I read a little Dylan Thomas last night. First time for a long time. “Under Milk Wood” is a true classic, but much of his other verse writing, I find a welter of words that quickly become too rich and dark for my stomach. But it is jazz. A complex, distressing barrage of improvisation that stuns the prissy levels of consciousness and lets the bardic, raw unconscious voice reel in delighted freedom of sound and association. A windful sky of darkness racing with occassional glimpse of translucent still starlight. So here I am, witless and broken backed…..
DYLAN
1
Son of the wave
A fluid tide jazz
Murmuration of starling words
Swinging drunk
Self-eloquent
Singing down evening lanes
The world exultant
The world squeezed
Tumbling in woven line
Dancing on tender, long toes
Sparkling.
2
My father’s mother, too, was a Thomas,
Small as a mouse with a shout and a bite
Who faded fast, turned white, drowned in herself,
Lost and homesick for something lost.
And I, maybe, now abraded down to
A Welsh road of rolling river words
Tied golden, chained to tongue
A dance for ears, mighty, joyous,
Cloud-wrenching, heart-bursting soliloquy.
3
A deliquescent, delightful urination
Of golden words.
A mushroom-minded mouthful
Of minced meanings.
A rhythmic tumble, a murder of crows,
A wild macaw of seagulled callings,
A taste of death, sweet and dusty.
So falling a sound, so rising,
A breathless gander, a meander,
A vast river of undone spun
Spick and span trodden sound.
A rush, a relief, a rocket acceleration
Of howling words
Through one bright mind.
4
O Dylan, a dilation
A look you here
A gone-to-bed-at-noon,
A fluster of seed heads
Blown in breezes,
The drunken, dizzy delight
And a slow, slow, solidifying
Concretion of the weight
And want of seconds,
Rapid, rapid, the going and the coming
Of sparrows, the flutter of days
Between spark and darkness
Of death worm dark.
simonhlilly 
Conversations with Invisible Friends 13
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ., art, comments, conciouosness, conversations, fragments, landscape, nature, Poetry on May 2, 2014| 4 Comments »
WINGS
Looking over the hills,
Low cloud,
Dusk after rain.
I would wish you
All wings,
My friends.
—
SOUND CHAMBER
This voice born from caves
This voice shaping emptiness
This voice, the flavour of silences.
—
CUP
This vessel of poetry
Always lucid, empty
Til held and warmed
By palms, tipped
Towards lips,
An exchange of breath..
—
TICK
There is no time
In the worlds of spirit,
Nor in the worlds of matter.
Only in the mind of Man
Does the click and tick
Of moments
Signify a neurotic cauldron
To oblivion or eternity.
—
HAVEN
This mind, timeless, anchored
Rocks, sways, on word tides.
Gull-wind senses roam and wheel
Searching food.
The patterns of love
And belonging
In rippled reflections.
Harboured, havened, home.
—
SLIGHT
Sweet violet
White and nodding,
Rising in damp westerlies.
Prophets with blazing heads roar by
Raving,
Not hearing, not caring.
—
SEMIOTICS
Nice, nice, nice!
(Triple nice denotes favour of the gods),
a vapour aromatic, bitter,
Rising from certain, approved of,
Sacrifice.
One who knows his place
And knows it might
Be nowhere particular,
Except the particularity
Of cloud chambers
And the silent
Expansion of a supernova
(Inexplicably given
Nomenclature
Of someone’ wife).
The only object
Is its name.
Three moving lines.
Hence the wise man
Remains silent
Watching the return
Of swallows.
No blame.
—
IN THE MACHINE
Love the depths!
What computers really dream,
what they say to each other,
not just oh and one,
but a cosmology of dark spaces,
exploding stars….
—
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