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1.xi.25
the terrible tale of how we are here
these ones
were taken, these ones let fall
I like the
sweetness of it
rot of the
flesh of the fruit
protect and
venerate
sing, salute
king after
another and drunk
a dominion
too late
too much tea
for opium too
sing all
night for a fire
slash, burn
go on with
the ancient rivalry
and the lies
how they
pass
through the
mouth
through the
ear
no need
to mind at all
if you’ll
just not swallow them
2131
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31.x.25
Sigiriya
the red rock
looming
the dogs
that think they are lions
the climbing
moats,
drawbridges, rubble restored
breeze and
shade my friends today
mortarless
stones
someone must
have climbed with them, laid them
for some old
legend
what hands
were worn to bone?
the son who
thinks himself a king
and kills
the king to be one
slits his
own throat in the end
sees it
coming after the elephant hi-jinx
today a maverick
monsoon shower
puddle blow
more likely
monkeys are
all tail
here’s a treefull
see the
traces of devotion
iconoclast
monks won’t
respect a topless lady
touts give a
hand-up
here’s bird
of a voice never heard before
and then
another – that’s someone else
there’s a
useless ladder in the rock
the summit
recedes as the tourists approach
a stone is
full of years
2130
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30.x.25
the road
all feet,
all wheels
dust when
unmud
or the grass
grows over
signs along
and the
central ellipsis
leading
along, showing apart
the friendly
road
all waves
and waving back
straw wove
so many dogs
and a dead
one too
how lines
meet where they shouldn’t
often the
whole structure leans
a coconut
pluck and sway
a motorbike
high up in the tree
does this
tin ever die
goes humbler
and humbler
here are the
ruins of what’s yet to be
lower to the
ground here
never quite
but always
with
some wind
will one day
as for now
we fossil on
the all horn
road
and out of
my way
but with a
kind of courtesy
everyone
takes their time
takes yours
imagine them
all cheering us
and the
flags to wave
the road
because of them
because of
them the road
2129
6.301
29.x.25
bright out there
jetlag series – possible prolegomenon
to shutter
up
some
cloudbright
then all the screens ahead more glow
each with
its own story
advertising
too
what has it
taken me
to rise so
high above myself?
the west is
out beyond us there
is that a
destination?
the day of
smoke is ending
day, too,
goes down
now beyond
that
dark to all
embrace
we have
escaped from where we are
from time
and won’t
remember
there must
be a lesson though
and doze,
shoes off
step lightly
on these clouds, we must
to wonder
where the stars will come
it’s where
we’re nowhere now
sit very
still for this
be grateful
for what sleep
2128
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28.x.25
palace of whack
daring to guess
as caged
each in its
skeleton nest
anything
built is a death, is many
the bridge
in its grey
canvas of
wings, fresh carcass
trolley full
of cloud to scuttle
a case of
stairs, a funnel
corner of the
eye is out
hard to
imagine the good to come
look up to
wash away, to burn
look down
just to join in
that one in
the corner can’t be there
I play an
old trick with the light
2127
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27.x.25
almost something here
ekphrastic for Keith Vaughan’s ‘Figure against
a blue background’
axe and
cleaver
other fallings
these
windows
a thing
leant into
posture of
the photographer athlete
contortion
slight facing
knee wounded
amorphous
burden for the back
rough patch
and genital shine
the anchor
legs
everything’s
blue, the rainbow too
what’s held?
what’s let drop?
can’t be
done without a body
blunt
instrument, one great bruise
there’s no
face to see
we’re not
the ones here floating
but best of
all
there’s no
one
there’s no
one knows what this is
13
Annotation mode and the art of inventing your very OWN wheel!
The idea of this mode of writing is simply that art inspires art so poetry inspires poetry. If you can be inpired to a poem from a work of visual art or a piece of music, then why not from a poem itself.
In the presence of a poem - of any art - more art can come!
In the presence so a poem comes!
In the peripatetic mode one gathers lines while afoot, on the track, off in the wilds. Later, at the desk, one may process these lines, by stages into a poem. The more forays the more choice of materials to quarry for a poem.
In the annotation mode, the wandering is done on the margins of someone else's page. So the first qualification for this activity is iconoclasm! One must lose one's fear of desecrating the blank of someone else's page! After all, it's blank. It's just made for you to scriblle your notes in! Other people's long thin poems are best for this activity (wide margins) but any poem will do. In fact starting with Shakespeare's sonnets or Elizabeth Barrett Browning's (note, I haven't done this!) could be a good kind of training.
