Somatic Exercise

Somatic Exercise (Conrad)

2.) In your home alone. Take a bucket or basin of room-temperature water to your front door and strip naked. Put a piece of paper or thin notepad under the bucket and lay a pen nearby. Stand in the water. Get used to being naked while standing in water at the front door. Look through the peephole. Look for a long time at the world out there. Then look above you, and at the door, the walls, and make note of something you hadn't seen before -- maybe a cobweb or crack in the paint. Every once in a while stretch your arms over your head stretch as high as you can stretch stretch stretch then relax in your bucket. If someone knocks or rings the bell it's your good fortune! Look at them through the peep hole while saying nothing. Maybe have a friend come over at a certain time to knock and say, "Are you naked in your bucket of water?" Don't answer, you're a poet, this isn't time for idle chit chat, besides that you can warn them ahead of time that you won't be answering them. Stretch, and be quiet. Step out of the bucket and sit your poet ass on the floor, get the paper from under the bucket and whistle short, loud bursts of whistle four times. Then write. When you feel the need for more whistles, pause, whistle, then write some more.

"The Result"

What a waste of water

Was there ever such a waster of water

Will the water waster waste her

Water once more? Or

Mni?

When she wants it turns the tap

And looks at

The roof ceiling hook—LOOK!

The ceiling hook  she couldn’t hang herself from but

A plant could hang there. A plant that needs water.

And there are three windows where the water evaporates thanks

To the sun.

And the ceiling hook hangs nothing, and hangs there kinetically full of potential.

And the boyfriend walks in on this poet ass, bare-assed and laughs and laughs

And the poet ass jiggles as the poet laughs.

Let them think it’s crazy. Stretch out in your bucket and let yourself say fuck it.

My Somatic Exercise

Go into your bathroom and clean your tub for this one first. Now.

Go to your kitchen and fill your biggest cup, glass, or mug with water. Bring that drinking implement to your bath tub and pour it into the bathtub making sure that the stopper will stop that precious water from going down the drain. In whatever you happen to be wearing at the time, get in the tub. Lie down and try to relax in the small amount of water around you. Let it soak into your clothes if you’re wearing clothes. Try to wash your hair. Imagine how you would live your life differently if that amount of water in the tub is the amount of water you were allotted daily for a month. Write a the first half of a poem about what you would do during that month, and the second half of the poem about what you would do the first day of the next month (with access to as much water as you have access to presently).