Wednesday 31 August 2011

In the land of sheep and sheep weather

In the land of sheep and sheep weather
there are long narrow paths
and along them we follow the leader

these paths have a name
it is follow the leader
and along them we follow our leader

until we hop through the gate
that is open before us
dogs are behind us

and walk up the road
that leads to the gate
of the field where the grass grows much greener

than the grass of the field we have left
and here we spread out

each finds a choice place

each one a specialist in a new field

gw2011/

Monday 29 August 2011

Poetry Kit Award Nominations 2011

Publishers of UK poetry magazines, online poetry magazines and poetry books are invited to nominate 3 published poems "that should get wider recognition" for the Poetry Kit Awards 2011.

There's a Poetry Kit badge at the side of this blog. Go there for more details. The closing date is given as December 2012 but this is obviously wrong since the awards are for 2011. I have emailed PK's Jim Bennett pointing that out.

This is one award where the big and the small have an equal chance! And that must be good for poetry.

Good luck to all!


Sunday 28 August 2011

haiku


The heatwave lingers -
I play like a child in the river
happy as an old fool

clean water is a blessing,
please look after it!

Friday 26 August 2011

haiku


close to the bank
two ducks at swim
in gold & silver


gw2011/

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Famous actor exclusive haiku

snapped!
famous actor heads out of the limelight
and into the shadows

gw2011/

Saturday 20 August 2011

Nothing to declare

- i.m. of Ringer Edwards who survived crucifixion by the Japanese during World War II. Two others who were crucified with him did not survive.

except

one
hand
crafted
mass
produced
little wooden
souvenir

one
bought

one
holy
day
in Rome

a
miniature
copy
only

of
an
ancient
torture
in-
strument


you
simply
hang
it from your neck

_____
gw2011


Friday 19 August 2011

Ritual

At cockcrow
morn
before going to milk
she softly unclips
the chain
and the cross
from her neck
and facing
the mirror
she knows
that there is
no other future
and she smiles
but only to herself
when she hangs
the instrument
of torture
on a cowshed
nail

______
gw2011


Wednesday 17 August 2011

haiku


the long-bearded man

and a girl with a helium balloon

stand on the corner

Tuesday 16 August 2011

ON THE ROAD HOME

The illuminating Wallace Stevens' poem ON THE ROAD HOME comes immediately before the poem I have featured in the post below this, at least it does so in my 534 pp volume of this poet's collected works, and I suspect there are many good reasons for this being so.

I see connections between the two poems and I will highlight some of the text of ON THE ROAD . . . with a view to signposting the route, as I see it, to the connections and thereby to the finding of the poet's 'points of view' as I like to think of them, and thereby towards understanding.

ON THE ROAD HOME

It was when I said,
"There is no such thing as the truth,"
That the grapes seemed fatter.
The fox ran out of his hole.

You . . . You said,
"There are many truths,
But they are not parts of a truth."
Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue.
We were two figures in a wood.
We said we stood alone.

It was when I said,
"Words are not forms of a single word
In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The world must be measured by eye";

It was when you said,
"The idols have seen lots of poverty,
Snakes and gold and lice,
But not the truth";

It was at that time, that the silence was largest
And longest, the night was roundest,
The fragrance of the autumn warmest,
Closest and strongest.

_______
Wallace Stevens

Monday 15 August 2011

THE LATEST FREED MAN

To be or not to be free? That is a question.

But what does it really mean to be free? I mean to be really free. I think the answer can be sought through Wallace Stevens' famous poem. It's one of my favourites. I put it here in the hope that it will bring some new readers to Stevens. It may at the same time free-up some confused and troubled minds. It deserves the reading and the rereading.

THE LATEST FREED MAN

Tired of the old descriptions of the world,
The latest freed man rose at six and sat
On the edge of his bed. He said,
"I suppose there is
A doctrine to this landscape. Yet, having just
Escaped from the truth, the morning is color and mist,
Which is enough: the moment's rain and sea,
The moment's sun (the strong man vaguely seen),
Overtaking the doctrine of this landscape. Of him
And of his works, I am sure. He bathes in the mist
Like a man without a doctrine. The light he gives -
It is how he gives light. It is how he shines,
Rising upon the doctors in their beds
And on their beds. . . . "
And so the freed man said.
It was how the sun came shining into his room:
To be without a description of to be,
For a moment on rising, at the edge of the bed, to be,
To have the ant of the self changed to an ox
With its organic boomings, to be changed
From a doctor into an ox, before standing up,
To know that the change and that the ox-like struggle
Come from the strength that is the strength of the sun,
Whether it comes directly or from the sun.
It was how he was free. It was how his freedom came.
It was being without description, being an ox.
It was the importance of the trees outdoors,
The freshness of the oak-leaves, not so much
That they were oak-leaves, as the way they looked.
It was everything being more real, himself
At the centre of reality, seeing it.
It was everything bulging and blazing and big in itself,
The blue of the rug, the portrait of Vidal,
Qui fait fi des joliesses banales, the chairs.

