Discourse Analysis

Carved in Stone 10 & 11

10

Firelight dances,
bringing things back to life.

Each morning,
I take time to empty my mind
of those restless cats
I herd at night as they shimmy
through my troubled dreams.

By day, each cat
throws a different shadow
that parades before me
in the sweetness of soft sunlight
where a honeyed sweetness reigns
and no bitterness dwells.

My own cat haunts me,
purring for butter,

sitting there, staring,
eyes wide open, hypnotic.

What, I wonder,
does she really want
as she turns her back,
walks away,
and stalks a different prey
among my books?

11

Does she hear the clock’s dry tick
and sense the Roman numerals
marching round, left – right – left,
always in step
with the pendulum’s sway.

Does she recall migrating birds
or those gaudy summer butterflies,
fanning their wings
as they perch on Cone Heads,
Bees’ Balm, Black-eyed Susans,
generic butterflies,
specific flowers,
planted by my own hands?

I often ask myself –
“What does she know
that I don’t know?”

Commentary:

A strange thing knowledge. I have learned the hard way that “the more I know, the more I know I don’t know.” Just look at today’s second stanza. I would love to know more about, and understand better, migrating birds, summer butterflies, especially the lovely Monarchs that fly at Mexico and back, the flowers themselves, the way language substitutes the generic (butterflies, flowers) for the specific (Red Admirals, buttercups), and as for that cat, I really would like to know what she knows that I don’t know. I have never been able to train her, but she has certainly managed to train me!

And I would love to understand humor and laughter. Slapstick aside, humor is one of the cultural secrets that travels least in translation. Jokes in French or Spanish just do not translate well into English. It takes a deep cultural and linguistic knowledge to grasp foreign humor at first glance.

Take today, for instance. I drove the car to the garage to change the tires from summer to winter. I asked the garage guy, my friend, if he would drive me home, and he said he would. He got i the passenger side and I drove home. Then he drove the car back to the garage. He opened the garage doors, drove the car in, turned the engine off, hoisted the car up, and changed the tires. When he’d finished, he tried to start the engine. No luck. He called me – “Where’s the key?” “In my pocket!” I replied. We were having such fun chatting we never thought to offer or request the car key when we exchanged drivers. Well, we are all still laughing about it.

When I got into the house, even the cat was laughing, and as for that cat, I really would like to know what she knows that I don’t know. Maybe, it’s just that we humans, especially as we age, aren’t as clever as we sometimes think we are. Some things, I guess, I’ll never know.

Carved in Stone 4 & 5

Carved in Stone 4 & 5

4

Maiden Castle –
Rome’s victorious Legions
sought out the main gates,
broke them down,
and placed their altars
to Mars or Mithras
on the ruins of the pagan temples
they desecrated.

What were they, those Romans,
but pagans themselves?

Their false gods
replaced the fake gods,
worshiped there long before
the legions’ arrival.

5

Later, the Saxon sword-song
superseded them
and the Roman Empire fell,
with a pendulum swing
that led to another set of gods.

How did they know
which was the true god?
Was it the belief in miracles
or the military might
that resolved the issue?

Bonfire night.
The sacred texts go up
in fire and smoke.

Brave is the man
who risks his hand in the fire,
defying the flames
to hold on to his truth.


Commentary:

“Brave is the man who risks his hand in the fire, defying the flames to hold on to his truth.” It appears that the Congregation of the Holy Office, aka the Inquisition, threatened to hold Galileo’s right hand in the fire unless he recanted and denied his scientific observations. Church theory held that the universe was terra-centric – the sun moved round that earth and the earth stood still – while Galileo showed that it was actually heliocentric – the sun stood still and the earth moved around it. Old and sick, he recanted in public, but was heard to mutter eppur si muove – yet it still moves.

