Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’

Review

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 28, 2015| Leave a Comment »

REVIEW

Ice moon
Punches light
Through brittle
Smoked sky.

Nothing is revealed
By word or movement.

Body’s aching
All the time
(As the song says)
As the song.

City words.
Skinny,
Low-fat language.
No need for pause
Or repeat.
Socio-
Political,
A smatter of
Classical reference,
Footnotes,
Hand gesture,
Erudite,
Excusing
All manners of
Genocide.

Overplayed is
The well-suited
Dictionary.
The poet
Understudied.
The poet
Misunderstood.
Trope, trapped
And clichéd.

Time to sink
To anonymity,
Forgetting,
Forsaking this clamour
For another, yet another
Point of view,
Validation.

Worms wriggling
Upwards to
Drown in puddles.
Picked off by
Black birds
With golden
Beaks.

A
Metaphor
Too far
Perhaps.

—

Read Full Post »

Llym Awel, Verse 12 improvisations continued.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 26, 2015| Leave a Comment »

So fragile
Is beauty.
That
Is what
Every song
Says.
Fragile as a single breath
On a winter morning:
A mist flowering out
On settled air.
The slightest murmur,
Whisper without word,
A readjustment of time
And space,
A coordination atomic.
A new chord
Tasting the intervals between.

A settlement of sound:
Snow on the ridge edges.
Colour flees through the sky at dawn.
So, then, it grows colder.

There is sound.
There is silence.
There is
The dance of light
Between them.
Some time,
In the small hours,
The fire will die down
And we will dream.

—

Beauty is our food.
We hunt it out
For sweet sustenance.
Gathered, it is
The honey
Of our memories.
Clear and golden,
A long summer evening,
Just before the stars appear.

The moths,
The small things
That delight in edge
And shadow,
Where softness
Calmly billows,
Inviolable.

—

The way
That words fail
Upon sudden,
Harsh beauty.

Hardly moving
This slow, congealing
Blood of dawn.
Congregated, coagulated,
The most slight timbral vibrating,
This metallic air will disengage,
Withdraw to its smirked edge.

Unsupported,
Things fall motionless
To frozen earth,
A whitened mist,
A cloud of ice,
A stutter.

—

2015/11/img_1761.jpg

Read Full Post »

Llym Awel, Verse 12 (part One)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 25, 2015| Leave a Comment »

LLYM AWEL verse 12 Improvisations
(Part One)

Gvenin igogaur, guan gaur adar;
Dit diulith….
Kassulwin kewin brin, coch gwaur.

“Bees shelter in winter quarters, the weak noise of birds;
A bitter day….
The ridge hill cloaked in white, a red dawn.”

The hives silent.
Bees shut up in winter.
So too, the thin voice
Of birds.
A bitter day of it,
So, too, words fail.
Gagged, gaunt,
All declines to murmur.
The hill ridge
Is cloaked in white.
A red dawn.
—

The hunters for gold
In their hollow halls
Gather murmured dreaming.
Summer is far away.
The dawn flowers red,
But still the birds are silent.
—

The beauty of it:
A silent red dawn.
River murmurs under ice.

—

Their laboured breath:
A cold wind sighing
Through bare branches.
The gold of victory
Keeps not cold
From the heart.
They will dream of
Summer and a summer sky,
And the dance of victory
And the boasts of heroes.

—

This verse has the second half of the second line missing. Rather ironic, as one of its main themes is silence, or comparative silence. The inactivity of the hive I have taken to be a metaphor or parallelism for the host of warriors, inactive, in their lord’s hall. Hence, the imagery of hunting for gold, the warrior’s prize, and bees in summer hunting for pollen.

2015/11/img_1759.jpg

Read Full Post »

There, The Chapel Yew

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2015| 1 Comment »

THERE, THE CHAPEL YEW

Three nights now the clatter whisper
Ricochet words follow fade of breath.

A landscape sloped and skittered:
One old tree, small in its alloted bounds
Hunkered, curled tight about its heart.

Webbed taught, knotting stone to iron
Grown from bones, grown from bones.

Where all reach skywards and open
Wind, rain, cloud, jackdaw, hawk,
Where the wild, freed leaf flies,
Where it forgets itself
Where it can taste new names.

It will bend down, bend down low,
Not caring, delving to the smallest
A jewel of dust, the truest glimmer,
Wish to be nothing other than this:

A long vowel hummed, light in darkness,
Tongue spilled, an ejaculation this stringed
Taut, eloquent ivy, fearlessly veined
A clothing for the other, braced and measured.

It ripples blindly about its subject
Blinked and blinded, the brightest termination
An alluded something spaced hauntingly.

Resolutely peripheral, as all living things are wont.
Unbeknownst, uncontained, avoiding rigour
Vaguely rivered, an unassuming continence,
A this and a that and a wealth in shadows.

In sleep, only, can come communicated equivalence,
The monitors drowsed and edges blunt.
Something akin to a sleepy reaching love
A convolution wordless felt and melted
Inhabiting the same dream, a sometimes,
An always and forever, harboured together:
Ocean Mind waved and curled.

2015/11/img_1756-0.jpg

Read Full Post »

Verse 11 continued

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 14, 2015| 3 Comments »

LLYM AWEL verse 11(part2)

So we pass it round and drink
It round, drink the short day,
Block out the storm, the raging heart,
The dying, trembling roads.

