Creativity

Self-Portrait

Self-Portrait

I smell. I whiff. I gloriously stink.
My arms, my feet, my crotch, reek with beauty.
This is me. I am still alive. I’m rank.
The time has come, the Walrus said, to take
a shower. I strip. I weigh. I obey.

Hot water streams. Bathroom steams up. I draw
faces on grey glass, smiling, glum. Soft soap
works its miracle turning Japanese
nylon into a rough body cloth that
rubs and cajoles all putrid dirt away.

Butterfly from its chrysalis, I step
from the shower, sniff with caution, and stench
no more. I am clean. I no longer pong. 
My body has been taken over by
perfumes no longer mine. Who am I now?

I am no more myself. I am no more
my own gorgeous underarm muscular
ripeness. I have left my odor circling
in the soap suds and drifting down the drain. 
What a pain. It will take me a week or 
more to start smelling like myself again.

Clepsydra 8

8

… those other faces fading
     drifting away
          their smiles their frowns
               melting away into the dark
                    where no star glows

they cannot return
     nothing walks the woods
          save a silence
               where once they strode

empty the hand
     once held out to help them

silent the prayer
     emerging from pale lips
          and unanswered

where are they now
     those who walked
          this way before us
               glum ghosts
                    hushed their chorus

I promised
     to remember them
          but I forgot them
               as one by one
                    they slipped away …

Clepsydra 4 & 5

Clepsydra 4 & 5

4

… candles and the clepsydra
     marking time
          witnessing
               the transition
                    from day to night

drip-by-drop
     falling water
          flickering candle flames

less certain
     than the monotonous
          tick-tock
               of a pendulum clock
 
time and tide
     wait not
          for ship nor man

though time is marked
     on calendars
          and prison walls

days passing into weeks
     spring into summer into autumn

daylight lengthening
     shortening
          until bleak mid-winter
               comes again …

5

… black midnight
     all is lost
          who now can count the cost

stiff upper lips
     forget how to pray
          fingers clasping
               unclasping
                    never grasping
                         life’s simple flow

with silent steps
     planets and stars
          slowly turning
               writing out our lives

sun by day
     moon by night
               the sky alight
                    with shimmering fires

midnight curtains
     burning lights
          crazy curtains
               drawn in night’s sky

a lost dog hurls
     his coyote cry
          who on high
               now listens to his call

not the planets
     nor the Archer
          nor the dog star
               who never barks
                     anything
                          but summer’s flames

pity the poor dogs below
     bitches in heat
          waiting alone
               for their lover’s paws
                    their welcome snuffles

locked and bolted
    the door
          heightened
               the canicular heat …

Rock

Rock

You are the rock
on which I build
my life.

You are the fairy castle
planned in paradise
where the sun always shines
and stress is distant.

How often have I mapped
your inner islands,
traveled your well-known ways,
always discovering
new sacred spots
where I can immerse myself
in your inner serenity?

You are the fortress
within whose walls
I can forget my past
and create my future.

Candle Light

Candle Light

Candle light
softens your features
brings out the bone shape
makes me forget
the minor flaws
of ageing.

Bone shape,
rock shape,
land scape,
your face contours
traced by the flame,
counting the years,
like tree rings.

Beneath the surface
you are as you always were
and always will be.

When I look into your eyes,
I see your soul
dancing in the candle’s flame.

Clepsydra, Poems 2 & 3

2

… who closes
     the museum doors,
          locking away its memories

dark descends,
     waters heard but unseen
          time unmeasured now
               until the coming of candles

each with its symbol
     lines that mark time
          an hour here or there,

never accurate
     seldom on time

a time that quickens
     in a whisper of wind
          the flame flickering
               time traveling faster

one candle tilts
     its waxen cataracts
          tumbling time
               cascading down
                    entering the void

that empty space
     left by the spent flame
          smouldering

where did it go
     the light
         I’d like to know
               how and why

a lifetime
     like a fire-fly’s spark
          flits away …

3

… fifteen eighty-eight
     the Spanish Armada
          its crescent glistening
               gunfire sparking
                    fireflies of flame

ponderous time
          spaced out
               relentless and slow

an unstoppable juggernaut
     on and on
          tides turning ebbing
               ever-flowing

hill beacons burning
     church bells
          ringing out their warnings

God blew
     and gusting winds
          took them away
               to the sand-dunes
                    off the Lowlands coast

