Lately I have learned about ‘poaching’ – I thought this would be a good start for this, the month of Salmon Spawning. An expression that has affected me somewhat over the years, but not in the culinary sense: poaching, to put it crudely, is the act of stealing someone else’s bird. Whereas, perhaps, in the past seeing someone in a steady and sturdy relationship put them in the ‘no-go’ category, now it seems they are fair game. After all, it’s a great test of the status quo, especially if all parties assume that any flirting is purely academic.
Having been neither poacher nor poachee but, in my unfortunate past, poachéd, I found myself drinking gin-and-tonic on my sofa with someone who described herself as ‘happily un-single’ – and knew she wasn’t telling the whole truth. Anything but. So, to charm her, I attempted to recite Ted Hughes behemothic poem, ‘Wodwo’ only pausing to breath at the commas. Don’t try this at home, kids. Or if you succeed, move on to the last few pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses without a breath, and see if that secures you a place in the poachability pursuit.
Yes, I cribbed, nicked, filched, pinched, pilfered, poached and outright stole from others to create these tales (but Ted Hughes, too, took his idea from an ancient tale, or teller.) Unfortunately I didn’t get the girl, in spite of plying her with Gin, reciting poetry to her and performing Schubert’s ‘Dichterliebe’ in her honour. Poaching, it seems, like poetry, works well on the surface. But when we break through into it, it seems there are greater truths, and freshness deep down things.
(And that I 'arf-inched from Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Moon Phases, September 2010
Last Quarter – September 1, 17:22
New Moon – September 8, 10:30
First Quarter – September 15, 05:50
Full Moon – September 23, 09:17
SEPTEMBER: Salmon Spawning Time
Wodwo
Man or beast, goblin or troll, reckless or tame,
Wodwo dwells deep in the woods,
in the dark intestine of the mind's green eye.
If curiosity killed the cat,
it procured this vain creature's survival,
climbing through the icy glass of its own image,
the reflection of air and sky and unseen trees
as nihilistic as the illusion it shattered.
However you doubt its existence
time and again the eternal questions exist:
Where did it come from, to where does it go?
Some rabbit-hole: clay's aorta, within, within,
unreckonable with any system or organ or engine,
hovering on the perimeter of existential reality
while sametime lurking deep among the myths of truth.
Not seeded, laid nor spawned, neither animal,
vegetable, mineral, flesh, fish nor foul;
both animus and anima, moon and mind,
lifeblood from the earth's deep bowel,
watered by the darkest beams of creativity.
Embryonic omen, could we dice with blasphemy
and say: beginning and end, death and birth,
swallowed, digested, cathartic, reiterated,
deep down things, in the soil, within, within, within?
There is no answer, save the perennial ticking.
Keep searching, Wodwo.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Monday, 23 August 2010
AUGUST: Moon when cherries turn black
There’s nothing much more I can say about Edinburgh than: it’s August; it’s Festival-time. Some find this season deeply irritating; others, invigorating. Either way, it hits your pocket. Even if you stick to the Free Fringe, you get stung for the price of a pint, and then feel guilty for only having 73 pence to put in the donation bucket. Well, here’s a tip: nearly every free show I’ve been to this year has featured a ukulele or a p**dophile joke – or both. If that floats your rhyming aquatic transport, fine: just look for old episodes of Mock the Week with Frankie Boyle, OR clips of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.
One is more entertaining (and talented) than the other.
There’s nothing much more I can say about this month’s mythical creature, the Crow, that hasn’t already been said by Ted Hughes, or Joni Mitchell. Yet I’ll hammer it out, with a few stolen quotes from other crow-poems (if you can spot ‘em – it’s been so long, I’ve forgot ‘em) and let the great edifice of my turreted pretence dissolve. Like Crow, and all Creation Myths, I am a fraud. None is less entertaining (or talented).
Moon Phases, August 2010Last Quarter – August 3, 04:59
New Moon – August 10, 03:08
First Quarter – August 16, 18:14
Full Moon – August 24, 17:05
Eskimo legend tells us the world was black,
Out of which pall came the darkest bird,
Before the owl blessed the ground with purer snow.
Heath Stubbs gave the Raven a hard time over the Dove;
That rainy November which extinguished Eden's lustre,
Sent for clues, he pecked at the entrails of fallen existence
Preferring Eve's blackened cherry to Adam's peace-offering
Fresh from the soil; and the sister's nocturnal illumination -
Corruption and diving, diving - to daylight's misty spectrum.
