The subtle art of time.....

Dear all,

It's been a long while, so busy have I been with my work and O.U. course that I would feel I'd lost my way were not the thread waiting for me.....

Seriously it has been five months since I updated and it has gone in a blur. The highlight of the intervening period has been a poetry reading for Slackfolk - a folk music group that meets in Colchester that very kindly guested me to read and afforded the biggest audience I've yet faced, up there, alone, just me and the mike. It's a funny feeling and yet somehow so very necessary, a chance to slough off a skin or two and face myself alone in public.....

Python and Dove

 

Side winding on a moment

The emboldened tongue
Exposes hidden form

Love uncoils

In strange new ways

Gifting pleasure storm

 

Sloughs its skin

A heartbeat missed
The  python and the dove

 

Slithering helpless

In surrender

On the forked tongued peaks of love

Now, what is interesting about that is in my last post this thought thread was called "Raven and Dove" and hopefully the new version demonstrates the writing process in action. An initial idea, growing and changing to become something else filled, in this case, with snake imagery.

Ethereal Peaks

The wildest sea resides within

A white capped storm of longing
Ethereal peaks of magnificence
Found in hopeless striving

Slow the world, too fast it turns
The moment defining all I am
Such a pale illusion cannot last
No inner grasp of time unfolding

 

Another interesting aspect of time constraint is the short poem. You don't need a long rambling discourse to say something that is on your heart

Preparation

My heart beats with an agonised lilt

Round and round the shining light
Leaving gold dust from my wings
Upon the sweet bloom of your lips
Sprinkling frankinsense
Until I can no longer fly....


One of my greatest influences is Emily Dickinson and she never wrote "long". I figure if I can  just manage five percent of her genius.....

On My Skin

I read letters from the dead

Fear traps me, fly like, in its web
I look upon the stars with dread
Knowing my earthly course

Is but a footnote to the universe

I briefly illuminate
The spreading cloak of time

Such a shrinking lot defines The worth of treasured things

 

The pale flame I lit for you

Burns against the darkness
As quietly I meditate  Your loving touch, sublime…..
But cannot feel it on my skin.

 

 

My latest "collection", in the loosest sense of the term, is currently labouring under the title "Apotheosis" or roughly the process of translating something (or someone) into a god or goddess. Perhaps this is something we all do at some point or another in our lives as we seek (or strive to fulfill our lives purpose) in finding the "magical other".

Bloom

There is a new flower in the field

A lovelier bloom than all before
She turns bright petals to the sun
Whilst her lover sings in solitude

No greater pleasure can there be

Than see her carpel opened wide
Sweet inner sanctum, holy ground
Love's fragrant altar for sacrifice

 

 

Who, or what, is the "magical other" to you? What does he or she or it look like? Do you want to write about or articulate that emotion? I would encourage you to do so.....

 

Ajar

I’m on the outside looking in
Watching as your footprints
On the shifting sands of time
Are washed away

 

Intently listening from a distance

An ear pressed to the ground
I'm like a piece of flotsam
Lost and found

 

I'm a face in the rear-view

From the place of the skull
When there was wailing
And gnashing of teeth

 

I'm still reaping the harvest

Of summers past
Inadequate encounters
All too brief

 

You tarried for a season

Passed your darkest hour
Now like a sated vixen
Gone to ground

 

Mark Harris has asserted his right underSection 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
To be identified as the author of this work. 

End of year round up - a seasonal post.

It's that time again, soon this year will turn into something new and uncharted - 2014. Is it just me or did 2013 seem to pass quicker than any before it? I think personally it's because I've been too darn busy - hence the over long gap before returning to the world of blog. I'll make a commitment here and now to take more time out for personal writing projects in the new year. We all have to create a space, somehow, amid all of our busyness, and writing is my very necessary escape. All summer long I've been jotting down ideas, a line here, a thought there and now it's time to unravel them - to pick up the thread again that leads me back here, to myself.....

