today i am wrapped in a cloak of rain
enclosed in my own world
the smallest of human worlds
rain’s grey shawl renders me invisible
everything around me, invisible
the sky is invisible
the only thing i know to be true is that my feet are on the ground
i can almost believe
i am the only person
to ever have been here and now
then i realise i am
and it is kind of nice
Paper glider
Luft reminder
Of the history of flight
Of little boys
Crafting simple toys
Becoming Brothers Wright
I read poetry and that strikes me as something of a strange thing to do because I perceive the large majority of people don’t. Why would they when it is so often hard work? Finding the rhythm if there is one, gleaning the meaning, interpreting the language and often deliberately obscure references to matters of apparent yet not obvious significance.
Poetry is where we can discover more than words alone can convey. Where more can be said than with words themselves by unconventionally contextualising their expression.
But without effort there is no reward. Oh my, I read poetry because it calls to me. Whether baldly belligerent or so subtle as to confound. I often thrill and marvel at meanings real and imagined, stimulated through another’s mind in the most pure yet ill defined form of communication I can follow. Where numerical patterns, rhyme, metre, syntax, verse and free form prose all rate as valid, where everyone who can write has an opportunity to write in their own unique way. Where understanding is so fluid you can literally read a passage as if it’s meaning is either explicit, implicit or complicit. Every which way will be different. Where poetry trumps language there will always be found adventure!
To be deceived by art Is where the pleasure lies As Oscar Wilde said When the finished work dries Art unexplained Awaits reference in time For art to have context Someone must find An intrinsic meaning An enchantment or spell A hard fact or history That explains it well So ethereal This imaginative bent Where art creates product But may not pay rent The elusive success Of an artist such as me Depends on the work And conveying what we see To be reminded of something That may not be there Is the way we see art Reminiscent or bared The artist displays What the artist portrays The observers creates What the observer says And the feeling is surreal This fraught disconnect Must artists defer To the critics subject Is it in artist’s deceit Where the pleasure lies Taking the work and working it wise Psychological or literal The interpretation applied Is anything worthy In a meaning belied With all the definition in Every artists hand The lines of description Are at critics command The intensity of design Or depicting a glance For artist and critic It’s the art of chance Is ugly ugly Or is it brave and true Is beauty beauty Or a sop to me and you Only the artist knows Where the artist goes But as deception grows Across art shows The artist bows To the stories faux As the critics row And the sponsors crow And the buyers coo Gallery owners woo speculators too Attempt to choose The number 1 pick That makes art slick To turn a buck Art by the truck Instead of art refined As in the artist‘s mind But only the artist knows Where the artist goes
Ever watch a kookaburra
Sweep in from on high
In a perfect arc
Geometry made art
Beak as an arrowhead
Body flat as an arrow
Piercing the air
Fletched tail as rudder
Precision steering
A dart to the bullseye
Wings not moving a millimetre
Purposeful focussed targeted
Missile like glide
Ever watch a kookaburra?
1. My father read Tolkien to me as a kid. It was the 1960s.
2. Tolkien is still popular now. Sadly this fact more arises from movie reviews than book reads. Movies can be great, but also they lose so much. I wonder why people do not experience FOMO when they have only viewed the movie and there is a whole book waiting to be read?
3. A single book can change the world. Tolkien’s four books of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings created new worlds of imagination, changed the world of literature and the world of art would never be the same again.
4. My father’s copies had stiff cardboard covers encased in a red fabric fading to pinkish. The fabric was worn to threadbare in places such as the corners and finger grip sites. The spines were ragged and peeling.
5. The physical books themselves looked and felt to me as timeless as the story.
6. My father was in his late 20s or early 30s. He was full of energy. He loved to read.
7. I don’t know where those books went. I have owned other editions in paperback, but despite three rereads, they never read quite the same way.
8. Possibly one of my sisters still has those first Lord of the Rings books I inhabited.
9. In my teens, I met many people who read and reread Tolkien. Quite appropriately at the time, another thing we had in common was being permanently stoned.