Then, in lunatic retribution, silver shadow was eclipsed:
Raven plunged into the dark that bore him in the beginning.
And if the Tower crumble: no great loss. Legend has it, yet.
Besides, he claimed the damp and smelly loam his own.
This strange year, there are more than the months' number
Of ways to view or justify the hidden side of mirrored sun.
I'd rather hear, from the dark side of that bird's abyss,
Heath Stubbs recalling the Raven's querulous 'kark'
Than Ted Hughes' or Joni's black and ragged Crow.
Monday, 26 July 2010
JULY: Ripe Moon (San Juan)
The Gormless Public
Throughout the Central Belt of Scotland in the early summer months, a plethora of out-door runs and races takes place; everything from Marathons to Moonwalks. The latter of these suits the subject of this year’s moon-theme: the Moonwalk is an event that raises money and awareness for and of breast cancer. Competitors wander through the night dressed in pink brassieres (mostly over their clothes – it can be chilly even at this time of the year) around the streets of Edinburgh. To illustrate, here’s a picture of Antony Gormley’s latest installation sporting a pink bikini… which brings me onto the subject of this month’s rant.
How foolish of me to think that a press conference was for anyone other than the self-aggrandising media, a few of the artistic elite and one random fan of Gormley’s work who having, by chance, caught up with this private party along the Waters of Leith enjoyed meeting and chatting with him, shared stories of Edinburgh, was bought a cream bun from a bakery in Canonmills. The private party strolled all the way to the foot of the Waters to marvel that the installation tucked behind the soulless Ocean Terminal Shopping Centre had been doused overnight with seagull shit!
Unfortunately, this random fan was not me: he was a van driver who, passing by the Modern Art Gallery, heard the news on his radio and, on enquiring, found himself at the right place at more or less the right time. I found him later, looking at the statue sunk into the pavement just by the zebra crossing between the Modern and Dean Galleries, and he told me, without gloating, that he spent the entire morning with the artist. He might not have made many deliveries that day, but this ordinary, pleasant and affable man was genuinely struck by how the Great Gormley was, equally, ordinary, pleasant and affable.
Arguably, Antony Gormley’s method could be described as ‘Realist.’ Scholars of English Literature will be told that the Realist Novel began with the likes of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, even Charles Dickens; before these ‘new’ types of book were romances, allegories, fables, the Epic and other genres. This month’s poem makes a bold statement: claiming that somewhere between the Old and New Testament, something important happened that changed the concept of Truth forever, and sowed the seeds of what was to become The Novel.
The Gospel stories, about one extraordinary man, retold by those who to greater or lesser extent knew what happened, are presented in such a way that intelligent people who read with an open mind can interpret, enjoy, learn and possibly, live by them. ‘Realism’ is not the same as ‘realisticism.’ If we read all the Biblical myths as true stories, we relegate reality to fantasy-land. But if we read them as essential truths about the relationship between our selves and things of the deep, spiritual and infinite life-force that some call God, we come closer to understanding our very human condition.
Now I’m no evangelist – Heaven forfend! – but I must openly (okay, anonymously) commend any person to read the Gospel Truths with an open mind and ignore the closed, agenda-driven, spurious and mendacious claims of the media. You might prefer, perhaps, the didactic happy-ever-after stories of Jane Austen, or the gritty realism of our greatest film-makers: Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, or Michael Haneke. Better still, put on your best pink bra and go and visit Gateshead, Winchester Cathedral, Crosby Beach or the Waters of Leith and see for yourself, humanity in all its grandeur and humility.
Moon Phases, July 2010
Last Quarter – July 4, 14:35
New Moon – July 11, 19:40
First Quarter – July 18, 10:11
Full Moon – July 26, 01:37
JULY: Ripe Moon (San Juan)
Brer
For all the Brer Creatures
born out of barreness,
Crafted and grafted upon the mind's eye,
Sisters of Myth,
the eternal fraternities
link the bright earth to the night's dark sky.
Vicarious fictions
estranged fecundations of
human distended hyperbole
which singers and dreamers
and story-tellers create
to divert us from outer reality.
And what is truth (the Bible inquires)?
