Tag Archives: religion

Day 16 – fire (& stone)

flames.jpg

Spent a large chunk of my writing time today trying to craft a pome comparing & contrasting the fire at Notre Dame with the fire in our climate. While many parts worked, a few did not & I realised longer would be needed to resolve the kinks.

However, while researching the idea I came across another, far less known story, which led to this …

*****

holy houses

in less widely covered news, the revered
al-asqa mosque in east jerusalem
was also struck by (a far less dramatic)
blaze at the same time as notre dame’s
inferno in france — damaging solomon’s
stables beneath a corner of temple mount

here’s a thought:
perhaps god is trying to tell us something

.

.

BONUS POEM: April 16, 2018

The theme persists.

*****

immemorial

stone is worn
moss softens
lichen gathers
chiselled lines
flatten
it rains hard
the sun shines
& pretty soon
everything
is forgotten

14b cornish grave

Day 05 – the moon (& too much travel)

05b BluMoon cropped

Another one of those last minute ring-ins (it is one of the blessings of NaPoWriMo — firing up the creative cogs after something of a lull).

After pottering round with two others pomes for varying parts of the day, this one roared at me about 45 minutes to midnight. There are other myths/folklores I would have like to have worked in but I stopped tweaking at midnight.

NOTE: the formatting may be a bit out of whack: Wordpress doesn’t cope too well with unusually spaced lines. That said, it is meant to be staggered, messy, abstract.

*****

the many things we see in the moon

over millennia in the long night darkness
human eyes, seeking patterns, discover them:

a weaving woman;
                                 clusters of laurel trees;
an elephant jumping off a cliff;
                                                        a girl
with a basket on her back;
                                               many rabbits:
one working a mortar & pestle;
                                                   two fiery,
      one self-sacrificing,
                            & one thrown into a sun;
          yet one more carried by a crane;
innumerable frogs & toads:
                                             an immortal
goddess hiding
                         in the likeness of a toad,
another hiding
                         from a wolf,
                                             a marriage
broker for a Sky Maiden …

but of course it’s none of these
— it’s the Man in the Moon
sometimes carrying a bundle of wood
sometimes just his face (though many
Pacific Islander peoples see a woman)

the real mystery is comprehending how
others could see such bizarre things
when our interpretation is clearly correct

 

 

BONUS POEM: April 5, 2018

Mine haven’t arrived yet, but I’m sure we won’t be like this. Probably needs a good edit which I don’t have time for (sorry for long pome, I didn’t have time to write a short one 😁 NOTE: this incarnation, edited)

*****

Pax Familia

visiting endless iterations
of the long dead past
taxes the best of us
today I touristed more
   tears, tantrums & hissy fits
   pleas to be carried
   how much longer whines
   and demands to go home
than
   statues
   artwork
   or archaeological knick-knacks

despite non fluency in your tongue
I get you are
tense annoyed fully aggro
or just plain over it

such is the beauty
of traveling solo
no one to blame
for arriving late
getting lost
taking too long to decide

no, I never do those things
have never done  anything  so foolish

05 Crowds

Day 5 – Crows everywhere you turn

Today’s Title Poem challenge ties in with what I’m about to do in a little over 90 minutes.

After 8pm tonight, I will be performing a handful of poems at Lee Marvin Readings (LEE MARVIN is ON THE RAZZLE) all connected by a common denominator. That denominator is the same as I’m using as inspiration for this poem, & it is definitely the poem that works best as an independent unit, rather than a word game assemblage.

Source of titles is Ted Hughes’ crow: from the life & songs of the crow. I removed ‘crow’ from any title in which it appeared … & here is the result.

 

crow’s snake hymn

that moment
you hear fate knock on the door
fleeing from eternity
fragment of an ancient tablet
a sickened revenge fable

that moment vanity alights
that moment ego frowns
that moment nerve fails
that moment colour communes blacker than ever

how water begins to play
improvises in laughter
goes hunting
and mama
and the birds
and stone
and the sea
on the beach

that moment
lovesong undersong owl’s song

that moment
you glimpse theology is
a bedtime story
a childish prank
a grin a disaster a kill
a horrible religious error

truth kills everybody

 

36 titles used out of a possible 68. Only 4 italicised words & one tense change. I could have added other titles, but it really felt ‘complete’ at this point & any more would have bloated it. Pretty pleased. Now to get ready for the reading.

 

Day 14 – poem about weight

 

helix nebula

NaPoWriMo should cycle through the months of the year, because repeated participation throws up the same zeitgesty events annually. Today, a topic that continues to intrigue me.

14 sorrows

i.
all that remains
the kiss complete
sentence cast

ii.
weight is not great
merely wood, would
the rest weighed less

iii.
stumble, fall
twice more for
dramatic effect

iv.
love i’ve denied
before me where
others share, i’ve hid

v.
brother shoulders
compelled to bear
what he’d gladly choose

vi.
a cool cloth
give her my face
& my thanks

vii.
halfway to skulls
stagger again, stumble
tumble into desert dust

viii.
women weep
barren wombs, dry breasts
call mountains to crumble

ix.
fall
a third time
at last, almost done

x.
stolen clothes
brigands barter
naked before the gods

xi.
metal bites
wood absorbs blood
more than flesh hangs

xii.
enough
call for poison
the sleep of death

xiii.
amid weeping, relief
the weight off
down, done

xiv.
lie, in darkness
hopefully, finally
some peace

what comes when you have other deadlines

A friend & I are currently doing a trial run for a project we’d like to deliver early next year. This means we are each writing a poem a day (supposedly for all of September, but we’ll see how dry the well gets).  It’s similar to a NaPoWrMo — but a theme has been selected & each poem is an exploration of that theme. We intend to invite other poets, set tasks, & look to publish the best of, etc etc. But I digress.

Six days in, it’s exciting but definitely a very challenging task.

Naturally, given that I have a daily deadline & a set topic — I’m finding all sorts of reasons to write those other poems — NOT AT ALL RELATED TO THE POSSIBLE FUTURE PROJECT TEST RUN!!!! — which have been inside for a few months … or are discovered as I research topics only tangentially related to the topic (if at all).

This is good for those BONUS poems (I must be producing 3  for every 1 project poem each day, & fragments / sketches of others). So it’s nice to have a lot of new first drafts under my belt. [Seriously the application of a curfew makes the fun you have after it has expired soooo much more wonderful!]  But I hope the designated topic starts turning up some gems soon.

This is one of those offcuts. I don’t actually need to say much more about it, as the poem is a little too self-explanatory (hey it’s only a draft) & will tell its story walkin’. The title, sadly, I think is my favourite part 🙂  But it is, at the very least, a quirky piece of information – definitely worth the share.  Thoughts/comments always appreciated.

 

Johannes Goropius Becanus’s Brabantic Obsession

was it:

hubris, naiveté or desperation to be near
a god that patiently does not exist, or at the last
doesn’t actually care enough to intervene

which led 16th century Dutch amateur linguist
Johannes Goropius Becanus to prove
Brabantic was the language spoken in Paradise?

his key theory:

the world’s original language must be its simplest
& given innocent Brabantic has more short words than
Latin, Greek, & Hebrew — viz. it’s older than all three!

corollary theories:

all languages have bitten from the Brabantic tree
Egyptian hieroglyphics represent Brabantic
Eden was located (you guessed it) in the Brabant

oh — did I mention Brabantic was the language
spoken between the Scheldt & Meuse Rivers
in Holland, the region right where Goropius lived?

IKR, coincidence or what!

*****

Tree_of_Knowledge_by_The_Fairywitch

Tree of Knowledge by The-Fairywitch