10. Tolkien was interesting all over again in my teens while we smoked and toked like chimneys.
11. It didn’t matter who you mixed with when you were permanently stoned. Almost everyone was interesting in a pumped up, flattened out sort of way. So you could readily share Tolkien imagery in one way or another.
12. I met many people who thought they were connected to other worlds in that time. Middle Earth was often their gateway.
13. Middle Earth was my gateway to the other amazing worlds of sci fi and fantasy. They remain as close as I ever got to the more esoteric experiences though. Not for lack of trying.
14. Some people said they had mastered astral travelling. I liked the idea of watching my detached body from the ceiling while it lay on a bed or the floor or a couch below as I prepared to launch myself into otherworldly places.
15. I never mastered astral travelling. Although I did master tripping on several occasions.
16. As weird and wonderful as tripping could be, Tolkien’s Middle Earth was more real, coherent and creative. Eventually I decided I preferred the Middle Earths of this world.
17. Middle Earth has deep cultural experiences in which to partake. It is full of creativity, new beings, new languages, rituals, text based and oral histories, poetry and songs.
18. Every time a poem or song came along my father went into character such that he gave life to these many cultures so I could understand them better and live them through him.
19. As an adult I will never return to Middle Earth in quite the same way, so I am so grateful I went there first as a child.
20. I hope I have given some of the same experiences to my children as a father and I look forward to trying again as a grandfather.
21. To CRT Mathews and JRR Tolkien - I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the world of Middle Earth.
Brittle branch breaks under weight of bird landing
Falls to ground
Alarmed bird flutters to new bough
Insects break down branch
All is right with the world
Butterfly lands on native flower head
Tongue extends for life giving nectar
Butterfly moves on
Flower is pollenated
All may be right with the world
Mountain Water flows over rock
Down toward the sea
Sediment forms floodplain soil
Landscapes bloom with new life
All was right with the world
Forests, grasslands, wetlands and ocean life
Breathe for and cleanse earth and sky
Working together
part of a whole
All is not right with the world
Broken branch is tidied up by gardener
Native flower is replaced by agricultural product
Mountain water is harvested for commercial gain
Land and ocean are raided
Diversity is diminished
Brittle the world breaks
Precedence
is chance
The roll is a fast
chaotic dance
The die is cast
numbers spin
Will luck outlast
the spin I’m in?
The dotted faces
turn and prop
bounce and hop
My future turns
on fortune’s stop
Excitement
Anticipation
Fulfilment
or suffocation
Desperation
Indecision
High risk taking
recidivism
Bound for glory
is my folly
Wracked and ruined
that’s my story
Highs feed lows
on pure vainglory
Today’s dVerse prompt from Ingrid was for a subject of each poet’s choosing. This one came from a draft I had on gambling, a subject I have been trying to get my head around.
When you go out of your way to pay a special visit to a reputedly special place to await and watch what is reputedly the best sunset atop the best vantage point in the country What do you expect to see? The first true signs of the end of days the man with the straggly long hair and dropping moustache stated categorically Glory in all its vividly obscene dissipating layers said one A solid shaft of pure golden light representing the pathway to heaven said another The small group sitting in the rock beside me said it was the last sunset they always came to see, but they hadn’t seen it yet A couple on the other side of the hill crest said they came for the purity of love they experienced every evening together under the setting sun A man and his dog told me they found in the descent of lonely Sol a parallel with their own existence dying each day and reborn alone each morning no matter how splendid each evening looked to others There was a small girl in rags come up from the squalid town below. She saw hope in the sunset of an escape into a world of bright light and enchantment away from her stolid grey existence There was an off duty policeman present. He came to wish all the bad things he saw done every day depart below the horizon before he could sleep at night A woman all dressed in white told me her life was colourless and joyless except for this moment every day where she could finally grasp the meaning of true beauty before she forgot what it was in the black of night A priest in his hot black tunic and white collar was saying a prayer as I passed. Bless this world with the light of another day An aged pensioner said he came to pay his respects to the newly dead as they left this