Adam himself evolved from a void,
and Eve a mere rib,
whose robbery Adam renegues to this day;
Hannah sang the same jubilant song
which Mary, mere handmaiden, magnified;
Ancient Elizabeth traced her relation
to Sarah, whose God-opened womb
housed the seed of our forefathers,
Forever and ever conceived in
immaculate miracles, bound
by unshriven sororel endeavours.
Who are the creators?
Blyton gave birth to a
fabulous family of 'creeturs'
she stole from the great Uncle Remus,
himself a mere mouthpiece
for some other orator;
And Aesop, the Father of Fabulists,
collected his stories
according to one simple truth:
There can be no Fables with humans alone.
Abstract, imagined, exaggerated,
the primitive beasts provide
the analogous truths of the ancient tales.
Enid Blyton, whose genus
the Brothers Grimm shared, was
not so barren it seemed;
Nor Dogdeson, Lear, Graham, Potter or Milne:
Trapped in regression, they all knew
The existential story-tellers' truth:
There can be no good fairy tale without humans.
Whether Adam or Aesop,
Carroll or Grimm,
La Fontaine or Reynard the Fox,
Uncle Remus' or Blyton's brothers:
are not all stories pure fiction?
Or the yearning for purification?
Not so, since all the Brer Creatures,
are but the seeds of creative unconscious,
ripened by the moon's dark side.
So what of the Bible (truth inquires)?
Signs and symbols, birds and beasts,
primitive pictures in preference to man,
’til One pre-empted truisms' pact:
what lies between Old and New
exists between fiction and fact;
no fairy tale hero or fantasy-land,
He incited something quite modern.
And called it 'novel'
Throughout the Central Belt of Scotland in the early summer months, a plethora of out-door runs and races takes place; everything from Marathons to Moonwalks. The latter of these suits the subject of this year’s moon-theme: the Moonwalk is an event that raises money and awareness for and of breast cancer. Competitors wander through the night dressed in pink brassieres (mostly over their clothes – it can be chilly even at this time of the year) around the streets of Edinburgh. To illustrate, here’s a picture of Antony Gormley’s latest installation sporting a pink bikini… which brings me onto the subject of this month’s rant.What’s the big idea of announcing in the news and on the radio the unveiling of a new Edinburgh installation by one of the great exponents of Public Art and then, not telling the public when or where to find him? Having spotted earlier this month a couple of the six figures, and recognised them instantly as Gormley, I was pleased to hear the news one morning on Radio 3 that the man himself was in town. Irritatingly, there was no information – not even on the world-wide-web – on where he could be found, so I jumped on my trusty orange bicycle and went to search out the elusive truth.
Unfortunately, this random fan was not me: he was a van driver who, passing by the Modern Art Gallery, heard the news on his radio and, on enquiring, found himself at the right place at more or less the right time. I found him later, looking at the statue sunk into the pavement just by the zebra crossing between the Modern and Dean Galleries, and he told me, without gloating, that he spent the entire morning with the artist. He might not have made many deliveries that day, but this ordinary, pleasant and affable man was genuinely struck by how the Great Gormley was, equally, ordinary, pleasant and affable.
Arguably, Antony Gormley’s method could be described as ‘Realist.’ Scholars of English Literature will be told that the Realist Novel began with the likes of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, even Charles Dickens; before these ‘new’ types of book were romances, allegories, fables, the Epic and other genres. This month’s poem makes a bold statement: claiming that somewhere between the Old and New Testament, something important happened that changed the concept of Truth forever, and sowed the seeds of what was to become The Novel.
The Gospel stories, about one extraordinary man, retold by those who to greater or lesser extent knew what happened, are presented in such a way that intelligent people who read with an open mind can interpret, enjoy, learn and possibly, live by them. ‘Realism’ is not the same as ‘realisticism.’ If we read all the Biblical myths as true stories, we relegate reality to fantasy-land. But if we read them as essential truths about the relationship between our selves and things of the deep, spiritual and infinite life-force that some call God, we come closer to understanding our very human condition.
Now I’m no evangelist – Heaven forfend! – but I must openly (okay, anonymously) commend any person to read the Gospel Truths with an open mind and ignore the closed, agenda-driven, spurious and mendacious claims of the media. You might prefer, perhaps, the didactic happy-ever-after stories of Jane Austen, or the gritty realism of our greatest film-makers: Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, or Michael Haneke. Better still, put on your best pink bra and go and visit Gateshead, Winchester Cathedral, Crosby Beach or the Waters of Leith and see for yourself, humanity in all its grandeur and humility.
