Discourse Analysis

Questions

Questions

Jackpine Sonnet

each time you see a shooting star
a child is born or an angel falls
swarms of them in certain seasons
when our planet sails through
the meteor belt and rocks burn up
as they fall to earth through air and fire

written in the stars they say
and everyday I read my horoscope
to see what lies in stall
or rather what fate will me befall

warmth and love perhaps yet what
do cold unconscious planets know
about this life that people lead below

Eros Agape Philia
Jupiter Mercury Venus Mars
who knows what ancient
Greek and Roman gods
still play at being gods
among so many drifting
shifting shooting stars

Comment:

So, Moo is back to painting, at long last. Last night he painted two paintings to celebrate his return to a lovely clean, neat, washed, rearranged workshop desk that a certain KTJ tidied up for him. He was so happy. I could see him bouncing up and down on tip-toe, trying not to fall over with excitement. He even got to wash his brushes and ensure that all the remaining ones were solid and good.

“Back again,” he sighed. And that’s exactly what he painted. Of course, in the course of time some of his paints have dried up and a brush or two needed careful separation, fine squirrel hairs from dried paint. But with a little elbow grease and a lot of luck everything came together.

This time, I had poem that fitted Moo’s painting. It explores the idea that everything can be found in the heavens. Fray Luis de León phrases it this way –

Es más que un breve punto
este bajo y torpe suelo comparado
con aquel gran transunto
donde vive mejorado
todo lo que es, lo que será, lo que ha pasado?

Is it more than a brief speck
this low and clumsy earth compared
with that huge universe
where lives in betterment
everything that is, will be, and was?

Well, what a load of questions and all based on 16th Century Spanish Neo-Platonism. Yet old as the system of star reading is, people still read their daily horoscopes. Well, some people do. I guess they think that in the same way that the moon rules the tides and pulls them this way and that way, then the moon and stars rule our bodies – we are, after all, 95% water – and pull us this way and that way.

But hold on a moment. Nature or nurture. And what about free will – libre albedrío? Are we ruled by the stars? Or do we have free will to do as we want in this little world of ours? Good questions. What we do know is that certain people think they can do whatever they want, with no repercussions or consequences whatsoever, while others understand that certain societal norms and rules are there for a purpose. Oh dear – the eternal question. If the stars and planets know what we will do and when we will do it, can we speak of free will or are our lives pre-determined!

I guess Moo’s painting is more than a Who’s Who Zoo and more a who did what and with which and to whom zoo combined with when and why did they do it. “Alas, if thy mother knew it, sadly, sadly would she rue it.” And now’s the time to De La Rue it – so get out those playing cards, shuffle them carefully, read your fortune, and let’s see what is going to happen, and how, and when. Or you could read tea leaves, Viking Runes, or the lines on the palm of your hand. Speaking of which – question – what is the first sign of madness? – answer – hairs on the palm of your hand. Question – what is the second sign of madness? – answer – looking for them. – and you did, go on, admit it, you took a little peek, didn’t you. I know you did – it was written in the stars, and in the Tarot pack, and … and … and …. did you find one?

Windmill

Windmill
Jackpine Sonnet

When the scales fell from my eyes
I stood on them and wondered
what I weighed on the time’s great scales.

Miniscule. A featherweight.
A dandelion seed blown on the wind
that whirls the world through space.

Spiritus mundi – the great world spirit
inflating my lungs, each breath
a glimpse of the infinite
combining in my body and soul.

The sails of a windmill, my arms,
and the wind turning them,
dashing me down into the dust,
then raising me rejoicing to the skies.

Comment:

Moo said I needed cheering up, so he painted me a happy painting. “I know it’s not a windmill,” he told me, “but you can pretend it is. The leaves of the clover even look like they might be a windmill, and look, it’s got arms as well.”

“Thank you, Moo,” I said. My poem is a happy poem and it proves that the Black Dog of yesterday had been banished today, not by a happy dog, but by a four leafed clover standing beneath a shower of solver and gold.”