life for the darkness and left him one day more alone A trail runner had run all the way to the top because it was there, but he had to get back before nightfall lest he stumble or lose his way A group of drug affected alts were there to optimise the effect of their high in natural harmony with the earth the sun the solar system and the universe as their synthesised meds could make them An artist was there to capture the waning beauty of Ra’s life giving fireball on a canvas 2m square An astronomer and a night watchman came together not for the sunset, but for the starlight to follow. Their interest was in the understanding and security of the afterglow. A marketing businessman came to follow the money wherever money might be found, he was always up for a look at a business opportunity wondering how he could leverage the sunset to his financial advantage. I found a quiet spot of my own right atop the stony summit and looked with the other people sitting there across the broad brown plain below, the towns with their lights blinking on one by one, the smoke rising from eternal hearth fires, stubble fires, waste fires, methane columns and coal pits I saw the permanent haze along the curvature of the earth, the grey brown band of smog climbing into the atmosphere the sooty stain on the sun and I realised there was no magnificent sunset here every evening It was a man made illusion comprised of the load of filth pumped incessantly into the air I knew then I had come to view not the sunset but witness the tangible manifestation of decline So I left that summit to discover if there remained views from cleaner clearer summits My journey took me around the world I saw the sun set on other plains hills mountains lakes oceans and ice caps I met talked and planned with others who along with me wanted to rediscover the first pristine sunset and see it resurrected At the last summit I attended I met just one man and one woman who had been at that place sitting walking watching talking and awaiting just one pure sunset together forever I asked them what they had learned? They said that it will come
The lock stops access The clock stops time The drug stops abscess The organ stops rhyme The boot stops turning The period stops lines The water stops burning The cleaner stops grime The valve stops pressure The jar stops brine The ruler stops measure The law stops crime The plug stops water The wave stops sine The truth stops laughter The pump stops prime The grass stops growing The bottle stops wine The gardner stops mowing The devil stops divine The food stops hunger The hunger that is mine This stop goes no longer Than this very last line
Their hands when they touch
Flow from rolling of wrists
Each touch is a signal
Each touch is a kiss
Their fingers are folding
On whispers and secrets
Cupped hands are holding
All ahead that will be
Their fingers trace circles
On their palms telling futures
Tender are the touches
Of their hands as their tutors
Their hands rest together
One on top of the other
Their hands mark their measure
Their harmonious hands
Their hands spread out
Open and true
Telling each story
Each soul on view
Hands hold each heart
Supporting each core
Their hands do the learning
Of what more to adore
The extension of hands
The parallel lines
Pads of sensitive fingers
Their dreaming defines
There are fists and shaking
The are dips and rise
There are quivering fingers
Before flickering eyes
When hands arc with arms
To gracious embrace
The lovers say nothing
As hands touch each face
Delicate lines are drawn
Across soft skinned cheeks
Then with touches to lips
Mouths start to seek
Two seeing hands
guide the blind
Sensuous and caressing they massage
to unwind
Four hands synchronise
to breathe in kind
in waves of love
entwined
Rum tum tum Rum tum tum I succumbed Rum tum tum When the words were flung Saw the bait Saw the bait Thrown to peers alust with hate Saw the bait Do its work to humiliate Watched his face Watched his face Cloud to the many shades of disgrace Watched his face Laid waste by such bitter taste Witnessed the scorn Witnessed the scorn For one different and elsewhere born Witnessed the scorn As with thorny crown he was adorned Turned my head Turned my head When more weaponised words were said Turned my head Away from watching as his heart bled Felt my shame Felt my shame As passive part of this vicious game Felt my shame My brutal silence my silence to blame I still regret I still regret No one’s eyes to have met I still regret Complicit inaction I can’t forget Where is he now? Where is he now? Is he high or is he low? Where is he now? Does anger in him burn aglow?
Sanaa asked we poets to explore the issue of peer pressure for this week’s dVerse prompt. I expect there are few people anywhere who can claim complete innocence. Have you got anything to say for yourself?
Someone dies a death
a death that
was not meant to be
How can the loss
be understood?
