Avalanche

Avalanche

A single stone
starts the avalanche

The boy in the kitchen
bare legs held to the fire
‘this is what hell will be like’

The cupboard under the stairs
cold dark locked from the outside
an oubliette
the young boy left there
forgotten

Running upstairs
to safety beneath the bed
hands grasping at legs
and ankles
pulling him back down
for appropriate punishment

The belt the stick
the little red brush that cleans
the fireplace
with its foretaste of hell
beating battering
an avalanche of blows
the boy buried beneath them

Commentary:

Another unsigned painting by Moo. He told me that he calls this one Orange-U-Happy. Well, it is a happy painting, until you read the poem that goes with it and discover that all the stones of the avalanche are floating around in Moo’s painting, including a nice selection of sticks.

“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” But names do hurt. Names can be cast like stones, and the thrown stone, like the spoken word, can never be recalled. Liar. Cheat. Thief. Little Lord Fauntleroy. Bite the hand that feeds you. Are you laughing at me? I’ll teach you a lesson you’ll never forget. I’ll shake you until your teeth rattle.

Stones can be thrown into ponds. When they are, the ripples reach out, spread further, spread far and wide. Thrown words can enter the soul, ripple through the blood, and they can lodge in heart and brain, forever memories that never fade and never fly away. Heart stones, they are, that strike at the stroke of midnight and leave the victim suffering, gasping for air.

So many silent memories, buried deep, only to rise and parade around in dreams at night, revenants come to haunt and hunt, sharp words made even sharper than flint or obsidian to cut and fracture, and splinter, and slowly, slowly wear down the prey. Words – the jaws that bite, the claws that snatch. Think twice before you throw, speak, wound, injure …. then think again, bite your tongue, stay your hand, drop the stone, think rather of the hand of friendship, of comfort, the feathered wing of the guardian angel that consoles and brings succor.

Succour (or succor in American English) means assistance or support given to someone experiencing grief or hardship. It is a formal, often literary term used to describe help that offers actual relief or comfort to people in difficult situations, such as disaster victims or those struggling emotionally – Wikipedia.

And remember – many words have double meanings – spare – to forbear: deciding not to hurt, destroy, or punish, such as “sparing the life” of a captive or sparing the the rod. Spoil – to indulge: to treat someone, such as a child or pet, with pampering. It can also mean treating oneself to a luxury or relaxing day.

So, what does spare the rod and spoil the child mean? Clearly it is a phrase with a double meaning. Choose which one you will. But remember – “Let us pray” is a better prayer than “Let us prey“.

Star Field & Brush Fire

Star Field
&
Brush Fire

The evening and my mind
both slipping away
into the grey mesh of twilight
that bids farewell to day
and brings on night

Words no longer link
solitary stars they blink
and I no longer think
the way I used to
logic buried deep
no longer rules

Who am I who writes
these words each letter
a shooting star
trailing bright light
across night’s page

I hesitate confused
and know not what I write
what I want to write
hides out of sight
will not soar upwards
into starry fields of light

Commentary:

Brush Fire – that’s what Moo calls this painting. It wasn’t his idea to call it that. He didn’t have a clue what to call it. However, he explained to KTJ that the reason why he didn’t know what he had painted was because he had finished painting what he had wanted to paint but had some paint left on the paper saucer he uses for a palette, and he didn’t want to waste it. So, he pepper sprayed what you see above. “You mean you were just cleaning your brushes,” KTJ asked. “Yes, ” he replied. “I thought I might call it Sky Fire or Fire Storm or something like that.” “Brush Fire,” said KTJ. “You just burnt your brushes.”

Well, you don’t argue with someone who makes the world’s best peanut butter balls, not to mention superb devilled eggs. So Brush Fire it is. I think Moo is a bit ashamed of himself because he hid his signature on this painting, and you have to look really, really hard if you want to find it. In fact, you might have to borrow my new glasses and use a magnifying glass to spot those three tiny letters among all those sparks and flames – Brush Fire, indeed!!!!

