Wednesday 26 December 2012

Random Vascular Encoding - A Tale of the Discarded


The four pieces presented here represent way stages, by products, off cuts of something more solid, more finished, more substantial. Yet I like them for what they are. Sometimes things which we discard have a value of their own, the more so for being discarded.


I wonder if we can recollect and reclaim certain parts of our lives and invest them with new meaning and significance on our way to forming something more polished and complete. Or if what we cast aside and ignore is never really cast aside but remains, clinging to us, helping to form the beautiful rag tag bunch of bones, thought and emotion we are.


I have more off cuts filed away, but it may not be a good idea to bring them out all at once, especially at this time of year. We have to deal with ourselves slowly, treat our formation respectfully, attend to it with patience and care and a gentle touch of humour. Nonetheless, I'm a bring-it-all-out-in-the-open type of guy, as long as I have plenty space to do so. As long as I'm able to resist judgement, judgementalism. As long as I sacrifice foolish pride for consciousness of self. As long as I am a black snowflake falling in the night, melting into the significance of insignificance, where the darkness of prime source circles back on itself, gathering in the strays, a snow sun soaking back its own creative rays.


Friday 21 December 2012

Vispo Visions of an EEG Scan


On Tuesday I went to the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow for an EEG scan, which my doctor set up after I happened to mention the strange, hot energy in my head and the vibrating sensation at the centre of my skull. He wanted to rule out epilepsy and tumours and all sorts of other unpleasant diagnosis as any good doctor might, but I’m pretty sure the symptoms are a result of kundalini energy reaching my brain after years rampaging around my body.

I was led by a pretty nurse into a quiet room with an easy chair where a hairnet of sensors and wires was attached to my scalp with a sticky wet gel. We chatted a bit and I asked her if she regarded consciousness as a by product of the brain’s evolution or a field of energy which the brain filters into mind. She paused and said, “Yea.” I apologised for being so philosophical. She was nice and I felt extremely calm and relaxed as the scan began, slipping into a quiet and fairly deep meditative state as she asked me to open and close my eyes, while recording my brain’s responses on a computer. The room was poised at the verge of exploration and discovery. I felt peaceful, blissful, wondering if the scan might record the brain’s reaction to the lovely liquid energy flowing up my body into my head. The room began to doze.

Next the nurse set up a lamp before my eyes and told me to look into it while she set off a flashing strobe at ever increasing speeds. This is where it got really interesting. Psychedelic patterns began to emerge from the source of light, followed by a swarm of spidery, spindly letterforms, a hive of asemia, which danced across my vision from a central point of white light. Now I’m an eye guy. I love the perfection of the word and the wondrous effects of just being able to see. But I’m no optometrist, so I can’t tell you what these visions were in scientific terms - a cornucopia of corneal activity, an illumination of the nerves in my retina? I don’t know. They were, however, beautiful, mystical, full of strange meaning and alien insight. They reminded me of Mayan geometry or Aztec script, vispo prayers to eyeball deities scratched in milk white parchment.

All in all it was a beautiful experience, shared with a lovely, quiet professional, in a tranquil corner of a busy city hospital. The results may take up to 6 weeks, but that doesn’t matter. I have my results, my effects, my vispo visions of an EEG scan.

These are two of the poems I made mimicking the experience. I hope you like them. They’ll save you an EEG scan of your own.


Thursday 6 December 2012

One of Us Must Marry


There’s only one way to reconnect - in church,
like birds, rain running off sacrament.
Long walk through mainstreet of desolate
past - green shutter shop fronts, empty units,
beer park.

The church welcomes the Irish, St Joseph’s gentle
charity.
        The meekness of the Virgin.

I have excitable fingertips, feelers for love,
crow wing umbrella hung from arm. Whose
hooks are in?

She is love, where we had none, so sunk ourselves
in mental void, all night, in music, or magic.
Where we connected like telepaths, we embrace,
re-embark, smile, embarrassed.

The church is a holy home for names we lost.

Wooden doors, glass, porcelain statuettes,
an empty pew behind a father friend.
The groom turns his head and we recollect
in an instant - vinyl hashish turntable, burnt
guitar gullibility, string fingers.
Friends arrive like multi-layered voices,
looped, smoked bedroom luminous.

Now I’m not nervous or exhausted, but you are,
& I’m empathic and easily squeezed.
We suck it up until Houstie arrives, puppy dog
Houstie.

Later you talk of arses you’d like to surf,
waves of memory shoring in the DJ;
I’m nostalgic, conscious of more than one
layer of experience hung on a time string.

What an awful seat facing the wall, but we huddle
for a photograph, dancefloor background,
bowtie babies, sweetheart sister, married six years.

We took acid, smoked hashish, drank rum,
longed for women, all in a tender ball
of endless, gorgeous night.

The goodbyes are as sweetened as your child,
little ball of blonde. I squeeze your sister.
We’re as interconnected as water, wedding fluid,
consecrated wine.

The taxi driver lays out knives on the backseat
of the cab ride home.
I’m full of pity poignant & enigmatic now, with my
talk of enlightenment, waiting to be drenched by
group essence as it reconfigures every
one of us moves on.

Tuesday 30 October 2012

Desert Empire

Here's a poem of mine in a fascinating new issue of Unlikely Stories. It's called Desert Empire. Check out the issue for work by Marton Koppany among others.

Monday 24 September 2012

Pigeon Poetry

 

A man leaves a roadside cafe at dawn. He has a pigeon in his eye and floats feathers on his tongue. The sky forms itself into pigeons and swoops down to meet him. The man yells, "Behold! Behold!" Up above, a new kingdom of clouds is anti-celestial. Hands take a chainsaw to history which reforms as a puzzle in space. More children are born with herring in their eyes while ancestors weave nets to catch them.

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Red Haiku Variations

beneath
my window,
red aching tulips

*

Wind blows
the moment I
branches aching heaven

Monday 3 September 2012

Deft on Dante

                                  

Now seems a good time. I've been putting it off for years. Now seems the right time. Ok I'm going to pick up Dante and start reading, perhaps spice it up with a dose of St.Thomas Aquinas. Yes, now seems the right time. The plan is to write a series of poems in response, salted with medieval mystical theology and flavours of the early renaissance. Truth is, I'm scared. Dante is daunting. But Bede Griffiths told me to do it. And Thomas Merton. And I trust those guys. I probably won't post many of the poems here. I'll sit on them, save them for something special, who knows what? But I will post the poem I wrote today, an introductory poem invoking divine mercy and all sorts of other stuff to help me on my journey into the underworld. Here it is . . . wish me luck:

Forest of half formed misfortunes,
half moon hang nails,
half hung
              demoniac embryos,
I approach you with a slacker’s concupiscence,
metaphysically maladjusted.
Go lightly with my slow-witted digibox,
my irregular dopamine WiFi.
You transcend the equinox,
the suppurating Catholic beatification
of a plum coloured sun penumbra.
You shape me brickless.