There has never
been a death that
was meant or not
meant to be
Death has no timing
no caring
no reason
Death is nothing
more than the end
of living
Looking deeper
into death
is looking deeper
into loss alone
For the dying
itself there is no
further explanation
We are flawed
mortal and
as such we die
It is how
the living feel
about it
where
the issue lies
The words
I have always heard
about the silence
of the forest
have never
rung true
There is no silence
in the forest
No matter how much
you romanticise
or wish
there to be
The forest is noisy
relative only to
just how hard
you choose to listen
Bright is the light that shines on me
as I dwell finally
in deathbed reverie
the doctor he talks
and talks and he talks
my wife she weeps
and weeps and she weeps
and time it creeps
and creeps and it creeps
what is this light that shines above
lights pallid face of death
to my love
the darkness it resists
and resists and it resists
in brilliance it glows
and glows and it glows
in radius it grows
and grows and it grows
this light that calls me as my light fades
this light that draws me
to the night of shades
with death it walks
and walks and it walks
my feeble hand I raise and wave
I waver and it waves
faces watch uncertain so grave
grave and so grave
I see my hand stir dust in the air
second last thing I will see anywhere
the dust it wafts
and wafts and it wafts
my brow is mopped
and mopped and is mopped
my hand drops
I drop and it drops
as dust I settle back onto deaths bed
into the pillow sinks my head
life’s weight I shed
I shed and I shed
looking down into the room
I am surprised it is lit
by only gloom
the husk has collapsed
collapsed collapsed
hollowed of life
of life and of life
beside my wife
my wife my beloved wife
the dust dispersed draws my spirit in
and back to dust
I go again
the gift I leave is small but complete
I was loved and I loved
I am replete
Today’s dverse prompt is from Laura, to write words of departure based on your choice from a set of quotes. I chose the quote from a favourite and most remarkable movie – “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” Roy Batty, Blade Runner.
Ah, my chimeric and fanciful place
A world to inhabit when I displace
Where food is abundant and water is clear
Where choices are free I’ll ne’er shed a tear
Where sharing is normal no money spent
Home is a shelter without mortgage or rent
Ideas are born to be actioned for pleasure
Actions occur for outcomes or leisure
Thinking is respected intellectual pursuit
Everyone loves and all follow suit
Where judging is absent because no one judges
Where grudges are absent because no one grudges
Where religion only follows the Gaia led path
To planetary health such joy makes me laugh
My friends are my friends conflict unknown
We simply marvel at how friendship keeps growing
What Prospero said should not be decried
Give death a rightful standing in our lives
As a lens through which to view the good for which we strive
To ponder temporal versus eternal that is always nigh
To elevate appreciation and despondency defy
And so, when vibrant youth immortality implies
When healthy vigour makes the future glisten in our eyes
When happiness is at its peak with all that it supplies
When prosperity creates opportunity many are denied
When security is such that all our fears it belies
Take a moment to remember it is only life that dies
Value life through death as on times fleeting wings it flies
The mind that honours death values life on high
pick I will go collect a bucket of plums see purple plums outside red plums inside bite taut elastic skin snaps and recoils under pressure of sharp incisors burst taste exploding plum tartly sweet firmly juicy with sticky feet feel the texture anticipated chewy soft an eating sensation never lost wet with flavour deep and true dribbles assured all the way to the end of it swallow the energy immediate hit spit pit ah plums
Today we https://dversepoets.com poets are playing with food. Thanks Misky for a prompt that has me re-savouring my favourite fruit.
