Ophelia's Nun

ISN

ahohohohohohohohohoh.....hehehehehehe.....too late

FinsburyParkCarrots

I clank my boots
up the ladder's shuddering steps
my weight making thud upon thud
in steel echo.

Stooping from about the top
I check the ladder's forefeet:
rubber trotters snugly paw the base
of my whitewashed farmhouse wall.

I place my paint pot on the top
stepladder step, looking within it
to a dense cream pulp. Then I lower
my hand, gripping before it my brush

lightly into the paint's lipped skin
and feel through the handle
the press of thick liquid upon wire.
Now I pull out my brush

and lofting my arm to an eave
to coat it, I see streaked bulbs of surplus
cream paint festoon the wind
and constellate the concrete path below.

As I peer beyond, my left hand leaning
on the top of the wall for balance,
I find clouds stacking to the darkening of blue,
stone air towers in a hierarchy of rain.

Below, Saddle Head, a prostrate mountain
proclaims its contoured sapphire worthless
as it buries itself in rippled miles
of shifting ocean sparkles, twinkles

to the morse of starfish, the beat of sealbreath;
Occasions of tidegush, rhythms of an afternoon.
Day upon day, the tide comes a little nearer,
carving rivulets in the dank jade rush.

In the Parish Church they've locked away
prophecies, some say spoken by a drowning cow
to his master: Doona will drown in a high tide
and no seawall will ever stand.

And I turn back to my eaves, I try to blind
the woodgrain eyes of eaves
with manmade chemicals from a pot,
Knowing next year they'll be staring again.

PJGirl2004

you really pull the reader into your work.
i have gotten goose bumps from some of the poetry i have read so far.
thanks for sharing yourself with us.

FinsburyParkCarrots

It means much more to me that my work has a physical, hopefully positive effect on readers than if it had some abstract influence on those vague things called ideas and 'the world'. Thank you so much. I like the work of yours that I have read so far, too.

Amaterasu

Write a book.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Thanks to everyone who created birthday threads for me across the bbs, 21st July 2004.

Love
Richard

FinsburyParkCarrots

A moonwinged butterfly poem dances
fluttering in bright blue orbs, gentle Wiley's eyes.
Wiley cries, "Mommy, I've a poem!
I have to write it down before it flies away!"

That's how a poem happens.
Wiley will tell you!

FinsburyParkCarrots

He likes a neat sentence.
He has an opinion on what English is.
He says what isn't plain isn't English.
He wants to know what something's about before he reads it.
He doesn't want to have to work at decoding something.
He says literature should reflect reality.
He says he doesn't have time to read much.
He says anyone who questions reality is a loony.
He wants language to reinforce his view of the world.
He hates -isms.
He says "The Left can't write".
(He emphasises this pun with a shout.)
He likes to point out what he sees as thick people.
He says a thought that isn't formed neatly isn't a thought at all.
He says a mature thought is a Conservative thought.

He's never invited to parties.
He says he doesn't care.
He's fibbing, I reckon.

Being Enlightened

Originally posted by FinsburyParkCarrots
A moonwinged butterfly poem dances
fluttering in bright blue orbs, gentle Wiley's eyes.
Wiley cries, "Mommy, I've a poem!
I have to write it down before it flies away!"

That's how a poem happens.
Wiley will tell you!

Ahhh, butterflies... thoughts arrive...*sigh*

PJGirl2004

i love your stuff fins!
you are truly talented
and i swear you could make a living at writing.
maybe you do and you just chill with us ameteurs, huh?!
well, thanks for looking at my work too.
way cool!

FinsburyParkCarrots

Class was assembled, sitting crosslegged
and frozen on long, cold floorboards. We
were eight and nine. We'd read the hymns from dogged
old books, must-dusty to the touch. She
was speaking, our headmistress, now (standing
there, her suit blue Thatcher-starched). "There are
Evil atheists in Moscow, handing
stale old bread to queues of mites who stare
out at skies and buildings, black and white,
Lost to communism." Then she steered
the topic onto how the dread and blight
of pagan darkness died where people feared
a Father's light: Strange lands where missions came
and settled, changing "children" for the good
by building up a market in the name
of building souls.

Today, they lack for food,
The "young" of Heaven's providential vision:
those, risen from a cold hard floor;
those, subjects of a colonising mission.
Still, preachers say we're rich in being poor.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Place above my heart your golden head,
darling one, and whisper how you came
to wing upon a world to find my bed
tonight when rose my crying of your name.

