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Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’

Conversing with Invisible Friends (5)

SLEEVES ROLLED, WRITER

Grit and bones
and sharp eyes
poking holes
in the sly fabric
of things.
A thankless task,
but it must be done
and continued to be done…..

—-

WOODLAND SIMULACRUM

A rustle of hymnals
A breeze of sighs
A birdsong of childen’s whispers
A sly, sharp toothed smile:
Reynard’s rising cassock…..

—-

MOTIF MOTIVE

A translation
Of passion
Across centuries.
Careless subtitles,
Redacted, rebranded,
Pre-ordered, double wrapped,
Only
In the deepest bones
Of nightmares
Far from any lights’ switch,
The rumble
Of Doom, a certainty,
So necessitates this frenzied
Juggling of human
And divine,
Wriggling
From flesh
To light.

——

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kali1e

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.

——

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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.

—–

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IMG_0215

ARCHED (Part 7)

Stone
Cast in,
Rippling
Time’s pool.

Outwards
And inwards,
A settled pattern
Of comings and goings.

IMG_0200

And the weight
Of the stone:
An anchor, a haven.
Small, still island
In a restless sea.

alder creatures boss

A forest for song.
A forest for silence.
A carpenter’s house,
A house of edge and curve.
A mother’s house,
A house of succour,
Of promises kept,
Of warm dark.

IMG_0197

Artificer’s jewel:
A design
Of forever.

—

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clasped1

ARCHED (part 6)

Footfalls,
Echoed whispers.

Slow light
Pools.

Names
Fading slowly.

—-

light2

A thin, cool shell.
A golden cup
For space.

Earth wells up,
Slow bubbled bliss
Under flags and brass.

Carapace,
Remnant, skull.

Outline echoing
Slain god outstretched
(still dreaming),
Vines growing
Through splayed fingers,
Fingers growing into mountains.

Eyes full of light
Coruscating, kaleidoscoping,
A replaying of memory
And sound.

Illumination of dark corners,
Interface and intersection,
Cavity.

Heart
Evaporated:
Chambers
Of song.

—-
quattrefoil screen

Stone’s song:
We, eloquent in edge,
Tumbling meaning,
Disguised as the living,
Guiding, naming,
Numbering the dead.

A condensation of merit
And tears, and beating blood.
A lithophone, an organ
For reverberation.
A song for endless sleep,
A cradle for dream.
An approximate eternity,
Outwearing centuries.

roof bosses1

wormwood and bay2

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Skylark

—

Skylark –

Earth’s own heart

Singing.

—

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west rose

3
Machine.

A metaphysical machine,
A gravity well compacting creation
Into one stone shell.
Languages gathered ( towering to heaven)
Light, memory, word, life.
A clustering, intergalactic map,
Star chart, journey of the soul
Through all the spheres:
Thrones, Dominions, Seraphim.
The dangerous beauty, the thin line.
Transubstantiation – stone to forest,
Light to liquid, tears to glass,
Memory to porphyry, the world
Shadowed, brilliant boat of heaven,
Ark beached, upturned, inhabited.
Dust motes dancing –
The souls delighted, the souls
Distraught.
Coming to the Mother Ocean,
Blanketed in soil.

—–
woemwood spirits boss

4
Hell Harrowed

Souls soiled sold solid some soft some scattered bitter bitter better to wake with wormwood wake to winter watch wanting play pray ring sing bright light.

a tree of three blessed branch cut curtailed cast down descending halls fallings hallowed allowed three keys harrow plough and sow bonds broken lost loosed let fly rising praising winged trumped welcomed home.

roof bosses2

dark foliate1

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caverned1

ARCHED (part3)

The bardo of entrances.
Intermediate transitions,
One spliced into the other,
Time and space elapsing.

A slow cool outbreath of stone.
It requires a recalibration,
A rearrangement of the senses.

Slowing,
Time is tamped down
In dusty layers,
Glistening.

An inhalation
Of fractured light,
Absorbed, solidified.

Entering the cave of God:
His ribs, grey skin tight,
Desiccated, stretched out.
Pinned, hammered, sheltered.

We are slowly digested,
( the enzymes of faith),
Becoming less, and more,
Of ourselves-
Becoming one of the waiting.

Slow and turning
From cave
To cave,
( the frozen forests whispering
Chiseled curve and keel ),
A reconstruction of gravity.

Tree roots sky conjoined,
Arched, steepled.
Leaves, gold,
Fruits rotten,
Drift weightless, upwards,
Food for avaricious
Angels.

An embroidery of whispers
An evolution of sorrow,
A still heaven
Waiting for a new
Eternity.

looking west

pierced light3

pierced light5

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clasped4

I do not know exactly when I took these photographs, certainly a few years ago now. It is not so easy to capture low light distant images without a tripod. Many were so underexposed so as to be completely black. Quite an interesting process to reveal the hidden images, grainy and so resembling the garish contrast of night-vision goggles. The revealing of distant mysteries. Creatures of the Abyss. Phosphorescent trails. The cave, plant sight lit. Eyes open or shut?

forested

THE STONE’S TALE

1
First Commandments.

The first descent
From Sinai
Tutmoses made,
(said these tongues of stone,
Buried in the vaults of space,
Uprised, upraised, given voice
By faith and silent yearning),
He turned Lord Asar, Green Osiris,
Bursting green fire, plant enthused,
Vegetal, spilt his seed,
Red pomegranate lips,
Entwined his heart and loins
With lust of God,
Forgot himself,
Became unmanageable –
Lightning and cloud –
Unintelligible, a roaring message
No one dared listen to,
So they laughed and kept dancing,
Keeping warm by firesides,
The complaints of camels
And obedient women.
—-

cleft

pomegranate carving2

green man2

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Meadowsweet, meadowsweet,
The sky is white
With heat.

White bindweed, pink bindweed,
The distant road
Mirrored,
Shimmers.

Pale grass, pale grasses,
Seed pods golden,
Empty,
Nodding.

In shade of yew,
In shade of cedar,
Small flies are bobbing
Up and down,

Like fishes in cool water,
Like fishes in cool water.

—-

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