sisyphus: Recent Episodes
None
GRAND OPERA AND PARLOR JUNK
Tallahatchie Flats, north of Greenville on the banks of the Tallahatchie River. A barren field some 2 acres long. A mighty tent, roped and guyed:
ship’s cable onto 2 foot long stakes. 4 union flags banging in the big, fat afternoon wind…
A long queue straggles. Kids fighting. A big sister hits out at a barefoot boy. A dungaree fool and his sweetheart bust a bottle of Old Crow. Sal Silverheels plays the line, his two spoons dancing
off his knees. All moving slowly through the tent door and spreading like the Big Muddy into the sea…
It’s like a canvas cathedral, all evening light and dust and echo. Fishbone seating filling fast. Popcorn girls in satin shorts and hotdog boys with steaming carts. Too close for comfort, dancers somersault along the aisles, barelegged, wild-eyed. One stops, panting, gleaming. A mother covers
her teenage son’s wide-open eyes. White folk move in packs, brown derbys tilted, shimmy skirts held down. But no one cares. No town cops cruising, tapping billy clubs. There’s a colour-blind connection, first over that gap between their ranks of seats and then, when the tent’s a Deep-South tin roof church fit to bust, no one cares again. All are ripe with joy for tonight.
This is a sawdust Sodom where all will receive another kind of gospel altogether..!
Heavy curtains, like for the biggest parlour window in the world. Four men in undershirts chewing stogies
hang hard onto sisal ropes. A barker runs across the stage cutting the air with his arm. “Let ‘er go!” The ropes are tugged at speed, hand-over-hand.
Bottom corners first, the curtains soar up like geese on the rise. And the sound that passes through that congregation is like a wind through river reeds…
They laugh until they weep against each others’ heaving shoulders. Ole Massa Melon chases the chicken thief up both curtains and through the band. And they dance in their seats and on
their seats and out in the aisles. The Wildcats tease their feet, their legs, their hips, their arms. Tishimingo, Moonshine, Hustlin’ Blues. Trumpet
ducks and trombone pumps the empty air above.. Bass sax bullfrogs, banjo clanks and the big cymbal hisses like a snake. Hoofers leap and spin, each
on a dime. And a long gliding line of boys wearing white ducks and sailors’ tops come kicking down to the front of the stage. High yaller, light brownskin,
gazing high above the raised faces, arrogant apollos to stop the hearts of every sweetheart, boy or girl, who watches and adores.
And then, like the gospel sea, they part and form two tidal breaking waves – step forward, step back, reveal, conceal, reveal. A roaming spot throws a coin of gold and down she comes – it’s gold-necked Ma Rainey, the Mother of the Blues! She strides like a man down
the people avenue, her arms raised, a brilliant grin across a face glazed like bronze, satin and silk across, around, behind in a train. She reaches up and cups a dancer’s face – “Ma pigmeat boy!” she cries, and hits the downbeat twice in the bar. It’s Lost Wandering Blues and the poorboys and the passers-through know what
she means when she stands there pondering, wondering “will a matchbox hold my clothes?” Then she sashays back up to where the girls are kicking high. She tips one tiny chickadee across her lover’s arm and she turns their two heads away. Prove It On Me, is what she wants to know right now. But each lonely wife and jilted lover yells hallelujah, sing it, sister when she tells them all
“They must’ve been women ‘cause I don’t like no men!”