_________
Wallace Stevens 2 Oct 1879 - 2 August 1955
The photo of Stevens in the sidebar is the one on the cover of my copy of his Collected Poems published by Ferozsons, Lahore, Pakistan. This lovely book is set in Electra, a Linotype designed by W. A. Dwiggins. It is a pleasure to handle and read.

Saturday 13 August 2011

The Jigsaw Ants


On the seventh day
(between naps)
HE created
mosaics
of small fragments

males and females
in one assembly
created HE them

- early stage cell division
- lost chromosomes
- inheritance control rods
- male and female tissue

the leftover jumble
of interlocked bits

and when HE saw that they were
less than good

HE placed them
eastward in Erin

in the nests
of the antagonists

the blood red slave-makers
the formica sanguinea

and the elbowed reds
the myrmica scabrinodis

which live on the lead veins
of
Ireland's Eye

and
Howth

and nowhere else
on Earth.

Amen.
_____
gw2011


haiku

to the survivor
falls the task of constructing
the monument


Thursday 11 August 2011

Red flag flying


Looks likes something serious is going on!

This map (note the date: y/m/d) shows another nuclear power station in big trouble. The red flag on the right is the one we all know about. The red flag on on the left is, at the present time, something of a mystery.

I have put the map here as an emergency measure in case the website where I found this information gets hacked or taken down. Or in case there's a cover up. Please, if you can, save it for now.

Updates will follow.
. . .
Update 1:
Fukui (not to be confused with Fukushima, which as you can see is on the opposite coast) was shutdown due to loss of pressure on 15th July 2011. That was the last news on it - until now, 2.59uSv/h. Nothing appears to have been reported on the mainstream news channels as yet.
Update 2:
Source reports that radiation spike is either from Monju Fast Breeder or Tsugura*. He tends to favour Tsugura as having the problem due to its previous history. High levels detected in Fukui and Kyoto. Still no official announcements forthcoming.
Update 3: All quiet on the eastern front?

*Tsugura reactor is a real dinosaur. It's the oldest in Japan. There's a claim on a Japanese website that it doesn't even have an emergency vent. Not that these vents on Mk1 reactors always work properly anyway. Sometimes they get jammed, and then you can't close them. The reactor was supposed to be shut down in 2010 but it was decided to extend its life until 2016. It has a veritable catalogue of serious problems.

Wednesday 10 August 2011

haiku

a cat
a garden
no birds

Tommy
________________________________
suggested reading for your cat:
Woods M., R. A. McDonald, S. Harris (2003)
Predation of wildlife by domestic cats
Felius catus in Great Britain -
Mammal Rev. 33: 174-188
May, R. M. (1988): Control of feline delinquency
- Nature 332: 392-393

Special note: The robin, which spends much of its time on or near the ground, is especially endangered by domestic cats.

Tuesday 9 August 2011

Emergency Verse

The fish begins to stink from the head.

Think bailed out Banksters, corrupt MPs, double-crossing Clegg & Co. and lately Murdoch's bought Cops. Then think of the dumbed down underclass. No job. No hope. Even the youth club shut down. It's all the fault of the Man ain't it? And the Man, today's Man, the Old Etonian . . . wot's he gonna do 'bout it, eh? Sweet FA that's all. Hey, what's that noise outside. Summat's going off, or what? Pass me me Blackberry will ya?

Emergency Verse was published earlier this year by the Recusant. It's introduction written by editor Alan Morrison, is an Invitation for the Government to Join the Fair Society. It begins:

Emergency Verse is a literary campaign in defence of the Welfare State and the National Health Service and against the coalition Government's 'emergency' budget, which it perceives as a return to the draconian politics of Thatcherism. Emergency Verse is as well a petition of 112 poets calling on this government to comprehensively amend its 'emergency' Budget to lift the burden of paying back the deficit off the narrowest shoulders and onto the broadest ( . . . ) for the sake of our social democracy . . .

