Humor

Riddle-me-Ree

Riddle-me-Ree


What does the kettle whistle
to the grandfather clock
and why does its pendulum
call the kettle black?

A chime in time saves the cuckoo
just before it flies before our eyes …
and in August, fly it must.

Does anyone know how thyme
tells the time and whether or not
the dandelion clock
will learn how and when to chime?

Deep in a Gower Cave,
a woolly rhinoceros weaves
a web of time
on his mother’s knitting needles.

Beside him, in the rock,
a neolithic clock is fast asleep.
Was it Bill Haley put that rock
around the clock?

“You’ll never know,”
rings the sea-bell
tolling on its tidal surge,
“and I don’t have the urge to tell.”

Commentary:

Moo loves a riddle – that is why he fills his paintings with some many strange half people and animals that look out and King Lear at you. Mad as a hatter, is our Moo, especially when he’s feeling Moo-dy Blue. Moo is visually strange and now he is encouraging me to be verbally strange. So I took up the gauntlet, accepted the challenge, and road Nexus, my old dobbin, down to the end of the jousting lists, up with my lance and shield, and off I go.

Luckily Moo doesn’t know what I am talking about and he doesn’t have a dobbin anyway, let alone a lance. So, there he is, sitting on the sidelines, flicking paint at me with his paint brush. “The brush is mightier than the last,” he said. “Here’s mud in your eye!” And he must have been to PEI, because the mud was all red.

Alas, the Field Marshal thought I was bleeding, so he waved the white handkerchief and told me to leave the field of combat before PEI was swept away and vanished under a tide of big red mud along with Bud the Spud. And that made Stompin’ Tom stomping mad. “He might at least have used ketchup,” he cried, “because ketchup loves potatoes.” I found out, a lot later, that he had actually betted some money on me and was furious because he lost it.

“Never mind, Tom,” I told him. “Jousting isn’t the best game out there, and not every day does the best knight win.” “Hmmm,” said the Man from Skinner’s Pond. “I guess I could write a song about that. I think I’ll call it The Good Old Nexus Game. Nope. Doesn’t sound write. Jousting game? Nope. Hockey – that’s it – I’ll just go off, get my guitar, and tune up the old stompin’ bored.”


A Question for AI

A Question for AI

It is hard
to shed the skin
and skin once shed
can never
be worn again

Yesterday
is gone
today
slips slowly by

Tomorrow
always comes
but never arrives

Who and what am I
this child
who thrives on sorrow
and on a sadness
that grinds
bones to dust
and soft silk ash

Tell me
if you know
what will arrive
for this child
tomorrow
if and when
it comes

Comment:

Moo is back painting and I am sure everybody is happy to hear that. Mind you, he’s a little bit on the Moo-dy side, if you know what I mean, as you can see from this painting. He calls it Moody Moo and he says it’s a Moo-d painting. He swears there’s a Moo Cow in it, but search as I have, I cannot see a Mrs. Moo. Let me know if you find one. Usual route – unless you have a drone of one sort or another. They have the road up leading into town and we had to wait a long time yesterday at the roadside while little men in yellow hats stood in front of the cars and wouldn’t let them move.

It was so bad, I put Pete Seeger on the disc player and turned the volume up full. “No pasarán, no pasarán, sang the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.” I thought it was rather funny. The person holding the placard that said STOP didn’t seem to be amused. I don’t if it was the volume. Maybe he spoke Spanish and knew all about the Spanish Civil War and how the Abraham Lincoln Brigade stopped Franco’s troops and wouldn’t let them pass! No pasarán, no pasarán – those yellow hatted road buccaneers certainly closed down the narrow straits that led to our house and they wouldn’t let anyone through. No pasarán, no pasarán.