All that sweat and sparkle, high-heel sneaking, cussing out the band (who laugh and fat-lip bronx cheers back),
kisses blown and back-of-hand secrets told and then it’s nearly time to strike the stage and pull the guy-lines. So she breaks their hearts with the truest of them all, “See See Rider, see what you have done done, Lord, Lord, Lord, made me love you, now your gal done come”. Then it’s all brass and ballyhoo with the whole damn show down front and Stack O’Lee Blues for all to sing. And then it’s the last dance – brothers and sisters for one night only doing the black bottom all the way down the aisles and back to where she’s shaking it out between two slick-haired, snake-hipped boys in sharkskin. And then Ma Rainey beats the air – 1, 2, 3, 4 – and all that’s left is echo on echo and feathers and straw adrift in the spotlight beam…
And they flow out into the night like a storm drain in flood.The jive-ass white kids swing into their Chryslers and Fords; the black folk walk through rising dust to the railroad station. And behind, the men with stogies wrestle out the stakes and let the guy lines slip. Eight trucks and buckboards take the weight and drive off into the night. And it’s white steam and smokestack sparks from Ma Rainey’s train of troupers, pulling out of Tallahatchie Flats to cross the Greenville Trestle west to Lufkin, Deep East Texas where there’s a fairground and a thousand and more starlight dreamers, black and white, fisting dollars, fixing collars, raising hollers into the blue dark.
As it is said,
through the bleak
and hollow laugh
whereby we
accommodate
the grimmest truths,
that no good deed
shall go unpunished,
so it is that everything
of light and beauty
carries close behind
its shadow self. Thus
it is that the price
of love shall be grief
and the gall of grief
shall match within
the mirror the light
and beauty of that
love. Such is the
symmetry that pairs
the seasons, gives
the sun its heat,
the moon its ice
and takes us from
our mother’s arms,
along our way of
chance or choice
and so to sleep.
Hiatus is a poem set to music by Gemma Moorby of MoorbyJones. The song was created on the piano and this audio file is a rough recording that Gemma did for me so as to work towards a bass part. We’re currently transposing the song for acoustic guitar, electric guitar and bass. Once completed, we’ll record Hiatus and mix and master it, possibly for single release.
HIATUS
I purse my lips,
release a breath
too soft to shift
a candle flame.
I purse my lips,
reverse a breath
and for the heartstop
in between, hiatus.
I imagine falling worlds
and stars in birth,
from dark to light
to dark again.
And this is how
we live inside
the days – looking back
through gilded windows,
looking forward
round darkened bends.
I purse my lips,
release a breath,
too soft to raise
a single hair.
I purse my lips,
reverse a breath
and live within
the heartstop
in between.
For a couple of years – from its provenance somewhere in the quietest part of lockdown – I’ve been moving this poem towards a final draft. Paul Valéry (apocryphal?) tells us that a poem is never finished, only abandoned. So as these pixels embed themselves, here I go, off into the mystic!
HOPE SPRINGS
When Pandora opened the lid
of the box, hope alone in
quiet defiance hid beneath the rim.
And then grown bolder
she tucked in her shabby lot
with the dust and destruction
and blew out into the world.
I met her in a strip-lit corridor.
She looked pale – more patient
than doctor. Strange that here
between the hand-wash stations
and the drug cupboards hope
should look so hollow-eyed.
The lights too harsh?
Or the expectations too high?
Hope was one before me
in the checkout queue.
So sad her choices, scattered
like bewildered strangers
finding themselves unaccountably
in the same place. Quick-fix items
for a moment’s solace, sugar-heavy,
full of shallow promises. And that
newspaper, the bigot’s almanac,
with its what about who and where
and why folded like sweepings
into its temporary sheets.
As for me, sometimes it seems
that hope is a vapour caught inside
my clothes. I catch its tang as
old-time barroom fag smoke, a
miasma I trail in spite of myself.
So I stand upwind of stiff breezes,
or where the pavement airshaft
lifts it inside sterilising steam
past the balconies, past the windows,
past the rooftops. But for others
it’s like some weird cologne; they turn
as I pass and follow in my slipstream.
We fashion in such moments
a chain of dreamtime links, rattling
our reckless certainty through
the halls and corridors, the bedrooms
and the cloisters, the wards and cells,
the arrival and departure lounges.
Hope as phantom, hope as
hive-mind murmur, hope as
marsh-gas. Hope is, in truth,
a tumour close to the heart,
inaccessible to the stoical
surgeons with their probes
and spatulas. It feeds at the
fuse-point of the white and red,
the coming in, the passing out.