Moon Phases, July 2010
Last Quarter – July 4, 14:35
New Moon – July 11, 19:40
First Quarter – July 18, 10:11
Full Moon – July 26, 01:37
JULY: Ripe Moon (San Juan)
Brer
For all the Brer Creatures
born out of barreness,
Crafted and grafted upon the mind's eye,
Sisters of Myth,
the eternal fraternities
link the bright earth to the night's dark sky.
Vicarious fictions
estranged fecundations of
human distended hyperbole
which singers and dreamers
and story-tellers create
to divert us from outer reality.
And what is truth (the Bible inquires)?
Adam himself evolved from a void,
and Eve a mere rib,
whose robbery Adam renegues to this day;
Hannah sang the same jubilant song
which Mary, mere handmaiden, magnified;
Ancient Elizabeth traced her relation
to Sarah, whose God-opened womb
housed the seed of our forefathers,
Forever and ever conceived in
immaculate miracles, bound
by unshriven sororel endeavours.
Who are the creators?
Blyton gave birth to a
fabulous family of 'creeturs'
she stole from the great Uncle Remus,
himself a mere mouthpiece
for some other orator;
And Aesop, the Father of Fabulists,
collected his stories
according to one simple truth:
There can be no Fables with humans alone.
Abstract, imagined, exaggerated,
the primitive beasts provide
the analogous truths of the ancient tales.
Enid Blyton, whose genus
the Brothers Grimm shared, was
not so barren it seemed;
Nor Dogdeson, Lear, Graham, Potter or Milne:
Trapped in regression, they all knew
The existential story-tellers' truth:
There can be no good fairy tale without humans.
Whether Adam or Aesop,
Carroll or Grimm,
La Fontaine or Reynard the Fox,
Uncle Remus' or Blyton's brothers:
are not all stories pure fiction?
Or the yearning for purification?
Not so, since all the Brer Creatures,
are but the seeds of creative unconscious,
ripened by the moon's dark side.
So what of the Bible (truth inquires)?
Signs and symbols, birds and beasts,
primitive pictures in preference to man,
’til One pre-empted truisms' pact:
what lies between Old and New
exists between fiction and fact;
no fairy tale hero or fantasy-land,
He incited something quite modern.
And called it 'novel'
Friday, 25 June 2010
JUNE: Flower Moon (San Ildefonso)
Unless I’m very much mistaken, the road-sign alerting drivers to the possibility of on-coming cattle is usually depicted by a cow. But there’s one nearby a certain scientific institute on the outskirts of Edinburgh with a picture of a sheep. One might assume its name is Dolly – or Polly or Tracey or any other of her scientifically-constructed sisters.
You won’t see Dolly grazing by the roadside next time you visit Roslin: she died in 2003, suffering from arthritis – unusual for a 6½ year-old sheep (or was she 12?). Now stuffed, she revolves on a plinth in the National Museum of Scotland, amid stories of Prometea the ‘horse’ (and its identical twin and mother, Stella Cometa) and other ever-hopeful clones-to-be, Thylacine, and (a little longer in tooth and tusk) the Woolly Mammoth.
It would be fun to think that we, as Spielberg suggested, could clone bits of DNA, but hard luck, time, and other thieves have not preserved the Jurassic amber so well. Yet, we have legend, lore and myth: why else is the Phoenix such an uplifting tale! Heaven knows, it makes more sense than the resurrection-myth purported by certain religions.
My sister once wrote out, as a calligraphy exercise, a passage attributed to Chief Seattle of the Dwarmish Tribe, about the everlasting presence of his people long after the white man has wiped them out. It seems there is more truth in myth than vice versa. As Elaine Feinstein (whose poem, ‘June’ I allude to below) says, ‘The dead are strong.’
How true.
Moon Phases, June 2010
Last Quarter – June 4, 22:13
New Moon – June 12, 11:15
First Quarter – June 19, 04:29
Full Moon – June 26, 11:30
Phoenix
Beneath the Flower Moon the Phoenix rises.
From the dust of winter's ashes, from the clay?
A miracle as old as Lazarus, Persephone;
Flaring flower of a dried-out cactus in June.