Meanwhile, old Welsh logic – tomorrow never comes, because by the time it gets here, its today. “Good one,” says Moo, checking the way I have reproduced his painting. Oh yes, the original is for sale, Moo says – going cheap for a five figure sum. And that’s not counting the two zeros after the dot! I think Moo is really asking too much. OW! He just kicked me. Sorry, Moo. That’s a very fair price. Now he seems happy. But I don’t think you’ll get it. Now he seems sad – oh dear, just like I said – “Moody Moo”!

I’d better be careful, or he will be doing some Blue Moo paintings next, and he’ll be turning the air blue while he’s painting them. Meanwhile, speaking of AI – here’s the news that’s rolling round the rock at Island View. There’s a new book on the market. A limited Edition. Only 50 copies. Keep your eyes open. They will soon be a collector’s item. In fact, they already are. Go for it -Don Roger and Don Ryan. Oh yes. Moo did the cover painting for that one too. But he’s not selling it – he’s already given it away to another friend.

Obsidian’s Edge 2
An AI Analysis

Don Roger & Don Ryan

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.

Neighbors

Neighbors

lights in the new house
we haven’t met them yet
we’ve seen them clearing the lot
digging basement and well
setting up the tile field

children playing riding bikes
bouncing on a trampoline
swinging on swings
their shrill voices breaking
the brooding silence of trees

sooner or later we’ll meet
it will be neat to put names
to faces and decipher
the stick shadows seen
in the distance shifting
dancing changing shape

a new generation of hope
turned into neighbors

Commentary:

“The olde order changeth, lest one good custom should corrupt the world.” Idylls of the King – Tennyson.

We have been here in this house for 37 years. We planted trees, and watched them grow. We watched lots being sold, developed, turned into houses. Many of those who were here when we arrived downsized, moved away, or in some cases, simply passed away and died.

We have seen families move in, and then move on. Some became very good friends, and we miss them dearly. Others were mere nodding acquaintances. Some spoke our language, others didn’t. We met many of them and their children at Hallowe’en until Covid arrived and spooked even the spooks. As an event, it ghosted out of our lives.

Soon it will be our turn to move. Our house will belong to somebody else. Our house? We are restless souls inhabiting a changing planet. We own nothing. We merely borrow, use, and pass it on to someone else who, in their own turn, will eventually pass it on.

So – what exactly do I own? What do I control? Only this single moment of time, this tiny particle of time when I raise my fingers, choose which keys I will type and in what order. And sometimes, even that is incorect / incorrect, for i / I make misteaks / mistakes, fale / fail to corekt / correct them, place the wrng wrong finger on the wrong key. A single slip of the finger – a bright red button – sometimes I wonder how it will all end.

Sun Bird

Sun Bird

You fill a hole in my life
with a strange unfamiliar
super glue
that bonds me to you

ties unseen unknown
bind us and stop me
from being alone

we neither touch
nor hug
yet a secret stream
links us joining us
mind to mind

manna from heaven
descends on the desert
more powerful
than mortal love

Free Spirit

Free Spirit

I stare at nothing
and nothing do I see
nothingness is the state for me

for me anonymity
no name no form
and shapeless I will be

shapeless yes hopeless no
for this I know – eternity
has sown its seeds in me

ashes to ashes dust to dust
my spirit will eternal be

my death will set it free
free to fly – free to roam
free to find my forever home

Comment:

Moo is bring stroppy. He has started painting again, but he refuses to sign his paintings. “Three little letters,” I told him. I won’t tell you what he told me to do. little bit embarrassing, and I am not that flexible in my old age.

Never mind. When nobody was looking, I promised him one of KTJ’s world famous Peanut Butter Balls. Well, they would be world famous if I let them out of my fridge in Island View, and I certainly don’t intend doing that. Then I asked him for a title and he went as crazy as Cuckoo Spit. He told me he was Going Bodmin Again, just like in Doc Martin. I told him he wasn’t in Doc Martin. “How do you know,” he asked, “you always fall asleep in front of the telly.”