And even when it seems
as though for you a night sky
like no other shuts down your light
into itself as if the stars themselves
are going out, hope will metastasise.
It animates electrolytes; it floods
your wilderness of roots and shoots:
it melts the filaments of heartbreak
and despair. Hope has you at your
open window, watching the black
smoke rising in spite of the rain.
Hope has you at the garden gate
whilst beyond they’re beating down
the bracken and the brambles.
Hope has you wedged between
your shrinking bones, wrapped
inside the shabby folded leaves
that are now your skin, and you
still vigilant for the turned key.
the arcing door, the ticket-of-leave,
and the steady light beyond.
Kodak, Blaise Cendrars’ series of American vignettes, was published in 1924 by Stock.The edition – much sought after on the rare book market now – included a portrait of the poet by his friend Francis Picabia. In Kodak Cendrars employs a literalism consistent with his intention of reproducing in words a collection of snapshots of 1920s New York. I’m beginning with the first eight poems.
KODAK
ROOF GARDEN
For weeks the elevators hoisted hoisted
crates crates of compost
Finally
Thanks to cash and patience
The shrubbery is blooming
The lawns are a tender green
A vital spring gushes forth between the rhododendrons and the
camellias
At the summit of this edifice this edifice of bricks and steel
The evening
Waiters grave as diplomats clad in
white lean out across the chasm of the town
And the flowerbeds are alight like a million tiny multicoloured
lanterns
I believe Madame murmured to the young man with a voice
tremulous with suppressed passion
I believe that we might do very well here
And with a sweeping gesture he displayed the vast sea
Its ebb and flow
The riding lights of its huge ships
The towering Statue of Liberty
And the mighty panorama of the city crisscrossed with shadowy
perpendiculars and glaring light
The old philosopher and the two billionaires are alone on
the terrace
Beautiful garden
Great banks of flowers
Starry sky
The three old men stand silently listening
to the laughter and the happy voices rising
from the bright windows
And to the murmurous song of the sea that mingles with
the gramophone
ON THE HUDSON
The electric dinghy glides noiselessly between the multitudes
of ships at anchor in the immense estuary flying
the flags of every nation of the world
The great clippers loaded high with Canadian timber
furl their huge sails
The iron steamers belch out torrents of black
smoke
A population of dockers from every race in the
world bustles within the turmoil of sirens and steam-whistles
from factory and train
The elegant launch is fashioned entirely from teak
Rising from its centre is a cabin resembling that
of a Venetian gondola
AMPHITRYON
After dinner served in the winter garden amongst
the groves of lemon trees jasmine orchids
There is a ball on the lawns of the illuminated park
But the principal attraction is the gifts sent
to Miss Isadora
Of particular note is a ‘pigeon’s blood’ ruby
of a size and brilliance beyond compare
None of the young girls present possesses a gem
to equal it
Elegantly dressed
And vigilant detectives mingle with the crowding guests
to watch over and protect this jewel
OFFICE
Radiators and ventilators running on industrial gas
Twelve telephones and five wireless radio points
Marvellous electrical filing systems containing
countless industrial and scientific dossiers on
a multitude of subjects
The billionaire only feels truly at home within
this place of work
The huge windows look out over the park and the city
Each evening the mercury vapour lights shed
a soft blueish glow
It is within this place that demands to sell and to buy
sometimes topple stock markets across the wide world
YOUNG GIRL
A light dress in crepe de chine
The young girl
Elegance and wealth
Hair a tawny blonde within which shine a string of pearls
A face composed and calm reflecting both sincerity
and kindness
Her wide sea-blue eyes almost green are
clear and bold
She has about her the special downy-fresh and roseate tint that
suggests the privilege of the young American.
