Memories

Earworms

Earworms

A meaningless collection of notes
swarms into my empty head
swimming round and round
like clustering tadpoles.

The ebb and flow of that mysterious
music clumps on and on, tight in
my mind and will not let me go.

Earwigs, some call them,
those senseless repetitions,
day after day, night after night,
awake and asleep,
old tv adverts, short clips
of classical music or popular songs.

They are wheelbarrow songs,
hedge clippings, dead flowers,
crass grass, broken branches, weeds,
repetitive memes of meaning,
a syndrome of stuck songs destined
for the garbage dump and ritual burning
in the hell of an eternal turntable turning.

Comment:

Word magic from the Mikado – “My object all sublime I shall achieve in time, to make the punishment fit the crime” … And in this case I would tie the criminals who invented these ‘ballads, songs, and snatches’ to the stake, with earphones that endlessly repeated all the nonsense we hear day and night, so much of which sticks in the turntables of our brains turning round and round as we toss and turn in our beds at night. Just a case, I suppose, of hearing music while there’s no one there.

And how many earworms did you pluck out of that first paragraph? I can count six, maybe seven. Then, my mind may be very different from yours. Perhaps your mind isn’t in the outrageous Wilfred that mine is. Don’t get that joke, do you? And why should you? I guess you don’t remember Ray’s a Laugh, Round the Horne, Mr. Dimwitty, or Wilfred Pickles – and why should you.

Passent les jours et passent les semaines / ni temps passés ni les amours reviennent / sous le Pont Mirabeau coule la Seine – click on the link for the English version (my translation) and click on this link for a slightly improved revised version.

Yes, as Apollinaire says time flows on and by – or, after Heraclitus – you can never step in the same river twice. More important, perhaps, for those who worry about their past thoughts, words, and deeds – you can throw the stone into the pond, but you can’t control the ripples.

FIFA

FIFA
A Jackpine Sonnet

elbows on the table
my hands clasped around
this soccer ball
I call my skull

its global reach
the totality of all
I hold and know
and understand

past games
long forgotten
gone the skills
of which I was so proud

my life the circumference
of this paneled circle
wrinkled and peeling

the ancient onion skins
of old corruptions
newly found

Comment:

Moo calls this painting, which he forgot to sign, Crater with Creatures. He thought it would be a good painting for this circular poem that also goes round and around like the creatures in the crater. Wild thoughts, they are, gnawing at each other as they circle. I had to tell Moo what FIFA meant. At first, he thought I had written FIFI, the name of his cat. No, I told him, it’s FIFA, not FIFI, and that’s why I call my skull a soccer ball. “But FIFA isn’t corrupt,” Moo said. Well, that made me laugh. “I wasn’t referring to FIFA as being corrupt,” I explained. “The corruptions are all my own.” “But you aren’t corrupt,” Moo exclaimed. “Think of them not as corruptions, but of little errors, little sins, the little mistakes we all make in life.” “Oh, those,” said Moo. “Nobody cares about those things. They are all little nothings, best forgotten.” “I usually do forget them,” I said, “but once in while I pick at them like I pick at a scab, and then they all start bleeding again, or flaking away like thin layers of onion rings.”

Moo looked at me, long and hard. “You are just like a world cup soccer team manager,” he told me. “First you pick your nose, then you pick yourself, then you pick your best friends and put them on the team. But that’s not corruption. That’s the way of the world. Everybody does it.” “Not everybody,” I said. “That’s because not everybody is a soccer coach,” he replied.

Good old Moo. Such a world wise philosopher. I remember when he had his index finger in plaster. “What wrong with your finger,” I asked him. “It broke,” he replied. “How on earth did that happen?” “Someone punched me in the nose.” “Well that shouldn’t have broken your finger,” I said, amazed and rather doubtful. “It was in my nose at the time,” he sighed. Que lo creas tú.

Striations

Striations

There are striations in my heart,
so deep, a lizard could lie there,
unseen, and wait for tomorrow’s sun.

Timeless,
the worm at the apple’s core
waiting for its world to end.

Seculae seculorum:
the centuries rushing headlong.
Matins: wide-eyed this owl
hooting in the face of day.

Somewhere, I remember
a table spread for two.
Breakfast. An open door.
“Where are you going, dear?”

Something bright has fled the world.
The sun unfurls shadows.
The blood whirls stars around the body.
“It has gone.” she said. “The magic.
I no longer tremble at your touch.”