The Phoenix has a handy device
above his counterpart amalgamates,
The Griffin, the Dragon, the cockatrice,
The Gryphon, the Quagga, the Wyvern, the Minotaur,
Thylacine the Tasmanian Wolf et al: ice
couldn't preserve the Unicorn with its spiral horn,
Yet the Phoenix, tried seven times in the fire,
continues, continues to rise.
Surely these pieces are purely inventions
played out as if on some chequered board
according to systems of human convention
- abstraction and emotion hold little regard
for the laws of nature, reality, fact nor fiction.
Attempting to ape the animals we re-create Eden,
Design a warped Utopia, Atlantis or Shangri-La:
Weird combinations, grafted vines or paper roses,
Genetically modified, cloned sheep, test-tube mice,
Imaged, molded or morphed like a child's cartoon;
Plasticine, proven dough, clay corrupted and fired.
We cannot be foxier than the fox; the proud
Heraldic Lion is rampantly so (- two legs good,
the stubborn symbols, angry defensive arrogance),
Yet we learn the basic rules, throw the dice,
Compose our own music to join in the dance.
The Wolf lies down with the Lamb, the Cow and Bear
The Leopard and Kid, Lion and Calf and all the Brer
Creatures: cannot all of them jump over the moon?
How can the Infant jump over the Cockatrice' nest?
Because it is not written, but invented; allowed to rise,
the Phoenix will follow the cycle of bloom:
Flowering, fruiting, decomposed, rotted and hewn
to be cast onto Autumn's conspiratorial pyre,
Only to put, once again, its septennial trick to the test.
One thing is sure: come hell or high water, fair wind
or foul, high noon, full moon, November or June,
When the last red man shall have perished, and the
Memory of tribes become a myth among white men,
- on reflection, nothing but a change of worlds - the
Phoenix will flourish long after its author's demise.
You won’t see Dolly grazing by the roadside next time you visit Roslin: she died in 2003, suffering from arthritis – unusual for a 6½ year-old sheep (or was she 12?). Now stuffed, she revolves on a plinth in the National Museum of Scotland, amid stories of Prometea the ‘horse’ (and its identical twin and mother, Stella Cometa) and other ever-hopeful clones-to-be, Thylacine, and (a little longer in tooth and tusk) the Woolly Mammoth.
It would be fun to think that we, as Spielberg suggested, could clone bits of DNA, but hard luck, time, and other thieves have not preserved the Jurassic amber so well. Yet, we have legend, lore and myth: why else is the Phoenix such an uplifting tale! Heaven knows, it makes more sense than the resurrection-myth purported by certain religions.
My sister once wrote out, as a calligraphy exercise, a passage attributed to Chief Seattle of the Dwarmish Tribe, about the everlasting presence of his people long after the white man has wiped them out. It seems there is more truth in myth than vice versa. As Elaine Feinstein (whose poem, ‘June’ I allude to below) says, ‘The dead are strong.’
How true.
Moon Phases, June 2010
Last Quarter – June 4, 22:13
New Moon – June 12, 11:15
First Quarter – June 19, 04:29
Full Moon – June 26, 11:30
Phoenix
Beneath the Flower Moon the Phoenix rises.
From the dust of winter's ashes, from the clay?
A miracle as old as Lazarus, Persephone;
Flaring flower of a dried-out cactus in June.
The Phoenix has a handy device
above his counterpart amalgamates,
The Griffin, the Dragon, the cockatrice,
The Gryphon, the Quagga, the Wyvern, the Minotaur,
Thylacine the Tasmanian Wolf et al: ice
couldn't preserve the Unicorn with its spiral horn,
Yet the Phoenix, tried seven times in the fire,
continues, continues to rise.
Surely these pieces are purely inventions
played out as if on some chequered board
according to systems of human convention
- abstraction and emotion hold little regard
for the laws of nature, reality, fact nor fiction.
Attempting to ape the animals we re-create Eden,
Design a warped Utopia, Atlantis or Shangri-La:
Weird combinations, grafted vines or paper roses,
Genetically modified, cloned sheep, test-tube mice,
Imaged, molded or morphed like a child's cartoon;
Plasticine, proven dough, clay corrupted and fired.
We cannot be foxier than the fox; the proud
Heraldic Lion is rampantly so (- two legs good,
the stubborn symbols, angry defensive arrogance),
Yet we learn the basic rules, throw the dice,
Compose our own music to join in the dance.
