Permamesostic
Patrick Jones
a few years ago
my girlfriend and I
were able to bank loan
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
’
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