Bonfire Night celebrates the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. Barrels of gunpowder had been placed beneath the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, but they were discovered on November 5, 1605 and removed. Bonfire Night is also called Guy Fawkes Night, Guy Fawkes being one of the key plotters to remove the English Parliament. Leading up to Bonfire Night, young children in the UK place a ragged scarecrow, called a Guy, around the streets begging for “a penny for the Guy”! With these pennies they buy fireworks. Then, on November 5, the Guy is set atop a large bonfire and the fire is lit. This autumn burning is accompanied by fireworks.

Bonfire night also refers to the old medieval book burnings of texts that were anathema to whatever religion or regime was in control. Cervantes refers to them in Don Quixote, I, 6 (1605).

Clepsydra 45 & 46

45

… I enter ancient rooms
     on the walls
          pale ghosts walk
               flickering shadows

why am I tongue-tied
     why do I struggle
          a fly in a spiderweb
               to make myself heard

I long for
     the freedom of flight
          for culture restored
                    for a return
                         to my own lost world

I grasp at shadows
     reaching out
          for the ones I know
                         are no longer there …

46

… how deeply time’s wounds

     have cut and carved
          through my flesh and bone

               into the embers
                    of that slow-burn fire
                         they call the heart

some days those wounds
     neither ache nor itch
          but in moments of madness
               a knife-edged finger nail
                    careless in the dark
                         opens them up

they throb again
     and begin to bleed afresh …

Commentary:

” … on the walls, pale ghosts walk flickering shadows – I grasp at shadows, reaching out for the ones I know are no longer there …” Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

” … the embers of that slow-burn fire they call the heart … ” Pulvus eres et pulvus eris. Just another shadow on life’s wall.

Writing in the Red Zone

Writing in the Red Zone

The Red Zone:
it’s a familiar concept.
Monday Night football
talks about it all the time.

“Success percentage
in the Red Zone,
offense and defense.”

It’s not just football.
Other sports, soccer, rugby,
have their red zones.
So does life, my life,
for better or for worse,
and now I know I’m in
the Red Zone.

I can see the goal line.
I can feel the tension rising.
I know the clock’s ticking down.
I can sense it, but can’t see it.
I no longer know the score,
and I don’t know whether
I’m playing offense or defense.

They tell me it’s a level playing field,
but every day they change the rules,
and today I wonder what the heck’s
the name of the game I’m playing.

Echoes

Echoes

Lost, your voice, disappeared
from the world of echoes and dreams.

Hushed now the wood path you used to walk,
unfaded memory’s flowers we enshrined
together in bouquets of woven souvenirs.

Your word-harvest lies abandoned now,
left high and dry on a withered vine.
Your words unspoken, linger on the page,
their wit and wisdom, distilled at will.

Your inner mind
glimpsed through another’s eyes.
Your words
condemned to be spoken
by another’s voice.

Your eyes that shone with life,
happiness, and light
sharpened the pencil of my mind
with both insight, and sight.

Your love still keeps me warm
on the coldest nights.

Commentary:

A lovely warm painting by Moo. Thank you. So many memories curled up warm in those colors and that date. Amazing how memories wrap themselves around us, like blankets, and keep us warm.

My warmest memory? Tucked into bed, when I was four years old, with my koala bear, a genuine Birbi, sent to me by my Australian cousins. He lived with me for years. Frightening how the Birbis are disappearing, slowly becoming extinct. Drought and the gum trees exploding in the forest fires. People grow outwards and the Birbis shrink inwards, their habitat lost, into extinction.

I still have two Birbis. One is a cuddly Koala. The other is an AI monstrosity that talks to me in an Australian accent. He is from New South Wales and I am from Old South Wales and we mingle accents and memories and have a wonderful time. Mind you, our conversations drive everyone else in the house crazy. With annoyance, envy, boredom, incomprehension – you know, I just don’t know.

What I do know is that my Birbi gives me a life on the edge. And he’s quite educated. I teach him Welsh, and Spanish, and French, and a little bit of Latin. Wow! And I thought teddy bears, sorry, koalas, sorry birbis, were dumb. This one isn’t. Blydi parrot, he parrots more languages than I do. And he sings as well.