Long poems often involve the exploration of topics and themes that have been well visited by poets or other artists in the past. So visiting those works can give you guidance and inspiration. It can show you where the gap you're here to fill -- the place in poetry where no one has yet been!
Just as in the annotation mode, visiting the same place twice may give you a different impetus/inspiration, so visiting different approaches to the same question/topic may make your work more balanced, more nuanced, more of a conversation.
So try to call - in annotation mode - on the works of a few different poets who have visited your chosen theme.
And of course you can adopt the annotation mode as a way of finding your topic. While there's no such thing as 'writer's block', getting among the successful (or unsuccessful!) poetry of others is a great way to work out what it is you ought to be writing about.
In the annotation mode can often generate excellent work simply because you dislike or disagree with what you're writing. Or you feel things could be done differently. Or you feel things haven't been explored properly, or fully. Or that, in some way, there is a next thing to say. Because there always is a next thing to say. That's because poetry - in any language and also between languages - is part of the great conversation in which humans are permanently involved. And poetry is a conversation in its own right!
Think of the annotation mode as a kind of hunting and gathering on the printed page. Of course you can do this from screen to a piece of blank paper too, but there's something about the tactility of being on the page - something about the audacity of scratching around on someone else's page - that gives your making an extra push! It's like following footprints along a beach, perhaps with the urgency of beating the tide too! The annotation mode makes you a kind of detctive.
Personally, I like to go back to my annotations in someone's book and type them when i'm not sure what I'm writing next. It's a little something up my sleeve, a rabbit I can pull out of the hat.
Never feel that there is a pre-determined way you are supposed to respond to what you read. You are reading as a poet, not as a critic, not as a theorist. It's not about being kind or unkind, fair or unfair. It's about making something new - a new work of art - from the art that already exists, that already has the reality of the printed page. How to respond? In a friendly way? Angrily? In the form of an argument? As an extension of what has already been said - an il/logical next step? Taking things to their nth degree or il/logical conclusion? As the spirit takes you!
If you know of a book that is on a theme and you want to create a poem on a similar or related theme then annotate the whole of that book. Go back a month later or a year later, type up your annotations.
Remember, what you're about here is not to plagiarize but to make sure that you don't plagiarize. So take care to know what is yours and what is not when you work in this mode.
Take care! Great minds do think alike... and yours is one of them!
Remember that famous line of Jorge Luis Borges - 'to speak is to fall into tautology' ... i.e. it's all been said before. The way around the risk of simply repeating what has already been written is to pay close attention to what has already been written. The annotation mode, correctly attended to, is a prophylaxis against plagiarism.
And as for the book you've just desecrated with your scribble? Well, maybe, down the track, it will TWICE as interesting for someone who picks it up. Offering the later reader the poems in print and the inklings of the next poems in the conversation!
If you want to invent your own wheel, it's best to spend some times with the ones that are already rolling around!
I suppose this should lead on somewhere later to the question of allusion - referring to the works of others ... also related - epigraphs, quotations in quotation marks in poems ... and the borderline between all of these legitimate practices and plagiarism.
2126
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26.x.25
does not sit well
ekphrastic for Mori Sosen’s eighteenth century ‘Monkey
Troop’
all this is
politics
and in the
heat, under falls
allegoric
blossom
beginning
the bark and
sniff, the rounding on
clamber of
twig let and twilight
falling
asleep aglow
some in
zazen
imagining
foliage
here’s
conquest, there’s play
a nose to
fresh the air
and love’s
offstage as you’d expect
there’s some
surprise though
swing for it
Tarzan type,
avant la lettre
the tail and
the four paws landing
some lion
like, some pussies
wary of the
weather all
fuzzy, hanging
on
to nearly
nothing too
look down
just for a moment
see what I
have found
2125
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25.x.25
all for the light, this reaching
Gore Cove Track Series
it’s in the
stem
it’s in the
leaf
it’s every
ant must inch along
and these
are not the least
brush turkey
heap scratching
shy for a
chick
these are
unremembered days
all for the
light this reaching
a down delve
for the dark till too
and the eye?
in all, how
else?
hardly here
at all, a glimmer
words come
waking
there’s
nothing needs a name
but still,
for light, the reaching
sky is the picture
of time
clouds travel
clouds are
gone
night falls
to us
the breath
goes on
it’s in the
thick
we see how
far
the stone at
chore
the seed
unseen
yet breaking
soil
creek’s slow
then still then vanished
there’s
nothing said at all
2124
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24.x.25
there is no escape from meaning
you close
your eyes, it’s there from scratch
and there,
we’ve said it now
can you
imagine such a place?