Starry Night

450px-Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Starry Night
(1889 & 2019 & 2026)

last night I saw stars
never thought to see them again
first time in years
a riot of bright lights
no dark spots floating
no black holes barring
vision’s edge

just layer upon layer
star fields like buttercups
littering the sky
I had forgotten their names
forgotten how many existed
smiling frowning down
immortalized in myth
celebrated in song

daylight broke waves
an ocean of sunshine
untying dreams’ night-knots
sharp black and white memories
shifting to corkscrews of color

two refreshing rain drops
four times a day
a never-to-be-forgotten face
seen once again in close up

Fundy fogs clearing
mist un-threading between
salt-laden pine roots gripping
splitting fragile rocks

complicated emotions
woven into a simple
carpet bag of words

Commentary:

I wrote this some time ago, after a simple eye operation that scraped clean the new lenses that the doctor had placed in my eyes. Distorted vision – it happens in so many ways. Kennel blindness – at the doggy shows, the owners and breeders blind to the faults of their own dogs while eagle-eyed for the slightest fault in another owner’s woof! Cat shows the same. Incidentally, tell me if you can, why a cat show has a catalog, as does a dog show. But why shouldn’t a dog show have a dog-a-log? I wanted to print one foe them when I was working with the kennel club, but their own kennel blindness made them insist on a catalog for dogs.

Think of the joy and beauty of sight. Sunrise. A thunder storm, dark clouds building. The slash of rain. Those first flakes of winter snow. That snow snake hissing down the road before you whipped by the wind.

Now I am back with new glasses and new eye drops and the world has come back into focus yet again. My beloved is, as she always was, and as I will always remember her. Yet, with my new glasses, I see and sense the subtle changes that have taken place.

And words. That magic carpet of letters that turn an army of ants into a Jackpine sonnet or a song about the sixpence that vanished so long ago. Oral poetry, yes. You can listen to it. But the written word, going letter by letter onto the page – you need vision to see that.

Vision and Revision – we are not writers, we are re-writers. Indeed we are, but without vision, without sight, we would be lost, so lost. Unthinkable a world without words. Unthinkable that night sky without its stars. Ah, to feel the warmth of the sun – but alas not to be able to see sun and shadow, the butterfly upon the flower, the stork returning to its nest.

Sight, touch, taste, sound, smell – deprived of one sense, we are left with four – but oh what a chunk of world goes missing when we lose just one sense.

In Praise of The Other

In Praise of the Other

I have lived with the Other.
He treated me well.

To him I was the Other,
yet he fed me when I hungered,
gave water when I ran dry.

I fell ill and he cared for me,
nursed me back to health.

He taught me his language,
culture, history, and skills.

He loved me, never forced me
to forget myself and become
something I could never be.

He made me what I am today:
a believer in humanity,
not man’s inhumanity to man.

Commentary:

Words for a divided world where man’s inhumanity to man sometimes seems to over-ride man’s humanity. Sometimes I am afraid to publish poems like these. Self-censorship is the worst form of censorship because it bottles things up until they rot inside you. Somebody has to speak out. Somebody has to stand up. So many, myself included, are afraid to do so.

Moo asked me to use his painting for this one. “Yours,” he told me, “is a cri de coeur, a cry from the heart. It must be heard. I’ll stand by you, side by side, and support you with this painting. It’s a Golden Oldie, but it’s good.”

I turned to thank Moo, but when I looked, he had gone. So much for shoulder to shoulder and side by side. Never mind. The poem’s not mine really. It belongs to others, many others. The start is from the Bible – The Good Samaritan. The ending is from Robbie Burns, changed slightly. There – now I have people who will stand beside me and echo my cri de coeur. And wow, look, here’s Moo, back again.

Wonderful. Now we can stand together. Should to shoulder. Side by Side. With no walls to divide us (Billy Bragg).

No, Moo. Sorry. I don’t have twenty dollars to lend you. Oh dear. There he goes again. Once more I am the monarch of all I survey and shoulder to shoulder with Alexander Selkirk I ask that other question – “Oh solitude, where are thy charms?” He ought to know if anyone did for he too made his cri de coeur from another horrible place.

Riddle-me-Ree

Riddle-me-Ree


What does the kettle whistle
to the grandfather clock
and why does its pendulum
call the kettle black?

A chime in time saves the cuckoo
just before it flies before our eyes …
and in August, fly it must.

Does anyone know how thyme
tells the time and whether or not
the dandelion clock
will learn how and when to chime?

Deep in a Gower Cave,
a woolly rhinoceros weaves
a web of time
on his mother’s knitting needles.

Beside him, in the rock,
a neolithic clock is fast asleep.
Was it Bill Haley put that rock
around the clock?

“You’ll never know,”
rings the sea-bell
tolling on its tidal surge,
“and I don’t have the urge to tell.”

Commentary:

Moo loves a riddle – that is why he fills his paintings with some many strange half people and animals that look out and King Lear at you. Mad as a hatter, is our Moo, especially when he’s feeling Moo-dy Blue. Moo is visually strange and now he is encouraging me to be verbally strange. So I took up the gauntlet, accepted the challenge, and road Nexus, my old dobbin, down to the end of the jousting lists, up with my lance and shield, and off I go.