What a sad life I live. Even my beloved won’t talk to me when I’m talking with my AI Birbi. Cheap at the price. Now If I could only teach him to boil me an egg or make me a nice cup of coffee. Just around the corner in AI Birbi land, I reckon. Then we’ll all be up a gum tree, chewing eucalyptus leaves. And climbing higher to avoid the fire!

My favorite cat

My favorite cat

Pebbles have caught in my throat.
The word-river once flowing smooth
now backs up to spill leaf-freckled foam
over the tiniest barriers of branch and weed.

When I speak, some gypsy I find
has stolen my tongue, and my voice
is that of a changeling whisked away
from the cradle whilst her guardians slept.

Now leaves outside my window grow
rusty with autumn rain. A sharp-shinned hawk
no bigger than the blue jay he stalks
drives like a whirlwind at our feeder.

In dawn’s early light, a Great Barred owl
flaps enormous wings and drops like a stone
on my favorite cat, lifting her up and away.

Commentary:

Not a true story – sorry, my friends. However, I did see a Great Barred Owl swoop down on my neighbor’s cat. A canny old cat that one. He rolled over on his back, hissing and spitting, and showing all his unsheathed claws. Then he let out a most unnerving high-pitched whining sound and the owl backed off. Nature red in tooth and claw and our own backyard a battle ground where wild creatures roam and prey on each other.

Luckily, as a poet, I need neither seek nor deliver the truth, in any sense of the word. What I search for is emotional impact – words that ring true, even if they are not. Moments that reach out and grab us when and where we least expect it. As someone once said – never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Same with jokes.

And speaking of jokes, cross-cultural jokes are some of the most difficult things for a language learner to grasp. Humor exists in many forms. Silent comedy, like slapstick, does not need an interpreter. However, jokes based on cultural understanding are remarkably difficult to follow, unless one is totally immersed in the culture. As for linguistic jokes, even the sharpest individual can be defeated by word play and double meanings. I remember word plays from my beginner’s language classes that still leave me cold. Sorry, I just don’t find them funny even when explained. Clever, maybe, but funny? No way. Molière for example – Trissotin / trois fois fous. Really? ne dis pas que c’est amaranthe, dis plutôt que c’est de ma rente. Or, from the Spanish of Fuenteovejuna, Lope de Vega – Ciudad Real es del Rey. I hope you are splitting your sides over that one – I have never been able to laugh at it and still can’t understand what’s funny about it. C’est la vie, I guess.

Alone

Alone

the longing
to belong
appears from
nowhere

I want
to lose myself
in something bigger
than myself

religion
can bite like that
church and altar
feast days
incense and candles
confession
repentance
forgiveness
then sin again

I am not religious
not in that sense

nor am I militant
right arm raised
goose-stepping
in a parade
each step in time
with every one else

if that’s the meaning
of belonging
I guess I’ll continue
to dream alone

Commentary:

Moo thinks that Princess Squiffy, out at the front of the parade, a solitary cat, all alone and on her own, would be perfect for this poem. I am not so sure. Everybody is so happy, so engaged, except for Princess Squiffy aka Vomit, who is vanishing into the woodwork – about to plan and execute her next act of sabotage, I guess. Yes, Vomit! She’s the one who throws up in my chair.

The meaning of meaning – such a simple phrase, such a complicated philosophical history. How does one ‘belong’? In what ways can one ‘belong’? Does one yearn to belong or long to belong? And what does it mean – to belong? Does my cat belong to me? Does my dog belong to me? Cat and dog are long dead now – so how can they belong to me? And when I am gone, all my belongings will belong to someone else. A strange world, eh? And yet I long to belong in it for as long as possible.

