September again & the blur of August is gone leaving its annual stain. I took the first eleven days of the month to do an intensive Vipassana Meditation retreat in Ethel, Washington. Writing was forbidden. As a result I think I was a bit rusty when I started my 3:15 poems on the 12th w/ the first of 27 Letters.

Almost all of the poems are Phrase Acrostics, taking a line w/ some resonance, writing it down the left margin & spontaneously composing a poem by filling in the lines. I got many phrases from the Copper Canyon anthology of contemporary Mexican verse: Reversible Monuments and a few from Homero Aridjis'—Ojos de Otro Mirar. A visit to the grave of Jimi Hendrix spawned an exquisite corpse & a 3:15 poem based on that.

Like last year, waking at 3:15 to write daily was too much, so most of these poems are 6:15's, though I did manage to write every day & at least once at 3:15. I got a couple of Slaughter poems for my book-length poem of Auburn history: A Time Before Slaughter.

Some days I made the left margin a wave, perhaps inspired by the Vipassana experience of sensing the subtle energy vibration in my feet & hands near the end of the ten day intensive. The essence inside us, what animates us, the spiritus, is a wave & actually experiencing that was the best gift of a difficult Vipassana experience. My words here, I am afraid, did not do that experience justice.

The 3:15 experiment has become a tradition in my life & it is my hope we will continue to conduct this experiment in community & non-local mind.

Thanks to all the writers, to Danika for tireless organizing, Tod for excellent webmastering & to the influences & inspirations who helped shape this year's work, including: S.N. Goenka, Francisco Hernandez, Gloria Gervitz, Pedro Serrano, Ernesto Lumbreras, Eduardo Milan, David Huerta, Maria Baranda, the town of Slaughter, Else Cross, Wanda Coleman, Allen Ginsberg, Sallie Anne Glassman, Roberta Hart, Lesbia Nelson (my Mom), Dominica Clark, Walt Whitman, Michael McClure, Homero Aridjis, Augusto Romano, Jimi Hendrix & always, the antepasados who make it all possible & to whom all praise is due if anything good has come out of this writing.

9.9.02 - 9:26AM
508 E. Main
Slaughter, WA