Intertextuality – texts speaking to texts. I wonder how many texts you can spot in this poem. I can count five, at least, and there are probably more. Milton Acorn, Miguel de Cervantes, Northop Frye, the Bible (not y Beibl Cymreig, unfortunately), Edmond Rostand. That’s quite the handful. Well, four fingers and a thumb, at least. Now all you have to do is spot the original sources which, blended, give my poem a saucy sauce of sorts. So, grab your AI and play hide and seek and see what you can find drawn from the dark recesses of my mind. Don’t give in too easily, now.

Mood swings – mood changes – Moody Me – Moody Moo – I’ll bet that you are Moody Too. Good mood, bad mood, who’s to say? We’ll leave that for another day!

Black Dog

Black Dog

The black dog leaps out
of the grandmother clock
and lands on my back.

His paws grip my shoulders,
then rake down my spine.

I try to shake him off,
but he growls, bares his teeth,
and won’t let go.

I love that clock,
its Westminster chimes,
the Roman numerals
standing guard
over the pointed arrows
of the hands as they march
round and round.

But I hate the hound
that makes its kennel
in the clock, leaps out,
snaps at me, bites and claws,
and grinds me
down into the ground.

Comment:

The Black Dog was Winston Churchill’s name for the depression that came over him, and overcame him, from time to time. It used to attack me when I was a young boy living in Swansea. My grandfather would point at the clock and say “He’s in there. He’s coming for you. I can see him. It’s the black dog.” Well, that used to drive me crazy and whatever it was that set me off became twice as bad when the black dog arrived. Alas, now I am entering into my dotage and my second childhood, the black dog has re-appeared to trouble my waking hours. I guess it’s the mood swings. Happy one moment, miserable the next. The good dog appears. The black dog drives it away. Then the good dog reappears and all is well again.

Moo understands me and my patterns very well. In fact he painted two paintings for me – Twin – the one above and Niwt – the one below. You can see evidence of the good dog and the black dog in each of them. But which is which?

I’ll leave you to guess which is the good dog and which the bad one. Really and truly, they are two sides of the same coin – heads and tails so to speak. Moo tells me you can think of the paintings as a mirror image, one of the other.

It’s like mood swings – either my mind or my body flips the coin and one of the two dogs jumps out visit me. Luckily, after a bit, the good one chases the bad one away, so it’s all swings and roundabouts and all the fun of the fair. Until I fall off the Ferris Wheel or see my own shadow while riding on the Ghost Train.

Twin, of course, is Niwt backwards. Or is it the other way round. Dylan Thomas, my favorite Welsh poet, set the standard for word reversal. After all, the town of Llareggub is bugger all backwards. What fun we can have when we twist our words, double up on our language, reverse words and their meanings, and generally weave the tangled webs of linguistic double-talk. Oh the mystery of missed and mixed up meanings. But are meanings meaningful or meaningless? Now that is the question. And when you have answered it for meanings, start thinking about double-meanings and their twins – or should that be quadruplets?

Mindfulness

Mindfulness

alive in the moment
a momentary cloud
crosses the sun face
brings shade to table

soon page and tabletop
ripple with light again

the pen’s shadow
pushes across the page
while the nib weaves
its spider fine lines
of well webbed words

meaningful mindful
each letter a moment
caught and held in time

Comments:

I caught myself forcing myself to write a poem – and it just wasn’t working. Meaningless words upon the page, each wound up, struggling like a little black fly in a spider web that promised only oblivion. Then I caught the one sentence that ends the above poem – each letter a moment caught in time. I had found what I was looking for. For the next half hour I played back and forth with a whole sequence of dibbles and dabbles that eventually led to what I have written above.

I showed it to Moo. “Tranquility,” he said. “I have just the painting for you.” Love at first sight – poet and painter, painting and poem, blissful in a true moment of blended tranquility and mindfulness. “Why, thank you, dear Moo,” I said and all our previous squibbling and squabbling was laid aside. We gave each other a big hug – I should add that we don’t often do that, as one or two of you out there might well know. But we did it today.

Meanwhile, I have received another set of fake invitations – oh, I would be so famous in the world of fakery if I gave away what little money I own to make myself truly famous – for my folly in believing the permanence of fakery. Why, only last week, I got an email mistaking me for my namesake and offering to help me publicize his most famous book – My Word is my Bond. The person involved was asking for a cool $250,00 for making the videos.