The Wolf lies down with the Lamb, the Cow and Bear
The Leopard and Kid, Lion and Calf and all the Brer
Creatures: cannot all of them jump over the moon?
How can the Infant jump over the Cockatrice' nest?
Because it is not written, but invented; allowed to rise,
the Phoenix will follow the cycle of bloom:
Flowering, fruiting, decomposed, rotted and hewn
to be cast onto Autumn's conspiratorial pyre,
Only to put, once again, its septennial trick to the test.
One thing is sure: come hell or high water, fair wind
or foul, high noon, full moon, November or June,
When the last red man shall have perished, and the
Memory of tribes become a myth among white men,
- on reflection, nothing but a change of worlds - the
Phoenix will flourish long after its author's demise.
Thursday, 27 May 2010
MAY: Corn-planting Moon
Far be it for me to make any kind of party-political comment on this blog – reserved purely for poetry, pictures and polemic – except to say that, yes, my last entry on all things green coincided with a General Election. Potentially this is the best night’s TV-watching (bar the Eurovision Song Contest… no, actually, scrap that: without Wogan, it is like, well, Election Night without Peter Snow!)
I spent the long night with some friends who, far from lasting until the Portillo Moment (or the Opik Defeat) flaked out long before the Green Dawn (I mean, when the hippies broke into the Pavilion, not when the Yuppies had a picnic in the Park.) For every silver lining…
This month’s full-moon poem may be more, or less, political – depending on your point of view. It sort of answers the question I get asked about vegetarianism: why I eschew something that has been created purely for my pleasure without any recourse to that creature’s or person’s dignity or humanity. Far be it from me: let poetry legislate.
Moon Phases, May 2010
Last Quarter – May 6, 04:15
New Moon – May 14, 01:04
First Quarter – May 20, 23:43
Full Moon – May 27, 23:07
MAY: Corn-planting Moon (Taos)
Cornplanter
The moon in Maytime teases dew
for the dawn's ablutions;
Seduces the sap, entices the juices,
lifts us to action.
In the fallacy of sacrilegious beautification,
Here is no time for the planting of Corn.
In a mud hut somewhere, a Hopi girl
sits grinding last year's harvest,
awaiting the onslaught of blood and ties,
Permitted only to beat the irritant dust-mites
away with her grinding stick,
Enduring the weaving and winding of a
relative matriarch, who plaits her hair into maturity's design.
Symbol of obedience to society,
to servitude and subjugation:
to masculine superiority;
she neither weeps nor complains
though her hands are raw and blistered,
her tender skin itches, and her puerile womb
acknowledges the moment of the moon:
la moment de la lune spills out sans puer.
The initiation complete, she
emerges from her childhood tent knowing her place,
with the shroud of adulthood woven round her face.
This might seem like lore or legend,
stuff of ancient so-called civilizations,
but it goes on still today.
In another hut, an apology for straw bedding,
Young females are incarcerated and lashed
with strobe effects until ready to produce their eggs.
And sometimes they are fed with grain and corn
to assuage some guilt - or rather, demonstrate cowardice:
no wonder the chicken has come to represent
fear; cowardly-custard, corn-fed, yellow-faced fear.
Other animals too are tamed and trained to produce.
In yet another tent, billed as the biggest and best:
Cornplanter, performing horse, praying for Pegasus' wings;
Gargantuan, though hardly a King like his cousin, Kong;
Dumbo (who had the sense to fly - at least to cartoon-land)
Goliath, beached sea elephant, hadn't the giant's strength
or native habitat to escape; rather, a captive in chains.
And Jumbo, conversely, travelled the sea to join Barnum's
Monstrous show, appeased by a barrel of beer on the way
(a costly exercise, but the audience loves a freak).
Who started this abuse of rights, it's hard to tell.
Who permitted this deep sleep to fall upon them!
It's a wonder these simple yet mightily powerful creatures
didn't wipe the smirks off the audiences face:
God knows they had the strength to, if not struck dumb
by their subordinated instinct or sedated apoplexy.
Thus God ordained and gave to man supremacy over all,
who named and subsequently maimed an entire Kingdom.
We all have our rites of passage; all people have their
Naming and initiation ceremonies -
Some afford the animals a special place in theirs.
The sacred cow, the filthy pig, the deified Ganesha:
Do not all these dwell within the temples of the mind?
Then we must award, reward, and re-award all animals
Their regal right among our chosen race.