The silver birch wades at dawn’s bright edge.
Somewhere, tight lips, a blaze of anger,
a challenge spat in the wind’s taut face.

High-pitched the rabbit’s grief in its silver snare.
The midnight moon deep in a trance.
If only I could kick away this death’s head,
this sow’s bladder, this full moon
drifting high in a cloudless sky.

Comment:

La poesía se explica sola. Si no, no se explica.

Pedro Salinas.

Poetry explains itself. If it doesn’t, it’s inexplicable.

Green Banks

Green Banks

An empty shell I am
the sea sound swishing
when you hold me to your ear

Pwll Ddu and pebbles
Swansea Sands
their fishnets glistening
with golden day stars

Brandy Cove
ever-changing after
winter’s storm surge

Fisherman’s Point
early evening
when dog-fish bark

Pyle Corner
cows in the lane
quick to kick
high the five barred gate
we climb
to avoid them

Rats
in the rubbish dump
grey bodies
scuttling claws

Green Banks at last
home of our summer
sky cloud castle dreams

Comment:

Have you ever held an empty sea-shell to your ear and heard the sea’s soft sighting sound? I used to collect them from the sands, hold them to my ear, and listen. The best shells left you with the sigh and sound of sea and waves moving with a magic that sounds eternally. These I would take home and listen to them in winter, or at boarding school, when I needed such beauty to keep me alive and sound in heart and mind.

Sure I was a dreamer. But oh what dreams and how they have followed me step by step, town by town, country by country. And now they gather here, in Island View, and let me know that within my mind the dream world of memory is immense but I can still capture it and hold it to my heart.

Funny how things come back to me.

1. Taste – and I there at Eynon’s in the Uplands, where I first tasted crempogau, Welsh pancakes. They changed into the Crêpes Suzettes I tried in Cassis-les-Calanques, all soaked in Grand Marnier.

2. Touch – damp wood beneath the hand takes me to boarding school where the walls sweated and the bannisters gleamed in foggy weather. There, in the Vale of Severn, damp mornings were the warm. I also remember the touch of hot air, breathed into my shirt, to keep me warm.

3. Smell – the scent of things burning, burnt porridge particularly, drifting down the drive, and driving through the tree mist and into my nostrils.

4. Sound – so many songs take me back to the places where I used to sing them. Sometimes they attached themselves to a family member, though I didn’t understand how or why those associations were made, not until much, much later.

5. Sight – put them all together and you can see those memories surging out of the mists in all five forms.

Have you tasted sea mist on your tongue? Have you touched the dampness of your jersey when you cycle down Painswick Hill in the mist? Have you caught the smell of wet wool, mist moistened, and clinging close? Have you heard the rustle in autumn when the November mists wrap themselves around ghostly trees and the dry leaves rattle like bones? Have you seen long dead mist warriors rise up from the ground at Badbury Rings or atop Maiden Castle, or on Cley Hill, or Westbury White Horse?

Time and tide wait for neither man nor woman. And memory’s mists do not wait either. they rush in, like angels, and foolish is the the man who refuses to meet them, eye to eye, tongue to tongue, nose to nose, finger to finger, ear to ear – in all their mystical mist-filled glory.

Decision Time

Decision Time

When down means up
and up has nowhere to go
save for the desert sand
barren and bare shifting
through helpless fingers
or the hour glass waste
with two trunkless stones
propping up the sundial’s
wrinkled face and time’s sneer
of command its wilderness
voice always a choice
between thinking and feeling
for yourself or believing
frozen words dropped
from winter’s snowflakes
to melt in the toothless mouth
of a new day another decision
the future laid out ahead
and you with no map
no GPS nothing to get you
to the last place you want to go

Comment:

Some strange touches of surrealism in this little poem that weaves its way through an intertextual maze recognizable, I hope, to many of those who read this blog and follow these comments on a regular basis. Travelers from far-off lands tinkle their echoes through the lines.

How many of you have read the South Wales Echo or listened to the paperboy, almost always an old man, chant his late afternoon song outside Cardiff Market or Down by what used to be Howell’s, not so long ago, when my world was so much younger and I too lived in a far-off land before I became a traveler. What sort of traveler, you ask. Why, a traveler in time and space, of course. Listen. Can you hear him? “Echo. South Wales Echo.” As regular as clockwork.

But in Swansea, everything was different. There it was the South Wales Evening Post, chanted by a paper boy turned old man who sang out – “Po-ost, Po-ost, Evening Po-ost, South Wales Evening Po-ost!” That double or extended vowel was a signature tune that brought on the evening and the turning on of the old gas lights that used to light up the streets.