Caroline Lucas MP, who can see further than many of her Westminster colleagues writes:

In spite of the Chancellor's protestations, the 2010 coalition emergency budget was neither unavoidable nor fair. Instead it was a massively failed opportunity to shift the economy onto a fairer, greener pathway. Devastating public spending cuts are not an economic inevitability - they are an ideological choice. So I warmly welcome Emergency Verse and the campaign to bring together various voices in defence of our Welfare State and our public services.

I would add to that the following: It is only by building a fair and just society with equal opportunities for all, especially in the fields of education, affordable housing, job opportunities and health and leisure facilities, that we can make any real progress in society. The people at the top of our society must, like those at the bottom of the current social and economic pyramid, also be seen to be held to account.

In his first Emergency Verse poem Do you blame her Alan Corkish writes:

she fiddles the system
caught in the trap
since leaving school
with zero qualifications

discovered that a baby
was the key to
a home . . .

A second printing of the sold-out Emergency Verse is in the pipeline. If you want to really understand what's going on and why, you should buy it. Perhaps there's a copy at your local library - if you still have a local library.

Emergency Verse - the Recusant / Caparison
ISBN 978-0-9567544-0-0
- visit the Recusant website via my A-Z Links >>>


Monday 8 August 2011

Giant wasps of Fukushima

Attached is a link to a report of some people near Fukushima being attacked by 3" long wasps. The Giant Japanese Hornet is a mere 1.6" long according to Wikipedia. So it can't be that insect. Are these gigantic wasps the first reported Fukushima insect mutations? What else could they be? You can read about the giant wasps of Fukushima and several other important Fukushima issues in the article How I spent my Sunday in Fukushima HERE.

The Bora

Men with BIG tractors
are on the beach
dismantling summer
and carting it away
- the San Carlo Snackpoint
- the plastic coconut trees
- the neo-African huts
- the Wacko's Snacks
and the Bora
benevolent as ever
with its froth in its teeth
is ripping the last half-masted Jolly Roger to shreds
as it waves ashore and deposits
- the blue pigeon
- the surgical glove
- the massage comfort shoe
- the bottle of no message
- the rusted can of Wizard Airwick
- and all the signs
of the END
_____
gw2011

The Great Flood

Now there was a tribe or family connected to the reptiles that had the knowledge of rain-making. Their totem was the elements - lightning, thunder, rain, hail, and wind. These people were becoming important. They resolved that they would not consult anyone, but would act as they pleased. They were known as the frilled lizard family.

They sent representatives to various part of the country with instructions that on the days and evenings of the week preceding the new moon every lizard was to begin singing the storm song. They were to cut the body and cause blood to flow, and then smear the body with fat and red ochre and daub the face with pipe-clay. They were to chant the prayer song, pleading that the Great Spirit grant the following humble request: "Come, O lightning; come, O thunder and wind; come with all your force and destroy the platypus tribe. They have become too numerous."

They repeatedly sang their song until the last few days before the appearance of the new moon.

Great black clouds began to mantle the clear sky, and out of the clouds the lightning flashed and rent the sky and earth. The thunder roared in reply to the angry lightning-flashes. The winds came hurrying and tearing the limbs from the huge, towering gum-trees, uprooting smaller trees and shrubs, and driving rain and hail into every hiding place.

When the birds saw what was coming they took wing, mounting upon the wind, and soaring up and up. Animals struggled hither and thither in the blinding storm, seeking shelter, travelling up and up, dodging behind rocks and boulders on the mountain sides until they reached the summits where they sought safety.

It rained and rained. The valleys and the low-lying country were deluged. Nearly all life was destroyed in the Great Flood.

But the cunning frilled lizards, while their medicine men were singing the storm song, had sought the mountain tops, and there had built homes to protect themselves against the storm.

When the storm ceased and the flood abated the survivors from the kangaroo, wombat, opossum, and koala tribes ran down the mountain-sides into the valleys, visiting water-holes, billabongs, creeks, and rivers. An awful and distressing sight met their gaze. Upon the broken branches of the gum-trees and among the rocks on the hillsides and in the valleys, were dead and mangled bodies of the platypus tribe.

After three years had passed the birds returned. Some came to live on the lakes and rivers. Others in the desert and the forest.

After the Great Flood there was called a conference of the tribes. The tribes journeyed to the Blue Mountain where there was created a huge camping ground. It was there agreed that no-one would speak out of turn and that no reflections would be made against any tribe or person.

___
This account of The Great Flood adapted from William Ramsey Smith's Aborigine Myths and Legends pub. 1930.