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Haiku: Alap and Jor Alap in Rag Bhairavi

April 27, 2014 by simonhlilly

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HAIKU : ALAP AND JOR ALAP

Raag Bhairavi
Alap of blackbirds
Rain cooling breeze.

—

Liquid air
Alap of blackbirds
Wind tampura.

—

Cloud blooms blackbird’s song
New green sways dances
Welcome rains welcome breezes
Mind tongue tastes cool day
Touch settled on clear moments.

—

(Classical Indian music is arranged in developmental sections. First, is a slow alap where the notes of the scale (raga, raag) are explored in relation to the pakad or thematic melody of the piece. Next comes a jor alap, which is slightly more structured with a rhythmic percussive accompaniment on the chikari strings ( akin to strumming on the guitar combined with a lead melody picked out).
Raag Bhairavi is one of my favorites. I believe it is a morning raag, but has a rather haunting and melancholy pakad with a lovely descent of notes.)

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This is our Sign (Snake Spiral Torc)

April 27, 2014 by simonhlilly

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SNAKE SPIRAL TORC

We slide spiraling
Ferociously nonchalant
Eyes on fire, laughing.

The tumble of sun on sun
The silk whisper, pale moonlight
Equations piled up,
The footprints marking time,
Precise dancers through space.

A knot upon hillsides,
A marching shadow in the valley.
Enchained to the motion,
Slave of raw power, sudden beauty.

This is our sign.
That we dance the dance
Between dusk and dawn
According to the paths before us.

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A continuation of my sporadic project to re-introduce Iron Age Celtic imagery and world-view into the world art vocabulary and other grandiose schemes…..

—

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“Death and the maiden” – fragments of a work in progress

April 23, 2014 by simonhlilly

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Subliminal words for “Death and the Maiden”

1
I will remember the smell of lilac
The white lilac, the purple lilac
And your voice
Dark and velvet
Rich with desire….

2
in starlit gardens
Light, fast steps.
The whispers
Are not from warm lips,
Shadows lean closer….

3
Folded memories,
Tracked, haunted,
Silent wings
Hungry….

4
Here she is
A budding, a blossoming,
A spring dawn, a summer dawn
Perfumed with sunlight
Alone, unconcerned, self-radiant.

5
A point, a pause,
A reason to slow time,
Slow space,
To cease pointlessness,
To hold still
Orbiting her gentle
Graceful gravity.

6
The clattering mists congeal.
I gather to myself
A memory of flesh,
An ache of bone,
A throb of sinew.
Reclothed and sublimated,
My fingertips yearn
( the push of, swirl of,
Flesh, a feast of remembering and forgetting).
Forgetting myself
Utter a sound of life,
Silk whisper, birdsong,
A thrush or blackbird
Sated on cloud and green rain,
A bundled heart,
Redeemed,
Understood.

7
A swan’s bones
Are as light as air,
As hollow as her sky-stretched voice.

8
It is the porcelain skull
Of winter, translucent
With hunger, decorated
With ice feathers.
Faultless, perfect ruthless frost.
All remorse stripped of flesh,
All bitterness spent.
All waters hollowed,
All sound rested.
A linearity, a sped arrow,
Targeted, released,
Quivering at its mark.

9
Stipule and stamen
We are petelled fragrant,
Purely, demurely lascivious.
Our love is perfumed,
Botanical. Wrapped
And layered, lipped
And tattered edge,
We protrude demurely
Into the world,
An impossible biology.

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Easter Saturday

April 19, 2014 by simonhlilly

—

EASTER SATURDAY

This morning slapped crisp
Across our cheeks,
Becomes yolk
And sunlit yellow.

White muslin, a swathed sky
Thinly veils moon and stars,
A cloak of promises,
A tingled, warm breath.

Forgetting darkness, torchless,
Clad in lightness,
We float seawards
Dreaming of long days:
The roundness of a peace
Pregnant with belonging.

—

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Good Friday (1-4)

April 18, 2014 by simonhlilly

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GOOD FRIDAY

1
Dew beads the grasstops,
Drawn upwards by the moon.
Still air,
birdsong, too, rising.
My heart,
weightless
Lifts,
Hollow ghost.

2
Beading grasstops
Dew drawn upward –
The brightest moon

The brightest moon
Birdsong rising –
Cloudless sky

Cloudless sky –
My heart, weightless,
Turns like a ghost.

Turns like a ghost,
Moon in the west,
Seeks shelter
In the deep hills

In the deep hills
Night remains.
Rising birdsong

Rising birdsong
A world dividing.
Edges of the sky

Edges of the sky
Weightless heart
Moonlit dawn

Moonlit dawn
Rising and falling
The way of heaven

Way of heaven
Floating heart
Weightless souls

Weightless souls
Rise on birdsong.
The dew has fallen.