Living in Santander, Spain, the street calls were totally different. There it was the lottery man, usually blind, who stood on the street corners crying out “Para hoy! Tengo para Hoy!” Today’s lottery. I have tickets for today’s lottery. So many lotteries in Spain. So much fun. In the laundry at the bottom of Perines, where I used to lodge, if your laundry ticket number matched the winning lottery number of the Ciegos – the Blind People’s Lottery, then you could claim a free wash that day.

So many memories. The past fading slowly away. The future coming ever closer. I look out of my window, and what do I see? Well, there’s always a bird in a tree, but today the clouds are building, playing piggy-back, and climbing on top of each other, reaching higher and higher into the sky and, sooner or later, there will be rain. Blessed, comforting rain. The gardens are dry. The aquifers are low, and yes, we need that rain. Para hoy – today – please!

And then maybe the desert will bloom again. The woods will flourish and, guess what KTJ saw in the woods the other day? You can’t guess? Well, I’ll tell you what KTJ told me – “I saw a partridge, then an owl, then two bear cubs, and the mother cub, followed by a third cub, and then a mother moose with a wobble-legged baby moose trailing behind …” If you ever see a mother bear with cubs – oh-oh, decision time, remember to make the right decision – don’t get between the cubs and the mother. Or you might end up as the Teddy Bears’ Picnic. And you wouldn’t want that!

And each time you meet a wild animal, you make a decision. To stop or not to stop. To take a picture or not to take a picture. To shoot or not to shoot – with a gun this time [nasty!] not with a camera [nice]. And remember, Santa’s got a list and he remembers who is naughty and who is nice. So think twice before you make that decision – you wouldn’t want to end up on the wrong list at Christmas Time, would you.

Blood from Stones

Car tire over a pothole containing small monster figurines with aggressive faces — A car tire hovers above a pothole filled with snarling monster sculptures.
Image AI generated.

Blood from Stones

The road ahead a bandage
leaking grey blood from stones.
The snow plow brutal,
carelessly lifting scabbed edges
until the gore overflows.

Spring always promises renewal,
but freeze and thaw also open
old wounds making them bleed.

A merry, mazy life we lead,
threading the car’s needle through
holes torn in the asphalt’s fabric.

Some holes are so large they have
lives of their own, and names –
Grand Canyon, Yawning Gap,
Patty’s Peril, Big Bertha, each one
well-known to neighbors.

Others are pornographic,
their open orifices painted,
laughing in scorn, dentated
vaginas ready for anything.

Such decorated potholes
are soon filled, their crude
messages swiftly erased.

Comment:

Three flat tires in the last month and spring’s potholes still out there, waiting to trap me. Apparently, one neighborhood on the North Side of the river decided to decorate their potholes with pornographic drawings. These were swiftly filled and their messages totally erased. Alas, we on the South Side are not so daring. We don’t go out and paint our potholes. Personally, I wish we did. July – and many potholes are still there.

Not only that, the road into town is being repaired. Hooray! However, the tarmac was stripped off two weeks ago and has yet to be replaced. Boo! More than that, at the end of our street, just before the highway, one or two enormous potholes still gape. They lead directly to a dip that rises abruptly when it meets with the now stripped highway. A champion clunker that – a genuine tank-trap. I think at least two of my flat tires occurred after going over that one.

It reminds me of my grandfather’s stories about WWI and ‘going over the top’. Now, each time I approach it in the car, I call out loudly, “Look out, grandpa, here I come.” I call that particular pothole Grandpa’s Revenge. My own personal name. I don’t know what the neighbors call it. And I don’t know why grandpa is seeking revenge! But below the tires, the pothole awaits, gnashing its teeth.

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!!!!

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.

The Dancers and the Dance

My poem, The Dancers and the Dance, refers both to the danzantes and to Monte Albán. Monte Albán was the capital of the Zapotecs and the principal city in the Oaxaca Valley (Mexico) between its foundation in approximately 500 BCE and its abandonment in approximately 750 CE. The White Mountain, thus named by the Spanish conquistadores, is justly famous for its temples, its tombs, and its carvings.

Two natural phenomena affected Monte Albán and its population. The first was drought and the dried earth with its brown and yellow tinges is clearly visible in these photos. The second natural problem came from earthquakes, for this is indeed an earthquake zone with active volcanoes causing tremors at regular intervals. The temples, even today, sometimes need repairing as earthquakes have been known to destroy even the reconstructed temples.