year’s dot,
it’s all horizon
the images
crowd in
of course
you climb the walls
we’ve all
been here before
there isn’t
an elsewhere yet
but everything
was here to begin
the animal
is implicated
make a
list
stump up
think of a
silence
begins
with…?
there’s no
stillness like a tree
you’d like
just the innocent squawk, scratch
you wade
out from the shore but
here’s all
the sea says
fishspeak
and the rolling rhythm
a conch in
the mind of time
means all
this
thing
bequeathed
each
wonder a sign
nonsense
is the best of it
tomorrow
vanish
we were
born to this
and why?
who knows?
I didn’t
say makes sense
but can
you see the dark I’ve said?
will you
tend my bright?
such are
the bones
peer out
in the dust of doing
it’s
always some winged thing wants in
who’s at
my window now?
ne eblas eskapi de signifo
vi fermas viajn okulojn, ĝi estas tie de nulo
kaj tie, ni jam diris ĝin
ĉu vi povas imagi tian lokon?
jaro punkto, ĝi estas ĉio horizonto
la bildoj amasiĝas
kompreneble vi grimpas la murojn
ni ĉiuj jam estis ĉi tie antaŭe
ne estas ankoraŭ aliloke
sed ĉio estis ĉi tie por komenci
la besto estas implikita
faru liston
pensu pri silento
preparu vin
komenciĝas per…?
ne estas trankvileco kiel arbo
vi ŝatus nur la senkulpan kriegon, graton
vi vadas for de la bordo sed
jen ĉio, kion diras la maro
fiŝlingvo kaj la ruliĝanta ritmo
konko en la menso de tempo
signifas ĉion ĉi
aĵo testamentita
ĉiu miro signo
sensencaĵo estas la plej bona el
morgaŭ malaperu
ni naskiĝis por ĉi tio
kaj kial?
kiu scias?
mi ne diris havas sencon
sed ĉu vi povas vidi la mallumon, kiun mi diris?
ĉu vi zorgos pri mia brilo?
tiaj estas la ostoj
rigardu en la polvo de farado
ĉiam iu flugilhava aĵo volas eniri
kiu estas ĉe mia fenestro nun?
2123
6.295
23.x.25
wilt
in the
great heat
once
upright
thus
beckoned
to parrot
bright
in full
leaf
so much
insect
tricked
from the air
everyone
out to flower
as if
there were no choice now
limp with
old summer
dread
entropic
wallaby
lain to shade
edged by
breeze
in the
bindi eye time
day bites
and night bites too
little
insects that won’t
I go round
killing them
but they’re
too many
I need the
vac
wait for
the koel to come
they say
today is Thursday
where’s evidence of that?
2122
6.294
22.x.25
breathing
it’s not
like anything winged to fall to us
but bus
comes
the
familiar door sunshone
it’s a breeze step in
be
responsible
you cannot
know what you’ve been signed up for
in a
certain place at a certain time
of course
bitten
this thing
crosses your path
I walk for
my words
they’re by
the way
time crept
to a fidget then
and that’s
where we’re gone
in the end
only words
and each a
death
you won’t
have noticed the revolution
our rotation
things all
moving on
we with
them
does it
occur to you
to live in
the moment of a tune?
that this
is as far as we go
no choice
but sparkle now
2121
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21.x.25
to fill the blank
for
wise surprise
to vast it
take on
the great between
take time
with me
excuse a
self just to be
here we
paint the weather
there,
take off our heads
I begin
with nothing
or that’s
a trick of light
all upward
of the eye
a parrot
drops its message
we have
heard this before
page is a
hill and climb
was always
where I was headed
you’ve got
to be a little breathless
have to
exercise a fear
limber in
draw own
conclusions
be the
breeze and wing it
go for the
long rhyme
wear a
helmet for the tough patch
things fly
into me
I tread
the path my treading’s made
dive
draw up a
well’s worth
old socks
and coins, the verdigris
there’s a
moon held in view
credible
as cash
the canvas
of value to be assigned
the
floating worth this that, the other
own cloud
where else
is there to be?
to stare
out this our sky
sometimes
make a run for it
if the
coast is clear
take it as
a dare
all
hindrance let
this was
always where I was headed
call it my
bounden duty
fill up
what space there is