YOUNG MAN
He’s the Beau Brummel of Fifth Avenue
Cloth-of-gold tie stippled with a froth of diamonds
A suit in metallic fabric pink and violet
Ankle-boots in genuine sharkskin each
button a tiny black pearl
He flaunts pyjamas of asbestos flannel another suit
fashioned out of glass a crocodile-skin waistcoat
His valet scrubs his gold coins with soap
He packs only brand new scented banknotes in
his wallet
WORK
Criminals have just blown up the railway embankment
bridge
The carriages have caught fire at the bottom of the valley
The injured swim in the boiling water seething from the
ruptured engine
Human torches run amongst the wreckage and the
jets of steam
Other coaches dangle suspended 60 meters up
Men carrying electric torches and acetylene cutters
clamber down the valley track
And in silence the rescue is swiftly organised
In the shelter of the bulrushes the reeds the willow the
waterbirds create a happy commotion
Dawn is long in breaking
But already a team of one hundred carpenters summoned by
telegraph arrive by special train to begin to reconstruct the bridge
Bang bang-bang
Pass me the nails
TRESTLE-WORK
If you come across a certain river or a deep valley
you’ll cross it by a wooden bridge until such time that
company revenue permits construction of one
in stone or iron
American carpenters are without peer in
the art of constructing these bridges
You begin by laying down a hard rock bed
Then you erect your first trestle
Which will support a second then a third the
a fourth
As many as it takes to reach the level of the bank
On the last trestle two beams
On the last two beams two rails
These audacious structures are neither reinforced by
a St Andrew’s cross nor by iron T-bars
The whole is held together just by a few supports and a few
bolts which determine the gauging of the trestles
And it’s what it is
It’s a bridge
A beautiful bridge
WHITE FIELD IN BARLEY Here in my August days,at the top of White FieldI open my hand; I spreadmy fingers and I palmthe barley heads all downthe slope to the lane below. She leaves Keeper’s Lodgeat 4.00 in the morning.Dew … Continue reading →
This poem has a curious provenance. I wrote it 14 years ago in a white-heat continuity of days. Once started, it spilled out prolifically in long sequences of verses and stanzas – to such an extent, in fact, that I … Continue reading →
Starting from the raggy edgeof a night of demons –Crazy Helga in a blue roomacross the alley, her shadowwild & ticky on the busted blindas she wails in Germanat her TV screen.Jesus, what a sound:something dark & spinythrashing in her … Continue reading →
PETANQUE PLAYERS AT ST. ENOGART
There are two men,
this square of ground,
the sun, the cypress tree.
The men unpack
their boules. The man
in the blue shirt
clacks a pair together.
The man in the
red shirt arcs
the coche into
the dust, steps back
and lights a cigarette.
The blue shirt
throws his three.
One hugs the coche
and two lie close.
The red shirt bowls.
His final boule
scatters the group.
The two advance.
They contemplate
the spread of boules
and coche, the disposition
of them all, then stoop
to gather and cast
the coche, the boules
again. Inside the
cypress shade the
blue shirt cups
his boule and lifts
it high. At the point
of release his fingers
tip it back, reverse
its spin. At the point
of its contact with
the coche he says:
“Your sister. Is
she well?” The red
shirt draws deep on
his cigarette.
“Quite well”, he says.
“She’s been home
three weeks now.
She’s walking. She
can cook. She walks
the dogs down by
the canal. She manages”.
The blue shirt listens,
two boules held
between his fingers.
The red shirt drops
his cigarette, grinds
it into the dust.
“Go on”, he says,
nodding to the splay
of boules and coche.
And from out of
the shade of
the cypress, the blue
shirt drops each boule
behind the coche,
completing a triangular
wall. “Once”, he says,
still stooping, his hands
on his knees. “There was
a time once”. The red
shirt lights a second
cigarette, shakes out
the match, steps up
to throw. “There’s always
a time once”, he says
and he looses a boule.
The blue shirt watches
the arc and fall, the
puff of dust where
it lands behind the
triangle. “Celine and I”,
he says. “On the beach
at St Enogart. Down
by the rocks”. The
red shirt straightens,
purses his lips. “Enough”,
he says. “Enough”.
“And then”, the
blue shirt says,
“you and I, we might
have been brothers”.
