?
You say in your bio:
"These are great exercises and experiments to get the mental blood flow going."
If these are simply exercises, then this begs the question, what comes after the "mental blood flow" has been stimulated?
Regards,
A.E.
WElcome to WOL! Glad you are taking an interest in the competition and have also put a blog on here. Hope you carry on enjoying the site.
Hi Barbi - post your poem here in the blog section. The important thing is that you tag your poem "serendipity". When you have written your poem on the "make a blog entry" page you'll see at the bottom of the page a space where it says "tags". Just type serendipity in there. And good luck with the poem! :)
http://drivenbythemoon.blogspot.com/2012/02/cellular-memory.html
This week is almost over but, don't fret, you can still play anytime.
This weeks theme is Cellular Memory. Please leave your writing in the comment section. Thank you and have fun.
Cheers - BT
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Rachel Bond
Sun 17th Mar 2013 20:46
hope to see some more of your writing soon, barbi x