Love

Lorca’s Duende

Lorca’s Duende

Duende
“Todo lo que tiene sonidos oscuros tiene duende.”
“All that has dark sounds has duende.”
Federico García Lorca (1898-1936)

It starts in the soles of your feet, moves up
to your stomach, sends butterflies stamping
through your guts. Heart trapped by chattering
teeth, you stand there, silent, wondering: can I?
will I? … what if I can’t? … then a voice
breaks the silence, but it’s not your voice.

The Duende holds you in its grip as you
hold the room, eyes wide, possessed,
taken over like you by earth’s dark powers
volcanic within you, spewing forth their
lava of living words. The room is alive
with soul magic, with this dark, glorious
spark that devours the audience, soul
and heart. It’s all over. The magic ends.

Abandoned, you stand empty, a hollow shell.
The Duende has left you. Your God is dead. Deep
your soul’s black starless night. Exhausted,
you sink to deepest depths searching for that
one last drop at the bottom of the bottle to save
your soul and permit you a temporary peace.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Lorca’s Duende

Comment:

I guess the secret is to have infinite trust and to hand yourself over to those higher powers during the performance. Some can do it individually, others need to be part of a team. It works differently for each one of us. But when the lower element surrenders to the soul-fulfilling higher element, miracles happen. And when they are over, we are left bereft. It’s the same, in many ways, with mystical experiences. After we venture into the beyond, Messiaen’s Au-dela, upon our return to our earth-bound existence, we are left stunned and stranded by our former voyage into absolute beauty.

Spirit of Boo

Spirit of Boo

So, I can’t draw dogs, nor people, nor reality. But I can draw spirits, and moods, and emotions. This is NOT my neighbors’ dog. It is the spirit of their dog: energy, joy, happiness, and total and complete love. What more could a doggy want or an artist, however useless, do.

Boo: I salute you.
Woof!

Original drawing, dated 9 August 2014, can be found in my drawing notebook of that year. I used it as a model for the painting, was completed on Tuesday, 30 November 2021.

In Love with Love

Meditations on Machado and Mairena
In Love with Love

1

In a dream
I dream of you,
dream you into reality,
yearn for your name.
Now I’ll never be the same.

I dream you in a garden,
roses around you.
I stand there suffering,
my head crowned
with thorns.

Caught in the briers of your eyes,
I am trapped in the eye-
lash of your name.

Your presence taunts me.
Your absence haunts me.
My life
will never be the same,
oh Guiomar.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
In Love with Love 1

Heart Ache

Hope Fall

Heart Ache

My heart is an empty nest, all feelings
fledged and flown. I yearn for the warmth
St. Kevin felt when the blackbird settled,
nested in his hand, laid her clutch of eggs.

Oh, the cold dark stare of the under-earth,
growing its cold chill upwards through feet and knees,
and the winter branch stiffness of hands frozen
into concrete branches, week after week, until
the blackbird’s eggs are hatched and fledged.

No saint am I. Just a father deprived of his distant
child, of his granddaughter developing, growing
older and wiser without him there to help her
on her way, or hinder, as old men often do,
unaware of the changing times and the ferocious
pull of new ideas, new tides, the swashbuckling
effects of the new world now upon us, a world
we oldlings, so long ago fledged and flighted,
will never understand nor grasp. How could we?

And yet that hand stretches out from the window
of the cells that hold us, bind us, imprison us,
and make us realize how strong are the wings
of love that flutter in our ageing hearts.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Heart Ache

Song without Words

Song without Words

I wanted to sing you a song
to keep you alive
but you slipped through my fingers
and fled from my sight

I still sense your presence
but no longer know
the shape of your face

your voice on the phone
unique unforgettable,
a voice without face

voiceless and faceless
fleshless yet graceful
just what you were
a presence a spirit
a force in my life

a grey fleshless shadow
a mist in my mind
I know I never knew you

two different worlds
a world without music
a song without words
my love song to you
however absurd

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Song without Words

Spirit Dance

Spirit Dance
Thursday Thought

One of my best friends came over today and we talked. We also went out shopping: blinds and curtain rails. I can no longer put them up. He can. We had a fun time. So much exchange of information in the car and in the store and afterwards, coming home.

We left the mounting of blinds and curtains for another day. But I invited him to choose a painting from my collection to recompense him for his time, his care, his attention, his help, and to thank him for his friendship and his reaching out. He chose this one, Spirit Dance, the one above, quite unique, one of my favorites. It was one of two that he liked. This was the other to which he aspired.