All narrowed, tunnelled in,
The golden liquid cools the breath.
Tunnelled in, proud thunder,
A slap of light, a daybreak.

The circle of the fire:
A harbour, a warm twilight.
We turn inward, away from the wall.
The wild fields of weather
The clatter of cold, the fall of night.

It runs in circles
It runs between dark and light
It runs, unacknowledged, between the company.
Cold are the dark paths to night.
Cold are the long, twisting ways.
No peace in the restless bending treetops.
No rest in the sparkling sky worlds.
Time runs screaming, piercing the light.
All dawns, a false dawn.
A cup never refilled,
Bright the days
That drip and scatter.
The fires gutter and chill.
Senseless and forgetful we sleep,
The few hours of dulled grey,
The storm that is coming.

—

2015/11/img_1709-0.jpg

Read Full Post »

Llym Awel, Improvisations on verse 11

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »

LLYM AWEL verse 11( part 1)

Eurtirn am corn, cirn am cluir;
Oer llyri, lluchedic auir;
Bir diwedit, blaen gvit gvir.

“Gold rims about the horn, the horn around the company;
Cold are the paths, full of lightning the sky;
Short is the evening, the tops of the trees are bent.”

Gold runs about its rim,
The horn is passed around the company.
Gold at the edges of the dark day,
Gold tasted on the tongue,
The tongue held silent.
Tangled are the paths and cold they are.

The circle of gold is eloquent but thin,
Shared, passed around, not owned by any.
The short round days.
Fire quenched and bent,
Should have been for the gods only-
As if we could have ever held lightning,
As if we could have gazed unblinking,
Unblinded by its sudden light.

It will burn all who yearn for it,
Burn them black and hollow.
Cold dust they will blow tree-high,
Forgotten, lost in name, one of many,
The bending boughs will mourn.

—

2015/11/img_1697.jpg

Read Full Post »

Winter Song

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 7, 2015| 1 Comment »

2015/11/img_1735.jpg

WINTER SONG

This distant raven
Smudges the fields,
A rise and spin and fall
Into waves of rain.

Storm winds sweep away
The last of daylight.
Broken sun skitters the hillsides.

It is a rage, a downing tumble.
The world aches
For good governance.
We, an evil race
If we can sing neither
Praise nor beauty.

The heather has broken,
Black is the wild rock.
Unkept are the fields,
Unkempt the hedges.

The cold phlegm lies deep,
A ghost not to be forgotten.
The neat roads are a lie:
They go nowhere
But another stone womb
Devoid and hollowed of life.

Arrogance barking
Through the night,
A papered-over civility
That masks
The purple bruises
Of pampered bullies.

The lambs of peace
Will bring down wrath,
The ravens know.
There is only hunger,
Food and eater.

Marrow,
The heart of things.
We gnaw the shattered bones
To find the fire.
Peck the eyes
To see tomorrow.

—

2015/11/p1130041.jpg

Read Full Post »

The Long Rain, Grey

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 2, 2015| Leave a Comment »

The long rain, grey,
Has dissolved a fragile distance.
With the wind, it comes and goes.
A silent room, a flutter of words.
A curl of incense, a bitter tea, warms and dries.
Perched above joy and sorrow
A ribbon road turns endless,
With only two steps,
Left and right.

A monk dips his quill.
He has become half-uncial.
A steady curve delights,
One syllable at a time.
A river of knowing
And forgetting.

Though the skin he writes upon
Is his own,
A compassed scratch,
A foliate curl,
Heroditas, Avicenna, Merlin.
A history of mirrors,
A rotated wheel.
A willowed sigh,
This river ink.

—-

Read Full Post »

Llangammarch Lies Golden

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 28, 2015| 2 Comments »

2015/10/img_1738.jpg

Llangammarch lies golden,
Autumn tumbled.

Moss grown green
On slated roof.
Slate skies
Silent with holding light.

Patted butter,
The maple leaves.
Bronzed, the curled oak,
Birch, a spattered copper.
The lank drip, the bloodied cherry.

Through its towers,
The river runs,
Light and cold.

A long distance opens up
Through wood and hedgerow.
We are laid, once more,
Naked and glorious
To the hills.

An easy folding land,
Smoke-blue
And tinged with
Sweet and bitter.

—

2015/10/img_1737.jpg

Read Full Post »

Llym Awel. Improvisations on Verse 10 (part1)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 24, 2015| Leave a Comment »

LLYM AWEL verse 10

Ottid eiry, guin goror mynit;
Llum guit llog ar mor;
Meccid llvwyr llauer kyghor.

Snow falls, mountains are fringed in white;
These bleak trees: masts on the sea;
A coward has endless excuses.

1
Knowing what we know
What should be done?
We ask ( fearing the answer).

The cold clear cut,
The slow scribbled signature
Of snow.

Timber shattered,
The mast trees weep.
Stripped fingers
They have nothing to say.
The cry, long dry cry of winter.
Glass sea, glass sky,
Broken.

2
What is slight
Sustains us.
Rills and ridge
Croak under snow.

A laughter cough of ice.
Harsh is the wind on the edge of the valley.
No kind words for the hesitant.

—

2015/10/img_1690.jpg

—

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »