A Conversation with Magdalena Ball

And today I'm welcoming well known poet, Magdalena Ball, to the Daily Kit for a conversation about making art in dark days, to whit the current COVID plague. Maggie is a poet, novelist, reviewer, interviewer, panelist, moderator, chapbookster and Flying Islander of note.

(This conversation took place over the last few weeks.)

KIT

Maybe we could start by seeing something new yr working, and discuss that? 

And I could respond in kind. 

MAGGIE:

I’ve been working on a few things. The first is a long suffering novel, which I’ve been working on for years. I can’t let go of it, but neither do I seem to be able to get to the end of it, so I keep working on it in bursts.  Also I’ve been pulling another poetry collection together - I guess with the usual dystopian themes - I keep wanting to do some happy happy turning the corner chirps, but 2020 keeps getting more intense and it’s hard to ignore it.  The lovely Karen Hughes, who has been encouraging me to finish my novel while I encourage her to finish her thesis - over cups of strong, good coffee at Suspension Cafe, suggested I do some novel writing in verse to free me a little from the constraints of time and space, so below is a poem written effectively as a novel chapter followed by a little snippet of prose taken directly and without context from the work-in-progress (which I’m happy to talk about later if you want). 

A Voice to Shatter Glass

There’s no scientific proof this ever happened

the sound isn’t even audible

unless you’re a dog, in which case      

rhythms preserved in the patterns of words. 

Every object has a resonant frequency

run a finger along the rim: ghost hum

she didn’t like being called a gypsy 

Romani, a Jew, dark eyes

secrets wrapped in a soothing voice

break the glass

they came in secret   

tea leaves in a mug, left with something other

than answers it was    not that kind of fortune.

She hummed, a single note amplified

working through the cavity of the mouth, the pharynx

stretched along the larynx

shattering of history   a portal

they came in secret but they didn’t keep quiet

sound carries

mechanical waves moving through gas, liquid, solids

through the medium of time

press your ear against the table 

and its there still, carrying energy outward

into the hallway of her cramped apartment 

smelling of damp clothing and Barley soup 

into the streets, against the silence of intent

rushing into the future, always pushing

struggling, desire and hunger, the means

air, water, glass, shattering 

into the present where

the only thing that can happen

is that which seems impossible. 

***

The air had a tangible taste - like mint, and exhaling her carbon dioxide, which almost had a palpable shape to it - oblong - before it dispersed into the air, she felt a sensation which took her several moments to identify – it was happiness.  How could she be feeling happiness?  Maybe relief that her mother’s operation was over.  This was once entirely a rural area - ocean, beach, and bush - basic blocks of nature set against one another. Now there were very little spaces, in the main drag anyway, that weren’t taken up by apartment buildings rising against the sand. The sound of a jackhammer drowned out the gulls, though she occasionally heard the birds when the rat-a-tat-tat stopped. The local population was growing by the day. There had to be a limit though. Otherwise the industrial growth would outweigh the beauty and people would stop coming. It was a delicate balancing act, and one that, in the city centre at least, seemed to be tipping in the wrong direction. The sun on her back was strong, so she took off her shirt, leaving only a tank top. The pain in her head had resolved and she felt light, gliding along the surface ground.  Louisa was fine. She was fine. They could all move on with their lives now. 

KIT

wow, Maggie… you embarrass with the riches and where to start… your novel problem reminds me of my dad’s… when he died he left me and my brother, Stephen, a two page list of works he wanted us to finish… including (now in an almost meter high box under the pool table) The Man from Overdraft, a novel he started in 1966 and never finished… I shall try to get onto this… although now I’m working through his unpublished autobiography (it’s March 1938 and he’s just missed his boat from Singapore to Durban - having been delayed a night in Johore Baru - all part of his ping pong tour of the world and a good time to not be in Europe)… a rollicking tale, with volumes to go…

it’s funny about the novel though, I have to admit, I guess when dad was in his eighties and not getting back to it, part of me was thinking ‘loser - just write the blood thing’, and now, in my sixties, I totally get it… the way a creative project can just drift away further and further under the pile

… I think you know I have quite a pile… but the main things I’m wanting to get back to right now are

a kind of an illustrated workbook about poetry writing (the picture book of the poem) which is a collaboration with a wonderful artist in Miami, Karla Caprali…

and a few kids’ books (possibly picture books) - especially the one about the girl who gets lost in her mother’s handbag trying to answer her phone