It Matters

It matters to me

This isn't wrong

It’s not a crime

The stunted bough

The twisted rhyme

Celestial Fall

I did wish upon a shooting star

In its celestial fall

Hoped my love would unlock you

My prayers provide the key

My heart did burn in solitude

As it arced across your sky

Although worn upon these sleeves of mine

You never batted eye

Lost moments sincerely spent

Now darkness has returned

Mute silence blankets everything

All trace of where we burned

It's been a good, if steady year on the performing front and I've enjoyed the opportunities that have come my way, courtesy in particular of Colchester Poetry.  I was fortunate enough to do three months worth of sequential performances at Open Mike nights for September, October and November, plus a couple of performances earlier in the year and an appearance at the Sunday Matinee in January. There was also the Festival at the Hythe, Colchester, in the summer, so not too bad I think. My sincere thanks to all concerned in organising these events and giving chances to folk to have their moment.

All the Things

All those words I’d written for you

One final touch, a misplaced stroke

And everything is lost

A page full of empty space remains

Lilly white, like a coward’s heart

Elusive tender moments

Brimming with all the things

I never said

So has the desire, the passion for writing diminished in these fallow months? Not at all! How can it when it is something I love doing and so value sharing? These pieces posted tonight are all new, the first harvest of summers thoughts. I hope you are enjoying them.

Galatea

I carry a personal Galatea

In my mind

Pure psychology

She oozes like beeswax

Love and erotica

Melting in my undecided flame

Raven and Dove

Spread eagled on a moment

The emboldened tongue

Exposes hidden form

Love uncoils

In strange new ways

Gifting pleasure storm

Fire meets ice

A heartbeat - missed

The raven and the dove

Falling helpless

In surrender

On the outer lips of love

Erased

Hollow heart, running loose

I’m just like a frightened deer

But if I were a preacher man

Bold - I’d entreaty God for you!

With a useless broken antler

Snapped at rutting time

On a hill, I’m straining upwards

Towards Artermis’ shrine

I never meant to hurt you

Though my aim was straight and true

The gods have made my choices

They dictate from depth of void

Colour turns to black and white

And I struggle to recall

Why on earth I wait here

Set for a bruising fall

I hope that you are happy

Beyond the touch of man

I’ll erase my thoughts, forget you

In every way I can

The Holy Grail

Of love and stone I speak

One dances like a moth drawn to a flame

The other broods, unyielding, brute

One is passionate, fleeting, delicate

Until the holy-grail is reached

And it fails, beating frail wings

The other enduring, faceless, mute

Removed from the fire dull and cooled

Merely exists in splendid isolation

One burns with all urgency

The other drains and chills

Which I ask myself were you?

As I roam desolation's hills

Kernel

Fluttering against the glass

Still he beats his wings

After long and fallow years

On the outside looking in

A lonely, frightened mocking bird

With gold dust on his tongue

Carrying the burden of

An imagined Midas touch

So much to say, so little time

He would sing for you

Bring precious stones, a holly wreath

Things borrowed, old and blue

It’s cold out on the margin

The farthest edge of time

In deepest dark the brightest stars

Gleam in solitude divine

Within this darkest hour

A kernel only night can bring

He awaits the cusp of sunrise

When he’ll catch your eye and sing

I'd like to thank everyone whom I have shared the writing journey with so far, everyone who has taken time out to read Ariadne's Thread. I wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2014!

Proximity

Sleep walking the halls of sadness

I wrote this for a heart like mine

Though none abounds

And time abhors my ethereal ways….

To what shall I compare her?

All my words are but the guttural

Aping the divine

My striving the profane to the profound

And to know her, how?

To roll back time and take her hand

In mine, would be a splendid thing

And together walk a path so intimate

Surely, to miss its proximity, a crime?

To experience every leaf and flower

Watch each heavy pollen laden bee

Upon a bloom’s explosion feed

All confirms creation's glory

I but mere and flawed can scarce conceive….

To know her, how?

Except through the Ariadne’s thread

Of words she's left behind

Leading me by the heart

Toward her light sublime

Mark Harris has asserted his right under

Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
To be identified as the author of this work.