Spoken Poetry

Time Beyond Time

Meditations on Messiaen
Quartet for the End of Time

7

Time Beyond Time

Time beyond time and the eternal
ever-present in the quotidian.

When the Seventh Angel sounds his trumpet,
time will be no more and this earth
will be pulped, like an orange,
in an almighty hand, clenched into a fist.

Thus it is writ, and sundry have read the words.
repetitive forms cycle and recycle themselves,
diatonic chords disassociated by duration.
Laud, bless and praise always the vivid joy,
light and color lighting up the skies
in an aurora borealis seldom seen.

Indefectible light, unalterable peace,
rhythmic repetition, time’s serpent
circling around itself and devouring its tail
in assonance and dissonance, the utmost beauty
of raindrop birdsong, its liquid forever decanted.
Infinitely slow, ecstatic is the message.

“Laud, bless, and praise him all thy days
for it is seemly so to do.”
Old One Hundredth.

Click on the link below for Roger’s reading.

Time Beyond Time

Crystal Liturgy

Meditations on Messiaen
Quartet for the End of Time

6

Crystal Liturgy

Here, in the abyss,
where song-birds pluck their notes
and send them, feather-light,
floating through the air,
here there are no tears,
no fear of shadow-hawks,
for all blackness is abandoned
in the interests of sunlight and song.

Here, the crystal liturgy surges,
upwards from the rejoicing heart,
ever upwards, into the realms of light,
where color and sound alike
brim over with the joy that, yes,
brings tears of release to head and heart.

Here, the seven trumpets will sound
their furious dance that will announce
the end of this singer, the end of time,
but not the end of song itself.

Here, seven-stringed rainbows reign.
Here, the harp is tuned and plucked.
Here, the everlasting music
cements the foundations of earth and sky.
Here, the master musician conducts
his eternal choir, their voices rising,
higher and higher, until they reach
the highest sphere, and song and voice
inspire, then expire, passing from our eyes
and ears into the realms of everlasting light.

Click on the link below for Roger’s reading

Crystal Liturgy

Silence

A stopped clock: accurate twice a day.

Meditations on Messiaen
Quartet for the End of Time

5

Silence

Pain stops as the sounds of silence
break against the walls of the room
in which I sit.

Silence, yes, yet silence broken
by the renewed intrusion of the clock,
by the electric hum from lights
and heating, from a distant tv
suddenly breaking into my thoughts:
cheers from a tennis court,
the eternal advertisements
invading my innermost being.

What triviality now shatters
the Messiaenic mood that wrapped
me for a moment in a many colored
cloak of musical oblivion.

Now time’s teeth gnaw again
and the grandfather clock
nibbles at my soul, extracting
its essence in a surge of sound,
tick-tock, tick-tock.

Westminster Chimes now choke
life from the hour and ring
the tick-tock knell that files
my life away, second by second,
minute by minute, day by day.

Click on link below for Roger’s reading.

Silence

Transitions

Meditations on Messiaen
Quartet for the End of Time

4

Transitions

Modes of limited transitions,
moods of time tapped in time
to time’s rhythmic piano.

Scales fall from the listener’s eyes.
A transitory awakening,
this glimpse of the composer’s vision,
each note a new version
extracted from abstracts
perceived in color,
each note a hue, and chords
a rainbow spectrum of light
glimpsed darkly through
a raindrop’s lens.

Birdsong and sunshine.
Notes perched
on the matinal branch,
each in tune with the other,
at times discordant,
yet the morning chorus
diluting the day
with the liquidity
of light and sound.

Click on the link below for Roger’s reading.

Transitions

Waiting

Waiting

I remember pushing
my father around the ward.
Two weeks we had together.
He sat in his wheel chair
and I wheeled him
up and down.

“Cancer, ” they told me.
“But it’s kinder not to let him know.”

In those days, it was better to die,
without knowing why.
Did I betray him by not letting
him know what I now need to know?

One day, he begged for help
and I lifted him onto the toilet.
He strained and strained
but couldn’t go.

“Son,” he said, sitting there.
“Will you rub my back?”
How could I say no?

That strong man,
the man who had carried me
on his back,
and me standing there,
watching him,
trousers around his knees,
straining, hopelessly,
and me bent over him,
rubbing his back,
waiting,

for him to go.

Click here for Roger’s reading of
Waiting.

Waiting

The story of one man’s journey

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Waiting

I remember pushing
my father around the ward
in the hospital.
Two weeks we had together.

My father sat in his wheel chair
and I wheeled him
up and down.

“Cancer,” they told me.
“But it’s kinder not to let him know.”
In those days, it was better to die
without knowing why.
Did I betray him by not letting him
know what I now need to know?

One day, he begged me for help
and I lifted him out of his wheelchair
and placed him on the toilet.
He strained and strained
but could not, would not go.

“Son,” he said, sitting there,
“Will you rub my back?”
How could I say no?

