swimming,
pool of dawn
splashes of spark ignite me
hope fire chills my bones
Did I dive in?
I don’t remember
I swim in dawn de cologne
it stings a little bit
too alive too now
everything dead is gasping
stranded if it will not
give it self up to life
being dawn-summoned it shrinks
enfeebled, inert,
dissipating in one hiss
warm radiance consoles
consoles the weary
fear not, fear not
wherever hope was not
it was
it is
it will have been
splash spray spray
poem
blows and beauty
I was radiant with hope
delighting in the beauty
the truth, luminous over
my being, my story.
Blows rained down,
as if a cudgel to the heart
yet mere words.
You took my fears
as a script, copied
the old patterns
I thought I had, perhaps
eluded.
You crushed all joy from me
dismissing that it once
was shared, that depth,
the wonder of a true
communion.
Or was it? Certainty you
sowed with doubt, did you?
were you? how could you?
To our dreaming together you said,
no, alone.
An uncanny insistence
growls irritable from deep within me.
Trust your heart; your
own wisdom is truth.
Believe yourself.
What do I say to you now?
Can I undo myself from the
places you have
conveniently assigned for me
not to cause disturbance
not to trouble your
nice new story?
to elude the work
of making ground?
Can I heal from the idol
jailer of your own captivity?
My battle now is yours,
unfought.
I am not ruled by
convenience or comfort.
I seek truth.
Your blows have momentarily discouraged me
My wounds will heal
A mere skirmish, I will announce,
My laughter will return.
I will dance again.
I have lived this story before,
perhaps, yes,
some may say
but now I’m wiser
I untwist the events from your grasp
evil prophet,
I laugh giddy at my freedom, my knowing
this time the story will belong to beauty.
the studio inside – rhythm
All the while of la vie suspendue en l’air and la vie revenue à terre, I have been maintaining, more or less, my studio rhythm – piano, writing, documentation. So then something is going on in the studio inside, but to me, there is a kind of absence. An absence of expression. There is something about painting in particular that releases me into some kind of inner depth, while, mysteriously, materialising this depth into a visible form.
Is something preventing me from getting there?
Sometimes I just need to insist.
But as I write a recognise, yes, I’ve been doing immense works. Inner ones, in most cases, but also material ones of another sort – organising, unpacking, tending.
Perhaps now is time to try another intensity of insistence. Maybe I have a week before I leave for traveling to insist this into reality, to come home to water and colour, and to see what I find there…
wild the sea; the spray, gold
storm, the wildness is coming
restless, I scent the rain
distant, but nearing
me, adrift, chop
currents crush me to
each other, press into my
skin, insistent
you are mine, Mine
I don’t belong to myself
forces pull on limbs
a vast rose crimson,
pulsing in the drench
clatter, rain advancing from
another shore, nearer still,
nearer, sound the drums of
torrents, clash against clash
whip, foam, soak, slap,
gasp, yet not a drowning
yet
monstrous pitterpat
hail, rain!
splatter
tumult a poor shelter,
lift me up, hide me
may I nestle in your ferocity
dip into the pinkish hue
silence a moment
down
returning,
surface
all is rose dawn
wild sea; rain-spray, gold
Note: a second poem in a series painted to Einaudi’s Divenire, played by myself after a long absence. This life size abstract water colour is painted in Rose Madder and Permanent Rose (Windsor and Newton Professional watercolour) splattered with Rembrandt Light Gold (Series III watercolour)
the year of the poem, a pondering
The looping that I have noticed is in particular taking me back to the year two thousand and sixteen, ‘the year of poem‘ (strangely I did not feel like writing digits, I am aware it looks a little odd). With some fanfare I christened this year with a title of such vast aplomb it appears that I sank under the weight of it.
The ‘year of the poem’ plummeted from its giddying heights to a swift confrontation with reality, as I quickly realised. The ‘poetry diary‘ stayed buried in a box, poems remained unwritten, even the ‘editing poetry course‘ became an ordinary memory with startling rapidity.
No more ‘year of the poem’ musings were mused.
But now looking back, the year of the poem was speedily despatched, not because the poem element was too small, but because it was too big.
Somehow, a pre-existing poetic dimension took hold of my whole entire life.
And, of course, being frail, not really realising, consumed by other things, practicalities, transitions, this elemental condition was not fully grasped.
Dizzying though it may sound, preposterous though it feels to write, what happened to me in the year two thousand and sixteen is that my weary, care-worn ways of being were shed, like an age of reason skin, and I leaned into trust, to relinquishing control and holding on to faith as a human experiment. And slowly but surely, the very substance of my being mutated into wonder.
What does it mean?
I’m still not entirely sure.