Premonitions

Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.

Daily writing prompt
Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.
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Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.

Once upon a time, I lay in the sea, at midnight, in Brandy Cove, and I watched the moonlight lap over the waves as I lay there. I began to relax and felt the moon rise. Then I rose up with it, just like Cyrano de Bergerac, and I rose, rose, rose, up into the sky until I was level with the moon.

Was this the furthest I have traveled from home? No.

Once upon a time I climbed with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza upon the back of Clavileño and I rose up, up, up into the skies until I danced among the seven sisters, the Pleiades, and counted them, one by one. Sancho told me they were little goats, all colored differently. “And look,” he said. “That’s the earth, down there, as small as an orange pip.”

Was this the furthest I have traveled from home? No.

A long time ago, I visited Stonehenge and marveled at the temple my ancestors had created there to tell the time and worship the sun. Seven thousand years ago, they told me. I closed my eyes and dreamed I was back there with them, digging the post holes and raising the stones.

Was this the furthest I have traveled from home? No.

I also visited Hengistbury Head in Dorset. There I discovered the scrapes the Reindeer People had scratched in the chalky soil nearly ten thousand years ago. Older than Stonehenge, I lay down in the rocky soil high above what is now the English Channel. My mind went back in time. The waters slowly receded and I saw green grass where herds of reindeer crossed the meadows that still attached Albion to the mainland of Europe.

Was this the furthest I have traveled from home? No.

Once upon a time, I truly traveled and visited Avila. I wandered among the ancient ruins of the pre-Christian monuments. There I stroked the granite of the Toros of Guisando, and watched the ever-lasting storks as they nested in the towers of all the churches. I also walked the Roman Road at the Puerto del Pico. When I ran my hands over the bodies of the verracos, I marveled upon how far away from home I found myself, and how small the world really was.

Was this the furthest I have traveled from home? No.

Once upon another time, I really traveled, this time by plane. I flew to Oaxaca, Mexico, and went back a thousand years or more in time. I read the Pre-Columbian Mixtec Codices, climbed the temples, visited the tombs, consulted a witch doctor, drank mescal, ate chapulines, and entered a world beyond my world.

Was this the furthest I have traveled from home? I no longer know. But I do know that el mundo es un pañuelo – the world is a handkerchief, as the Spanish say. Yes indeed. It is a small, small world. Alas, too many people are blowing their noses into it right now and I see and grieve for this, even when I am at home.

Low Ebb

Low Ebb

We have been apart too long, my love,
night’s dark corridor lying between us
and neither of us approaching the other
when doors close and blinds are drawn.

The way to the heart of the matter is not
an easy path to walk, not any more.
Our secret ways and dreams lie cold
upon chill, empty sheets and pillows.

Each day the tide revives the beach,
flowing out, abandoning its wet debris
for the sun to perform its magic: fresh
seaweed drying above warm sand.

Sea-birds bury their beaks, writing claw
letters as crabs burrow, dig deep, waiting
for the tide to return and re-create
its alternate reality of dreamy waters.

Half of my bed performs its nightly duty.
The other half lies cold, empty, lonely.
No sea-life wanders there, not even in
my most creative dreams of sun and sand.

Comment: The loneliness of old age is compounded by many factors, including ill-health, sleeplessness, and the need to sleep in separate rooms. How many homeless people suffer that loneliness, and more, and at ages much less than ours? And then there’s the distress of trying to live in poverty, to survive from day to day, with safety net that will not protect us, if we chance to fall. A sad world then, as Polly Toynbee points out in today’s Guardian.


Underworld

Underworld

In the secret world of my goldfish bowl
I speak in bubbles but only hear silence.

My fish-eye lens bends the pendulum
of the grandfather clock. Westminster chimes,

inaudible, do not intrude. Noiseless are time’s
ripples across the surface of my submarine sphere.

I feel, rather than hear, my troubled heart beat.
The foreboding sounds of distant voices leave

me untouched and becalmed. Rocked in love’s
cradle, these amniotic waters nourish and soothe.

In my beginning will be my end. One day I’ll return
to the beaches of my childhood, where the sun

always shines, and the moon path over the waves
is a welcoming walkway leading to the underworld.

What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?

Daily writing prompt
What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?
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What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?

Looking around me and seeing the way that the world I know is so totally divided, and knowing that words and ideas will bounce off people’s backs like rain off a duck’s back, I do not expect my blog to make any changes, big or small, to the world. Would I like it to? Yes, I would. But whether it will or not is a different question.

My blog consists of several elements. Let us start with the poetry. If I can reach out and touch somebody with one or more of my poems, then I will be very happy. This is, after all, a poetry blog. And part of that blog is a continuing discourse on creative writing and poetic creativity. If one of my articles / posts on creativity can help one person, just one, to improve their creativity, then I will feel justified with all the hard work and thought I have put into the posts.

I also write about Discourse Analysis, the meaning of words and texts. In our current, doubt-ridden world, it is often the loudest voice that carries the most weight, and he wildest ideas that get the most attention. I always remember that still, small voice that comes after the fire and the thunder: “What doest thou here, Elijah?” Alas, I am not an Elijah, nor am I a prophet, nor am I out to make a profit. But if someone, somewhere, recognizes my voice as a still, small, voice speaking a little bit of sense in this wilderness of wild words, then I will be satisfied. My creative prose comes next. It is mostly composed of flash fiction, memoirs, and short stories. If I can bring tears or laughter to the eyes and the heart of just one reader, then again I will feel that I have done my work.

