Every Day is a New Year

The next few months are looking to be exciting and entertaining. I haven’t been on campus a full week yet but already I feel more productive than I have in months. I think this makes up for just how useless I felt when I was at home. I enjoyed my time home but I felt like I wasn’t getting anything done. I suppose the change really did come with the meeting of the POETS. So my time at home wasn't a complete loss.

Speaking of which, I promised a little background on the CHURCH OF THE PAGAN POETS.

In high school, my friend Gringo and I were involved in the creation of our school’s annual literary magazine. As such, we came into contact with quite a number of great writers (as well as some people with pens and not a clue how to turn a phrase). One of the people we met was a quiet guy who, in my previous post, I referred to as both brother St. Louis and Tree. This young man wrote some fantastic poetry and was always a joy to be around. Sadly, Tree and I lost contact when he moved south to participate in AmeriCorps activities, mostly in Louisiana if I remember correctly (which is improbable).

This past academic year has been rough for me, something I believe I mentioned previously. A few months ago Tree began posting a poem or two on that wonderful and awful networking site Facebook. I enjoyed the poem very much and sent Tree a little note telling him so. That sparked a flurry of correspondence that helped my state of mind quite a bit.

In our correspondence the idea of starting a church of poets was thrown out. We’d find a church building, take the windows and doors off to let the outside in and begin holding services. The Sabbath would begin at sundown on Friday and end at sunrise on Sunday, at which time we would walk outside into the light and go about living our lives until the next Sabbath. Inside the church, anything goes as long as no one gets hurt. There would be copious amounts of alcohol and weed, sex would be acceptable at any time, on any surface, with any willing partner. Sermons would come in the form of poetry and short plays, music would be a constant. The paintings in the church would change weekly at the whim of the artists.

For me, this is a lovely idea but what has stuck out to me, and to us as a whole I think, is the idea of gathering a group of artists to share creations with one another, as well as create. I love the idea of collectives, which is what this is, really. As I said last time, if it continues to grow and include more visual artists, musicians and thespians, the name might have to change, but for now we’re still the CHURCH OF THE PAGAN POETS.