Letters From Dad

http://www.mixcloud.com/AliBrownUK/letters-fom-dad/

Words that sometimes get stuck in my head....

Trapped

Where have you gone?
Behind that forced smile and
Tired, lifeless eyes?
Where is the spirit
That used to sparkle and dance
In once-twinkling eyes?
Come... come...
Take my hand, weary soul;
Step forward once more...
This is your time to shine
Together we can fly
Body and soul
United and free
Let's set ourselvees free
Let's soar, once more...

Insight...

I think of you 

With needles in your eyes 

To help you see

Yet you can't see

Have you ever seen?

Will you ever see?

Or do you just see 

What you want to see

Through blinkered

Narrow-minded

Judgemental eyes 

Full of bitterness and self pity?

Will you ever see 

Your mistakes or

Will you always 

Be blind, only able to see 

The next glass of whisky

That might or might not 

Help drown the grief

As a temporary, yet long term,

Measure?

From a safe distance

I can see and

Still, I wish you well.

Windy day...

Buddhist prayer flags dance

While the wind chimes clatter...

Sunshine appears

Lost and Found...

The words for the spoken word bit on the previous blog...

Lost and Found…

The blank page reflects my

Blankness…

“Hello stranger; where have you been?”

Where have I been?

Where am I?
Where was I?
How did I

Slide

                                So far
                                                Away?

Without even
Realising?

Pretending I was too busy, I

Disconnected.
I switched off my inner voice…
Tried to ignore the whisper, the wise words
Crying out to be heard…
But I knew it was there all along;
The gentle voice,
Wise and strong.
I just needed to create
A bit of

Distance.

Press ‘pause’ for a while.

Because sometimes
Ignorance

Is bliss.

Or that’s what I tried to tell myself,
As I drifted,

Faltered,

Mourned

And grieved….

Feeling lost.

All the while ignoring my inner guide’s call

As my soul wailed a mournful song that went

Unheard…

But now with rueful smile I find that all along
It was me I’ve missed most of all…

Hello stranger; your lament is done!
Come; step out of the shadows
Back into the sun.

Step forward
Come on;
Come

Into the sun…

Stepping forward, I shiver

And feel
The ice start to melt…
The ice starts to melt.
It feels
Good.

3^rd Feb 2012

Lost and Found...

Lost and Found...

If you click on the 'Lost and Found' link above, it will hopefully take you to a recording of something I've just written and recorded... I'll post the words in the next blog...

In an Iridescent Time...

Poet Ruth Stone (above) died last month, aged 96. I love her description (below) of what happened when she could feel a poem coming on, and can relate to that myself a bit...

Elizabeth Gilbert tells a story about Ruth Stone's writing style and inspiration, which Ruth had shared with her:

'As [Stone] was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out, working in the fields and she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. It was like a thunderous train of air and it would come barrelling down at her over the landscape. And when she felt it coming...cause it would shake the earth under her feet, she knew she had only one thing to do at that point. That was to, in her words, "run like hell" to the house as she would be chased by this poem.

The whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. Other times she wouldn't be fast enough, so she would be running and running, and she wouldn't get to the house, and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it, and it would "continue on across the landscape looking for another poet".

And then there were these times, there were moments where she would almost miss it. She is running to the house and is looking for the paper and the poem passes through her. She grabs a pencil just as it's going through her and she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it. She would catch the poem by its tail and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page. In those instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact, but backwards, from the last word to the first.'

Here are a couple of her poems, below:

Always on the Train
Writing poems about writing poems
is like rolling bales of hay in Texas.
Nothing but the horizon to stop you.
But consider the railroad's edge of metal trash;
bird perches, miles of telephone wires.
What is so innocent as grazing cattle?
If you think about it, it turns into words.
Trash is so cheerful; flying up
like grasshoppers in front of the reaper.
The dust devil whirls it aloft; bronze candy wrappers,
squares of clear plastic--windows on a house of air.
Below the weedy edge in last year's mat,
red and silver beer cans.
In bits blown equally everywhere,
the gaiety of flying paper
and the black high flung patterns of flocking birds.

by Ruth Stone

Mantra
When I am sad
I sing, remembering
the redwing blackbird’s clack.
Then I want no thing
except to turn time back
to what I had
before love made me sad.

When I forget to weep,
I hear the peeping tree toads
creeping up the bark.
Love lies asleep
and dreams that everything
is in its golden net;
and I am caught there, too,
when I forget.

by Ruth Stone

(many of her poems convey a haunting feeling of loss and bittersweetness; they are“love poems, all written to a dead man”; written after her husband ended his life, leaving her to bring up three daughters on her own)...

The great enigma...



The news that Tomas Tranströmer‎ has been awarded the Nobel prize for literature had me almost running to my bookcase to reread some of his poems. I'm delighted that he has been recognised in this way.

I was first introduced to his work five years ago, by a fellow blogger on myspace (how 'old-school' that seems now...). After reading just a few lines, I promptly ordered myself a couple of books - 'The great enigma' and 'The half-finished heaven'.

The picture above is from the cover of The Great Enigma.

Here are a couple of his poems - one from each book.

Calling Home

A telephone call flowed out into the night, and it gleamed here

and there in the fields, and at the outskirts of cities.

Afterward I slept restlessly in the hotel bed.

I resembled the compass needle the orienteer runner carries as

he runs with heart pounding.

~~~

The Tree and the Sky

There’s a tree walking around in the rain,
it rushes past us in the pouring grey.
It has an errand. It gathers life
out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.

When the rain stops so does the tree.
There it is, quiet on clear nights
waiting as we do for the moment
when the snowflakes blossom in space.

both by Tomas Tranströmer

Echoes...

Echoes...

As the leaves rustle softly,
Distant memories
whisper
Songs of love
and echoes
from another life,
another time...
A seagull cries out
overhead
while my soul
cries of pain
and
lost love,
but most of all
of hope...

There is always 
hope...

© AB 2011

 

sweet...

The smell of damp earth 

underneath trees

mingles with honeysuckle and 

wild roses

life tastes 
sweet

 

After the rain...

 Hello again! 

Here's something I wrote earlier today when I was sitting on my bench, enjoying the sunshine for a few moments...

After the rain...

Summertime rain brings flowers

 and life

To once parched and barren

ground.

Gardens are alive

With a blaze of colour

Lifting spirits high...

Sitting for a while

I soak it all up

With gratitude and

 love.

Refreshed and 

renewed

Tranquility returns.

What was lost

Is found.

(24th June 2011)