Tag Archives: crows

Day 16 — nightingale + a trilogy of flamingo fun facts

Just playing round with a passage from Book IV of Virgil’s The Georgics where he describes an incident surrounding the Big O following his failed attempt to restore Eurydice to life (he claims he that O lamented for seven whole months).

nightingale


a nightingale nightly cries
amongst the shadowy poplars

lamenting the loss of her chicks
stolen as i saw by some hard-

hearted ploughman (what need 
has he of three featherless chicks

callously snatched from their nest).
the mourning songstress weeps 

her song throughout the night
all night, every night, repeating 

her miserable notes relentlessly
pierces all peace with her pain

wails all night, fills air all around 
with melancholy protestations.


unlike Orpheus, she has not forgotten 
how to sing

Day 16 – TIL a lot of flamingo related fun facts. (In point of fact I have lots & lots of bird facts, that I almost put a dozen of them into one megapoem, but this flamingo triptych seems to work quite well…)

flamingo triptych

i. 
there are more fake flamingos 
on Earth than real ones

ii. 
flamingos pair for life
some stay mated
for 50 years or more

nice that flamingos
are 12.5x better at 
partnering than i am 

iii.
you probably know 
a crowd of crows is called 
   a murder

& an assembly of owls
  is a parliament 
  (or wisdom, or study)

but life gets really joyful
the day you discover a flock of flamingoes
   is a flamboyance

Day 08 – cracks (& crows)

08 kintsugi-et-kintsukuroi-philosophie

The kintsukuroi meme popped up on my feed again today, It’s a common one that does the SM rounds fairly regularly, but is no less profound for that. I’ve thought about trying to write a pome about it previously, today I gave it the good old red hot crack. It’s not there yet, but I ran out of time.

*****

to repair with gold 

the philosophy is poignant : the aesthetic exquisite : the reality, harder to craft : repair broken pottery with powdered gold, silver, or platinum : mixed with lacquer : the precious metal seams : among the reassembled detritus : supposedly somehow : stronger : more beautiful : for having been broken

i doubt : the proof of fragility : together we dropped : three pots : which broke me : for over two decades : lived too long : with cracks, lines, chips, flaws, scratches, breaks : broken lines : deep trenches : the breaks, the knocks, the shattering : the fragments : too often my baked clay : wished to dry up : crumble : fall to pieces

unlike with Japanese artisans : if your pot breaks : only you can apply the lacquer : today i feel : the joins i’ve made : might be silver : perhaps one day : i’ll be strong enough : to transmute : those luminous lines to gold

 

 

BONUS POEM: April 8, 2018

Lines & images jotted down over past 3-4 days. Finally assembled & fine tuned today.

*****

Snug Voyeur 

every glimpse thrills me.
secret knowledge
hidden when you’re here,
temporarily abandoned;
your harsh full stops
& half-hearted commas;
like warts  like growths  like blisters;
blood clots in the cerebellum
conglomerate of cancer cells

collected sticks  stark
architectural recreations;
high amongst the skeletal
fog framed silhouettes,
reworkings of capillaries
tweaked bronchial tubes;
punctuating the forever
potential for new life.

when the leaves return
when the blossoms bloom
when your long flight
returns you home

08b clot

April 5 – Day Five: modern day celebrations

Although it’s posted a few hours late, this poem was definitely written yesterday.  (As Deb Dawson can attest — I was writing it while watched Tom Cruise play, well, um, Tom Cruise, in “Minority Report”.)

A full day, a bunch of drugs (painkiller & hayfever, I’m not that hardcore), a late night & a wishywashy internet connection when I got home prevented an on time posting. Soz.

Once again, the eventual outcome was not the intended topic. It seems so far every day I’ve had an experience which goads me into poetry-attemping mode.  “Today” (Yesterday) was attending one of the few modern day equivalents of ritual, myth, celebration, collective communion we still have as a culture.  I won’t say much more than that.  See if you can work out what I’m doing before the end.  Locals are going to be at an advantage to international readers…  (so apologies to those three people — hahaha!)

 

Coliseum of the Crow

like Orpheus we began
by descending
into the bowels of hell
our coin to pay Charon
given us by a bank
to compensate
friends who lost
everything in a fire
cross the Styx
find ourselves
in a deserted
concrete mausoleum
half a dozen cars
where a 1000 should be
elevated into the arena
inside the new stadium
before the gates open
strange to be surrounded
by such vast emptiness
where crowds are
meant to congregate
we laugh out loud
at the surreality

then a siren sounds
startling us from
our spacestaring
the rush is on
we are washed away
by damned souls
for surely we are all
damned … believing
in the cult of the Crow

 

1. coliseum

2. hades

The Coliseum & Hades: images: moi