LITTLE LIVES ROUNDED
I step off the narrow path onto the long grass to let a new dad pass with his tiny treasure harnessed to his chest.
Probably the first, seeing the slight bewilderment in his eyes and how he cradles the back of the child's head with his soft, white collar palm.
It will take a while for his world to settle again from its current state of swirling newness.
All these sleepness nights until the waking life returns to the state of familiarity and routine.
Another form of sleep.
ASK A SILLY QUESTION...
Is this sky that shifts from faultless morning clarity to murky afternoon nimbostratus an English sky or a London sky?
The trees offer no answer to the throbbing knots potbound in human skulls.
Their new leaves have waited centuries to answer the same questions that think themselves different.
The same answer now as it will be when they burnish and fall.
Now. Now. Now. Now. Now.
IF GODEL MET WHITMAN
“I’ve always been jealous of mathematicians that are able to see the poetry and music of numbers. Whether by genes, embryology, diet or culture, I’ve not been able to tune into that frequency. I sometimes think that art happens when useless things become useful but the opposite is also true. Things become symbols and symbols become things. The well formed equation that speaks its own negation. Its logic is sound. It contains multitudes.”
HIGHER LEARNING
“Pondering the possibility of giving a lecture to an empty classroom. for the purpose of making a recording, obviously. But still, a moment to ponder the value of knowledge when nobody listens? There is always one who listens, even when we identify as the one who speaks. Where do the words come from and where do they go? Does speaking aloud make the intrinsic extrinsic? Any questons?”
NOTES ON BRIGHTNESS
“Low sun and old snow. Dirty red fox pads across the icy path, rock salt stinging its tender paws. Perfect zero. Equilibrium of mercury. I inwardly dismiss a philosopher's schtick as Coldplay poetics and hit shuffle. The world hasn't been this bright for a while. Beautiful mornings intrude on bad times. Heating stays off while the kids are in school. I forget who's on strike today. Solidarity, always.”
#ClockCard #poem #ProsePoem #nature #strikes #solidarity #winter
SHRINKING PAINS
“Ageing is a type of adolescence where the end outcome is not a flowering into adulthood but a consignment to the compost heap. Not the promise (or threat) of sprouting hair and swelling appendages but a slow reveal of the scalp and wherever our pecs end up traveling to. No school disco pangs but some awkward, civic indignites. And yet the outward gaze still crackles as is beams from bleary, vein-spackled eyes.”
TAKE ONE
‘Just spent over an hour recording a podcast which went pretty well apart from the
"hit record” part. So it turned out to be a cosy chat and poetry reading for myself. I could consider this a form of therapy, a different kind of shouting into the abyss than the worldwide web. A crow croaks beyond my window and the traffic swishes. The glory of one's own incessant noise.’
UNCOMPLETED WORKS
“I'd love it if everybody was forced to list every unrealised goal and abandoned project. We spend our days surrounded by finished things while our minds rattle with frayed ends and broken chains. But every finished product is haunted by a platoon of fallen prototypes. All the budding branches that never became boughs blossomed and flowered regardless.”
MIDLIFE AUBADE
After waking, I sometimes sit upright at the edge of the bed in the dark. My age makes me prone to "this is how things turned out" thoughts. Things didn't turn out bad at all but there's something about a few moments of pre-coffee/light wakefulness that changes "this is how things turned out" to "this is how things are”. It's enough to keep the "'turned out" thoughts from turning in their little prayer-wheel barrels. Coffee's for closers.
BOT DYLAN
A few days after writing that a person cannot be digitally replicated I read that Bob Dylan used a machine to sign 900 limited copies of his book. His mea culpa referenced covid and vertigo. No details were given about the machine. I imagine a series of rods, pulleys and cylinders leading from Dylan's wrist to 900 books on 900 tables. A few wrist flicks and he's done. Nobody shouts "Judas!'
Niall O’Sullivan