Permamesostic
Patrick Jones

 

 

a few years ago

  my girlfriend and I

were able to bank loan                         

a small lot of land             

                           near to where we had lived  

a few years b efore           

 

at the time  

                     we had one full-time job

                                          and this enabled us to make the loan

     so we could move a small house

 onto the bare and bulldozed plot

                    and start work on a garden of food

         with plants that would feed us

 and repair the land

 at the same time       
 s            

 

 the day             

             that we signed away for the land

the company my girlfriend slaved for                                     

                            sacked all of its workers and went away

neither of us since have had permanent work                              

bbut because we play outside the city      

           our mortgage is about two-thirds light  

                   and we cobble together    

            work here and there  

         in order to pay  

the monthlies             

 (altogether after  

 

the d&y)             

 

of course     

this land is not our land             

                                and this land is not your land

nor broker nor Queen nor the land of the banks                  

                      and the figures are only rubbery and the figures very funny

              and of course the local mob Jaara  

should they be here is theirs                     

of course                   
      

 

more  

  or less  
we live frugal  

bbuy our clothes second-hand      

             and grow meals and keep chooks 

                            exchange some things with friends and neighbours  

                         and generate a sum of our energy  

                  with the daylight sky  

more than less                         

 

  and by now

 we are essentially set up            

 and think it time to share our good fortune    

and build a small shed in the garden –                           

the Shed of Interrelation –                              

for poets who can slog                                

    and help grow food

to share               

today    

 

and the shed           

      and the sum of its parts –

                                 a bed, a composting toilet, a desk and a bath – 

                will be a temporary home for artists

                      whose work will help define

  a new era of culture
  

       bbased upon –

 

   cchance  

non-hierarchy        

        the sharing of resources

                and permapoesis:  

 

         if a poet’s food

which in part provides                               

                                material or fuel for her meaning

 is produced with her involvement and                                  

                           within walking distance of her home

                                  her involvement and production

                 provide the fuel and food

           in part for

her art          

 

(permanent)   

                   meaning -making

              is the activity embedded

                               in processes of ecological flux

                                and accordingly participates in what it represents

                                         and biomimics the circular and mutable

                     as a rocking steady-state principal –

            the idea behind

           permanent

 ccultures             

 

   she

 now participates                     

                     within her environment

     where generating toxic waste

and the support for capitalised food                

                               and the ecocide of the land base

                     are no longer central

             to her poem

 

this alters         

                     the way she uses  

her time and her core                    

the blood fully oxygenating her mind                                              

                     through the labours of her own food production

                                          her existence steady-state with the round world  

                 around her – her conceptual life and body materially aligned  

which is part of the order of her local ecology –                           

                             the way she writes the poem  

the way she is the poem      

the way the poem             

is altered   

 

 

~~~~~

Patrick Jones is a writer, artist and food gardener who utilises permaculture as a modus for life and poetics. He lives in Daylesford, Victoria, with his girlfriend and son who together constitute The Artist as Family. Each participate in the Hepburn Relocalisation Network, a loose-knit transitional community. He blogs at permapoesis.blogspot.com