The red shirt works
the cigarette to the
corner of his mouth.
“Brothers enough without”,
he says.
wing.
when there’s
no memory of
the moment of
passage and
tissue and salts
have gone to
the denizens
themselves now
gone to earth
those feathers
make a brave
show folded
still into the
intelligence
of flight as if
they might still
know the air
SHEEP SKULL HOLLOW
The resonance of bone –
my knuckle rapping
on the brain pan.
Loose earth blows free
as if blood was
at some point of decay
pulverised. The wine of life
was drawn and all
had become dust.
I set the skull
on a post to watch
along the fence line.
Maybe like me another
will force ferns
and brambles through
this no access zone
only to find that
where we are now
is where we have been
before and is where
in time we shall be again.
HOW IT IS.
I’m old and I shall die soon. This much is true. For much of the time nowadays such anguished queries as to what
manner of ‘soon’? whose ‘soon’? when does ‘soon’ transmute into pretty much now? go unspoken. The day is shopping, bed-making, emptying the dishwasher, walking the dog. I have a beer with friends; I talk, I argue, I laugh with my family. So that ‘soon’ simply ticks over as a managed sense of diminishing future, an intellectual awareness rather than a red-light imminence. And it goes without saying, of course, that throughout all the sturm und drang of childhood, youth and middle age, the immortality diode through which all experience was filtered performed its function admirably and my existential voltage flowed unimpeded forwards, always forwards.
Then 13 years ago I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. After surgery and with treatment I live with it now and am assured by my oncologist that it’s not going to carry me off. But that door to the mortality ante-room was opened with the urologist’s words of diagnosis and with the passing of the years since that day the darkness within it impinges increasingly on that voltage flow.
SO HOW ABOUT..?
…DESPAIR.
There are moments of sheer despair. They stop me in doorways, on the stairs, by a window. I’m not done yet. I love and am loved. I am everything that I am. The energy that binds my atoms and molecules together as me is inexhaustible, even within the fatigue of sleeplessness. My consciousness of its heat and radiance is constant. What do I care for its transmogrification into some other form beyond my death? Attention! the mynah birds call in Aldous Huxley’s neglected
masterpiece Island. Here and now, boys, here and now! I AM here and now. What inexplicable chaos is represented by a ‘soon’ that will turn all of this passion and glory, this peace and serenity into a then’? The contemplation of departure from all of this is beyond reason or comfort. My partner, my children, my grandchildren, my friends, my dog – they’re all here around me in this great sunlit ark safe amongst the waves. Despair grips me; it covers my eyes and ears. I’m paralysed with dread at the mere thought of their dispersal into the life to come and my disintegration into dust. At such
times beyond reason there is only the catharsis of tears.
…JOY.
But here in age there’s joy too whose acuteness is maybe greater than before. Maybe it’s in the sheer cool cleansing
water of laughter that for the moment can’t be stopped. There’s nothing in the space between us but the sound and sight of sense unravelling and the bright clarity of absurdity shining into every corner. Love binds us as we share for a few heartbeats the truth that nothing matters in a world of dreams because all the constraints of time have in the here and now has been obliterated in the wild abandon of moments. Laughter is, of course, a vitalising function at all stages
of life. But in age I see it and seek it as a process of intrinsic value, not just as a release within the uneven dynamics of everyday events. Maybe through a letting go there is accessible in age a zen through which the fundamental absurdity of all human endeavour outside loving is quietly but devastatingly apparent.
…MEANING.
