As part of the ongoing SDFP column Geo-Poetic Spaces
Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
Sun’s shell exploding
swimming pools
displacing water’s reflections
with electro-convulsive
flashes of dendrites in chlorine [Read more…]
Poem of the Day: “The Spruce Street Bridge” by Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
From the ongoing SDFP column Geo-Poetic Spaces
By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
Editor’s Note: San Diego Free Press contributor and poet Karen Kenyon has introduced readers to a number of San Diego poets. One of the iron-clad rules of poetry is that one poet always leads to another. Ish, as we know him, is one of those poets. Since SDFP’s launch in 2012 he has contributed both poems and essays. A few months ago he attended one of our contributor and editor meetings and told us that he has been combining videos with his poetry. The ongoing SDFP series Geo-Poetic Spaces arose from that meeting.
As part of our National Poetry Month coverage, we have asked San Diego poets who contribute to SDFP to provide some insight into why they write poetry. Ish responded: Poetry is breathing. I write because I can’t hold my breath for long without exhaling words. I have to create. For me art is not just a way of living it is life.
The Spruce Street Bridge
Wind strumming up chords
Strolling over Spruce Street bridge
Nasturtiums swaying
Canyon suspending sound’s scent
A suite for strings struck in steel [Read more…]
Happy 50th Birthday! Time for a Colonoscopy!
Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
I could see the light coming and it wasn’t a train in a tunnel. It was the fiber-optic luminescence of my gastroenterologist’s endoscope. I knew it was coming, years before the nurse hooked me up to the IV and flushed a cocktail of saline solution and sedatives into my arteries. I knew it because my maternal grandfather died from colon cancer before medical science had put the fiber into optic and endoscope into my rear end.
The day I turned fifty was the day I became a party pooper. “Happy Birthday” may have decorated the German-chocolate cake. It might as well have spelled out dreaded “C- word:” colonoscopy, squeezed out of a tube in brown letters.
Family and friends acted like it was just another birthday, prompting me to make a wish I knew would not come true. I blew out the candles and sat in my private hell waiting for the doctor’s minuscule beam to snake its way toward my drain pipe. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Swami’s
What was Paramahansa Yogandanda thinking
building his Golden Lotus Temple
on sandstone cliff?
The town doctor warned,
“Erosion!”
Was it returning waves of karma?
condensation from past lives deviating from
path?
Was it watered Hinduism?
The refracted face of Jesus?
leading to back slide?
[Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Rain
By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
RAIN
Fingers tapping nails
Into eye beams blurring limbs
Wiping away clouds [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: The Battle for Mule Hill
By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
Surrounded
by houses malls
the ghosts of Mule Hill
pinned down by charging Interstate
under fire from lancing nine irons
shooting 18 holes
Geo-Poetic Spaces: A Collection of Poems
A collection of video poems by local author Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes from his award-winning book, Intimate Geography. [Read more…]
Geo Poetic Spaces: Encounter In Peñasquitos Canyon
By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
A diamondback stream
winds out of river scales
where rainwater ran off trails
stripping vegetation from roots
Debris kneels into rocks
damming what should have been
swept to sea [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: San Diego
By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
A native San Diegan and award-winning author, “San Diego” is a video poem from Ishmael’s 2013 book, Intimate Geography. [Read more…]
A Place Called I-Park: Erasing the Separation between Life and Art
By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
On September 17, 2013, I awakened in a small boat house on a pond in the wooded Connecticut countryside of East Haddam. A thin smoky mist wrote in calligraphy just above the water. My roommate, Roger Rigorth, peeked his head through a curtain separating our two beds and whispered, “Welcome to I-Park!”
I-Park is 450 acres of living art married to nature. International artists experienced in a variety of mediums are invited to spend 3 to 4 weeks living and working in the idyllic setting reminiscent of Thoreau’s Walden Pond.
Founded by Ralph Crispino in 2011 as an “unconventional memorial to a friend,” I-Park evolved into a residency program for artists. It’s almost sacrilegious to write about a place imbued with an uncompromising respect for the mystery of life and art. I-Park defies simple categorization so it will be impossible to capture it in prose. [Read more…]
Draconian Obstructions, Logical Fallacies and the Decline of America
By Ishmael Von Heidrick-Barnes
Recently, I had to book a flight on a major airline using miles I had accrued with the carrier. What should have been a simple transaction turned into a time-consuming labyrinth of automated answering machines and passive-aggressive procedural dead-ends. I suspect the process was designed by lawyers to deliberately frustrate customers into giving up using the air miles awarded them.
After three days and six hours of attempting to penetrate the airline’s technological gatekeepers, I can’t say the obstructions I faced were resolved to my satisfaction. The psychological energy required to deal with Draconian obstructions and logical fallacies left me physically exhausted (which, I will wager, was something the architects of the airline procedural guidelines were deliberately hoping to evoke). [Read more…]
Spilling the Beans: Overheard in San Diego Coffeehouses
by Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
The day after President Obama’s reelection, I was in an affluent neighborhood coffeehouse trying to work. A table of loud businessmen in their early sixties proclaimed, “If the Democrats want to tax the wealthy, we’ll dump our stock, layoff our workers, and move our businesses overseas. We’ll see how the middle class likes that!” The angry tirade reminded me of a two-year-old who didn’t get his way.
I do a lot of work in coffeehouses around San Diego. I try not to listen in on people’s conversations, but when they are loud proclamations I can’t avoid hearing, I sometimes write down the outrageous things that come out of people’s mouths.
Recently, I reviewed my notes and realized they are a psychological cardiogram of our city. I decided to publish the most outlandish conversations in hopes of exposing the anger behind them. [Read more…]
