Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestors, art, awareness, Callanish, essences, Isle of Lewis, Keys to the Green Kingdoms, landscape, night, Otherworlds, Poetry, Scotland, standing stones, stars, time on March 24, 2014| 1 Comment »
KEY TWO
(Stones of Callanish)
Starlight
Ripples outwards.
Past, present, future, sitting down
To feast at the same table.
The ancestors from whom we descend
Graciously remain;
Their old,wrinkled faces,
Their stone fingers,
Reveal the bones, extracting
Meat and marrow:
This is where eternity crystallises.
This is where soul, stone and star converse.
Procession of coincidence.
Listen:
The music of time.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Haiku, moon, night, oceans, Poetry, Ryokan, Sound, space, stars, whales on March 7, 2014| 2 Comments »
WEIGHTLESS
The whales weightless
In their heaven.
The spice islands of the night.
Drowned in
Midsummer blue
Scattered, sprinkled.
They sing across half a world:
These whales weightless
Rippled in starlight.
The golden moon is a song.
They shall sing the song
Of one line,
Of one world,
Of one note,
Endlessly satisfied.
The dark with its peacock eyes,
The bruised lips of the rose,
The scented fingers of night.
Wordless on the wings of fluid song
The curves they leap,
The sideways slide of their dream:
The stars that weave the hours.
Ryokan says:
Months pass, days pile up
Like one intoxicating dream-
An old man’s sighs.
One bowl
Is the moon.
One robe
Is the sky.
He says:
Dreaming about this dream world again
Old memories return.
Ten thousand mountain paths.
And they are weightless
In their blue heaven,
Stars, mountains,
Whales.
The spice of moonlight
Scented of roses.
Wordless they turn,
Sighing they turn,
Weightless, wordless:
These days piling up,
Endless paths, winged,
Sliding, drifting,
Weightless.
came across some old scribblings, upon which this piece was constructed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ignited, infection of words, language, light, literature, morphic, mused., neural, night, Poetry, resonance, signs, Sound, sparked, stars on December 11, 2013| Leave a Comment »
In the library of the night
Seconds flick as pages scanned.
A gilded, bound and chained world
Reading, exploring, explaining itself.
An Alexandria, an akashic island,
Self-muttured, self-revealing,
A transliteration through dream.
And somehow
( there always seeming to be
No causes, always just strings of effect),
A simple phrase gongs and peals,
Bursting, a match in tinder,
A moment drawn dancing out,
A simmer of vocables,
A play of chord-thoughts.
One word becoming
A thousand languages,
A mandala, a point,
A pebble rippled
Surface
Where a glowing moon
Slides and steadies.
One word, one sky.
The view
From where you are,
Accidental muse.
—-
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, death, dream, dying, landscape, life, living, mortality, moving on, nature, night, passing, photography, Poetry on December 1, 2013| 3 Comments »
INSTANT IN SILENCE
How many this night
Will not see the dawn?
Will turn away
And in an instant, forget?
In silence, or with a sigh
One by one release the senses,
Taste the fragrance
Of every memory
Then let them scatter.
We are a drift, a chord,
Bound and loosed,
Spun strong and thin,
Too thin for even strong words
To hold for long.
Release this dream
To find another.
Solace and grace,
The scent of pine needles,
Birdsong in the morning,
A familiar voice
Calling from nearby.
Turn away,
Turn away.
Dawn can come at
Any time.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark moon, deep consciousness, dreams, fires, Haiku-ish, moon, night, Poetry, symbolism on September 6, 2013| 2 Comments »
DREAM WORKS
Dark moon
Ripples through
The world.
Strong winds
Along the coast,
Fires pushed fast.
The buried stir,
The sleek hoarders
Of wisdom, stir.
Next to nothing
Is the answer.
A satin edge,
A mighty stillness
Witholding breath,
Inner heat.
Abiding
In emptiness,
The dragons of formation.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestral voices, art, cosmology, deep, dream stream, geology, mahavidyas, night, oceans, other places, Poetry, recitation, souls, space, stars, time, trandscendence, words of earth on August 8, 2013| 8 Comments »
WORD OF EARTH ( “geo- logos”) – a dream stream.
(from “RECITATION” (3)
Measureless are the layering of voices stratifying the night. A geology of language. A wisdom of the earth. A voice of weight. A voice of remembering. Mutterings over herbs and hunted, mutterings around campfires, incoherant weepings in empty spaces, rocking, rocking inconsolable.
The few
who have pushed through,
who have passed to the other side of the sky,
where the stars walk
on two legs, like people,
in brightnesss,
in brightness.
They find the rhythmic chants spinning out of the web along its thin, strong lines, its reliable patterns, its junctures. They weave and weave in and out of song, free to find and to lose form, to remember and to forget, but always to return to the axis, climbing their own spine-tree just for the view, just for the view.
In the dark,
snakes and daggers.
The hungry fingers, the hungry eyes.
To be sent out
and not to return home
empty-handed.