And meaning – the search for which burns so many lives to a crisp – declares itself most when unsought. It’s in apotheosis – that moment in which all activity without and within makes perfect sense. The dancer’s triumph off the earth and in clear air; the rugby player’s crashing skid across the touchline; musicians sweeping across their little patch of space in perfect concert; lovers’ in their mutual consummation when rewarded for the absolute generosity of each. So when I interrogate my silent, solitary days for witness to any intrinsic personal purpose or function – to my place along the route rather than on its verges – what testimony can I offer up? There are two forces in my life that animate me and disconnect me from the purely utilitarian – music and poetry. Playing in my band of 8 years, MoorbyJones, whether in rehearsal or performance, instils within me an overwhelming sense of rightness and connection. And putting a poem together over time, whether months or moments, informs me that I have a purpose, even maybe an obligation that is
unique to me and it must be discharged. (Which is to make no claims as to any objective quality or value of the product. Those are aspects of its existence which can only have meaning or none to another).
…LOVE.
Kathy Burke’s recipe for right livelihood declares: ‘Be content. Clean your teeth. Make sure your breath don’t stink. Try not be a cunt.’ Brendan Behan’s manifesto was equally simple: ‘I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.’ And on a less demotic plain, there’s the Dalai Lama: ‘This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.’ No specious moralising here or appeals to a higher level of consciousness other than that which we employ on our way home from work or to a football match. And aren’t all three statements informed by love in its most practical portable form? So much so, surely, as to eschew any notion of the divine outside the majesty of the human spirit.
In age I do try so hard to be kind against the urgings of selfishness, fear and anger. Kindness is how love operates at street level and it brings with it a payload of well-being. I feel much readier, more willing and more able to love in this simple way now that I’m so much less burdened by corrosive ambition and competitiveness. But still too often I realise retrospectively that an opportunity has been missed to do so and I have to try to turn regret into resolve. But this
capacity I believe to be a gift of age and I’m happy indeed to sacrifice the drive to compete and win with its consequence of loss and diminution on the part of the loser.
And so with this sense of fewer corners along a shorter path ahead, there is only one recourse: look no further than the next pace and the next pace…
DJ 25/3/23
Old Man’s Tears
There is a plant
called old man’s tears.
A thwart, disnatured thing,
tall, but crooked tall,
not bold tall like
its companions all around.
And its leaves are thinner,
but they’re fiercer,
like its flower, which, though
chewed and ragged, still
stares bright into the world.
There is maybe a melancholy
in the burdened curve
of its filaments, but
there’s a wisdom too
within the flesh of its anthers.
And, if you peer close,
there on the single stamen eye,
the limpid markings
that they call old man’s tears.
skies that make islands
of familiar trees
and cause us to imagine
great waters in between
near and far
and so probability
yields to dreaming
and there are wings
Proposition. A song is a song and a poem is a poem.
They share words but they don’t share function.
I wrote this as a poem and then Steve Moorby of
MoorbyJones, the band we share with his daughter
Gemma Moorby, set it to music and we recorded it.
It’s due for release imminently and I’ll link to
Spotify when it’s out in the world. And then, if
the proposition has value for you, gentle reader,
you may judge!
STAND UNDER FALLING WATER
When the sun
is obscured by clouds
and the moon and the stars
are inconstant
and the stations you pass
with the crosses you bear
are turning your bones
into water…
CHORUS:
lean into oncoming wind,
let hot sand sun through your fingers,
stand under falling water.
When the clock
is slipping its gears
and the minutes
get ground into powder
and the song in the wires
is a hymn for the fallen
and the North Star
is lost to the sailor…
CHORUS.
When each night
is a different story
but the theme and the plot
are unchanging
and you’re walking
the narrowest furrow
and you meet yourself
there at the turning
and you sleep like
you’re deep fathoms down,
but you’re treading
the boards until dawn…
CHORUS.
Even when you know that with any given poetry magazine receiving maybe 3,000 submissions a month, the chances of acceptance are minimal, it can be a rough push in the chest when yours is rejected.
Against the inevitable sense of invalidation that defies the hard logic of numbers, I have submitted very few poems in years. In general I’m not prolific: my output is relatively sparse so what goes out is pretty much all I’ve got at any given time.
But over the past couple of years I’ve found myself more creatively busy than in a very long time. Lockdown, walking the dog I’d fought against acquiring for years, this season late in life – all powerful stimuli, I guess, for now doing regularly something that I’ve done in bursts ever since my teens.