…and there’s another one from before that about a time travel bicycle (distance = time… seems oddly appropriate right now)… and there are novel ideas much older than that, to which I’d like to return

… but before I can get to any of that … a lot of poem sorting

… at the end of Project 366 (2016 - 2020), I had 14 hundred and something draft poems, that all need sorting into places and polishing or reshaping or discarding … so that’s an ongoing business… a lot of them are going into the three linked collections I promised for my Ozco grant - a field guide to Australian clouds, a book of ekphrastics and ataraxia (ataraxia being the overall title and the overarching idea - so a garden collection in a way),

… and then there are poems spilled out from there into a few other places…

one started out as a book of jetlag poems but has morphed into a more general sleep to dream kind of project … the other is a collection called godsbother -- essentially stuff (ideas and so on) designed to bother God or gods

… so that’s the general background of my impossible task of catching up with myself…

and I try to give dad a little time each day in the midst

…so better to get on to responding to your actual work-in-progress…

best respond in kind

but the problem is yv got such a lot of different themes and ideas going there …

I think we’re both very interested in questions of identity - of what we know and can’t know about ourselves… of where we are and how we got here, of the rights and responsibilities that go with that

these are good times to think through such things, and to think on… to think further

… this was from yesterday morning, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while … ‘some thing’? -- I suppose I mean a web of stuff with which I’m tangling… some echoes of Merleau-Ponty perhaps (the chiasm)?

the reciprocity

there are other worlds

from which

they made us

and we’re making them

that’s where we come in

with wings you’ll see

inside out of a dream

we dwell

diaphanous and gone

white heron

proud on the pond bank

sunning

and of its world

as worried no doubt

as we

thing and another

a tribe of rhymes

go under

undergo

be seen

be bitten

bite back

take a rise

out of the sun

let lost moons love

come around

believe and be trusted

wallaby is

damp smoulder

do a job on

song bursts in

and slough despond

birds sing, is it

fifteen times faster?

if you slow down

you’ll hear

give or take

say, think it

let’s just

blame, bless

make up

as we go

insects

one flew in

I killed it

another has me marked

I’m telling the story               

some days

see through myself

who’s in the mirror

and gone

.

I played a lot with that first stanza

there are other worlds

from which

they made us

and we’re making them

that’s where we come in

I want the ambiguities that come from not knowing where the sentences begin and end here… and the questions they raise… e.g. who made us?  or does that question not arise?

over to you, kiddo

MAGGIE

Hi Kit, your dad’s novel is intriguing. I’m really looking forward to seeing it once you’ve done.  That said I couldn’t even dream of asking my kids to finish my novel for me (if only!) - I mean they’re not writers as such, and you and Stephen are exceptional writers, so I guess he knew it would be in good hands.  It’s not so much that the work drifts further and further under the pile (though that happens very easily). If I stop writing other things and focus on it, it won’t drift, but there are so many structural difficulties - how to get through a timeline, an arc, a transition, and to resolve these major plot problems - all of which is more of an engineering issue than a writing one - and while everytime I sit down to do the writing I seem to enjoy myself, engineering is not my strong suit. I’ll keep at it though. 

I love the idea of an illustrated kids workbook - those stories sound so fun and quirky. I also agree that we share an interest in questions of identity - and not just our selves, but our collective selves - how we as individuals fit into the broader collectives of those groups we belong to and specifically don’t belong to, and what we inherit. This may be an aging thing but I’m more and more interested in cultural identity and inherited traumas but also inherited capability/insight (not just genetics but epigenetics and the psychological inheritance). I like to think about notions of time that are not necessarily colonial, but may be part of an inheritance I carry unknowingly (that may not make any sense - apologies if that’s the case!).  So how about I do a little response to your work (in the way of ‘A Conversation in Poetry’) which you can then respond to as you see fit - ask questions as you did with Kerri (a conversation I read with relish!) or just write another poem in response.  Here’s my response to “the reciprocity”:

A tribe of rhymes

Just as everything begins to pixilate

the breath coming in faster

I have always known 

at some cellular level

diaphanous, the word too flowery

for this world, incongruous

or some other four syllable thing

breaking against my tongue

when I recite words that undo

this construct

witch, witcher, at the cauldron

getting older with time

but never progressing

past the clock that holds

my wavering body in check.

We have never been more or less

than a project, a collective

a microbial community

coming together, falling apart

especially today, failing 

wholesale, with such exquisite emphasis.

if I bite hard enough

into this damp emptiness

and though isolation is the word of the day

nothing is unconnected

bacteria living in and on 

might bite back.

This one world, corrupted

a motion we can only measure

not feel

did you ever stop to think

she asked me, while I paused

briefly, evidence of my work

everywhere, pervasive

the hypothetical group of 

multiple universes

right there in front of your

eyes, vibrating, pulling at you

another kind of gravity.

KIT

Perhaps the clock is our connecting? I’m working on a series - or maybe it’s a long poem - about time… I’m not sure if it’s a part of godsbother or the dreambook …

… nice sometimes to let things drift for a while and take their own form before you find out what they’re part of…

pixelated … I like the nexus between pixelated (how the world is going) and pixilated

(which reminds me of mid twentieth century American movies, and might be some kind of a solution in the current circs… at least bottle shops seem to be doing a roaring trade)… I’m guessing you were intending both … I notice the Shorter OED also has a word ‘pixie led’, meaning, naturally, to be led off by pixies … the bottom of the garden being one of the safest places I can think of at this moment…

it’s funny at times like this … I mean funny/strange … I mean moments like the corona-tastrophe … our sense of time is seriously disturbed by it … for instance maybe we now measure from shop to shop or risk to risk, home and away… but of course the radio news is still there when we would expect it…

but the clock was stopped when I woke up this morning

and of course I took it for a sign!

…

clearly you’ve got me back on the time theme, Maggie

hence this morning’s

28.3.20

88

eerily idyllic

home

that’s the new sublime

kind of a dream

we find ourselves gone to

and take a big breath

coming, ready or not

symptoms imagine us

under we go

still standing

standing under

a tissue and all fall

undergo

in the birded world

sway, tip

there’s upside

and when the clock stopped

we left it like that

left it alone

perhaps meaning the time had come

stopped clock

points to a lucky numbness

to us

says here now surely

cryogeny

(and what’s it got to do with Ireland?)

dream toilet paper wars

and all around the lockdown

zeitgeisties

stay in stay out

that’s how come

and so we ask it

how far to a sunny day?

…

and from there I went on to think

actually I should call the time works clockworks probably

(regardless of what larger work it might be part of)

anyway here’s the next bit

(of course when I say ‘next’ I actually have no idea where it will fit)

.

for clockwork

look at a stopped clock

that pause at the top

merely conventional

could come anywhere

ye know not

un coup de

what does it mean to turn it around?

clock takes the shape of

a cookie

bitter pill

average celestial body up close

a motivated coincidence

world fallen to two dimensions

never does the Dali droop

a stopped clock is pointing

says

soon this will be back in the day

remember we got through this?

time has been lording

and you’ll need a snorkel

try counting by yourself

under your breath

and under that

understand

numbers you won’t know

trees unfelled

they are

the clock stops just where I am

as far as I’ve got

as far as I can see

…also meaning to say those multiple universes and gravity of yours remind me it’s time to read some science fiction… it’s binawhile … any suggestions there?

… this rain persisting now

seems oddly appropriate to the mood

… grown in, rained in

is that where you are too?

MAGGIE

"Eerily idyllic” immediately put me in mind of The Talking Heads' “This Must Be the Place (naive melody)” so I put it on and enjoyed it so much that I had to listen to the whole of Speaking in Tongues (the LP has been with me since I was a teenager - being something of a minimalist, there aren’t many possessions which have followed me across two continents, but that record has). The album seems bizarrely apt at the moment ("This ain't no party, this ain't no disco”).  I’ve now returned from the rabbit hole - thank you for sending me there! 

