ONOMATOPOEIA
By Mark Juhan
On a mat appear
On a mat away
On a mat a tear, to this very day
On a mat a worry
By the mat a sorry
On the matter: golly
On a mat breathing, writhing if you play
On a mat the past
On a mat the pain
On a mat your demon, make it go away
On a mat a warning
On the mat aware
On the mat a way to go – to & fro & forth & back
On a mat, tear the canvas to black
On a mat forward way,
On a matter, peers
On a mat a future, music pleasing stay
On our mats the safety
After mat, cuppa tea
– then again –
Awash the mats with hearts, waiting for the steep pull
With a mat a lung-hoot
By the mat it’s humbling
On that mat the crumbling, and the fruit
On a mat clay human
On a matter peering
On a mat a potter
On mat pitter patter
On a mat, just checking
That by the mat you’re listening
To the one on right there that’s glistening:
On mat that urge to purge the scourge
From the mat’s sheer livedness
And on that mat’s forgiveness
‘twixt all the mats, such withness.
On the mat your trust
By the mat I mustn’t
On that mat the secret, waiting to be told
On a mat a hand
On a mat a question
On the mat a hold
On this mat: be bold.
Mark Juhan Schunemann: Mark is a poet and doctoral researcher at EPIC (Exeter Psychedelic Interdisciplinary Centre), working on comparative drug culture with Christine Hauskeller, Leor Roseman, and Luis Eduardo Luna. Son of a priest and a witch, he has worked in universities, schools, prisons and hospice chaplaincies, with refugees, and–most importantly–toyshops. It has been one long apprenticeship in sitting with people while something enormous happens to them. His interests run through theology, critical theory, medical anthropology and the philosophy of cognitive liberty. His collection Dance of Death (These Days) (2024) puts Death in dialogue with CEOs, oil barons, hippies and AI to hear what they say when death arrives.
This poem arrived horizontally at, mid Dreamshadow-facilitated breathwork session at EPIC’s Summer School: he had gone to think rigorously about altered states of consciousness, and was instead conscripted into one. He has spent seven years arguing that set and setting do most of the work. The mat (sat on the cat and) proffered intense close-range agreement. He gives thanks to Lenny and Elizabeth Gibson, his sitter–Eva Gentner–and all the facilitators at Dreamshadow, for all the lives lived, and lessons learned, in those three hours, and for the humbling lesson: even breathing sometimes needs super-vision. Please reach out if desired on markschunemann@gmail.com or m.j.schunemann@exeter.ac.uk