So recently I submitted groups of poems to magazines once again. Not this time just to a selection of the excellent little known publications that abound on the internet, but to the best known and most highly regarded ones. I have much less time in front of me than there is behind so it’s now surely that this man’s reach should exceed his grasp! And in reaching further I set myself up, of course, both for almost inevitable rejection and its corollary dejection.
No surprises, then, that to date Poetry London and the members’ page of Poetry Review have said no thanks. However, with that grasp in mind, I’m delighted that London Grip is taking two poems for next spring. But even on the back of that success I’m far from optimistic that the other poems are going to find landfall and I regret greatly not having pushed back harder a long time ago. Maybe had I spread the words more energetically and celebrated success more loudly , then I’d be occupying a bit more shelf space now!
i leave the earth
in steam even
under a winter sun
i become a cold-
shouldered cloud
uneven inconstant
i hide the sky
and you wonder
will we ever know
blue around
our heads again
i eat
the children clouds
where they play
and become all heft
and hubris
but as empires fall
so i fragment
and the earth
reclaims my body
in a million pieces
here i lie staring
at my sisters
but i am not done
look i have swallowed
a tree
From dawn to dusk,the pewter silver-greyof clouds that haven’taspired to the sky.We walk inside them,drawing onto our facesthe unrained drops.We’re comfortably dislocatedfrom horizons; paths aheadare vanishing points lostin feathers; red kiteswhistle the fields’ edges.I walk, you run the curvatureof this … Continue reading →
more like treading water here in the slack pool of night or a long walk to nowhere movement happening but no behind or before like didi and gogo my trudge is all on the one black spot there's a sadness … Continue reading →
Dog Latitudes §22Some see Godin the suddennessof the sunout of a cloud.Surprised byan event so muchbigger thanthe monotony ofthought (the tellingof the sameold story ofdoubt and fear),they glory inthis brief giftof external light.For mewhen caughtunawaresI understandin the momentthat the lightthat … Continue reading →
Our band MoorbyJones just laid down the basic tracks for a song called Light is a Story. It’s to be the next single so a good deal of construction needs to be done over the next few weeks before a … Continue reading →
THE ANARCHIST CAFÉ Anarchists should open cafes.Spill the ill-assorted chairsand tables onto the pavement.Go heavy with the red paprika,shower down the black pepper.Have trans and Roma waitersto glide between the tables,taking orders couched as poems.Decorate the walls with graffitopics of … Continue reading →
MY DANCE PARTNERMy shadow could be any age,sharpened to a T by astare-me-down sun.My sideways self glidingacross this bracken ladder,it tells me as we walkof how things were,or how they might have been.Skidding down a slopeon scree, laughingbreathless like a … Continue reading →
When I climb the slopeof Bottom Field, I runmy open palm throughthe stalks of barley.The little cobs are greenand the stems area ghostly blue andthose grouped antennaeare just junior whiskers.This multitude, though young,has buried the hilland is its own horizon.I … Continue reading →
What’s the riskwe take, wethe music makers,compared tothe dancer’s shifting,slipping grip;the penalty taker’sinjudicious shot thathits the bar;the climber andher crew loston the implacablerock for afinal hand hold? For us maybea clinker droppedacross a piece ofpristine harmonybefore a crowdwe’re tryingto impress. … Continue reading →
Dog Latitudes §16as if the houseswere to be drawn acrossthe loose earth on whichthey stand and go downas if the trees that shield uswere to shake onceand follow the housesroots up and branches downeach the mirror of the otheras if … Continue reading →
trespasstwo paces offthe path andinside the cloisteredtrees /the brindled haresteps his paddlesfrom the freeearth’s edge andinto the governedbracken /you belong tomy two barrelssays the keepertheir two roundeyes will watchyou through nettlesand brakes andbushy hollows rightup to myprivileged moment andyour reckoning … Continue reading →