My reponse reflects all of that.  

under your breath

there are sounds that arrive 

solely via memory

old film music in the guise of insomnia

a pale buzz like electric shock 

smells of recognition

I found that dream again

under the breath

silently drumming

a temple throb that followed

the clock tick tock

falling further back

and though this situation

as it were

feels entirely unreal

it’s as if we’ve always been here

locked in this particular home 

living against a shadow 

there are lifeforms

to which we are merely 

another product

a food source

apt irony perhaps

for such cocksure apes

cruely consuming more 

than we need

change is real

but time is not

watching your discomfort as you pace

I can’t focus on anything 

but that damn noise

coloured sienna, rust, white 

it takes shape

under your breath, sickly sweet

it could be a symptom

an absolute direction

a locus that begins and ends

here, tenseless

***

For sci fi recommendations, I do like China Miéville's Bas-Lag series - that’s Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council. You could also do worse than Margaret Atwood’s Orxy and Crake (it’s a 3 part series and I’ve read them all but the first one is vastly superior to the other two and you can read it as a standalone).  It’s terrifyingly prescient, but also a funny, brilliant read. Finally, for classic sci fi of the best kind, I really love Octavia E Butler’s Lillith’s Brood series - Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago).  :-) 

KIT

ah now you remind me, Maggie of … a very clear memory… getting off an overnight bus at Pagan … a bus from Mandalay… beginning of ‘86 (I just checked my diary for that year… a bit of a hunt, but I got there… and I can tell you it was Tuesday 7^th, January, 1986, and I’d written ‘the river is all clogged up with Buddhas’… not erribly enlightening but there you go)…

it’s funny with diaries, I can tell you where my dad was every day of 1938… but I can’t tell you where I was any day between 2000 and 2010 or thereabouts, because I kept digital records, which are now all lost …

which kind of reminds me about the importance of blogging this kind of conversation -- the irony that now authors, artists, and everybody is/are communicating more than ever, almost all of it is being lost in the ether…  remember when people died and their letters would be bundled and returned perhaps because the correspondence was important/ possible publishable … now there’s heaps more of it and all lost justabout

ah but remember Sterne ‘digression is the sunshine of the text’

and so to return to the early morning of Tuesday 7^th January, 1986… Adam Aitken and I sleeplessly disembarking the old overnight rattle-trap from Rangoon and blearily into the temple laden dust of Pagan, wired up in my case to Talking Heads …I had a ‘professional’ walkman I’d just got (probably in Singapore).. fantastic sound quality …listening to ‘the world was moving she was right there with it and she was’ … a really otherworldly experience … walking round in this utterly magical dirt poor piece of desert by river with more ancient temples per square km than anywhere else on the planet I guess … it was like tripping…

dreamwork and clockwork, here we go…

anonymous

write the dream down

and you’re in it again

everything is true in there

duty to forget

no one notices

you are nameless there

this is the one death all know

drink from

grow into our own knowledge

everyone is pharaoh

would you say, distracted?

an itch and you’re over

an ache brings you round

how is the clock in the mirror?

you hold a candle to

no one loves

is loved there

all are ghosts

you yourself are the door

and a tree

made of tin

be in the mind of the thing

all the turning night

where the world was still

everything written is cloud and away

we fall as rain

drink of the dream well

mortal day

slave of the dream

locked solitary

of course you’re there

of the former life

of the long since

paint a way

slip stand and fall

rain could have driven it

or the sun rose

first among words

from light

born to light

every morning like this

all my best vanishing was done here

will you come with me?

let’s go

MAGGIE

I was reading The Letters of Virginia Woolf (Vol 1) and thinking the same thing - that we will lose the makings, the dialogues, the ’stuff’ behind our public images (whatever we choose to put out there, all filtered and fluffed) and I think I already mentioned that I’m the kind of person who loves to tidy up and throw out stuff (even, sometimes, to my later shame and denial, sentimental and important stuff), and not even an aerogramme will remain of the conversations. I’m old enough to remember how good a walkman sounded - the secret pleasure on the train, knowing no one else had what you had - that surround sound protection. I saw the Talking Heads live once - at Forest Hills, Queens NY at the tennis stadium. 1983. Byrne in a big suit. Lots of soul singers. Films flashing on the screen.  Psycho Killer was the opening.  Can’t remember who I was there with…

Duty to Forget

The demon duck of doom

is not a duck, as such

but it was here, true story

where that ordinary Chestnut Teal swims

a rain puddle that wasn’t there yesterday

its call more croaky gnow than quack

I can almost make out its girth

all 300 kilos of it, a shadow DNA

demons never fully disappear

this is the material world to which we belong

sunk costs, money money the red light

I no longer look into the mirror

trying to recreate the face

the fetching angle

the painful truth is enough

I walk and walk 

it’s all that’s allowed 

in isolation

everyday the numbers drop

and I am being altered

algorithmically, as broken RNA

my lips pull back, a spiky tongue

a docile bird

remembering where we began

the mind of the thing

where we will go

when the paint fades

where there is nothing but light

KIT

then who the fuck is that duck?

