Tuesday Poem: "Hipster Cancer" by Paul E. Nelson

July 26, 2014 - Dear T. -

"bright eyes in wells

watch for the sun's assassin;"

                 - Denise Levertov

"The past can wait," she'd

say - even today where his

hipster cancer can't be hid

in his giant beard, where

a toddler only a nuisance

not a direct link to the

numinous.

                  I'd've wanted

a cannabis boutonnières at 17

 but long lapsed my High Times

subscription. Call it Skywalker

 but only yr head's in the clouds

   not yr jiwa.*

*jiwa = Indonesian for "soul" 

Paul E Nelson, June 2019, photo by Philip Brautigam

Poet & interviewer Paul E Nelson founded SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Since 1993, SPLAB has produced hundreds of poetry events & 600 hours of interview programming with legendary poets & whole systems activists including Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Diane di Prima, Daphne Marlatt, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Barry McKinnon, José Kozer, Brenda Hillman & many others. Paul’s books include A Time Before Slaughter/Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia (2020) American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) American Sentences (2015) A Time Before Slaughter (2009) and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies (2013). Co-Editor of Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia (2015), 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards (2017) and Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill(2019) Make it True meets Medusario (2019), he’s presented poetry/poetics in London, Brussels, Nanaimo, Qinghai & Beijing, China, has had work translated into Spanish, Chinese & Portuguese & writes an American Sentence every day. Awarded a residency at The Lake, from the Morris Graves Foundation in Loleta, CA, he’s published work in Golden Handcuffs Review, Zen Monster, Hambone, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2014 Robin Blaser Award from The Capilano Review, he is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia and lives in Rainier Beach, in the Cascadia bioregion’s Cedar River watershed.

 

Paul is an active member (since 2004) of the Subud spiritual community, serving as Local Helper and Rental Agent of Subud Greater Seattle, webmaster of Subud Pacific Northwest, Secretary and webmaster of the Subud International Cultural Association’s USA chapter and has many other positions in the past.