trespasstwo paces offthe path andinside the cloisteredtrees /the brindled haresteps his paddlesfrom the freeearth’s edge andinto the governedbracken /you belong tomy two barrelssays the keepertheir two roundeyes will watchyou through nettlesand brakes andbushy hollows rightup to myprivileged moment andyour reckoning … Continue reading →
how you arelonely in a crowdlike the mothinside the cageof handsand each wingbeatsheds moreof your powderand you can hearthe calm voicesand the sharedlaughter andthey think thatyou’re with themout in the lightbut where you areis entirely dark
stations. and do you findyou asked afterthe first bottle(hesitantly becausethis reunion sharedonly the fumesof a maybe past)that tears comemore readilythese days?oh yes i agreedbarely a daygoes past withoutyou lookedinto your glasslachrymae rerumyou pronouncedman’s relentlesscruelty to manas the default stateand far … Continue reading →
it was an omelettetwo eggs and somechopped mushroomsthe cat switched his tailas he always switched his tailwhen the evening pigeons settled on the hanging basketsone storey upshe poured a vodkathe last glass from the bottlefrom the belgorod relativesshe watched some … Continue reading →
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depicter of flowerscurator of fruitswitness to birds embracer of wastesconsumer of carrionwitness to birds
My blog is only accessible to me via my phone. Attempts to log in via my laptop generate the info that I have no current blogs with WordPress. Attempts to contact them directly have failed. Now, let’s see whether this … Continue reading →
dog sutra §59 and the rain fell in one long story we sidestepped between trees i tripped my length into fallen water and you chased a hare into a rainbow Dog Sutras §62 the green barleycrowds the horizonpopulous intenseas if … Continue reading →
Dog Sutras §58
stop
pause
stand
unthink
nothing
everything
Dog Sutras §47
you chased the hare
a golden zigzag
covering the roots
and hollows
as if born amongst
bracken and moss
we waited
locked in time
i whistled and called
and you came
spinning in from
the wrong direction
hope intact
joy undiminished
Dog Sutras § 52
at the edge
of angel wood
there is
a sort of gateway
we wonder
what’s beyond
we stop short
no closer
than this
hold the dream
Dog Sutra §22
sad at the passing
of a friend
we few now
the sun sets
but still
you drive
the dark paths
as if they had
no end
DOG SUTRAS
Dog Sutras §12
we make it home
just as the sun
dies in its own fire
Dog Sutras §13
here at the pond
the light swallows
the huge trees
Dog Sutras §14
crow jane lady
in your house
in the wind
flying still
SHIP TO SHORE
Here I am, said the old man
still young, trapped between
ship and shore. I understand
that we’re always on the gangplank,
having just arrived or just heading
for departure. There’s always
someone to talk to, someone pausing
to put that suitcase down and then
rub chafed hands. “I’m heading south,
old son. Didn’t work out over there.
East, west, home’s best, eh?”
Yes, I guess so. And I turn to watch
a shimmying flag at a lonely masthead.
All to play for across a monotony
of waves. No suitcase for the next guy.
He’s a nomad under a hundredweight
of rucksack, thumbs under the straps.
“I’m off to Panajachel to join
my girlfriend. The most beautiful place
on earth, she says!” Yes, I guess so
and I turn to watch the only cloud
pass behind the funnel. Fortune
favours the bold under a limitless
certainty of sky.
dog sutra §1
leaves turn into butterflies
they’ve understood
that as winter bites
they might fly away
dog sutra §2
leaves go to earth
berries hang
like bright bells
dog sutra §3
the two of us
you running
quicksilver
into your future
me as slow
as one step forward
and then the next
dog sutra §4
between the sloe
and the oyster
a tree singing
dog sutra §5
we hang on in hope
but you know nothing
of winter’s tooth
dog sutra §6
mist lying in pools
another country
arrive and it’s gone
The Dog Sutras and their accompanying photos all derive from walks with Lupin across and around the fields, meadows and woodland near our home in North Hertfordshire.
§§§
leaves go to earth
berries hang like bright bells