a duty to forget?  of course reminds of Carolyn Forché’s wonderful anthology Against Forgetting

but back into the mirror hutch diving now

and thinking of those who exercised that duty to forget

and wondering who I am…

silence of the grave

the truth

is a maze in the blood

consists entirely of what you were told

so is the river run through

let's play forget

apocalypse, messiah

you'll get the holy haunting yet

all you can believe

for the price

of what they're calling the soul

and later burn a heretic

so as to form the habit

the ancestors at large in me

just won't shut up

each of them is telling tales

my father's uncles

his father too

the ones who lost the family

lost the war

fell under another

then they go proverbial

o where is thy sting?

tomorrow they will say the sky

today has a date

they all do

but will an object keep to its meaning?

you think of it a bloodless thing

I followed a trail to here

devout of tribe

it's the many mansions of us

went out in just pyjamas

grandmother must be mother of God

if I never met her

that's how a family works

though this heaven has been figured

here are the bereaved

and here's the manner of forsaking

call names

they're all ghost vanishing

gone for the greater good

I live in a garden of this

MAGGIE

We seem to be on a bit of an association roll.  So your title puts me in mind of Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress ('but none I think do there embrace’were ). Also The Cranberry’s Yeats’ Grave ('were you sickened in time?’) (https://youtu.be/nKKS_qfswIw) 

Drumcliff Church

I hear the drums, even now

in isolation

tablas against your grave

you would have lost it

had you not already lost

not that you weren’t in 

voluntary confinement

bolt on the door

but it’s one thing to lock yourself in

and another to be locked in

I sit with this, with you

your music, your thoughts

comfortable enough

watching death like a long run movie

in slo mo, it keeps going

and I keep coming back

to this silence

you didn’t want a tombstone

terrified of burial: soil, worms

one eye maybe still open

they carried you out

throwing rose petals

the undertaker, a big burly guy

said you weighed less than nothing

those were his real words

a koan

I recited Under Ben Bulben

to you, in those final days 

and after, now, in absentia

brushing your thinning hair

we all wonder who we are

your fingers knotted, missing

still trying to play a song

while I sit here, time collapsing inward

and now, if there even is a now

there’s no distinction between those 

bleached, buried bones and your soft

dissipated ashes

KIT

Casting a cold eye, eh?

Do you know my ‘Reagan era To His Coy Mistress’ parody, Maggie?

FROM HIS COY PLANET

Annihilating all that's made

to a green thought in a green shade.

Marvell

Had we but worlds enough and time

This madness Ronnie were no crime.

We would sit down and think which way

To aim the missiles for today.

Rather than let the bombs devour

The earth, we'd make a show of power

– A virile play of cosmic lust

And turn some planets into dust.

One hundred bombs should set ablaze

The planets closest to our gaze.

Two hundred flying east and west

Would light the cosmos with our jest.

Your limitless domain would grow

Vast as nebulae, not as slow.

An ageing amorous bird of prey

Like every dog must have his day.

And young Mikhail should play his part

To show that bears are just as smart.

The Sandanistas watching by

Would praise the fireworks in the sky.

Harmless targets like black holes

Would ease the worried minds of Poles.

But at my back I seem to hear

The missiles shooting past too near.

Though isotopes decay at last

There's bits of planets whizzing past.

So before we all turn into glue

Or melt down into morning dew

Before five billion souls transpire

At every pore with instant fire

– Let us roll all our rhetoric and all

Our megatonnage up into one ball:

And so we'll re-invent détente,

To forge a lasting rapprochement.

Thus while we can't blow up the sun

Let's send the bombs there just for fun.

and bleached, buried bones/your soft

dissipated ashes

feels v Celan to me

your golden hair, Marguerite, your ashen hair, Shulamith

then there’s the question of the weight of the soul, something that was seriously pseudo-scientifically entertained late ninetheenth century, and a theme I’m looking at for godsbother

weight of the soul

I built the cage

I have the keys

cloud come to again

a little forest me

made of some doubt

and stream to run away

so this is captivity?

