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 7th, 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 7th 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
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