Oh dear. 007 is one thing. 006.5 is something else and someone else. Never mind – maybe one day someone real will call me and make me a genuine offer that I really can’t refuse. I probably wouldn’t believe that if it happened.

Enigma Variations

Enigma Variations

Our world is spinning on its edge, placed on
the perimeter of space, going who knows where.

Specks of dust, we float around and contemplate
night’s wonders wondering what might happen.

Out there, in the vastness that surrounds us,
worlds without end will never know we existed.

Bleak and blank our names, our deeds, our status,
the monuments sometimes raised in our praise.

And what of our thoughts, those sparks
of electricity that link us mind to mind?

Is each of our actions determined by a dance
performed by circling planets that shape us?

Are we nothing more than a code
of virtually meaningless dots and dashes?

Are we then pinballs bouncing between
a million trillion strings of flashing lights?

What star god plays trivial games of snakes
and ladders with our lives and names?

Commentary:

Moo’s painting is called Grey Sky with Bear Claws. He thinks it is a great companion to the poem. Actually, I rather think he likes to have his paintings published online without the necessity of lifting a finger to help. Oh dear – he heard that and just lifted his middle finger in my direction. “I am helping,” he said. “I also lift paint brushes. Remember that, you philistine.”

Philistine? Me? Now why would I be a Philistine? And what is a Philistine anyway? That’s where AI comes in. Thank you, Don Ryan. I wouldn’t know about AI without you. “And you wouldn’t know about painting without me,’ says Moo. “So tell me what a Philistine is,” I said to him. “Go look it up,” he scowled, wagging that finger in a menacing way. So I did.

AI to the rescue. A philistine is a person who is hostile, indifferent, or smugly oblivious to art, culture, and intellectual pursuits. The term typically describes someone whose interests are purely materialistic and practical, lacking any aesthetic refinement or appreciation for high culture.

Well, I don’t think that’s fair. Let’s see – hostile, indifferent, or smugly oblivious to art – no, that’s not me. I love Moo’s art, and he knows I do. I am not hostile to it at all, though I might be just a little teeny weeny bit hostile to him when I think he is lazy and doesn’t appreciate me. More – someone whose interests are purely materialistic and practical, lacking any aesthetic refinement or appreciation for high culture – no. I refuse to accept that. Purely materialistic? I give my poems away, free of charge, to my friends and anyone else who wants to read them. Moo isn’t materialistic either. He gives his paintings away to his friends. I know he does, because I have seen him do it. Come to think of it, I don’t think either of us is practical. We wouldn’t be living in Penury if we were.

Sorry. I won’t go any further. That’s all Isle of Wight Ferry, as they say in Hampshire. Well, I won’t call you a Philistine if you don’t know what they say in Hampshire. Okay – here goes. “What’s hot, black and smelly and comes steaming backwards out of Cowes?” Why, it’s the Isle of Wight Ferry, of course. Well, it was until they replaced it with a hovercraft. Now the joke [Cowes, the port / cows] doesn’t work any more. So, here’s a couple of questions at Philistine 100 level for you – (1) What have Margo and Reg got? If you don’t know, you’ll have to ask Stomping Tom Connors. And (2) what did Reggie give to Margo? Okay, okay. I give in. I’ll tell you.

Answers – (1) Margo’s got the Cargo and Reggie’s got the Rig. (2) A cowsy dungsy clock, of course. Made only in Canada. And you can check that one on AI too. And look up the song on YouTube while you are at it. Canada Day – July 1 – and Stomping Tom Connors is one of the best adverts for Canada. Go, check out his songs.

On Re-reading Quevedo’s Poetry

On Re-reading Quevedo’s Poetry

Was that where my life went,
a spent candle trailing dark studies
among the packed lines of your poems?

What about you, was your life gutted by that
same guttering candle by whose light you
scrawled your tight black spider rhymes?

Are they all meaningless, your insights
and my words? Few people now know who
you were and what you represented.

Am I, your scholar, a mere shadow
of your shadow struggling in the straggling
half-light of your existence?

Yet, I’m still intent on sharing light
and the word with a world that thinks
the two of us are out of date and absurd.

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“.

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.

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.