I always wondered

a day in the dark

sun slipped

sunk in the balance

bobbed up for air

damned whichever way

and blessed

no, never feathered for flight

but gossamer, go at it

like wearing nothing

glimpse of all other lives

worlds in it

creature we

phantom of an opera

darkest crimes

are down to here

just think of an adjective

sunk in the balance

bobbed up for air

like that pimple under the skin

or poem you know must be there

pray for me, won't you

first thing that comes into your head

when stars reach down to touch

it's all because you say

.

… but I’ve always been suspicious of negative numbers… when they started on those in maths (I think in first form), that was the beginning of the end

MAGGIE

didn’t know that parody - but it’s probably still relevant with a few little tweaks (Reagen used to seem so bad back then - he’s been well and truly Trumped.)

damned whichever way and blessed

she wore it well    slack jawed

waiting for the start  

on her bed

overdressed 

isolation    in the mega city

empty walls     the green light 

fills the room with    solitude

still life   

everywhere is industry    outside 

a sound effect     the city    is always 

on the go    even when    

dis ease is on everyone’s       lips

unspoken   skirted round   better

to stay quiet  

she watches   waits for change

stuck in the       tableau

misses the transition

night turning   to day

the harsh   angles   of shadow

an intrinsic    intelligence

dissasociated   

out of     the picture

what if she stayed in that    space

kept watch   sunlight in matte tones      

reflecting    on her temples

took nothing     broke no rules

curled in shadow    in stillness   

      but ready

to become heavy

KIT

among the butternuts

in plague time

I hear the hammering of those at home

and have these Bunnings thoughts myself

but know I shouldn’t go

it’s sunlight tops the trilling here

a yellow butterfly makes light

of this the moment following

sky grey enough to show its will

it’s sunshine keys the colour

we keep an open window

and let the day in still

MAGGIE

Ah the butternuts. Do you have a crop?  Such a great thing to have a glut of. 

the forest is still legal

so this is what it comes to

tall trunks, a Rufus Fantal

with a song of silver shards

it’s greening up again

after months of brown and black

vines, grass, a snake skin, signs of life

against all indications

the air smells eucalyptus clean

It's impossible to do anything else

but walk, smell, taste

senses open like pores

breathing in slowly

my eyes are closing

night is another constuct

like colour, which we take for granted

today an old friend told me

that this pandemic

is what we deserve

we are part of nature

not separate

evolving one way or another

my mother was a prepper

though I didn’t know it

outdated bags of rice, pasta 

cases of toilet paper

apple cider vinegar, soy sauce

filled her basement 

she didn’t make it to the apocalypse

nor did the goods 

full of moths and weevil

which had to be thrown away

meanwhile in another timeframe

a parallel universe

in the future, which is now

we’re ready not ready

toilet paper, sanitiser, neatly stacked

in a cupboard with a big sack of rice

that makes me cry

KIT

Yes, we are compelled to love our homes and appreciate them… and realise that we must be the luckiest people in the world… not that we didn’t / don’t work very hard at making the most of our luck (how it shits me when someone looks at the ramshackle house you built and tells you how lucky you are … of course they’re right, but in the sense that they almost invariably share your luck… to be born in this place, with this skin, to parents who loved and wanted the best for you and had the means to do it, etc)…

so I’ve been walking around

looking up

to get ahead of the curve

the treetop walk, in which

blue is the colour of up

riff on this

or mist it

in among a tracery

of see all sprung to leaf

tree is birding

birds tree too

all song is forth bursting

leaves vanish in a curlicue

kind of atom swerve

shaped for it

and unseen

in the after hours

someone is climbing for moonlight

someone is climbing for stars

MAGGIE

We are lucky. I don’t want to forget that. I’ve been walking along with my daughter grumbling about this and that and then I just look around - the fresh air, the heartbreaking beauty (who knows how long but it’s in front of us - would be a tragedy to not enjoy it while we have it), the comfort. 