Juliet is all slick and wet her long hair in her eyes she has been hit by an idiot drunk driving by bye bye Romeo roams idly by sees the girl on the ground He looks at her quizzically then realises what he has found Juliet breathes in gasps as blood pools under her back She looks up sees Romeo last look last love as limbs go slack Romeo’s not much you know but this time things are different He wipes the hair from glazed eyes and wonders where her life went Juliet rises above the scene She watches Romeo He cradles her head gently in his lap He whimpers out a moan Romeo struck by love’s full fist his only love has gone He whines he weeps at his loss Death into his soul creeps Juliet bears final witness to Romeo’s last testament “Did my heart truly love till now?” he whispers For the first time he knows what love meant “Good night Good night” “Thus with a kiss I too die” He declares to her death pale face Romeo bends his head down tenderly brushes her cold lips with his own he lets her head down lightly beside him as he lies quietly beside her takes her right hand with his left Romeo from his pocket retrieves a knife meant for other men he eases the blade between his ribs it finds his broken heart As blood pools under his back his life is also gone Juliet utters one last cry of grief before she disappears or was that one last cry of relief in hope he reappears for never was there a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo
Ingrid’s prompt for this week’s dVerse poetics was “Homage to the Bard.” I chose to write a poem approximately on the theme of Romeo and Juliet. https://dversepoets.com/2022/04/26/poetics-homage-to-the-bard/
Two women sit under a thatched roof
supported by rafters
coarse wood brown
smiling and chatting together
Chickens scratch at the edge of their shelter
a bold shiny colourful rooster
a big shiny black hen
Their surroundings are a circular patch
dry dusty earth red
small mud brick dwellings
define a perimeter orange
The late autumn day is lit by a cold sun of
clean blue light
One woman sits above the other higher
she is perched
Her long thin legs hang over a shallow edge
a rug covered platform
She is the older in a thick faded purple
dress a pullover yellow
is topped with a scarf white around her neck
Her head is swaddled in a woollen wrap crimson
it frames a face sun
lit, weathered and aged by decades of labour
Spaces such as this
fields such as she can choose
to see at anytime
will forever be green and brown
She gazes pensively across
open communal space
She ponders her past with pleasure and regret
she speaks of things new
old, deep and trivial
Her arthritic hands clasped in a lap
of gratitude flesh
Her battered Nike sneakers peek out from
the long layers of fabric above grey and yellow
her face is calm
Her future as it will be
The younger sits cross legged
a woven mat under her strung tan
Together cultivating lines of okra
drying under sheltering eaves ragged
shadows of indigo host
hangings vertically in bright green
coloured lengths
unclasped necklaces ornaments
of metres adorn the space with a decorative
interior that creates a sense
coming festivity
The drying shed colours the day, the place
it’s people making
according to the crop
a pride of place for transient
prettiness and implications
security, work well done
Here for generations other
younger women have
sat for hours
days post harvest preparing
sustaining products of manual fieldwork
multi hued
for deep grey winter consumption
Her dress is brighter golds
magentas her hands are as yet
unaffected by the gnarly
growths destined by labour
She repeats centuries old weaving
patterns confidently efficiently unhurried
listening quietly thoughtfully respectfully
Tales of the past wash over her black and white
through her as water of life in delicate pastels
as hope as comfort
She knows here there are will be
still lessons to be gleaned
conversation the reflections of her elder
The younger a willing learner of
a quasi meditative state borne soft pink
by the methodical repetitious
nature of her work it is was as surely known
the best way for learning lessons
by the word of her people
successes and failures
myth legend
retelling that never ceases to inform
warm warn entertain and delight
There is comfort in the learning
a knowing that all the natural obstacles over
which there is little control life
will continue on on on
There is no question about how
time is to be spent
day by day this is dictated
by seasons culture necessity
green yellow brown grey
There is no concept of time ticking away
each day is known-quantity where
choice is limited but colour rich
life is sometimes unpredictable dangerous
set fluid simple
giving and taking with impunity
Time has no measure
life itself opaque
Two women commune as did
two before them
back it goes into the dark
blue of distance
where many women become every one
sitting together, stringing up green okra
another part of every year’s never ending
rainbow
They told me about her hair
before I met her.
It was green.
I thought it the best hair
I’d ever seen.
The fall of her locks
topped long flowing frocks
that ran neck to toe
as they swept the ground clean.
In bare feet
so she walked
or sashayed
I should say
her hair bounced away
like gentle waves of the sea.
In long flowing robes
from her head to her toes
luminous bright green
and shimmering a sheen,
she moved as one
supple, undulating dream.
Her hips that were square
rolled sensually there
under rippling fabric I deemed.
Her shoulders carried smoothly.
Her pose held beautifully.
Her skin smooth as polished gold.
Her head held proud,
and defiantly bold.
Her face was of grace
framed in fine green lace
at the edges of the green hood
folded around her neck.
From the dripping sleeves of her gown,
where long hands emerged brown,
slender fingers completed the scene.