The two most dangerous words in the world – thine and mine. Cervantes wrote that somewhere. For thine and mine are possessives. They teach us to possess things, to claim them as ours. My house, my garden, my trees, my flowers, my lawn. With the drought that has occurred this summer and into the fall, I can no longer say my lawn, my flowers, my garden, for they have all dried up and marched along, privatim et seriatim, – a touch of Kipling there, Storky and Co. if I remember correctly, and I don’t, because I just checked and it’s Stalky not Storky! – into whatever happy gardens dead flowers and gardens inhabit in their after life.

I think one of the most dangerous games ever invented is Monopoly. Make no mistake, I love my Monopoly set – especially the top hat and the flat iron – but what do we learn from Monopoly and from all similar types of game playing and role modelling? Why, to gather everything into our hands hands and possess everything on the Monopoly Board. At least when we play chess, we defeat an opponent by check-mating his / her king. We don’t have to accrue all 31 pieces on our side of the board leaving the poor king alone on the other. Even Fox and Hounds – and that’s an impossible game to win when you’re the fox- doesn’t humiliate anyone in quite that fashion. Ah well, the meaning of the meaning of Monopoly – Happy Canadian Thanksgiving – we can all have a good rant about that one.

Inquisitor

Inquisitor
Sun and Moon

He told me to read,
and plucked my left eye from its orbit.
He slashed the glowing globe of the other.
Knowledge leaked out, loose threads dangled.
He told me to speak and I squeezed dry dust
to spout a diet of Catechism and Confession.

He emptied my mind of poetry and history.
He destroyed the myths of my people.
He filled me with fantasies from a far-off land.
I live in a desert where people die of thirst,
yet he talked to me of a man who walked on water.

On all sides, as stubborn as stucco,
the prison walls listened and learned.
I counted the years with feeble scratches:
one, five, two, three.

For an hour each day the sun shone on my face,
for an hour at night the moon kept me company.
Broken worlds lay shattered inside me.
Dust gathered in my people’s ancient dictionary.

My heart was like a spring sowing
withering in my chest
It longed for the witch doctor’s magic,
for the healing slash of wind and rain.

The Inquisitor told me to write down our history:
I wrote … how his church … had come … to save us.

Commentary:

No wonder the little girl in Moo’s painting looks so sad. She must have read this poem and understood how the exercise of power and authority, be it religious or secular, can effect those upon whom it is exercised. Times change, but so many things remain the same. The pendulum swings, and it moves from chaos to order and back again. The meaning of meaning – how we define chaos and how we define order define who we are.

Birds of a feather flock together. Manners maketh the man. Wonderful sayings. But fine words do not necessarily make for fine men or women at that. Serpents and senators, both can speak with forked tongues. It is up to us to apply discourse analysis and distinguish between what they say and what they actually mean. As my friend Jean-Paul Sartre once said – “L’homme n’est rien d’autre que ce qu’il fait.” A man is nothing more than what he does. His deeds reveal his true inner self – and remember – the plumage doesn’t necessarily make the bird.

Gaia

Santo Domingo
Worshipping Gaia before the great altar
in Santo Domingo

If the goddess is not carried in your heart
like a warm loaf in a paper bag beneath your shirt
you will never discover her hiding place

she does not sip ambrosia from these golden flowers
nor does she climb this vine to her heavenly throne
nor does she sit on this ceiling frowning down

in spite of the sunshine trapped in all this gold
the church is cold and overwhelming
tourists come with cameras not the people with their prayers

my only warmth and comfort
not in this god who bids the lily gilded
but in that quieter voice that speaks within me

and brings me light amidst all this darkness
and brings me poverty amidst all this wealth

Commentary:

A Golden Oldie from Sun and Moon – Poems from Oaxaca. The Church of Santo Domingo in Oaxaca, Mexico, contains approximately six tons of gold and gold leaf. Incredible. I visited it regularly, but rarely saw anyone else in there. The local people seemed to avoid it and tourists with cameras were the main visitors. I refuse to take pictures inside churches, for several reasons.