I spent the long night with some friends who, far from lasting until the Portillo Moment (or the Opik Defeat) flaked out long before the Green Dawn (I mean, when the hippies broke into the Pavilion, not when the Yuppies had a picnic in the Park.) For every silver lining…
This month’s full-moon poem may be more, or less, political – depending on your point of view. It sort of answers the question I get asked about vegetarianism: why I eschew something that has been created purely for my pleasure without any recourse to that creature’s or person’s dignity or humanity. Far be it from me: let poetry legislate.
Moon Phases, May 2010
Last Quarter – May 6, 04:15
New Moon – May 14, 01:04
First Quarter – May 20, 23:43
Full Moon – May 27, 23:07
MAY: Corn-planting Moon (Taos)
Cornplanter
The moon in Maytime teases dew
for the dawn's ablutions;
Seduces the sap, entices the juices,
lifts us to action.
In the fallacy of sacrilegious beautification,
Here is no time for the planting of Corn.
In a mud hut somewhere, a Hopi girl
sits grinding last year's harvest,
awaiting the onslaught of blood and ties,
Permitted only to beat the irritant dust-mites
away with her grinding stick,
Enduring the weaving and winding of a
relative matriarch, who plaits her hair into maturity's design.
Symbol of obedience to society,
to servitude and subjugation:
to masculine superiority;
she neither weeps nor complains
though her hands are raw and blistered,
her tender skin itches, and her puerile womb
acknowledges the moment of the moon:
la moment de la lune spills out sans puer.
The initiation complete, she
emerges from her childhood tent knowing her place,
with the shroud of adulthood woven round her face.
This might seem like lore or legend,
stuff of ancient so-called civilizations,
but it goes on still today.
In another hut, an apology for straw bedding,
Young females are incarcerated and lashed
with strobe effects until ready to produce their eggs.
And sometimes they are fed with grain and corn
to assuage some guilt - or rather, demonstrate cowardice:
no wonder the chicken has come to represent
fear; cowardly-custard, corn-fed, yellow-faced fear.
Other animals too are tamed and trained to produce.
In yet another tent, billed as the biggest and best:
Cornplanter, performing horse, praying for Pegasus' wings;
Gargantuan, though hardly a King like his cousin, Kong;
Dumbo (who had the sense to fly - at least to cartoon-land)
Goliath, beached sea elephant, hadn't the giant's strength
or native habitat to escape; rather, a captive in chains.
And Jumbo, conversely, travelled the sea to join Barnum's
Monstrous show, appeased by a barrel of beer on the way
(a costly exercise, but the audience loves a freak).
Who started this abuse of rights, it's hard to tell.
Who permitted this deep sleep to fall upon them!
It's a wonder these simple yet mightily powerful creatures
didn't wipe the smirks off the audiences face:
God knows they had the strength to, if not struck dumb
by their subordinated instinct or sedated apoplexy.
Thus God ordained and gave to man supremacy over all,
who named and subsequently maimed an entire Kingdom.
We all have our rites of passage; all people have their
Naming and initiation ceremonies -
Some afford the animals a special place in theirs.
The sacred cow, the filthy pig, the deified Ganesha:
Do not all these dwell within the temples of the mind?
Then we must award, reward, and re-award all animals
Their regal right among our chosen race.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Moon of Grass Appearing
This month we have seen, in Scotland at least, every weather system – from snow to sideways sleet, howling gales to April showers, hazy summer shimmer and sunsets tinged with dark, Icelandic Ash. Convinced that it is spring, I took my trusty piece of sackcloth up our own extinct volcano, and celebrated something simple: freedom.
Funny, how they say the grass is always greener on the other side. When I got there I found it was not so much, greener nor less green, but simply so: green.
The poem for April mixes the Lakota Sioux name for the full moon with an Iroquois Creation story. The three sisters of the Iroquois, Corn, Beans and Squash are the three spirits that sustain life. Other myths speak of six sisters; either way, the doll created from corn husks was, initially, a symbol of celebrating the gift of sustenance.
Moon Phases, April 2010
Last Quarter – April 6, 09:37
New Moon – April 14, 12:29
First Quarter – April 21, 18:20
Full Moon – April 28, 12:18
APRIL: Moon of Grass Appearing
Corn Sisters
Over hill and dale, in park and pale,
Fairies dibble-dabble in the dam, with
Elfin mischief and lively Spirit-dances,
fording fen and brook and beck and burn;
High upon peak and pike, and under vale,
Trolls in crag and crevice hide beneath bridges
with Goblin menace and Impish glances.