To never be bereft again, never that spun hollowness where power pulls to the edges and breathes itself away in a silence more devastating than sobs.
Click, clack,
the needles go.
Snip, snap
the shears.
She gathers up,
she gathers in,
she counts the knots,
she raises the winds.
She claps her hands and waves boil. The black cat weaves between her calves, purring. Patter, patter on the wet sand. The strings move deft between cold fingertips. A catching of moments. They are so intrigued, so curious like cats, like moths, these spirits clamber and elbow in to see more. Sticky wisdom traps them as flies. Their syllables mirrored and pronounced, taken from thin lips, pointed tongues, and turned, turned and shaped, malleable soul breath mingled to free the dreaming souls of drowned sailors anchored in the black, black starless deep.
They float and turn slowly.
Increments of light
bounce around empty eye sockets.
Teeth shed like wheat,
like barley, nicotine-stained.
Worn thin
and grazed by little fishes,
little fishes,
scoured by starfish,
bored by worms.
They rise and feel the release of water’s weight. They rise and rise, blow and shatter to powder, diatom dust. Turned song for whales, cathedrals of breathing space.
Oceans : just unfamiliar skies.
Skies : just uncharted oceans.
Skiff and wherry,
stars tacking dimensional tides,
solar winds,
trawling the chants,
the glimmer scale words,
the protection mantras, the seeds, the forms, the road home.
——
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cosmology, darkness, goddess, mahavidyas, night, Poetry, project, The Recitation of the Names of Night, transcendence, vessels on August 8, 2013| 4 Comments »
I have just recently turned my attention back to a project called (at the moment) “Recitation of the Names of Night ( or Darkness)”, pulling together black and white graphics and words to create an art book project. How far it will get, who knows…..
These received texts will be interspersed amongst images, some as staightforward text, some as worked and layered artworks. ( “received” as in: come out of the blue, unbidden, uncensored, unformed, a fleeting landscape of idea cuaght from a speeding moment)…
RECITATION (1)
The Topography of Night
The topography of Night
The slopes of darkness
Its pools, its shadows,
Its steep contours, its melodies,
Its mists and clouds.
To map its creatures
To collate its vocabulary
To define with certainty
Its presence and its absence.
To narrate its brilliance,
Its luminous resonant self,
Its fear-filled halls,
Its echoing steps, its
Vague promises, its
Certain threats,
Its embraces, its charms,
Its crevices, its lascivious
Gestures, its names,
Its names,
Its names.
—-
Epidermis
She moves,
Ligament and skin
Extending, taughtening,
Flex, reflex, a brushing
Of skin on skin.
Dark matter, dark mother,
Between all things,
Behind and within,
Void and immanent,
An unexpected punchline
Ghosting us,
Rapidly, inevitably,
Collapsing neat equations,
Smug cosmologies.
The sound of silk sliding
On silk, tongue across lips.
—-
Vessel
A bowl, a cup. A simple thing echoing the two hands together. A nutritious function. The hands, the skull, the sky. Clay pressed to hold emptiness and fullness. Progenitor, act of creation. Made of clay, pinches of dust kissed, mated, caressed, formed. Fingertips pressing warm cavities, pliant, obedient, holding still, spun, stroked, admitted, allowed. The scent of iron and sweat and earth.
—–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Haiku, Haiku-ish, japan, machinery, monkeys, night, photography, Poetry, rain on June 1, 2013| 7 Comments »
JUST LIKE HAIKU
1
nonchalant monkey
busy eating fruit
raises an eyebrow:
single snowflake
drifting down.
2
sound of seagulls,
echoing sea caves –
air-conditioning unit
splutters to life.
3
night rain.
a million leaves
gently clapping
—-
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, dragons, dream images, dreams, fairytales, folklore, fox lovers, Haiku, Haiku-ish, japan, japan landscapes, kirin, landscape, landscape photography, magatama, mountain monks, mythical beings, night, Poetry, rain, sleepless on May 31, 2013| 2 Comments »
MAGATAMA BLINKS
night rain.
slow breath, flared nostrils
of meditating samurai.
drunken skeletons,
clattering arm in arm,
splashing puddles.
rain passes right through them.
five-tailed white fox
rolls over, kisses lover
and creeps out to hunt chickens.
moon lies back,
shivers,
thinking of ocean beds.
calligrapher practicing
with invisible inks,
worlds destroyed and created.
yamaboushi
splashes down mountain path,
breathing rock and root.
five miles high,
dragons and phoenixes
look down on city lights.
crows shift and grumble
nests full of the stolen dreams
of small children.
magatama blinks
turning into a jade bird,
once then twice.
slightly fuddled,
thinking up names
for new brands of sake:
night rain,
samurai nostrils,
calligrapher’s surprise,
moonlit window,
animal seance,
dancing foxes,
shadow river.
poet weaves clouds,
farts, scratches,
remembers, forgets.
cloud scroll, cherry dark trunks.
hooves of the kirin
echoing in the valleys.
there is no magic outside
the mind.
there is no mind outside
of magic.
—-
simonhlilly 