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Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’

4.MOON AND MEMORY

there is no limit to the stretch of words
yet they shall snap back to the punch of present,
piquant, drenched, unpersuaded:
the insistent knot and never of this loss.

four times
(since severed heart turned stone, hope faded),
four times the moon has drained the palest light,
punctured, bled out, trespassed, wilted.

four times, too,
risen, filled, flowered again.
memory and forgetting is the long answer to all.
the longest of views: a levelling balm, recycled effulgence,
finally ingested, become ornament and unbound.

rippled eternal edge,
each falling is a misunderstood choreography –
taking wing, pushing out, interrogated possibility.
an orbit. a turning away and a turning towards.

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P1090084
3 The Undefined

between definitions
death turns us all
time-travellers,
hunting echoes
in edgeless canyons.

becoming poets
searching flavour:
the right words
for a gesture, a phrase,
a filling of empty spaces.

actions dissipate,
colours fail in their purpose.
the emptiness of hollowness
(a mimic, a clue, a joke,
of real emptiness
from which we come and go,
come and go).

a dream of reaching:
unable to find
our
own hands.

P1090073

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2. TO THE EDGES OF EMPTINESS

the thunder of departing
Doppler skies.
the descending chant
of iron birds.

when those eyes
disappear,
when that voice
can no longer be heard,
(though deep inside every second
of every hour, like the scent
of something lost,
familiar from childhood)
our edges blur,
focus becomes irrelevant.
we become the lost,
the fading,
unaware of
where we are and were.

formed, framed each day
by that voice, that look, that smile.
its absence a gaping hole,
heart, soul and stars rush through
to unanaesthetised emptiness.
diminished by each second of absence
emptying into that space
where your scent and memory lingers
for a moment, still.

so, you have gone,
and taken,too, the one real world
along with you.
leaving a changeling, a perfect simulacrum,
devoid of feeling.
a mechanical resemblance,
a world as if nothing
had changed: sunlight,
laughter, time moving.
even the finest detail,
ants, dust motes, petals,
all hollow, purposeless.


temple precinct
by the incense bowl
two old ladies wafting smoke
to all their aching joints, aching bones,
laughing.

flopping amongst green shadows
black crow hunting for food.
cries from bright tree tops

old man dozing
clouds of incense
priest’s voice chanting

—-

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1
moon leans down.
spirit of the departed
pale, smiling.

in the yakitori bar
every face
a character from Hiroshige.

we bend to each other
laughing
at the unfailing sorrow
of our human condition.
sake tasting
of tears.

warm night
cicadas tisk and tut:
our homeward staggering.

—-

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MIND FLICKER

Dream-quick,
These words
Borrowed
From
A deeper well.

AIR OCEANS

Broad prowed,
Galleon wood-pigeons
Dip and anchor
On buttercup oceans.

Bright morning breeze.
Lullaby shanties
From crow’s nest trees.
Sun-still islands,
Slow air tides.

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—-
CITIES OF NIGHT

The prickle-skin of neon
Electric cicada buzz.

Light – the city’s camoflage.
Fickle, flicker
Paling sun, moon, stars.
Echoed shadows coloured.

Time puddled,
Hissing.

Neon kimono
Expressionless stare
Indwelling darkness.

Iron castle
Skull-wreathed.

A sludge of thought
Clay-like, heavy.
The weight of
Tomorrow.

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How Still

How still
The lashes of your eyes
Searching words
How still

How long
The slow rise of your breath
Searching peace
How long

How fine
The enamelled morning
Blue, shadowed
How fine

How light
The dive of swallows
above buttercup shine
How light

How still, how long
How fine, how light,
This filigree life
Floating skywards

Well, a thanks to Marie Marshall, whose words this morning fed this little thing, sort of summing up the morning sun here, before the clouds pile up and wind carries in rain… ( if I can put in a link to the original I will, not that it’s difficult but I am all at sea with invisible machinery).

fragment 354

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A continuation of fragments inspired by others in this virtuality. Thanks be to all their moments of light.

WHEEL OF FORTUNE

Drained dregs,
swirled,
interrogated.
Take possession,
a wonder!
(shadow of a monkey,
top hat, spinning wheel,
a descent into most
beautiful desolation!)

—-

MARI’S PAINTING

The smudges,
fingerprints of,
intentions of.
Something emerges.
Something.
Something peels away,
flakes of time.
A brush with fate,
a moment
remarked.

—-

MAPPA MUNDI

Place is a story
someone has inhabited,
long ago, leaving signs,
debris, memory.
A place where no one has been
exists nowhere,
inhabited by jealous dragons,
guarding their own history.
Blank space
waiting for words, instructions.
Place: a time that piles up upon itself,
memory on memory,
making ghosts that sing
sweet, terrible songs.

—-

OBJECT

Maybe more that it is a thing,
a presence, but not recognisable.

Like an archetype it resonates
with many types of object,
but its form, colour, meaning,
purpose are not appearent.

