Violin strings flutter around the still centre of a single moment
The Irish flute patterns the air and my soul
Surges in the moonlight of deeper sound
I am thermal coasting on the spread shawl of music
What I long for unfolds before me and rushes ahead
The arrival turns to nostalgia
Then home
Then back again
In a tumbling spiral of desire
and complete presence
Clarice Lispector an angel human you have me mute and shivering hot. Longing to write dance in a one two step of consciousness. I, as in soul me, stutters and fizzes into life. Yearning replaced with the instance. A balm remedy with the excitement of yes!
Sweat pours down me as you talk about the bodily knowledge
of word sounds and the endless question of why being replaced by the art of
doing, of churning and leaping and turning inside out on the page. Keep going
deeper into the pace and intention of writing. Writing is claiming something
from time and asking for nothing. There is a partnership at work I don’t know anything
and on the walk here a stream of bile filled my mind that is just as much me. I
am replacing honesty with better honesty. The truth of things is painful and
yet I have to turn to it, lean in and find space for my spirit. To write with a
greater now that has within it blood and life as Clarice says the ‘plasma’. I haven’t
fed from the placenta but here is a sound that is feeding me, her thoughts on
the page. The sound of her words in my skull. Am I trying to emulate a genius,
something more, for she unshackles me and I am inspired. Once again I believe.
Blood liver. Life giver. Host or roses and other such
things. Round it off, round it off. Rounded instinct pivoted by forces unknown.
And full stops come up against a wall. Hear the water flush the dust.
The air is timid but the opposite _ bold. Both around me as enough,
a throbbing embrace.
Vibrating potential. Field of belonging and expectancy.
State of expectance on the air that is also tepid and slow yet pulsing. Oh and
the birds.
Incessant contours of sound stab darts siren in the heat
undulating throbs of a drill brief exchanges of words on the street, like the
flutter of wings, rustle quiet rustle amongst engine surges and clatter.
And there the hiss of a cool drink being opened, punctuation
I relate to, release. I am forever looking for release, a dive into the eternity
of the moment, a lapse in pressure from the endless boiling point of my frantic
mind. A mind which swerves from one thought to another trying to grab something
with marrow and suck on it. Another thought muscles in, or is it instinct telling
me such marrow will not be found in thought. The rich juice of life lies
beyond. This is a moment to stretch it, to smile with this illusive essence, to
laugh, to write it on a page, bottle top and laughing I am learning slowly,
learning a nonsense that is freedom laced with meaning or do I mimic, is that
my most taut muscle, lacking lyrical genius and without the richest depository of
vocabulary. I litter this page with speed and doubt, give way to moments of
roundness, the loop completed and darting into synergy like magnetism, those
brief moments of perfect fit. I am talking about tessellation and this really
is a response and half cooked notion, having read the work of a mind in flight.
I am inspired amongst the mud of my limitation, making sandcastles without the
sand. Yet my back is not to the sea at least. I am facing front on, drinking in
the view. In the distance I constantly see and feel the tug of the tide as the
water of life pulls near, draws away, rushes back. Intimacy in constant appraisal
and my net glistening over-head, empty again, though through faith once again filled.
We march for life
For our survival on an agile globe
For a receding reality, one fairer and greener
Something better than the world’s wealthy huddled together
In the dust and futility of their narrow horizons
All that is good in jeopardy that is the emergency
I pause for a drink, to quench my thirst
In that moment truly thankful for clean water to drink
Every sip is a portal to a well of worry where water is
scarce
Even a glimmer of brevity sharply focuses the mind
Surge of panic amongst the colour throng
Breath shallow quick stalling
I fight for fresh air, to fill my lungs in a stubborn city
I think of womb you
A fragile whisper
This beautiful promise that already sends tremors across mummy’s
tummy, your whole world
Alive yet unborn you wait to inherit the earth
Such an inheritance was never to exploit but cherish
A joining in with this exponential dance of teeming forms
An exchange of love
Are you dreaming of the future as you wait in there?
If nothing changes then by my age
Like so many already alive
You could be blighted by not enough food and the smallness
of violence
A future at the mercy of water and fire
Put at risk by the very ground you stand on and the air you
breathe
All the elements skewed against you by past generations
Things will shake you and rush you
try to tumble you and I tremble at the thought
The innocence of my youth was a luxury
Now we must strain for a world where all the trees of the
wood rejoice
Where kindness can survive escalation and thrive
I want a world where we can hold each other’s gaze
I am heavy now with the weight of dread, the status quo
A fog pervades and the tide moves in
I held a sign
Oh I held a sign and stood in the way
The work won’t stop and its calling me
To imagine in higher definition and in new dimensions
Shoulder my fear and act out of love
I watched as the evening sunlight laced
Shadow patterns across your flank
And
I said,
‘But
that is for me, what is for you?’
Sensing the truer half of a clumsy question
You ushered me closer with compassion
I pressed my
head against your bark
Hands on the
rough grooves of life lived
A familiar
pose.
In the
emptiness behind my thoughts you somehow spoke
Shifting the
channels of my mind to show me
That yours
is;
An unutterable
intimacy with all life
And a deep
groundedness in the wholeness of things
My heart
quickened
And
I was silent
Today
The many doors of love
are open