flashes of flame
     fire-ships launched
          fire on the flood
               the rigging ablaze

quickly cut anchors
     now watch them go
          shepherded
               by sheepdog ships

 on Ireland’s rocky coasts
      ships and men
          their time up
               torn from the light
                   
swallowed by night’s
     dark throat …

Clepsydra

Clepsydra

WFNB 2025 BAILEY PRIZE: 3rd Place
Citation

Clepsydra relates a process of identity loss, as time’s passing removes the people closest to the eroding narrator. Its consistent form – the manuscript is one long poem made up of 48 sections of varying length, each of which begins and ends with an ellipsis – provides a framework in which the narrator strives to describe how their sense of self drains away, drop by drop, the way the liquid in a clepsydra (a water clock) marks the passing of time. Amazingly, the poems convey existential dread through remarkably vivid and grounded images of things like “seals basking in sunshine, / knowing themselves, being themselves, / thinking themselves safe, / kings and queens of their seal-dom, / never questioning” (19) and “…an osprey, sudden, the swoop, / turned into a stoop, water shattered, total immersion, then emerging, / lusty thrust of wings, claws clasping, / prey imprisoned” (20). Sense slides in and around the sounds of the words as well as in their dictionary meanings. In Clepsydra the author rigorously plumbs a difficult subject: the loss of subjectivity.

Exhortation

Thank you for the privilege of reading your poetry manuscript, Clepsydra. I was quite taken with all of its virtues: a meaningful concept, carried out in an impressive form which is followed both rigorously and nimbly in each section.

Introduction

     The National Museum of Wales, in Cardiff, had a working Clepsydra that fascinated me. School children could enter free, and every week day, during the school holidays, I would visit the museum and also the Clepsydra.

     I have built the structure of the Clepsydra into the verses of this book. The words flow down, from left to right, just like the waters of the Clepsydra. Sometimes they overflow the line, and sometimes they hold back, just a little. This visual construction fortifies the idea of the ebb and flow of time, water, and memories.

     I first met the poetic image of the Clepsydra in the poetry of Antonio Machado – No temas. Tú no verás caer la última gota que en la clepsidra tiembla. / Never fear. You will not see the fall of the last waterdrop that trembles in the clepsydra. I have, for better or for worse, repeated this theme throughout the poetic dialog.

     I would like to thank the judge, the poet Kathy Mac, for her comments and her excellent suggestions. I have followed most of them in this revision of the original manuscript. My thanks go to all who have read Clepsydra at one time or another.

Clepsydra

1

… time, and my own place
     not this dry museum
          filled with dust

its ghosts, running rampant,
     raging silent
          over ancient artefacts

the clepsydra dreaming
     time like its liquid
          slipping
               through clay fingers
 
runnels of water
     ebbing flowing
          continually running down

earthen-throated
     its hour glass structure
         
each terracotta bowl
     lower than the one before
   
a mini-cataract
      a constant waterfall
            second by second
                    time dwindling away…

Fall Foliage

Fall Folly Age

Fall Folly Age aka Fall Foliage is a play on words.
Thank you, Moo, my painter friend, for putting this title
on your painting and allowing me to use it for one of my book covers.

After intense heat
the garden is dusty dry.
The hollyhocks,
stressed out,
bow their heads
and tumble down.

Before the heat,
heavy rain drenched
the flowerbeds.
The yucca subsided
beneath waves of water.

One hollyhock,
regally proud,
stored so much liquid
in its flowery crown
that it bent and broke.

The mountain ash
bears a host of berries.
Bright orange,
they are already turning
to their winter shades.

I see so much stress
in the little world
I inhabit.
I no longer listen
to the news
or watch TV.

So much is beyond
my control.
Yet I can control
the radio and the TV
by turning them off.

The friends I meet
now have white hair.
Like me and my flowers,
they are dried up
and bent, held up
by sticks and canes.

My beloved and I
are growing old together.
We watch each other
with great care
wondering who
will be the first
to topple and fall.

Comment:

It has been a long, long time since I last wrote on my blog. Many things have distracted me, including editing books for friends, working on my own books, journaling, painting, and surfing the web in search of something positive to read. As for my own books, I published four this summer. Clepsydra – Chronotopos I, Carved in Stone – Chronotopos II, Rage Rage – Chronotopos III, and No Dominion – Chronotopos IV. Maybe I will try to post on a regular basis and copy some of those poems here, in my blog.