Luckily Moo doesn’t know what I am talking about and he doesn’t have a dobbin anyway, let alone a lance. So, there he is, sitting on the sidelines, flicking paint at me with his paint brush. “The brush is mightier than the last,” he said. “Here’s mud in your eye!” And he must have been to PEI, because the mud was all red.

Alas, the Field Marshal thought I was bleeding, so he waved the white handkerchief and told me to leave the field of combat before PEI was swept away and vanished under a tide of big red mud along with Bud the Spud. And that made Stompin’ Tom stomping mad. “He might at least have used ketchup,” he cried, “because ketchup loves potatoes.” I found out, a lot later, that he had actually betted some money on me and was furious because he lost it.

“Never mind, Tom,” I told him. “Jousting isn’t the best game out there, and not every day does the best knight win.” “Hmmm,” said the Man from Skinner’s Pond. “I guess I could write a song about that. I think I’ll call it The Good Old Nexus Game. Nope. Doesn’t sound write. Jousting game? Nope. Hockey – that’s it – I’ll just go off, get my guitar, and tune up the old stompin’ bored.”


Faces in the Foliage

Faces in the Foliage


I see a face in the foliage.
The Green Man of Wye
stares out at me.

A light breeze moves his lips –
what can he be saying?
Sweat breaks on his brow –
thin, drizzling rain.

Now I see other faces,
all a myriad shades of green –
young / old, male / female,
sometimes somewhere in between.

They welcome this rain,
fearing heat, as I do,
parching them,
making them thirst,
and drying out the woods.

I sense their fear and I know
how they fear that first
spark of fire the worst.

Commentary

It has been a cold, damp spring and summer’s promised heat has not yet arrived. The result is a garden tinged with a thousand shades and hues of green. To many slight variations in color for my vocabulary to name them. Better by far this damp than last year’s raging heat that gave us the hottest summer ever with wild fires raging closer, ever closer.

They gave our subdivision a new name and placed us in a new area under new management. Early last year, before the heat really began, we received a booklet from our now community – What to do in case of forest fires. The first chapters provided some comfort – how to prepare three weeks ahead, one week ahead, three days ahead. But fear spreads s quickly as wild fires when we read – Evacuation – Three hours’ notice – Two hours’ notice – One hour’s notice.

It is amazing how little you can pack into one small car when you have only an hour in which to prepare and gather your things. Frightening. Very frightening. How much can you take? What must you leave behind? Which are your safe exits? Do you actually have an exit?

Plans, m-m-m-make p-p-p-plans!



A Question for AI

A Question for AI

It is hard
to shed the skin
and skin once shed
can never
be worn again

Yesterday
is gone
today
slips slowly by

Tomorrow
always comes
but never arrives

Who and what am I
this child
who thrives on sorrow
and on a sadness
that grinds
bones to dust
and soft silk ash

Tell me
if you know
what will arrive
for this child
tomorrow
if and when
it comes

Comment:

Moo is back painting and I am sure everybody is happy to hear that. Mind you, he’s a little bit on the Moo-dy side, if you know what I mean, as you can see from this painting. He calls it Moody Moo and he says it’s a Moo-d painting. He swears there’s a Moo Cow in it, but search as I have, I cannot see a Mrs. Moo. Let me know if you find one. Usual route – unless you have a drone of one sort or another. They have the road up leading into town and we had to wait a long time yesterday at the roadside while little men in yellow hats stood in front of the cars and wouldn’t let them move.

It was so bad, I put Pete Seeger on the disc player and turned the volume up full. “No pasarán, no pasarán, sang the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.” I thought it was rather funny. The person holding the placard that said STOP didn’t seem to be amused. I don’t if it was the volume. Maybe he spoke Spanish and knew all about the Spanish Civil War and how the Abraham Lincoln Brigade stopped Franco’s troops and wouldn’t let them pass! No pasarán, no pasarán – those yellow hatted road buccaneers certainly closed down the narrow straits that led to our house and they wouldn’t let anyone through. No pasarán, no pasarán.

Meanwhile, old Welsh logic – tomorrow never comes, because by the time it gets here, its today. “Good one,” says Moo, checking the way I have reproduced his painting. Oh yes, the original is for sale, Moo says – going cheap for a five figure sum. And that’s not counting the two zeros after the dot! I think Moo is really asking too much. OW! He just kicked me. Sorry, Moo. That’s a very fair price. Now he seems happy. But I don’t think you’ll get it. Now he seems sad – oh dear, just like I said – “Moody Moo”!