He thinks he was hugging that great big squirrel, as mad as a hatter, as crazy as a loon, as loony as a man in a loony bin. So, why does a lunatic sleep under the bed. Answer – because he’s a little potty of course.

Does anybody read this junk I write? I can’t imagine that they would. However, if you are reading it, please send a recipe for maple fudge by mule train via the lower Andes. I think it is quicker than snail mail, or the dog sled via the North Pole. Every time a dog lies down for a rest, those sleds get a flat tire.

Loopy

Swings

They told me that one day
my feet would be up in the air,
and the next they would be stuck
on the ground.

A roundabout, they said,
a merry-go-round,
with all the fun of whatever fair
happens to be around that day.

Someone, not me, flicks a switch,
music plays, the carousel horses
move up and down, slowly at first,
then faster and faster as day, music,
and horses all gather pace.

There are no reins. If there were,
I would heave those horses
back towards whatever reality I left.

But what is reality now?
These hot flashes that warm my flesh?
Those cold flushes that make me shiver,
then turn up the heat
until I am sweating again?

Shadows grow. I pull less strongly
on the swing boat’s ropes.
My journey slows. The showman
raises the bar beneath the wooden hull.

Wish it or not, my time is nearly up.
With a bumpety-thump,
my journey grinds
to its inevitable end.

Comment

Moo is having a bad hair day. Somebody glued all his paint brushes together and he hasn’t painted anything for a long time. The painting above dates back to April. Oh dear. Poor Moo. I shall shed a little tear for him, when he is not looking. I wouldn’t want him to know I care, so please don’t tell him. I wish I could unclog his paint brushed for him. but I am not very good at that sort of thing. In fact, I don’t think I am particularly good at anything right now.

Everyday is an adventure now. Every day something happens. Sometimes for the better, more often for the worse. Like a knocked my morning cup of coffee over. Like I burned the toast and the fire alarm went off. Like I squeezed the orange and the juice went all over the table cloth to join the wine stains that I made when I reached for the salt and I knocked that over s well. And don’t let’s talk about filling my fountain pens and leaking ink everywhere.

So – look on the bright side of things. Every cloud has a silver lining. Hooray. Down every rabbit hole, there is a little rabbit. Dig deep and you will find it. Or not. If not, then find another rabbit hole or buy your own rabbit, stuff it down the hole, then dig it out again.

Never surrender. Never give up hope. And look – there’s a rabbit, just going down it’s rabbit hole. Don’t go away. I’ll be back in a little while, as soon as I have caught it. Welsh recipe for rabbit pie – “First, catch your rabbit.” And watch out for those fleas. “Little bunnies have tiny fleas upon their backs to bite them. And lesser fleas have smaller fleas, and so ad infinitum.”

My AI investigation tells me that Augustus De Morgan (1872): The 19th-century mathematician popularized the rhyming couplet known as Siphonaptera (the biological order of fleas):

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.


Alebrijes

alebrije2

     Alebrijes step out from dried wood and stand in the shower of paint that falls from the brush’s tip. Yellow flash of lightning, pointillistic rain, garish colors that mirror those of the códices. The carvings take the form of fantasy figures, anthropomorphic animals,
 and mythological creatures.

Sometimes one individual selects the wood, carves it, then covers it in paint. Occasionally an entire family takes part in the work of making the alebrije. One person collects the wood and prepares it for carving. Another carves and sands it. A third works on the undercoat, and a fourth applies the final patterns of paint.

The great debate: does the form in the wood 
reveal itself to the carver
 or do the carvers impose their own visions on the wood? In the case of the team, do the family members debate and come to a joint conclusion?

These thoughts, exchanged with wood-carvers in Oaxaca, all with different opinions, have led to a series of interesting conversations. What exactly is creativity? Where does it come from? Do we, as artists, impose it upon our creations? Or do we merely observe and watch as new ideas float to the surface of our minds? How does the creative mind really function? And, by extension, how much of the sub-conscious creative sequence can be placed into words?