Silence

Silence

Pain stops at the edge of silence
and silence is the sound of sunlight
breaking against the walls of the room
in which I sit and listen, in silence,
waiting for the notes to begin again.

Silence, yes, yet my silence lies broken
by the renewed intrusion of the clock,
by the electric hum from lights and heating.

Ghostly noises break into my thoughts:
cheers from a distant tennis court,
those eternal advertisements
that invade my innermost being.

What triviality now shatters
the Messiaenic mood that wrapped me
for a moment in a many-colored cloak
woven from musical oblivion.

Time’s teeth start to gnaw again
and the grandfather clock
nibbles at my soul, extracting
its essence in a surge of sound,
tick-tock, tick-tock.

Westminster Chimes choke
life from the hour and ring
the tick-tock knell that files
my life away, second by second,
minute by minute, day by day.

Comment:

Silence is the fifth poem in the first sequence (Crystal Liturgy) of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time.

“So,” said Moo, “today I offer this painting where the title, Sound of Silence, fits well with the title of your poem. That said, I am not sure that the painting itself, qua painting, is as suitable as earlier pairings. De gustibus non est disputandum / there is no arguing about taste. I guess you either like something or you don’t.”

“It certainly isn’t in your usual style. In fact, it looks more like a colored pencil sketch than a painting. Where did you draw the title from?”

“Actually, it’s from one of your poems about Avila, in Spain, the city where, or so they say, you can hear the silence. You complained about all the noise that you found, especially the church bells, in that otherwise silent city.”

“Ah yes. I remember that poem. And I’ll never forget the sound of the bells echoing from wall to wall in those narrow, medieval streets. Bells from all the churches inside the walls of the city, tolling at exactly the same time, calling the faithful to prayer.”

“And that is one of the differences between us that I mentioned yesterday. My paintings, whatever they depict, are always silent. I have heard you read your poems out loud on Spotify and I have also heard other people reading them on your behalf, not always successfully. Poetry is designed not only to be read silently, but also to be read out loud, before an audience. Painting, on the other hand, is always silent. It does not speak, nor can it be heard. A painting is just there, in two dimensions, powerful, if you are lucky, weak and wobbly if the artist does not fulfill his task.”

“Interesting, dear Moo. And the images that I draw from Messiaen’s music are interesting too. For musical notes, without words, change into images within the listener’s mind, and then, when heard by the poet in me, become verbal images upon the page. Fascinating.”

“It is. Some time soo we must talk about intertextuality, the ways in which one artistic form or text can influence another. Hopefully, you’ll find a poem and I’ll find a painting that illustrate just that.”

Transitions

Transitions

Modes of limited transitions,
moods of time tapped in time
to time’s rhythmic piano.

Scales fall from my listening eyes
and all-seeing ears.
A transitory awakening,
this glimpse of the composer’s vision,
each note a new version
extracted from abstracts
perceived in color,
each note a hue, and chords
a rainbow spectrum of light
glimpsed darkly through
the raindrop’s distorting lens.

Birdsong and sunshine.
Notes perched
on the matinal branch,
each in tune with the other,
at times in seeming discord,
yet the morning chorus
diluting the day
with the liquidity
of light and sound.

Comment:

Transitions is the fourth poem in the first sequence (Crystal Liturgy) of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time.

“How on earth did you create that painting?” I asked my friend Moo. “And how do you relate it to this poem?”

“Good questions,” Moo replied. “Difficult to answer, though.” First of all, this is not a painting. It is the background cloth, always changing, always in transition, upon which I create my post card paintings. The idea of transition summarizes the movement from paint, to brush, to painting, and the haziness of the creative moment. It relates directly to your lines ‘Scales fall from my listening eyes / and all-seeing ears.’ This is the point in time, the magic moment, when the painting declares itself. I assume you have the same moment when you write poetry.”

“The two processes are very different, I think. In my poetry, a thought leads to a verbal image, and then each of the words turn themselves into little worlds in which verbal gemstones appear. I try to catch those verbal gemstones and to transform them into poetry. If I listen carefully, then my ears see and my eyes hear the words forming themselves into the right order.”

“Interesting. And yes, that’s what happens in my painting too. The initial mood captured in that first color, and then the minor moods that emerge from the first one gradually woven into the painting.”

“That is somewhat similar to how I write – by listening to the words and doing what they tell me to do. Then I do what they want me to do, not what I want them to do.”

“Fascinating. But there is one huge difference between us.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll tell you next time.”