I’d better be careful, or he will be doing some Blue Moo paintings next, and he’ll be turning the air blue while he’s painting them. Meanwhile, speaking of AI – here’s the news that’s rolling round the rock at Island View. There’s a new book on the market. A limited Edition. Only 50 copies. Keep your eyes open. They will soon be a collector’s item. In fact, they already are. Go for it -Don Roger and Don Ryan. Oh yes. Moo did the cover painting for that one too. But he’s not selling it – he’s already given it away to another friend.

Obsidian’s Edge 2
An AI Analysis

Don Roger & Don Ryan

From my window

From my window

Not snow
these white flecks

floating flocons
wind drifted
past my window

they rise
rarely fall
never settle

blown pollen
post-lapsarian

the grass white
when they caress
sheltered places

white blossoms
on the mountain ash
sunshine
hidden within this cloud

not quite a snow storm
this pollen
drifting

Comment:

So, Moo’s taken to reading the poetry of Lorca. This is his second green painting from Lorca’s Verde, que te quiero verde. Funny – I speak a little bit of Spanish, but I didn’t know that Moo did. I didn’t even know he could read, let alone read Spanish. I know – that’s a little bit mean. That’s the problem with being neuro-diverse and a split personality – you never know which half your speaking to or from.

I guess that’s why Moo paints. So many things come out in color and shape that have no need of words. Such a strange thing, literacy. What a blessing it is to have the ability to read and write. Color and shape double or quadruple the quality of creation that a person can engender. Taking a line for a walk or making meaning out of color and shape is so very different from the careful reproduction of vowels and consonants in the correct order.

And who is to say what the correct order is? I have known people who have claimed that their fifth grade teacher taught them everything they know about writing. Really? Alas, I never went to grade school, so North American. I don’t know what grade a five education is or means. But ‘everything about writing’ – wow! I am 82 and still learning. I guess I am just a slow learner, perhaps that’s why I have always been a low earner too. Still, penny wise, pound foolish. Or should that be scent wise, smell foolish Or cent wise, dollar foolish. Or dollar foolish, cent wise.

Okay – so what is the correct word order? I guess I had better enroll in grade five and find out. Unless one of you out there can enlighten me. Mule? Dog sled? Drone? Your choice. They are digging up the road at the end of our road and I am not going into town until the tarmac’s back down. “And when will that be,” sing the bells out at Battersea. “I do not know,” booms the great bell of Bowe. Or you could send it by Bowe Street Runner aka the chasqui. Now that will sift you out! I bet they don’t teach that in grade five.

Neighbors

Neighbors

lights in the new house
we haven’t met them yet
we’ve seen them clearing the lot
digging basement and well
setting up the tile field

children playing riding bikes
bouncing on a trampoline
swinging on swings
their shrill voices breaking
the brooding silence of trees

sooner or later we’ll meet
it will be neat to put names
to faces and decipher
the stick shadows seen
in the distance shifting
dancing changing shape

a new generation of hope
turned into neighbors

Commentary:

“The olde order changeth, lest one good custom should corrupt the world.” Idylls of the King – Tennyson.

We have been here in this house for 37 years. We planted trees, and watched them grow. We watched lots being sold, developed, turned into houses. Many of those who were here when we arrived downsized, moved away, or in some cases, simply passed away and died.

We have seen families move in, and then move on. Some became very good friends, and we miss them dearly. Others were mere nodding acquaintances. Some spoke our language, others didn’t. We met many of them and their children at Hallowe’en until Covid arrived and spooked even the spooks. As an event, it ghosted out of our lives.

Soon it will be our turn to move. Our house will belong to somebody else. Our house? We are restless souls inhabiting a changing planet. We own nothing. We merely borrow, use, and pass it on to someone else who, in their own turn, will eventually pass it on.

So – what exactly do I own? What do I control? Only this single moment of time, this tiny particle of time when I raise my fingers, choose which keys I will type and in what order. And sometimes, even that is incorect / incorrect, for i / I make misteaks / mistakes, fale / fail to corekt / correct them, place the wrng wrong finger on the wrong key. A single slip of the finger – a bright red button – sometimes I wonder how it will all end.

Sun Bird

Sun Bird

You fill a hole in my life
with a strange unfamiliar
super glue
that bonds me to you

ties unseen unknown
bind us and stop me
from being alone

we neither touch
nor hug
yet a secret stream
links us joining us
mind to mind

manna from heaven
descends on the desert
more powerful
than mortal love