SMALL BARNACLE

yesterday paul hanson clark & i held this poetry reading in a parking lot in omaha
he had chairs but more people came than there were chairs for so he sat on the hot asphalt with the other people who didn't have chairs
we read poems aloud from printer paper as the sun went down
some stayed after we finished reading and it got dark

i called it "small barnacle" but make no mistake, it was/is not "mine"

but,
naming things does feel important to me, (am i just pathetically/unethically obsessed with branding?)
sharing things with people feels important, (am i just pathetically/unethically concerned with garnering attention and acclaim?)

taking on environments that aren't "officially" for art feels important, although i am not sure what happens to the environment or to the art when it happens

did we feel free together? outside there when we read our words we were bringing the stuff that is so often constructed within walls

last night felt freeing alright
like just choosing a place to do something meaningful in was a kind of resistance, a rewriting, rewiring, reworking
i didn't think of the parking lot as a blank slate,
since nothing is
it was a different kind of slate
blacktop slate


new working

and we didn't leave anything behind but this catch of white silk flowers that anna brought & it ended up attached to a pole in the middle of the parking lot