These flights of fancy heralding fortune are
Mini-magicians, ushering joy and delight
to uncles, aunties, siblings, nephews, nieces;
placing mysterious gems in cowslips' ears,
replacing lost teeth with ten pence pieces,
displacing the soot with three gold purses -
nocturnal assistants, too reticent to appear
diurnal; sweet as dewfall, innocent as grass.
Other folk interpolated colours:
summoning seed from six beautiful sisters:
The apoplectic rage of shame-faced red;
panic yellow-faced fear and melancholy blue,
which faces up to pity, nostalgia and regret;
Black, the flipside, face untouched by sun, yet
flowering from the sisters' enigmatic psyche;
Finally, the dappled sun illuminates the flowers
in speckled beauty, paints the pearl-white drops,
defaces the envy of grass as it appeared
naïvely green beneath the April sky at night.
Funny, how they say the grass is always greener on the other side. When I got there I found it was not so much, greener nor less green, but simply so: green.
The poem for April mixes the Lakota Sioux name for the full moon with an Iroquois Creation story. The three sisters of the Iroquois, Corn, Beans and Squash are the three spirits that sustain life. Other myths speak of six sisters; either way, the doll created from corn husks was, initially, a symbol of celebrating the gift of sustenance.
Moon Phases, April 2010
Last Quarter – April 6, 09:37
New Moon – April 14, 12:29
First Quarter – April 21, 18:20
Full Moon – April 28, 12:18
APRIL: Moon of Grass Appearing
Corn Sisters
Over hill and dale, in park and pale,
Fairies dibble-dabble in the dam, with
Elfin mischief and lively Spirit-dances,
fording fen and brook and beck and burn;
High upon peak and pike, and under vale,
Trolls in crag and crevice hide beneath bridges
with Goblin menace and Impish glances.
These flights of fancy heralding fortune are
Mini-magicians, ushering joy and delight
to uncles, aunties, siblings, nephews, nieces;
placing mysterious gems in cowslips' ears,
replacing lost teeth with ten pence pieces,
displacing the soot with three gold purses -
nocturnal assistants, too reticent to appear
diurnal; sweet as dewfall, innocent as grass.
Other folk interpolated colours:
summoning seed from six beautiful sisters:
The apoplectic rage of shame-faced red;
panic yellow-faced fear and melancholy blue,
which faces up to pity, nostalgia and regret;
Black, the flipside, face untouched by sun, yet
flowering from the sisters' enigmatic psyche;
Finally, the dappled sun illuminates the flowers
in speckled beauty, paints the pearl-white drops,
defaces the envy of grass as it appeared
naïvely green beneath the April sky at night.
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
March: Desert Night Lizard
How can a writer be trusted?
How can we know that what is written, and what is read are the same thing?
We cannot. We are the ineffectual jury, who interpret the word as beautiful or moving, but comprehend it not. The truth eludes us, like a lizard in the desert, or like the moon this month, curtained by clouds of sleet and snow.
How can a novel, a poem, a play imitate life when in truth it does not exist? What fidelity to the human experience can we glean from the page once the ephemeral is snapped shut between the covers? This, or that, is all we have: the book is bound and on this hard, hard back we place our hand and swear. On something not even there.
And Bill? You choose. He too is wherever, whatever, whomever your imagination allows you to roam, to do, to be (or not – if that is the question.)
Moon Phases, March 2010
Last Quarter – March 7, 15:42
New Moon – March 15, 21:01
First Quarter – March 23, 11:00
Full Moon – March 30, 02:25
MARCH: Lizard Moon (San Juan)
Desert Night Lizard: Xantusia Vigilis
To the San Juan, he may be a god.
Poised on a bare rock
in the relative nocturnal chill sits Bill:
uncle, cousin, man-in-the-street to us;
Peopled by an oh-so-ordinary name,
Placed tail-up in a jar, ineffectual juror.
How did he come to be there? Nobody knows:
a slither of lit-silver traces his skittering trail
in the once-gold, arid Nevada sand.
With a flick of his tongue and a trick of the tail
He's gone. Yet somewhere still
His smooth-skinned, wide-eyed stare
keeps vigil. Brer Bill. Herr Bill.
Where
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