3
Taking wing
They rise and melt –
Departing moments.

Departing moments.
My weightless soul
Rolls over
In cool, moonlit dawn

In cool, moonlit dawn
Dreams depart.
The way of heaven.

The way of heaven:
One window, the moon.
One window, the sun,
Heart between,
Remaining.

4
The dead rise weightless.
Some to the sun,
Some to the moon,
Some to the hollow skies.

They rise on floating song,
The birds of dawn.

Turning slowly,
Moment by moment
Forgetting their names,
Into the eternal expanses
Of a patient heaven.

—

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Eastertide

April 17, 2014 by simonhlilly

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EASTERTIDE

Morning sun.
Lambs and ewes.

In the shadows
Where frost dissolves:
Cool moved airs,
A glistening reflection.

A movement,
A stillness:

The space where thought
Had been.

—

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Conversations with Invisible friends 12

April 16, 2014 by simonhlilly

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OPEN

Beyond doing,
beyond not doing,
beyond beginning again
and remembering.
Disbelieving nothing,
the old man,
walking
through walls.

—

WITHIN WITHOUT

Neither is it the wind
Nor the tree
That howls
In this storm:
In the convolution of the ear,
In the eye’s tear,
In the blood’s roar,
It finds a home.

Emptiness
Finding and losing
Edges.

Bitter beauty,
Is beauty
Nonetheless.

—

KEEN

Slaked,
tongue cup still tastes,
somewhere,
sharp sorrow,
pulse.

—

DEFINE

Clarity: not a knowing,
not a thing,
not graspable,
never owned.
It is a landscape, high,
with a wind from the mountains,
a forgetting of,
a removal of frames and views,
cold on the tip of the tongue….

—

RESOUND

When we hear a phrase of the tune we have always danced to,
we remember and forget,
become more and less ourselves.
That’s it, that’s it.
Struck dumb by namelessness,
bright eyed,
melting.

—

—

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Scribbles

April 12, 2014 by simonhlilly

Scribbled reminders.

A big mistake it is
To hold that life belongs
Within the certain bounds
Of ones that begin and end,
Live and die, generated, disintegrated.
That outside the skins of being
Are voids of senselessness.
Look bravely beyond the borders,
Yet fail to recognise reflections in mirrors:
Self is an organ
Not an organism,
A way of catching the light,
Ice floes on oceans,
A difference of density.

—

No matter how pink
The clouds of dawn:
The blackthorn blossom remains
White as snow.

—

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Conjunction of contraries

April 9, 2014 by simonhlilly

Passionate lovers,
These winter and spring days.
March and April,
How they so
Tear at each other, caress
With smiles,
Fall together,
Push apart, preen,
Rush oblivion and break
As waves at high tide
On each other’s panting flesh.
Rain
Seeds dashed,
Rainbows unfurl,
Sudden sun, dark squall,
A mating in time and space,
Conjunction of contraries.

—

Moon worn thin
High north wind
Spring thaw.

—

Half a moon
Ice in the river
Slowly melting.

—

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Tenth Key to the Green Kingdoms

April 9, 2014 by simonhlilly

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KEY TEN
(Glen Mor and the Ard Ri n’a Sidhe, Mull)

“We shall give to you here
The skill of the Song of the Land.

Words of silver,
Words of gold.

Sweet gale and honey
On the tongue tip.

The melancholy of the curlew
And the lapwing.

The smooth stream of the blackbird;
The harsh heart of the eagle.

For you are only human –

Life as sweet as the scent of violets
And then gone.”

—-

Here, then, is the last of the Ten Keys to the Green Kingdoms and the words that discover their essence. Collecting environmental and subtle energy essences can be an uncertain thing. One can doubt the veracity of what is perceived, of what images and thoughts pass in front of consciousness. We knew the island of Mull still retained a sentient link to the Fairy Kingdoms, once felt throughout Britain, now rarely encountered or paid attention to. These words formed and seemed to me to emanate from high in the hierarchy of the Secret Commonwealth, the Otherworld realms. Delusion is easy for humans, however. I wished that I could be shown some veracity of the intent and content of the words. Immediately thereafter, as I was gazing out from the coach window, a grey heron flew close alongside us, keeping pace with the vehicle. Those who know, know the heron as a significant messenger of the Hidden Kingdoms. These things happen, likely or not. The Green Kingdoms underlie all levels of landscape, history, myth, psyche. They are the dreaming of the world. Those who might have been touched somehow by one or more Key may like to look at using the essence as a spiritual nutrient. Please go to http://greenmanshop.co.uk

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