It serves its own existence,
intrudes upon ours.

—-

WRITER

Pouring words from the jug of your head.
More you pour, more is there.
How many sights, how many sounds
are buried in memory and dream?
There will be no end of it,
squeezing out the now and the then.
It is nothing and then it is everything.
From afar, we watch your erratic climb,
cheering, oohing and aaahing.

—-

REMINDER

Food for the spirits,
food from the ancestors:
our breath, our voice.

—-

INTROSPECTION

All this
could be as pointless,
as self-enwrapped,
as walking solo to the South Pole.

It could be as noble
as a wounded messenger
warning of danger over the next hill.

It could be science.
It could be experimentation.
It could be a zoo.
It could be shared visioned stories
around a small fire on a wild night.

It could be howling ‘why?’ at the stars.
It could be showing off.
It could be a fatal avoidance.
It could be searching,
searching for what has been lost,
what has been forgotten.

It could be a waste of time.
It could be the whole damn purpose of time.
Following threads that are clues,
or are the unravelling of sense.

—-

ATTRACT

The mind orbits fascinated,
bemothed heart fluttering
near then far.
These harsh,
gentle words.

—-

INCIDENT

Scintillating sparkles.
Mind silenced
by a million small
dancing suns.
Distantly,
the shipwreck slides
silent beneath the waves.

—-

ARTLESS

“express yourself”
Vapid instruction.
Read this book
Teaching how to read.
Ride this bike,
Hands here,
Feet here.
Stuttered, stumbled,
(Walking, running,
After all, just falling
Cleverly)
“express yourself”
Reveal attractive scars,
Elegant vulnerabilities,
Do not shock nor upset,
Refine the blood, the stains.
Tidy up the mess,
Sauté the raw.
Season, disguise,
Dissimulate.
Pressed out, inside out,
Regurgitated, ejected,
Void, voided.
Go,
Express yourself
Numb
Skull.

—-

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SOUL’S MUSIC

This, then, is the music.
My head: a rippling stream,
A passing breeze,
A rustle, a lifting
And a falling.

Notes that cascade and tumble
But hold still.
New green leaves, new shade;
Harmonic tides,
Distant waves pierced:
The gull’s wheeling turn;
A slow stuttering starlight;
A bloom of sun, a drift of moon.

Fingers rippling on water strings
A remembrance, an essence, a perfume,
A rise of incense.
The turning of a page,
The sound of honest paper.
A rhythm of gardening,
A stroke of brushes,
A slow file turning soft, bright silver,
An edge revealed.

Trembling cascade,
Inevitable shift
From melancholic
To elegaic,
A broken heart soothed
Somehow
( but never mended).
The smell of rain.
The smell of summer.

A sequence moving along time,
Planned but reckless,
A bed, a couch, a cradle.
Always building to this matchlessness:
The revolving, wheeling heavens.
A path between dawn and dusk,
A road paved amongst the stars.

It is neither the truth
Nor the lie of words,
Neither the insistence
Nor the revealing of maps.
It is weaving the name of a soul,
A secret name known by all.
This music, a familiar mystery,
An itch, a longing, a homecoming
Just beyond that green hill.
Just beyond that hill.

***

There is that sort of dream wherein one listens to, or manages to play, the very essence of oneself, the most perfect delightful complete sounds, the most exquisite melody. Probably a compilation of the oldest, forgotten echoes from childhood, the phrases and rhythms that themselves formed the brain’s shape, how it moves within itself. Always fascinating, the way a composer or musician can be recognised by a phrasing, a pattern of intervals, a sequence of chords. As if they always return to those notes that name the shape of their own soul.

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AN INSTANT OF MIDNIGHT

Fragments of midnight
Drip.
Fears congeal.
But wait and watch,
Hold,
Turn not away.
See them stretch
Long shadows,
Return to only
Small knotted memories,
Hopes lost, misplaced,
Strategies discarded.
The grooves of tears
Gnawing cascades
Down ravines
To the slow, dark plateau,
The lake of now
An instant of
Midnight.

****

Move past the words
And there is just
The pumping songs of blood.

Down velvet streams to pools
Where washed cells
Glow golden in caves
Of pleasure,
Delighting in organic dance.

Enwrapped,
Swing upon the breast of being itself,
Resting in motion
The way a leaf belongs
The way a star belongs
The way a moment belongs.

In eternity
Held forever.

****

The names of night
Are scribbles
Within its own darkness.

Scattered fragments
Of midnight
Glint, investigating
Endless variations:
One pattern, one sound
A horizon to hollowness
An edge, slurred, smudged,
Scumbled.

Each form extruded
Attempting definition.
Continuous recitation
A rope between emptinesses.
Each, despairing, spins
Vanishing to void.
Choosing a new name,
A new path,
Emerging, bubbled into being,
A roar of foam,
White noise of silence,
Ocean vastness
Vast, holy darkness,
Rumbling hum.

****

one thousand
And eight names
Of returning night.

****

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