Blimey! This blog site has sat dormant for a while. It's taken a kick up the arse from the (inter) National Poetry Writing Month and the confidence of some ace gigs to get it going again. So let's start with this, blessing my work by calling in the powers that I want to feel flowing through my writing:
https://soundcloud.com/michaeljamesparker/callinginthepowers
Calling in the Powers
(Constructing a Heart)
East
It is dawn.
I am alone
As a single red Routemaster bus,
Flying, unnoticed, across the blue-
Grey sky above the semi-
Detached with a gentle diesel thrum.
A lone
Stranger: Father
Christmas or the Easter Bunny stands
Beneath a flaking London plane tree,
Milk bottle clinking delight at something completed.
The day comes in to land, takes breath, grieves
The loss
Of night,
Slipping out of the depot,
Slinking along the sidings. This
Never reaches its destination
But nothing does, so that's ok.
South
Cut,
Shining sword,
To the sea, the Channel,
Where my skin is a salty sea dog,
My muscles, and cockles, a battalion, ready,
And my senses: explorers, fisherfolk, survivors.
Through The Swinge
And the Race
These Bermudan boards keel,
And over the gunwhales comes the smack
Of mackerel, the nausea of D-Day landers
And the celebration of sea gold.
I have power!
I grin
At my companion anarchists
Downing a mid-day warrior draught
And spitting unwanted law-
Making into the harbour.
West
In sub-
Sylvan meeting
With Wandererthroughthewoods
I feel this belly-flood of green,
Think it dark to point of black.
In the flow I would know what this means:
I am mortal.
Magician,
I can smell the Atlantic from the fertile
Fields up to the clouded heath,
And I would be as desolate, need
To populate the coast with ghost and dragon...
The mountain
Shapes
My fear: lime, granite, slate,
I grasp the scales of the beast
Between the snorting wind and wilderness
And ride the swirling cloud over the edge.
North
Come here,
The now,
Fire spitting in the dark
Of hidden valley night, of winter white,
Of the meaninglessness of cycles
Of settle, depth and melt.
These hands
Overflow, I
Tread the narrow crest of sorrow,
Driven anger, overhanging
Fear and home to joy. Unbidden,
I sing my highland island song.
I take this old
Worn stone
Of destiny, no matter if th'original
Red sand, the stolen stone, the spoof,
I make my own meaning, crown myself.
Who else could be lord of these isles?
Earth
This land
Is all
That we have for sure,
This land, this land, this I am,
This green grass beneath my feet,
This carved and twisted stone round which I spiral,
This voice,
This mother
Of all the dwellers of the mounded
Earth, the hidden, behind
A little twist of perception,
The love that gives existence sweetness,
This I am,
This grace
Whispers I am perceiving you,
You are my child and I love you.
This wandering, this weather, this
Life laid down and given.
Sky
Through the clouds
Is the blue.
Through the blue is the void.
Laid down upon the pavement I look high,
Penetrate the concrete, the gap in the city ceiling,
See through the stars and the falling
To where
I am nothing,
Here, out there, nothing, upon nothing,
Father immaculate space.
I gaze down through great branches, dissipate,
Embrace this absurdity: starlaughter.
Ah well,
All will
Be well, through intergalactic emptiness,
The interstellar void, the interplanetary realm
Of invisible gods. I know it in my intercity
Window seat vacancy and in between each dot of empty stuff.
Ancestors
Once, now,
As the glacier
Withdraws and welcomes my kin
To its carving, I become alive,
I light fires, hunt bison,
Am bison, sacred, dead, and alive.
And then
Come my brethren
With flint and seed and crucible:
Torc-turners, torch-bearers,
Sword-wielders, axe-grinders,
Horse-riders, carvers of plate and cross and cup.
And each,
Placing feet
Upon the shore, turn heads to horizons,
Lift great grins and great arms to the dancing hills
Where I hold this circle of space and time between nothing
And ever
Everything,
And here
And now,
Let go.
I am
Alive.
https://soundcloud.com/michaeljamesparker/callinginthepowers
Calling in the Powers
(Constructing a Heart)
East
It is dawn.
I am alone
As a single red Routemaster bus,
Flying, unnoticed, across the blue-
Grey sky above the semi-
Detached with a gentle diesel thrum.
A lone
Stranger: Father
Christmas or the Easter Bunny stands
Beneath a flaking London plane tree,
Milk bottle clinking delight at something completed.
The day comes in to land, takes breath, grieves
The loss
Of night,
Slipping out of the depot,
Slinking along the sidings. This
Never reaches its destination
But nothing does, so that's ok.
South
Cut,
Shining sword,
To the sea, the Channel,
Where my skin is a salty sea dog,
My muscles, and cockles, a battalion, ready,
And my senses: explorers, fisherfolk, survivors.
Through The Swinge
And the Race
These Bermudan boards keel,
And over the gunwhales comes the smack
Of mackerel, the nausea of D-Day landers
And the celebration of sea gold.
I have power!
I grin
At my companion anarchists
Downing a mid-day warrior draught
And spitting unwanted law-
Making into the harbour.
West
In sub-
Sylvan meeting
With Wandererthroughthewoods
I feel this belly-flood of green,
Think it dark to point of black.
In the flow I would know what this means:
I am mortal.
Magician,
I can smell the Atlantic from the fertile
Fields up to the clouded heath,
And I would be as desolate, need
To populate the coast with ghost and dragon...
The mountain
Shapes
My fear: lime, granite, slate,
I grasp the scales of the beast
Between the snorting wind and wilderness
And ride the swirling cloud over the edge.
North
Come here,
The now,
Fire spitting in the dark
Of hidden valley night, of winter white,
Of the meaninglessness of cycles
Of settle, depth and melt.
These hands
Overflow, I
Tread the narrow crest of sorrow,
Driven anger, overhanging
Fear and home to joy. Unbidden,
I sing my highland island song.
I take this old
Worn stone
Of destiny, no matter if th'original
Red sand, the stolen stone, the spoof,
I make my own meaning, crown myself.
Who else could be lord of these isles?
Earth
This land
Is all
That we have for sure,
This land, this land, this I am,
This green grass beneath my feet,
This carved and twisted stone round which I spiral,
This voice,
This mother
Of all the dwellers of the mounded
Earth, the hidden, behind
A little twist of perception,
The love that gives existence sweetness,
This I am,
This grace
Whispers I am perceiving you,
You are my child and I love you.
This wandering, this weather, this
Life laid down and given.
Sky
Through the clouds
Is the blue.
Through the blue is the void.
Laid down upon the pavement I look high,
Penetrate the concrete, the gap in the city ceiling,
See through the stars and the falling
To where
I am nothing,
Here, out there, nothing, upon nothing,
Father immaculate space.
I gaze down through great branches, dissipate,
Embrace this absurdity: starlaughter.
Ah well,
All will
Be well, through intergalactic emptiness,
The interstellar void, the interplanetary realm
Of invisible gods. I know it in my intercity
Window seat vacancy and in between each dot of empty stuff.
Ancestors
Once, now,
As the glacier
Withdraws and welcomes my kin
To its carving, I become alive,
I light fires, hunt bison,
Am bison, sacred, dead, and alive.
And then
Come my brethren
With flint and seed and crucible:
Torc-turners, torch-bearers,
Sword-wielders, axe-grinders,
Horse-riders, carvers of plate and cross and cup.
And each,
Placing feet
Upon the shore, turn heads to horizons,
Lift great grins and great arms to the dancing hills
Where I hold this circle of space and time between nothing
And ever
Everything,
And here
And now,
Let go.
I am
Alive.
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