I asked him to help me choose a painting for the cover of my last book, Stars at Elbow and Foot, and this is what he selected. It is now on the cover of the book. He has a great eye for art. Well, it matches mine and he chooses my favorites. So I am happy with that.

But my Thursday Thought is this: in writing we say “kill your darlings”. Meaning, there are some great ideas in our poems, stories, novels, but they don’t quite fit. We love them. But we must kill them and cut them out. Sure we save them for later, but oh, do they ever belong.

I have never sold a painting. I cannot say ‘money talks’ like another of my friends, because to me it doesn’t. El Poema de Mio Cid: ‘partieron como la una de la carne‘ — they parted like the nail from the flesh. But, as another friend of mine, a preacher, said, when I visited my father in hospital: “there are no pockets in shrouds — you can’t take it with you.”

I am grateful to my friend for accepting the gift of my painting. I know he will cherish it and that it will be happy with him. But oh, I miss it. No: I don’t want it back. I want it loved and appreciated and yes, I know that when I go, I will not be able to take it with me. Nor any of the others. Does anybody want to adopt them, my beloved children?

Click here for Roger’s live reading.
Spirit Dance

Songs of Praise

Songs of Praise

Who has seen the early spring wind drifting
its thought-clouds across the grass, moving
shadows over the lawn’s green, thrusting spikes.

Sometimes, I speak my thoughts aloud, hoping
that nobody can hear or see them as they leave
migratory footsteps across my mind.

Autumn now and I watch the wind twist
leaves from the tree. Yellow and red,
they flee from me. I do not understand
their reluctance to stay, their urge to tear
away and leave. The birds must leave for they
cannot bear the cold, cannot stay without food.

At night, when I close the garage door, I sing
hymns to the trees and to him who always hears.
Each note forms like a pea in the pod of my throat
and launches itself skywards, migrating upwards,
in a feathered flock that celebrates in songs.

Words, migrant birds, their flight unplanned,
will not stay still, will neither perch, nor gather,
nor feed from the outstretched hand.

Click on link for Roger’s reading.
Songs of Praise.

Troubled Times

Troubled Times

Last night my favorite teddy bear went AWOL.
I got up at 3:00 am and sent out a search party.
Sharp eyes spotted the copper band I lost last week.
It had been hiding under the pillow.
Then, joy of joys, they spotted Teddy’s black velvet band,
the one that ties up the hair that falls
over his shoulder and gets up my nose
 and makes me sneeze.

They hauled him out from under the bed.
I picked up the phone and cancelled the 911 call
before the masked men in their jackboots
and their PPE could break down the door

“Alas, dear Mabel: I would if I could but I am not able.”
How those words resound in my ears.
Left ear, right ear, and, like Davy Crockett, a wild front ear.
I will not haul up the white flag and surrender.
My towel is in my hand and I will not throw it in.

‘He who fights and runs away
lives to fight another day.”
I will survive for another day.
Meanwhile, I’ll call for General Worthington,
 the fellow who can always make the enemy run.
“Will you have a VC?”
I said “Not me:
I’d rather have a bottle of Worthington.”

Alas, they don’t make Worthington anymore.
And Watney’s Draft Red Barrel has bitten the dust
and gone down the path the dodo walked.
All my friends are in the doldrums, watching,
as Admiral Brown abandons ship, mans the boats,
and hauls away into fairer weather and cleaner waters.

You say you do not understand?
‘Blessed are the poor in intellect,
for they shall know peace in these troubled times.’

Click on the link for Roger’s reading.
Troubled Times.

Selfie with First Frost

Selfie with First Frost

The back ground is dark green, or should be. We have red and yellow leaves, of course, this is New Brunswick, Canada. And the white flecks are the frost on the grass. Lovely.

Look closely and you can see bits of me reflected in the glass of the painting. That’s why it’s a selfie. Not a total one, but a teeny little bit of one. How much of ourselves do we ever capture, in a photo, a painting, a poem, a piece of prose? Not much, I guess. And is it the real ‘us’ anyway? I very much doubt it.

Does it matter? No. If you want to see the real me, come and visit. But, be prepared: I am not who I seem and I am desperate to hide the real me from the real world. You may catch glimpses. And that’s about it.

And I have a cat, just like that. Runs to the basement, hides beneath a chair, sits and purrs in her basket, sleeps on the bed at night, winds herself round my knees at feeding time, is and isn’t, just like all pussy cats. And aren’t we all like that? Here today and gone tomorrow. All that joy and all that sorrow.

Enjoy us while you can. And can-can while you can-can!