Thin Skin

Thin Skin

These ancient eyes pierce the thin skin
Flimsy veneer of civilization and certainty
Which conceals mandelbrot infinities of detail
Ocular illusory visions sweep across untouchable horizons
Tapestries of universes
Wrapped in rough weave
Warps and threads of endless multitude
And dream defying design
Heady intoxication of senses
Emotions and passions vice-like
Yet ephemeral uncounted incidents in time and space
Wave riders of a tsunami of motion, colour and sound
Lifetimes of wondrous mystery
Eternal puzzles sauteed in delectable complexity
Yet poor fare for the un satiated and unquenchable mind
All things brought plummeting to earth from Himalayan heights
Caught in crude nets of words and an inadequate prison of thought
Suffocated victims of comprehension and conception
Breathtaking vistas of beauty and dark pits of the grotesque
Splashed across a thousand bright, cold unfinished canvases
Incomplete artist standing awestruck before the splendour and terror

New PC Chant

Okay i will admit it.. I am a technophile. I have invested a huge amount of my time into my pc writing, creating, ideas, photos, video etc.. Well recently my pc crashed and, mainly due to a lack of back up measures I lost helluva a lot of stuff. PC technology is a boon, but you need to realise it’s limitations. It fails occasionally  and takes everything you have invested in it to digital purgatory. Oh well.. lessons we learn. Anyway off to get a brand new shiny pc on the weekend. Wrote a poem about the anticipation of new pc ownership.

New metal pet
Skin is red
PC needs met
Gadget lust fed

Morsel – Visiting Crescent Pond – Chinese Sung Dynasty Poem

I like all sorts of poetry from all sorts of cultures and times. Tang and Sung Dynasty poetry is elegant, brief , full of allusion and symobology.  Seemingly simple  and short verse can be a thinly disguised criticism; a reference to another classic poem; refer to a historical event or legend; or even be a mini philosophical treatise.

The poem I have selected by the Sung Dynasty poet Ch’eng Hao (1032-1085) is a bit more straight forward, but has some nice imagery in it:

Visting Crescent Pond

We circle the shore of Crescent Pond

to the north is a tower that touches the sky

the world has changed in the autumn air

we pour a cup for the evening chill

the image of a cloud pauses on the water

the sound of a stream lingers beneath the trees

our tasks are endless there’s no need to count

let’s meet again our next day off

 

Ch’eng Hao Poems of the Masters 205, (trans.) Pine, R. (2003) Washington: Copper Canyon Press, pp. 422-423

Zombie Dreams

Okay had a dream the other night in which I was fighting off  Zombie hordes led by Bruce Campbell aka Ash from the Evil Dead films. I admit the poem is a tad weird and all over the place.. but so are dreams.

Zombie haunted sleep
Packed doorways, broken windows
Space contracting, life on threshold
Shambling hordes closing

Hackneyed plot, mono-syllabic script
Undead Bruce Campbell leading legions of living dead
While Iggy Pop warbles in the background movie score
Singing for Brraains!!
Soft shoe shuffle of Doom!!!

Unfazed by falling from bone maggot ripe flesh
The only thing I fear is the death knell click of an empty shotgun
Holding my own in lurid dream carved rooms
Never winning, not losing

Metaphor, symbol and Freudian nuance
What moments are being trawled by the subconscious
Sitting staring blankly at a thought-leech screen?
Automatic pilot everyday life?
Or mundane routine monster of the known?

Eyes suddenly flick open
As morning smashes night fed shows
Memory switches to backup before the virus of the now corrupts all
I awake amused and bemused
While my muse groans in her grave

Evening in Autumn

One of the things I do like about Brisbane is the climate. Sure when it’s humid it is not so great, but autumn and spring are fantastic. Cool weather always revitalises me.

Cool air passes over me
My body seems to glide through it’s freshness
Smooth cold fingers caressing
A frosty lover’s gentle touch
The city whispers with a background hum
Empty streets pulsing with white noise
Within all the voices against me
Pause to take the affirmative
Shadowy trees bring no menace
Only shelter from clear skies
Stars hang in dark ceiling
Dimmed yet radiant in brilliance
Southern Cross balanced above forms an infinite arrow
Pointing all thoughts to the Middle Path

Small Dancing Monkeys

These little guys have become the bane of my existence, dancing in my head and jumping into emails.

Minute prancing simians
Many caricatures
Frenetic performance
Cacophony of sound
Fuzzy heralds in chaotic motion
Agents of distraction
Thieves of purpose
Squatters in my head
Stupid monkeys!

Traveling

Traveling through lands far from home close to heart
Muses peer mischievously from behind marble sculptures
While wild maenads  dance to rustic tunes
That were old before Apollo first caressed strings divine
Valleys and rocky slopes resound to airy spirits
Cities thrum to the vibration of modern life
People packed, car squeezing, winding byways
Leading to age layered mazes
Crammed with shops, bars, cafes
Each cramped doorway a gateway
To the exotic, different and alien
Gaudy  trinkets lie side by side with small treasures
Doorways inhabited by aproned tempters
Lead willing devotees to worship at Epicurean altars
Taste buds are assaulted with myriad sensations
And diners surrender to their plate ladened victors
The eye is drawn with every corner rounded
As the senses are intoxicated with heady waves
Crashing over the mind drowning all with the moment
Overwhelming a simple antipodean with old world charm
The road to the future seldom trod lies open
Possibilities arch towards endless horizons
The new pair of traveling shoes are already worn
By side of the road images burning
Galleries aflame with sensation and untouchable wonder
Experiences parade in rich procession
Even the jostling of the fellow travelers is welcome
Why then is my heart empty?
Cold and desolate as the Etruscan tombs I have wandered through
A soul as dead as the dwellers in that crypt infested town.
The crossroads I come across all look alike
And none are a fork in the road
What light can lead from the dark?
When my eyes are still shut tight
Halfway across the world but in the same spot
How far do I have to travel?
How many more journeys?
Until I find that gentle inner sea

Cemetery

Wrote this poem after visiting a foreigners cemetery in Rome, which is next to a hill that is made from broken pottery shards. All sorts of famous people are buried there including the poets Percy Shelley and John Keats.

In the shade of the broken mountain.
Labyrinthine stone lined hill,
Grass covered streets beneath time eaten wall.
Through ivory vistas range sleek fur-lined apparitions.
Psychopomps or guardians?
While bards untamed in life become brothers,
Silent children of the shadows.
Here their great words are lost to poignant brevity,
And the only verse that is heard is
“All in life comes to this place,
And none return save in memory”

Theatre at Epidaurus

Well it has been a while since I last posted, but i am in Europe at the moment and it seems with a change of scene I have had a change in my state of mind. My lazy and oft sleeping muse has received a timely kick to the head.

Wrote this after visiting the Theatre at Epidaurus. The acoustics are amazing.

Glistening ageless stone bones
Peerless offering bowl to the gods
Where once tramped the heirs of  Thespis
And crowds consumed myth and meaning
Here I stand unworthy of the position
Transfixed by echo divine
Do I hear my own voice reflected?
Or is it ancient whispers?
Windswept shades from healing sanctuaries
Or ancestral voices calling me home

Tiny Quotes – Marcus Aurelius

The next tiny quote are from a work by Marcus Aurelius, a Roman Emperor and philosopher who lived during the 2nd century B.C.E

“Nothing is so conducive to greatness of mind as the ability to subject each element of our experience in life to methodical and truthful examination, always at the same time using this scrutiny as a means to reflect on the nature of the universe..”

Marcus Aurelius Meditations 3.2 (trans.) Hammond, M. 2006 London: Penguin