Day: July 17, 2017

A song is sung, sprung with the babbling I

The mind is like a river as it flows
From small beginnings to unending sea.
Endless and elusive  what it shows

As in the mud, the stark blue iris grows
So with life itself,  from dark we see
The mind is like a river as it flows

The boat rides on the surface as it goes,
From what once was to what is still to be.
Endless and elusive,  what it shows

Before we learn to speak, the music holds
The   baby and the mother company
The mind is like a melody  that flows

A duet  comes to life and life it moulds
A song begins sprung with the babbling I
Endless and elusive, life to show

In lucid realms awakening, we enfold
The many parts of self that outward cry
The mind is like a melody  that flows

Come now sleep, where dreams of mothers stray
Engaged with all the fathers of desire
In the mud, the still blue iris grows
The mind is like a river in full flood

 

Gwyneth Lewis

Garden wall ivy.jpg

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2005/dec/17/familyandrelationships.family

 

” The less literal we are about families, the more the best qualities of that unit can be woven into wider, social relations. We have many offspring from our behaviour and only some of them are children.”

At the gate by Henrick Norbrandt

leg

http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/16681/auto/Henrik-Nordbrandt/AT-THE-GATE

AT THE GATE
1.
In the dream
at the gate to your grave
you stopped me
with the same words
I had spoken in a dream
where I died before you

so now I can no longer dream.

2.
Rusty, and on squeaky hinges
all the gates I have ever
seen, heard, or described
closed one by one
under a grey sky.

That is all there was
in my mind, earth.

3.
What can I say about the world
in which your ashes sit in an urn
other than that?

4.
On every trip you stay ahead of me.
On platforms I see your footprints in fresh snow.
When the train starts to move
you jump out of the back carriage

to reach the next station ahead of me.

5.
Outside the small towns with their sleepy street lights:
stadiums bright as capitols.

The lights glinted off your glasses.

Where else should you look for the ring
which, the night the power went out,
rolled under the bed and was gone?

6.
“I miss you, too”
were my last words
on the telephone
when you said you missed me.
I miss you too, Forever!

7.
You are gone.

Three words. And not one
of them
exists now in any

other context.

More Profumous

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I have spent ten thousand hours just writing
Poetry and thoughts, some  pretty humorous
I tell you now, my  writing  is exciting

If I were  male tiger I’d be biting
Eating little creatures , oh so numerous
I have spent ten thousand hours just writing

I clean  my nails and all the kitchen gratings
While hoping politicians will get more Profumous
I tell you now, my  writing  is exciting

With  my  female intellect so  under-rated
I managed to be a mite consumerous
I have spent ten thousand pounds on lighting

I believe  that poetry is delighting
I write on paper  leaves , they claim deciduous
I tell you whoo, my writing is exciting.

 

I know my inspiration’s pretty wonderous
And God has a loud voice some  folk call thunderous
I have spent ten thousand hours just writing
I tell you now, my  writing  is surviving

 

Aggression diary by Anne Marie Austin

Horse

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/apr/27/poem-of-the-week-aggression-diary-by-annemarie-austin

 

Aggression Diary

They had become concerned about him and started 
to keep an aggression diary.

The leaning is a clue. Intent controls
the spine’s tilt towards whatever.
See how he slants in his not-so-easy
chair, ignoring the burbling television.

Try to know exactly where he’s looking.
The file shows the outside signs
of inner roaring can be small. A knuckle
gone white. The stretched-out throat.

*

Piranesi’s Carceri: a man is racked,
the only sky above shows through a giant
treadmill, several pulleys dangle ropes
over indeterminate spiked objects.

Be careful what the eye feeds on
when it can’t get out from inside
the walls and all the stairs lead
nowhere, the drawbridge drawn up.

And consider the weaponry to hand
in fire, bunched cloth, a stone dislodged…

*

Lightning ignited a dry tree in the garden.
He leaned still farther into the room
from his chair. Flames perhaps played
intermittently in the window glass.

The other spread his arms like a fierce
swan its wings, falling backward.
There was a white rushing, flailing.
There were teeth on show on both sides.

And then, and then: what you would, expect
in cries and interventions, heat quenched
eventually, the furniture rearranged,
a return to the vertical through the house.

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The light of candles turns into blue flames

dPhoto0725 (1)

Inverted light turns blue like Plath moonscapes
The light of candles turns into strange flames
Thus  to breed  our fears, we ,stupid, ruminate

From a vantage point outside that evil draped
We see the loss and show the red of shame
Inverted light turns blue like Plath moonscapes

From our own dead-heads may we escape?
We want to grow and not  allot more blame
As brooding  on our fears, we ruminate

The ghost of Plath  shall  linger in dark shapes
And stutter as  the dead call out her name
Inverted light turns blue like Plath moonscape

And women murmur, shall I  too be raped?
All I want is sharing life and pain
Don’t brood  on your fears, they’ll germinate

 

In our sleep, we see the theatre’s dreams
Hear our minds bemused, old warriors’ scream
Inverted light turns blue like Plath moonscapes
Thus bleeding  from our  hearts, we  navigate

 

While alive

No human being is perfect, yet we strive
We pray and fast, denying that we sin
We aim to be God’s equal, while we live

It may be fear which alternates with pride
Blocking out the good that lives within
No human being is perfect, yet we strive

Donations to the poor  we sometimes give
Yet this alone  gets no attention
We aim to be God’s equal, while  we live

Terror acts as an unworthy guide
And,similarly  acts pretension.
No human being is perfect, yet we strive

God is  perfect, souls too proud explode
Acknowledge and admire the great divine
We cannot be God’s equal, dead, live.

Ourselves or friends we foolish idealise
No human  should be thought  of as all wise
No person can be perfect, yet we strive
We want to be God’s equal, while we live