Bright brown eyes
looked curiously around,
‘til she stopped,
tall and sure
image of a noble queen.
She had turned toward me.
I, the watcher was seen,
and I found myself bound
to the tall brown woman in green.
In the darkness there is fear of what we do not know where moonlit silhouettes change frequented pathways through accustomed landscapes to unfamiliar tunnels hooded by shadows obscured by gloom alive with the colourless and hidden In black night confusion and disorientation assert themselves by seeding doubt Insubstantial surroundings draw an inky deception across the known world where that latent but ever present dread of losing our way will always prevail
Today, the dVerse challenge was from Linda to pick one line from a Jim Harrison poem and use it as an epigraph for a poem inspired by that line. I chose, “Yes, in the predawn black the slim slip of the waning moon.”- Remote Friends, Jim Harrison. https://dversepoets.com/2022/01/25/poetics-songs-of-unreason/
I seek to find the tree where and when I find it I will know it for its role in my life spirit connecting totem white fella dreaming me my original culture kit equipped for consumption and strife for directionless floating missing address of life’s mystery missing where I fit cut from “other” as with a knife finished as animate factotum I seek the key in nature’s remit to open the door of relief to release my soul forgotten I walk the bush incessantly search nature’s bridge exquisite in enduring mortal grief to reveal immortal heart re-woken where entity is true and free where body and soul will sit with cup and bowl I turn new leaf full of love and hoping
Today Sanaa prompts we poets to write in the form of rimas dissolutas. In this form each stanza comprises of lines that end with a rhyme matching the corresponding line in ever other stanza. https://dversepoets.com/2022/01/04/poetics-exploring-the-realm-of-french-literature-first-stop-marseille/
Sustenance, sustenance
The needs of my family, the very future
depend on my
Hunter’s skill
Tracking is the game
ignoring the baubles for the meat
persevering when hope is lost
When perseverance is the
only hope to find
As I cross the threshold
between sunshine and artificial light
where my flaming torch
of knowledge and experience
must keep me lit
alert to fallacy and trickery
Nevertheless it dulls
against intensely bright competition
These high ceilinged vaults
as if starlit with halogen and diode
I find it hard to distinguish whether
inflamed or extinguished
my very own light flares
or fades
As does the light of knowledge
or critical elements of judgement
This is a brilliantly ominous
hole in real space
This dead centre of comsupmtion
Of glow worms on mirrored walls of
perverted fairy lights created by evil spirit
I cross a
sinister boundary
into a world of corruption
temptation
and reduction
The world is rendered thus
The cavernous halls of this space
daunt
Its glittering stalactites drip
luminously
sweet waters
impure as added sweeteners can illicit
over gem encrusted
subterranean alcoves and niches
Where false gods are worshipped
Where diamonds turn to glass
Where purchase is neither
with foot nor by hand
But by extraction and brand
Burning into pockets
through means of exchange
where the purpose of this cave
becomes revealed
Although,
still not
to the naive, the gullible and the willing
Yet I stand strong
Resolute by my informed knowing
I conquer foreboding
fear held at bay
by the most fragile resilience
and I buy in
I buy big I buy small
I buy all the things I want at the Mall
Until I can but no longer
As these halls previously mapped
have seen the bounds of my credit card zapped
Gotta get out
before ruin befalls
My Christmas spree buying
One day for it all
Today’s prompt comes from Dora. In the context of the Crazy Christmas season she suggests, ….. “imagine a moment of pausing, a still point of epiphany.” dVerse
Yakking yakking on the phone they’re lacking basic social grace they are in your face if wanted or not their conversation is everywhere like a worm that twists deep inside your ear Yakking yakking shared across public space on public transport in public parkland throughout Halloween with not a thought to public courtesy private calls aired I do not care to share
Today’s dVerse prompt is from Lisa. She asks us to present a Quatorzain poem (a 14 line poem not necessarily a sonnet) in Duodora form as follows: 2 septets for which Line 1 repeats. Syllable counts per line are 4, 6, 5, 5, 5, 10, 10. Quite tricky! The subject is to speak to a human attribute that is particularly irritating to you with a Halloween or Samhain theme.
seanmathews.blog 