subterranean

falling down the virtual hole

my rabbit fingers

my cheshire heart

small mushrooms act as keys

invisible doors

rocks under bare feet

in heavy rain

don’t pity me

this is rare freedom 

which I’m unable

to call constraint

water drips off my hair

my nose, eyes blurry 

I kneel against the dirt

bleeding and bruised

and find gratitude

yes, there’s a weight on my back

my grandmother’s hump

muscles tightening

against what could only be called 

fear though I don’t 

think that’s the right word

maybe it’s tenderness

the dull thud in the stomach

a longing that defies language

this soft, wet ache

leaning closer towards brackets

woody fungi, boletes and morels

a world beneath the feet

soothing in ways 

that make no logical sense

to think these mycelium might still be here

repairing, renewing, breaking down

waiting, always waiting

 

KIT

recharging the wom-battery

you say hutch

I burrow

down among them

and put on a new good room

dig it

this could be Coober Peedy

fur enough

pun up!

pun up!

do the quick cannonball upstairs

come to dusk, call it

light is a kind of contagion

we bring our own down here

by eye and inward

eat me and drink me

how green was my valley?

hat it madly

vanish a cat

I like a wise caterpillar

library where the leaves are damp

weather is coming or so I am told

but under the waves

it’s DIY

take that as read

alight here for MUSEUM

(otherwise over-sized shed)

I ran with your rabbit

o worthy pioner!

(invasive species)

doomed for a certain time to tread

lurching zeitgeist leitmotiv

there’s yoga down there

where creatures get their gear gone

cave with bung flicker

and take that for truth

down here for the duration

come out in from the gloom

lie flat out grazing

the wombats are singing again

MAGGIE

I  loved "corona consciousness” (and so far all the poems you’ve sent - am trying to refrain from commenting, but am open to doing that too, and of course, there is indeed yoga down there). I’ve been watching the NWF all weekend - really appreciate being able to watch every session, but also my head is buzzing (as it does during the in-person weekend) with all sorts of connections. This one plays with both of your poems (“recharging” and “cc”). 

Watching through a lattice

it’s odd to find myself, bunkered

just when I’m breaking up

only half human no suprise there

meanwhile trillions of viruses 

are in motion over my face

transformng the features

every second something new appears

a mole that wasn’t there before

a slight tilt to the nose, a crease

it’s almost beautiful

if you like decay.

Don’t grimace, brother

this is no longer the place

for squeamishness, fake cleanliness

high horses, even if you 

are descended from a queen

my invisible aura is microbial, progressive

a remnant from cellular processes

and yes, you. 

The old paradigm no longer applies

to me, at least

though maybe you ought to check.

Finding myself locked in, fully conscious

edges dissolving as I reach 

across the membrane

our bacteria connecting, just like that

each an expression of one another, a lattice

joining the dots, the patterns in our honeycomb

it’s hard to take in this view 

because it’s close

unnerving, subversive 

if you believe in status quo

but once you see it you can’t unsee.

KIT

unbelieve this!

the hardwire billboard of the highway gone

of course we love to mulch it

and decompose one day

one curve flattens, another goes up

might we not simply be kind to each other

in earnest, more often, as a matter of course?

it’s only the future if you can see

MAGGIE

hardwire billboard

this is what I found 

in the centre of the rogue

pumpkin patch

the Kents of course

giant, pink, yellow, pale brown

mottled like pastel easter eggs

already segmented

it’s as if they arrived

an alien gift sent

down-to-earth

to nourish us 

through the transition

beta carotine, vitamin c

vibrant orange shimmering

but something else 

decomposes invisibly 

into the rich soil, untitled

not sure what to call it

it’s not a food source

it’s some other kind of signal

apart from micro life

ecosystems

sharing a common life

the billboard

flashing in neon excess

buy buy buy bye

hardwired to self-destruct

KIT

Okay - you’ve got me onto

the pumpkins!  

in corona-time

they are the only ones travelling now

they are joining the dots

swell connected

they are rising

they are rhizome of the open air

world revolution a few thoughts away

this is their year

umbrella crowded

solar collectors  

take the fences  

scale the bath

they escape all bounds

carbs!  nomad empire!

day by day wilted and more  

fast, well ahead of winter

no social distancing with them

mosquitoes with

more otherworldly  

shrink underleaf to be among

every lantern head one of us kin

we’re all of us buried there

in the company of pumpkins   

in soup and scone  

in fresh invention

of course we cannot picture

those who have already

gone to a better place

MAGGIE (finally worked out the schema :-)) Poem for my granny who your poem, inexplicably, made me think of.  

Klezmer to Kaddish

Eve, the world didn’t wait for dinner

though you kept on cooking 

your violet eyes watery with death and longing

hidden under floral apron ruffles.