FinsburyParkCarrots

He reclines in a sepia image, occasioning sunset,
straw boater on,
cigar under his civil servant moustache,
chin jutting up in loutish profile,
dominating the golden section of this frame.
His deck chair like a yawning V sprawls
imperiously across a carpet floor, right to left.
His shoed feet are up on a table with a teapot,
And he poses with affected nonchalance,
Discoursing with his white-clothed body
on the confidence of place now owned,
for the camera; for the owners.

He has open at his chest a pulp hardback,
Its crude dustcover sketch emblazoned
clearly to the camera's view:
A stockpile image of familar adventure.
His blank eyes seem to pretend to glance
at an easy story's beginning;
One of afternoon boredom
and how firm rule rules from the first
without a need of a read-up of notes on arrival,
Since the Empire runs to order unfailingly.

A steel tub, for washing,
stays in a corner tucked to the left,
beer bottles are opened before boxes and cases
and a traveller's mirror catches a photographer's flash.
This new boy's arrival-festoonery belies
the ancient figures, deities
on carved pillars, dancing Gitas,
laughing,
loving beginnings after ends.

This is his office, in the Chennakeshava Temple
in Somapalem Andrapradesh.

Behind him, tall, erect, face full to the lens,
another's eyes glance to those filled shoes upon the table,
The light between pillars ushering
a chance of outside, a sunset light,
a dying Western blaze upon a shoulder.
This man, perhaps a servant, stands,
But the camera's attempt at chiaroscuro
fails to mask his face to standard form.
He, cheek lit, poised, is seen clearly.
His eyes radiate, in background brightness

though critical, askance.

This standing man's eyes
Reflect more than the colonial's mirror:

This man's eyes know what we see now,

Woodworm under broken shoes
And the imperviousness
of dancing gods on stone.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Two city drunks were staring at the moon
While leaning on a bridge, beneath which flowed
sparkles, ripplegleams. "That thing's a ruin:
Stare harder! Make that fughin' thing explode!"

FinsburyParkCarrots

A thirty-eight year old woman from Chepstow was reported to have given birth to a three headed yak. This was in 1598. Her husband was led in chains to the Tower of London and fed bread and water in the Bloody tower, whipped and racked and made to hang upside down, from the tower battlements over the Thames, in a hair shirt and in full view of passing coaches from Aldgate to Chelsea, while crowds of peasants gathered around and pelted him with jellied blood and buttered oats.

Nah, not really.

FinsburyParkCarrots

"When we found him in his bed, you know
he'd quite begun to whiff. Stiff as this gin,
He was. You know, he had this glow
Just like a rubber chicken, and this grin
stuck on his face, with all his yellow teeth
sinking in his bottom lip. But then
We noticed that protruding underneath
the bed were reams of pages where his pen
Had scrawled great slabs of poetry and prose
on history and kings, and deaths in battle:
We found this novel right below his toes
He'd written: "Whiskey Stars". Good stuff. Not prattle.
Well, the bugger's dead now. And his novel?
Dunno. I left it there, still in that hovel..."

FinsburyParkCarrots

rocking
dancing
plunging
rising
moving rhythm
plectrum beating
upstroke downstroke
halfbeat quarterbeat
eighthbeat again
again ringing
ringing harmonics
fifths, sevenths,
ninths, elevenths,
infinity spiralling
upward and pulsing
repetitive ragas
modal rills
like rivulets
on sound's
mountainous
roar of blue
quartz janging
azure, moving
the heart of my dancer
new waves
blisswaves
blissweaves
bliss to dance
bliss to dance
to dance
to dance
to dance

(((((((blissweaver))))))))

rarghrargh-brownstar

Originally posted by FinsburyParkCarrots
rocking
dancing
plunging
rising
moving rhythm
plectrum beating
upstroke downstroke
halfbeat quarterbeat
eighthbeat again
again ringing
ringing harmonics
fifths, sevenths,
ninths, elevenths,
infinity spiralling
upward and pulsing
repetitive ragas
modal rills
like rivulets
on sound's
mountainous
roar of blue
quartz janging
azure, moving
the heart of my dancer
new waves
blisswaves
blissweaves
bliss to dance
bliss to dance
to dance
to dance
to dance

(((((((blissweaver))))))))

now thats very rarghhhhh
and sensual!

FinsburyParkCarrots

Thanks, yer Rarghness.
It was inspired by guitarness.

rarghrargh-brownstar

Originally posted by FinsburyParkCarrots
Thanks, yer Rarghness.
It was inspired by guitarness.

thats even more exceptional rarghness
i was thinking something else
but a guitar can only exemplify it furtherness