Alebrijes

 Are they half-grasped dreams
that wake, wide eyed, to a new day’s sun?

Or are they alive and thriving
when they fall from the tree?

Does the carver fish their color and shape
from his own interior sea,
or does he watch and wait for the spirit
to emerge from its wooden cocoon
to be reborn in a fiery block of color?

Daybreak:
in a secluded corner of my waking mind,
my neighbor’s dog greets the dawn with sparks
of bright colors born from his bark.

My waking dream: dark angels with butterfly bodies,
their inverted wings spread over my head to keep me warm.
In the town square, the local artist plucks dreams
from my head and paints them on carved wood.

Or is this the true source of inspiration?

Poema de Amor – Love Poem

Poema de Amor / Love Poem

Mitla, Oaxaca, Mexico.


Mitla is a sacred burial place in the Oaxaca Valley.
 The caves in the hills above the town
 are said to lead directly to an underworld from which demons and devils emerge at night and by means of which humans can communicate with the souls of the dead. Mitla, in fact, is often called the city of the dead.
 Legend has it that if you embrace  a certain magic column in the Palace at Mitla, 
the time left for you to live can be measured by the distance 
between your fingers as they reach round the pillar and almost touch.
 The pillar, they say, grows and shrinks according to the length of the seeker’s life. Petrus,  a rock, in Latin, evolves into piedra, 
a rock or stone in Spanish: upon this rock will I build my church.

1
We walk on tiptoe round the garden
peeling free the sunlight cloud by cloud

sometimes the heart is a sacrifice of feathers
bound with blood to an ornate altar

petrus
this rock cold against my chest
piedra
centuries of glyphs alive in your face

if our arms meet round these all too human columns
what will become of us?

2
beneath your skin the woad lies as blue as this evening sky
yellow light bends low in the fields below us
each darkened pool a warrior fallen beneath the scythe

the moon paints a delicate circle
its great round open eye stands out
above the rooftops
tonight it bears an eye lid carved from  cloud

our teeth are diadems of whiteness
we tie shadows to our heels
and dance in triumph through street and square

3
daylight bends itself round rock and turns into shadow
we flourish in blocks of fire

dreaming new selves from roots and branches
we clasp each resurrection with greedy fingers
will the moon rise again tonight and will we watch?

dark angel bodies with butterfly wings
our shadows have eloped together

we can see them sitting side by side
bumping knees at a table in the zócalo

4
church bells gild the barrio‘s rooftops
our fingers reach to the skies and hold back light
we draw shadow blinds to shut out the day
night fills us with stars and silhouettes

we dream ourselves together in a silent movie
closed flesh woven from cobwebs
lies open to a tongue-slash of madness

the neighbor’s dog wakes up on the azotea
he barks bright colors as dawn declares day
and windows and balconies welcome the sun

can anyone see the dew-fresh flowers
growing from our tangled limbs?

your fingers sew a padlock on my lips
“Listen to the crackle of the rising sun!”

Tuseday’s Child

Tuesday’s Child

1

Thursday’s Child has far to go …
so too does Tuesday’s child,
especially this one, when he sets out
on a Tuesday on a long journey.

Just by chance, I caught this cormorant.
“Behind you, quick,” said Clare.
I turned and ‘Click!’

2

Such a miracle:
the first steps of flight
taken over water.
That first step heavy,
the second one lighter,
and the third one
scarcely a paint brush
pocking the waves.

3

The need for Tuesday’s Child
to take flight lies deep within me.
Fleeing from what?
Running towards what?
Who knows?

All I know is that the future
lies to the right of this photo
and the past lies to the left,
and I don’t know
what either might contain.

4

But I do remember the words
of Antonio Machado:

‘Caminante, no hay camino,
sólo hay estela sobre la mar.’
traveler, there is no road,
just a wake across life’s sea.

5

We may not know what lies ahead
but, like a ship at sea,
we leave white water behind us
and that wake tells us
where we have been
and what we have done.