I blinked and it was you there

so tangible I smelled the scones, sweet 

with home made pumpkin jam

sticky enough to lick off my fingers.

Your voice was everywhere

nowhere, bodiless

embodied, filling my kitchen

the longbilled Hoopoe of your Galician 

past, in Klezmer violin

cried in vibrato 

every night

when no one was watching.

It was a spiritual practice, a mitzvah

though you gave up on god 

that bastard father, the first time 

you stopped your mother 

from jumping off the roof

of the bleak tenement 

where you kept opening windows 

but no light came.

How many times was it

climbing up the steel ladder 

with your great legs

the ones that made men whistle

to tar beach, where you and your girlfriends

would sunbake, before the darkness

took her, finally, and left you

alone to clean up the mess. 

Now Eve, first mother

the heavens sing because you created them

the rocks vibrate a thousand miles away

the cosmos pulsate

and you never need to moisten 

your parched throat with tears

or punch the pillow in frustration. 

Your voice carries. 

You’re setting yourself free

you are free.

KIT

I think you’re confusing grandma with gramma, Maggie.

I must retaliate with some grandfather… a speculative enterprise

apotheosis

Béla's fate

1944

the Americans are coming

then the radio is taken

a ghost is like a cloud

all vanishing

look up!

and look around yourself

you won't know who

you never know when spite

in the last war

so kind the Russian prisoners

Christmas we gave them presents

then White Terror, Red Terror

some things in life you won't opt out

in this sun the buttons shine

the buckles

death is a starched uniform

a bullet could take generations

it won't matter that you served

1944

the Germans are here

the Soviets are coming

the Arrow Cross in charge

you think overcast, even teeming

but it's autumn already

bright, crisp

no radio

but we know

the Americans are coming

the Germans have left

so many trains went with them

whole quarters emptied

now a ghetto

the Russians will be here

it was a bright clear day that one

the Arrow Cross in charge

I witness

but I don't know what

no running at the end

of course one has to step out of one's shoes

more like a dentist's waiting room

though nowhere to sit, no magazines

short sharp

you see the others go

I'm here surviving just to say

the river will wash us all down

looked up to a little cloud

and just a wisp away

it was a bright clear day

I wonder who wore those shoes away

And still have one grandfather up my sleeve… not that I ever met either…

MAGGIE

the river will wash us all down

one can always hope he said

laughing freely, head thrown back

knowing the rain was coming

he knew how to read the weather

the synoptic, the radar

strong winds, showers, cold rain

he knew a lot of things

collecting wisdom like knick knacks

neatly arranged, shared freely

with no little pleasure

I imagine him today

his china pale eyes

clouded by cataracts

giving me breathing tips

health tips, stats and anecdotes

dispensed from the pharmacy

of his memory

while on horseback

now I’m his memory

carrying a photo

those close-cropped war shots

in sepia, neat, young, a gun slung

on his shoulder

PTSD didn’t have a name yet

so he pretended it didn’t exist

built a house, started a business

in sunny suburbia 

all that death held in check

in secret parcels left behind

as code, no one could link 

Fort Benning, Iceland, France

until it came out in little rages

broken pots, broken plates

a few bruises maybe

who knows, everything heals

after enough time

KIT

reconstruction of and from the mysteries we're left 

just reading dad's autobio April 38 sailing from Cape Town to Buenos Aires and he mentions having a German Spanish dictionary on board and to be studying it ... but I'm sure that dictionary had a a Buenos Aires bookseller's sticker in it ... maybe I'm wrong ... tricks of memory over generations!

I'm just thinking -- on account of how long this is getting -- that maybe -- without prejudice to where this is going -- we should put up what we've got so far ... 

in fact it's probably a good moment to pause and consider where this is going 

it is a kind of unplanned collaboration at this point... I mean maybe more than just a conversation 

... so shall we have a think

and shall I put up what we have on the blog?

MAGGIE

Certainly - put it up. And yes, let’s think if there’s something we can do other than converse freely. As you mention, I think memory and time are both pretty consistent themes/interests we have in common (also vegetables and forests…). if nothing else it has been an excellent prompt for me - you may want to get other voices on the blog, which I completely understand, but I’m open to anything.   

… conversation off-line now, to be continued