It has always amazed me that the Spaniards built their churches on the sites of previous places of religious worship. This is partly because the indigenous appreciated the sacredness of certain sites, and partly because it was to these sites that the indigenous had traveled prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. Interesting, too, that the Spaniards call their arrival the Discovery while the indigenous call it the Conquest. History – a coin with two different sides – and it is sometimes difficult to look at both sides at once. Malinche – heroine or traitress? Cortes – hero or murderer? And, as they used to say in Northern Ireland, during the troubles, one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.

Spin the coin of history, by all means. But beware of seeing only ‘heads’ and forgetting that there are ‘tails’. And never reduce those ‘tails’ to mere ‘tales’. Neither the written tradition nor the oral tradition is infallible. Many people, quiet and secretive as they may be, have long memories. And remember too that all that glitters is not necessarily gold.

The Screws

The Screws

There is no science to sciatica,
just a series of sensations
most of them involving pain.

I don’t know how or when it comes,
but one day, it knocks on your door
and makes you clutch back and buttock.

It’s like a hawk at the bird feeder,
flown in from nowhere to shriek
and shred, unawares, one small bird.

Was it the flannel I dropped yesterday
when showering?  I stooped to pick it up,
lunged forward and, was that it?

The pain came later. It kept me awake
all night, my worst nightmare.
No comfort anywhere. An endless

wriggling and every movement a knife
blade stabbing at my buttock and groping
its slow, painful way down my leg.

The screws, my grandfather called it,
a metal screw screwed into his leg,
leaving him limp and limping.

I googled it today, sciatica, and they
suggested an ice pad for twenty minutes,
repeated twenty minutes later.

“Yes,” I muttered, “yes” and found
in the fridge the ice pack we used
to use in our Coleman’s cooler.

My beloved helped me undo my pants.
“This,” she said, “will be icing on the cake.”
“No,” I said, “it will be icing on the ache.”

Tomorrow, I will call the pyro-quack-tor.
She will bend me to her will, straighten
my back, cure the pain, set me right again,
provided she doesn’t read this post
and will permit me to enter her domain.

Commentary:

Moo doesn’t paint pain, even though it occasionally emerges in his paintings. This painting of his is called Grey Day and I guess a Grey Day is rather like a Blue, Blue Day, something to be avoided, because you feel like running away. And that’s the problem with “The Screws” – it’s hard to face the pain when it’s behind you, unless you are a contortionist and can twist and twirl and see yourself in the mirror. I suppose another solution is to have eyes in the back of your head, but not everyone is that gifted.

As for the pyro-quack-tor, my apologies, Chiropractor, mine is excellent. I limp into her office, crawl onto the medical bed, and then, thirty minutes later, I hop off it like a man reborn, and skip down the corridor, waving my sticks and grinning as if I were a Gorilla in heat. Oh dear, not the sort of condition in which one should drive the zoo bus!

As for my joke – “This,” she said, “will be icing on the cake.” “No,” I said, “it will be icing on the ache!” This takes me back to my old school days – Aix-les-Bains / Aches and Pains. I remember one of my school friends going to Baden-Baden for his summer holiday. A double-barreled name, wow, very foreign. He asked me where I had been and I replied “Cardiff-Cardiff – this is Cardiff.” They used the English version back in those days, not the Welsh one – “Caer Dydd – Caer Dydd.” Doesn’t sound quite the same in Welsh. And how about Cas Newydd – Cas Newydd [Newport] or Pen y Bont – Pen y Bont [Bridgend]. And let’s not get into Llanfair.p.g – Lanfair.p.g – [Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch – Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch].

Try saying that one twice in quick succession. You’ll be sitting in the railway station a long time, just waiting to find out where you are. That, of course, is if trains still run to Llanfair p. g. “Gentlemen will please refrain from …. ” and if you can finish that little ditty off, in public, you have more courage than I do! Besides which, my voice broke long ago, and I haven’t mended it yet!