Then there is my art work. I have always been told that I am useless at art. Mind you, I think those people came from the same school of thought that told me, as a teenager, that I would never go to university – except on a train. However, I discovered Matisse and his words ‘making meaning out of color and shape’. Then came Dali – ‘I don’t know what it means, but I know it means something.’ Out of those words have come cartoons and paintings, some funny, some sad, and all of them unique. Again, if one reader / viewer finds joy in them, then I will be happy. And if my own work persuades one battered, belittled artist that he or she can paint, create, make meaning out of color and shape, then I will have achieved the minor miracle of helping to change someone’s life for the better.

As for these prompts, I have only just started to be prompted into doing something. Why? I am not sure why. I just think that I have a different view of the world from most people. If I can offer that alternative view of reality, a joyous reality, I might add, to one, or maybe even two people, then once more, I can feel that yes, my blog has made one, small change to the world around me. And I cannot ask for more than that.

Meanwhile, I think of the studies I did on the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The right kept moving further right. The left kept moving further left. The middle ground where discourse, creative thinking, and debate can flourish, slowly vanished. Then, when positions and thoughts became so deeply entrenched that there was no room for mainoeuvre / manouver / maneuver, whichever way you wish to spell it, then shooting broke out and people went to war and found, all too often, their often-violent deaths. I would not wish that fate on any person, government or country. If just one person would read that powerful and bitter history, and learn from it, then the world might be a better place.

To talk to one person at a time, that’s what I want from my blog. Then I want that person to talk to another person, and the third one to a fourth, and so on and so forth, until we have established, one person at a time, a linked chain that may, just may, be long enough and strong enough to help lighten the darkness and head off the dangers into which we seem to be steering.

Qué será

Qué será

Peace in the Peace Park,
here on the headland,
where cool grass slopes
down to the water’s edge.

Geese have nested close by
and gifted us with goslings.
Golden balls of fluff, they walk
on the land right now,
but soon will take to the water.

A thin, yellow line, they will
paddle behind their parents,
webbed feet invisible
beneath the water’s flow.

And I, in the metal coffin
of my over-heated car,
sit and watch them, envying
their freedom of movement,
waiting for whatever will come.

My beloved draws near.
I sense as much as see her,
as I covet her strong steps,
the ageless sway of her body.

Alas, I am growing old,
and not with any grace,
but fighting it all the way,
and qué será, será
is all that I can say.

What foods would you like to make?

Daily writing prompt
What foods would you like to make?
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What foods would you like to make?

Walking round the supermarket the other day, I was astonished by the high prices now written on labels. Meat is virtually unaffordable, especially the good cuts. Butter at $9.00 a lb is a shock to the system. Eggs are up to $6.00 or more for a dozen. Wow! So much of what I used to cook I can now no longer afford. So What foods would I like to make?

Good, wholesome, cheap, nourishing foods. Foods that could be distributed to the city’s poorest people, at very little cost. Foods that would support those who are struggling with high rentals or rapidly climbing mortgages. Foods that would give a genuine opportunity to do both, to those who are wondering whether they should heat or eat . Foods that would allow people to stay on their medication and not be forced to choose between eating, heating, or skipping their pills.

Now, with these enormous heatwaves, house-cooling is also a priority, as is clean air, and clean water. Our food preparation, sooner or later, will have to take so many different factors into account. ‘Brother, there’s a reckoning comin’ in the morning’ – the spiritual says it well and speaks true – ‘better get ready ‘cos I’m giving you the warning’.

And remember, the percentages of people who can no longer afford to live a decent, respectable life is rising, not falling. Food Banks are on the rise and more people are using them. Soup kitchens too. In the United Kingdom, now known as the Untied Kingdom, it is rumored that government is cutting sponsorship to food banks so that more people will return to their daily gigs and fulfill their duties of supporting themselves financially by seeking multiple employments at minimum wage or less. Alas, even then, with multiple jobs and moonlighting, they cannot necessarily sustain a decent life-style.

So, what foods would I like to make? Good, cheap wholesome foods that would support a maximum number of people for a maximum span of time. Pax amorque.

Pain and Pane

Pain and Pane

I am living in a Duke of York world
fraught with mood swings and random changes.
When I am up, I am up, and when I am down,
well, then I am down, and every so often,
I meet in the middle and am neither up nor down.

At night I swim among the constellations
and the stars net silver sequins in my hair.
By day, I walk along a piano’s keyboard
and replay life’s ups and downs like scales,
practicing them, again and again.

I no longer know who or what I am.
I only know I exist right here, at my desk,
my table, in my bed, looking out through
a window that has opened in my head,
a window that serves as a mirror.

I step through it, and go back to my childhood
in Wales. I recall the sunny days of sea and sand,
but also those days when sunlight fails, clouds
gather, and the west wind conjures rain and gales.
Such pain as I press my nose against the window
pane, and watch the raindrops falling again.

Lost

Lost

Where can it be? I put it
somewhere safe, but I
can’t remember where.

So many things grow legs,
go absent without leave,
walk out of my world.

I am slowly losing control.
My life will soon be left
in somebody else’s hands.

They will control my wants
needs, and necessities.
Then I too will be lost.

Placed somewhere safe,
perhaps, there to lie forgotten,
abandoned, secure, perhaps,
but who knows at what cost.

Swings

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 to 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 journey grinds
to its inevitable end.

Click here for Roger’s reading.