In fact, the abandonment of Monte Albán may well have been caused by an earthquake that cracked the enormous natural cistern in which the population’s water supply was stored.

The Danzantes are strange, grimacing characters that have been carved into prisons of stone. They may be captured warriors awaiting sacrifice or the chieftains of conquered tribes humiliated, perhaps tortured, and then flash frozen into stone photographs where for centuries they have danced out their torment. Whoever and whatever they may be, they still dance on Monte Albán.

My poem, The Dancers and the Dance, captures a different form of dancing. It is taken from my book Sun and Moon: Poems from Oaxaca (2000) and contains echoes of the vibrant folkloric culture that thrives to this day both in the city of Oaxaca and in the Oaxaca Valley. Here, traditions are remembered and relived. Each year, on the Day of the Dead, for example, families place food and drink alongside photos of the dearly departed on altars inside their houses and their doors are thrown open to welcome their deceased family members as they return along the marigold paths that lead to their former homes.

The Dancer and the Dance

she comes here to dance for me
only for me does she dress this way
she shows me her dreams
unfolding them one by one
silk and cotton garments
drawn fresh from her scented closet
thin copper bracelets
carved wooden mask
only her eyes reveal
subversive flesh and blood

2

she orchestrates her story
skin drum
rattle of seeds in a sun-dried pod
single violin string
stretched across an armadillo’s shell
I too am tense like an instrument
waiting to be played
the bones of my love
reach out towards her

when she makes her music
familiar spirits return to the earth
dancing in a sash of moonlight
she recreates an ancient spell
gold letters plucked from dark scrolls
no wands no words
just water’s purity
flicked fresh
across lips and face
she binds me with the string of notes
she undoes with her hair
our bodies form an open altar
we worship with mysterious offerings
drawn from wells set deep within us

Rain falls from the sky
Moon turns his face away
suddenly in darkened alleys
clouds hold hands and dance
dense streamers of light
dangle from street lamps
shadows remember their forgotten steps
gently she draws me to her
I try to follow
frail whirlpools of withered leaves
fragment weak sunshine
in light’s watery pool

her magic grows
I take my first step
an unmapped journey
into desert space
we move to old rhythms
across moon flecked clouds
raindrops fall more slowly
faltering drum beat
diminishing water

high above us
the ghost of a melody
shaking its head
wringing its hands
we return at last
to light and air
the moon’s vacant face
scowls in an empty field
someone has plucked the stars
one by one
and threaded them like a chain of daisies
now there are no sky flowers
to adorn the night

7

noche de rábanos
someone has taken a knife
and peeled an enormous radish
this cartoon moon face
this full skull hanging from nothing
this lantern lighting from above
now my lover sculpts time
and space
into small chunks
each sacrifice
a jewel between her fingers
I pin to my chest
three small notes
and a skeleton of words

8

inside my dancing head
the fires have gone out
without her hands to guide me
my feet have turned clumsy
scars layer my wrists and ankles
star crossed bindings
cutting against the grain
I gather a harvest of stars
she holds them in her eyes
her fingers are grasshoppers
making love in my hair
when she kisses my fingernails
one by one
we both know our bodies
will never be the same

together we weave a slender cage
she cuts out my heart with her tongue
placing it on an altar inside the bars
she locks the tiny door
a silvery key wrought from moonstone
my fluttering heart grows miniature wings
next time the door is opened
my wings will fly me to her lips
my heart is a caged bird on a tiny perch
it chirrups a love song
its image in the mirror answers back
breathless it scrapes its wings on the moon
its body striving upwards to the stars

on Monte Albán the danzantes
sway to soft music
their shadows dance in and on stone
as they have danced for centuries
wind rustles the grass
moon casts sharp shapes
darkness ascends the temple steps
huge fingers grasping upwards
an owl’s feathers clutching at the skies
at dawn tomorrow
the sun will rise beneath our feet
we will squint down on its majesty
we will pluck the ripeness of its orange
in our outstretched hands

our last night together
I pluck a blossom from the tulipán tree
a final offering of my love
she gives it back
I place it in the pocket of flesh
where I once kept my heart
tomorrow when the flower breaks
it will stain my shirt
a damp splash of blood
no longer running in my veins
the scent of our happiness
will cling forever to my fingers

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	Earworms – rog… on Le Pont Mirabeau
	Earworms – rog… on Le Pont Mirabeau