Car Park Orchestra .
Opening doors. Parking. Leaving. Synchronised shapes. Orchestra of Friday night light. Flash and twinkle. Little rag doll girl in back seat woken. Draped upon shoulder. Lights close. Night closes. Trolleys retreat. Take-away arrives. Moment dissolves.
Footnote: Image from CD Sigur Ros. Poem written to track three playing in car called, ‘Hoppipolk’.
Caught In Mime .
Wonder….why it is easier to crash, than to stop. Why a smile is easier to dredge across face, than to allow a tear to roll. A fear to tumble. Why to fake is easier, than to exhibit a flaw. Why the spin holds tighter than the stillness of your own place. Why silence roars and the mind’s scream is caught in mime.
(Drawing Harley Manifold.)
The Kiss .
Curiosity stimulates forward movement. Kindness keeps me warm . Water carries me away. Nature sustains my sense of wonder. Humour makes me rich. Music transports me to another place. Movement turns mind to muscle. Sensual experiences secure a connection to the present. Conscience a bond with purpose and meaning. Solitude an essential power source. Risk a window of potential. Critical thought the liberator. Talking a solvent when stuck. Hope the peacemaker. Self care my temple. Self reliance my faith.
(In My Room book. Art by Harley Manifold)
Purple Porridge .
Sticky pot of oats / purple blooms on porridge blob / before morning eyes.
For a Poetic Breakfast …
Take one cup of oats whole and into its vessel pour one times the same measure of water and one again of milk, light on the heart. Fetch a small dish from draw or shelf to scoop berries mixed and frosty frozen for entry into the microwave hum. Listen for popping and spurting on stove to tell you, “It’s ready”. Make it a home in the base of a deep, deep bowl. Drizzle honey sweet upon its top, and let berries land just where they please. Circle the mix with a shallow mote of milk. Settle down somewhere snug to savour the show before it fills the inside warm and full.
Modern Poet .
“The saviour of modern poetry … this guy Eminem has created a sense of what is possible. He has sent a voltage around a generation.” Seamus Heaney. Guy Adams writes, “He has done this not just through his subversive attitude but also his verbal energy…. A decade ago, Mathers – an angry young man from the wrong side of Detroit – decided to bleach his hair, adopt the alter ego Slim Shady and transform the landscape of popular music. In six years, from 1999 to 2005, he recorded five extraordinary albums that sold nearly 50 million copies and gave the city of Motown a new chapter in its musical history.
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A Week Away .
Sit in awe and wonder of a woman who wears her possible fate in a way that marks a question on the mirrors of us all. For nothing is ever more beautiful that pure courage and truth shared in the absence of fear. While she may feel there is now little she can give – she has never been so full. And despite energy low and time much shorter than most, she commits to home made juices, savouring every dip of spoon – offering a recipe for us all.
Her touch is void of hurry, lingering long and toasty warm. And the serenity of her space sits you firmly in your seat and somewhere goes your list of ‘things to do’. The treat is the mischievous sparkle that skips across tiring eyes to reveal a woman who’s swapped ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to invite little girls to play. And we do. Following her shuffling slippers on legs we joke are now so fashionably thin and a bottom all but gone. She steps into her garden world, full of birds she points high in gums. Willy Wagtails snapping insects in her wake.
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