That strong man,
the man who had carried me
in his arms, on his back,
and me standing there,
watching him,
his trousers around his knees,
straining hopelessly,
and me bent over him,
rubbing his back,
waiting,

for him to go.

Comment: Thank you, once again, Alejandro Botelho of Diverse TV. This was a great reading. If you, dear reader, are interested, you can listen to it HERE. Alejandro’s reading of my poem begins at 40.52 and ends at 42.33. But remember, the other poems are also well worth listening to and Alejandro has a great voice and wonderful interpretation. A further comment: first there is the text. Then there is Alejandro’s excellent reading. Then there is my own reading. From each of these the observant reader and / or listener will extract a slightly different emphasis and meaning. In my own case, following Alejandro’s reading of the original text, I have added some minor changes, to add to the intertextual rhythm of the words. Tolle, lege et vade mecum. A Cancer Chronicle is available HERE.

Bird’s Nest

Jackson Pollock it ain’t. But just look at those fledgling storks launching themselves into the air. And yes, those are their nests!

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Bird’s Nest
Jackson Pollock No5 (1948)

This bird’s nest starts with a startling tweet
that wins a trilled, thrilled response. A flutter
of heart-string wings, creator, viewer, join

with the creation. Thin threads of life mix
and match their tangled weave, existential
tapestry, fathered in a feathered nest.

World without end, this labyrinth without
an entry point, without a beginning,
with a spaghetti-thread middle that meets

not in a breath-catch of the mind, but in
a brush-flick of coloured rain, a cycle
recycled of circled paint, circular

in its circumnavigation, its square
eight by four-foot globe of a new world whirled
in stringy whorls, reinvented beauty

drawn haphazardly from the bicycle
tour de force of this artist’s inner mind.

Comment: This is a tongue-twister of a poem, much as Jackson Pollock’s painting is a twisted vision twisting the viewer’s eye. And, no, it is not easy to read. Nor is the painting easy to view. Click here for a link > Jackson Pollock < to the painting. Click here for a link to Alejandro Botelho’s reading of < My Grandfather >. Note that Alejandro’s reading of My Grandfather begins at 17.58. And note too that the other poets are also well worth listening to. Once again, thank you for this, Alejandro: your work is very much appreciated.

Man of Glass

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Man of Glass
After El Licenciado Vidriera
(Miguel de Cervantes)

“I am made of glass,” I said.
“You can see right through me.”

But the harder you looked,
the less you saw.
You claimed
there was nothing there,
just empty air.

“Your glass is an illusion,” you said.
“It’s not half full
and it’s not half empty.”

“Glass is fragile,
I break easily.
Drop me, I shatter;
hot and cold will
make me crack.”

“Your fragility is in your mind,
not in the fact of your existence.”

“When light passes through me
I break into a million colors,”
I said.

“You are a prism,
the colors that you cast
change you and rain
rainbow lights
that change others
too.”

“That’s because,” I said,
“I’m made of glass.”

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MT 2-1 Kinder Monkey Garten

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MT 2-1
Kinder Monkey Garten

Give him a magnifying glass
and monkey nit-picks!
He likes nit-picking.

Hunting for fleas,
he combs through the fur
of less fortunate monkeys.

Monkey see: monkey do,
and what monkey does best
is crack fleas between his nails
and stick his paw in the jam jar.

Here, in the Kinder Monkey Garten,
young monkeys learn monkey skills:
how to conduct monkey business,
how to throw a monkey wrench
into other monkeys’ plans,
how to wear monkey suits,
how to square round pegs
and fit them into triangular holes,
how to build better monkey traps,
how to reinvent the monkey wheel,
again and again and again.

Monkey likes to perch enthroned
at the top of the monkey temple.
Paradise is to squat
on the organ-grinder’s shoulder,
top banana that.

Monkey also likes to visit the rest of the zoo.

 

MT 1-8 Monkey’s Verdict

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Monkey’s Verdict

(After George Orwell’s Animal Farm,
an inverted Mr. Micawber, and a Gower proverb) 

Although monkey has been the primus primate inter pares,
he has never done anything himself,
so he reduces all competitive monkeys to his own level
by negating anything they have ever done.
Only then, will he be their equal.

“All monkeys are equal,
but some monkeys are obviously
more equal than others!”

Here, in the temple’s garbage dump,
monkey finds the lowest of the low,
scratching for fleas and baring
their yellowed, monkey teeth.

They scrabble in the temple’s garbage,
searching for something,
anything to reject yet again.

Monkey writes anonymous letters
with a poisoned pen.
He conceals his hand
and throws ambiguous stones.
He has learned from blows
delivered to another monkey’s head
and has become a wise monkey:

Monkey’s template for survival in the temple:
“Dick other monkeys before they can dick you!”

Primus primate steadily ascends
the monkey puzzle tree:
but the higher he climbs,
the more he reveals
his asshole.