The Curly Mind

An absolute bonanza of poetry at Reuben Woolley's new blogzine, The Curly Mind. Click on the link, then type my name in the Search Poets/Poems bar to the right. I have three contributions. Hope you like them, and thanks Reuben:

https://thecurlymindblog.wordpress.com

Ex-Ex-Lit

Try yer eyes on these. Some experiments with corrective text at ex-ex-lit:

http://ex-ex-lit.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/5-poems-stephen-nelson.html

Eratio 18

http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/index.html

This is a link to the new issue of Eratio, Eratio 18, full of goodness, full of love. My poems are somewhere within. Do seek 'em out. Thank you!

Drifting Down the Lane

This is a wonderful new anthology of poetry and art put together by editors Agnes Marton and Harriette Lawler. It's based on the children's game Whisper Down the Lane, or as we called it, somewhat worryingly perhaps, Chinese Whispers. The whispered secret is the Magnum Opus, the Great Work of alchemy, turning lead into gold. Each poet and artist had to interpret the secret how they wished, and the book is arranged as a chain of interpretations, quite brilliantly by the editors. Here's the link to the shop where you can buy either a hardback or a paperback copy. It's quite expensive but a fair price for a large coffee table book like this, where the art reproductions are really magnificent: Drifting Down the Lane.

I'm going to blog my poem here, but in actual fact it should be seen in context with a great piece of Cubist art, and alongside a sequence of poems by Andy Jackson, Andrew Taylor, Sarah Crewe and Ira Lightman, where a wonderful chain of meaning is created. Please buy the book. It's well worth the price and would make a great Christmas present. Thanks to the editors and all the poets and artists who contributed.

FIELD REACTIONS IN A CATALYST

Where I am, always where

rivers of breath, ribbed

by caution, daring, quotidian

homeostasis, soak the body rock

animistic, flight of pictographic captains

sucking back the hologram

to formative singularity, mulched

in low level dream delirium.

Eyes along a thread, glissando

quick to confluence of irrigated

radio waves, pig gut fluvial

spilled at bordering consciousness

breaks to calcify, purge, clarify,

surge of intuitive cloud gold,

radiance known as that,

shown no disconnection where I am.

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.

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.

My Mime Me

What belongs to me.







What I may possibly be.






What is solid, and relates to others, solidly.






What rolls and bridges.






What breaks down, weeps, is reflected in another.






What mirrors in the eye, the I.






What ascends?






What climbs?






Ladders?






What I am when I hide, when I merge in you.






What I am constrained.






What when I am you,






when I am you.






And when I am what.






When when I am.






Or am what.






What I suffer.






What I offer.






What I give back.






What I impersonate,






regale,






glorify.






What I manifest when what is whole in me.






What emerges,






is planted,






is beyond recognition, knowing,






nowing.






What is known.






What.





Now.





Is.





What.

Perfect Fit

Where do we fit in the world?

As children - between our parents, a tiny ‘i’ between an ‘f’ and a ‘t’, nurtured, no doubt, or, perhaps, stunted. Eventually the ‘I’ develops, becomes true to itself, or not quite so true. The ‘I’acts, thinks, but never fully realises or understands. To that extent, there is always a degree to which we don’t fit, places we don’t belong, situations which are uncomfortable. But that’s ok. The only place we really need to fit is into our own skin

There’s a passage in the Tibetan Book of the Dead which describes the circumstances surrounding a soul’s rebirth into the physical world we know, where the reasons we are born into a certain family, in a certain place, at a given time are explained as a choice we make in accordance with our karma. Coming from a realm of dark phantoms, all of which are manifestations of our negative and positive tendencies, a kind of hellish zone, the soul has a vision of different couples having sex, and is drawn, through light, to one particular couple in order to enter the womb to unite with the implanted egg of the mother by way of a network of subtle energy channels connecting the spiritual and physical realms.

Mindbending, no doubt, but I mention it as a precursor to a description of a series of dreams I had as a very young child, before the sharp talons of religious belief had a chance to grip me and influence me.

So really I was no more than a babe, a toddler, enclosed by loving parents, fitting nicely into a warm milky world in this strange land called Scotland. My dreams were vivid and recurring, and always involved a being made of light, a humanoid form composed of light among other, similar forms. I wandered the dreamscape (which was by any other name a heaven) as this being, filled with light and peace and bliss, communing with those fellow beings who, I imagined, would go on to become my parents and grandparents because they raditated a kind of familial love. They did, however, warn me that what I was about to undergo would be difficult, a trial, some even pleading with me not to go through with it, but to remain with them in this comfortable light zone. Regardless of the warnings, my mind was set on the journey ahead, and I was drawn, inexorably, to a portal through which I would travel to waking consciousness. And I always awoke, remembering my dream.

Before too long, the Christian culture I was brought up in lead me to impose its own interpretation on the recurring dream, which always felt momentous and hugely significant. I imagined I dreamt about the Holy Spirit. What else could this light being be? Over the years, as my ‘I’ has developed independently, I have come to regard the dream as a kind of memory of pre-existence. I still fit this cosmology into a basic Christian structure - it helps to have context and reference - but I am free to fit it however and wherever and whyever I like.

Sometimes you feel as if you really don't fit in. There’s opposition. Scientific, social and religious orthodoxy are constantly trying to squeeze our experiences into a model they themselves have constructed, and sometimes those experiences just don’t want to be squeezed. Again, that’s ok. I’m not going to butt heads. What I have I hold in my heart and keep fresh there. As long as I fit beneath the loving, milky moon, I have no complaints, and I’m willing to keep quiet and still, until I’m drawn into something limitless and eternal where there is boundless room to fit in and feel exactly how I need to feel.

Until that day . . .

Here's a poem I wrote some time ago in response to the section of the Tibetan Book of the Dead I mentioned. I wrote it in plain language, because that was my only way of responding to something so incredible. That might be no way to write poetry. I don't know. You tell me:

Conception puts an end
to it. A landscape of
mental projections. Experiences,
tendencies. When you
consider the opportunity for light
at release. Unrealised.
The unfathomable
transition. Imagine entering
a hall of seductions, the allure of
desire, materialising on a
footfall. Manifest delight.
Pursuit. The phantoms whipped
up, whisked off, vanishing
under the strain of habitual
grasping. Cravings. Devils.
And monsters. Hideous visions of
residual emotions. Unless you
happen to loose the urgency,
even sympathetic qualities
rear up as temptations. The
grip of accumulation continually
deflects. It may be necessary to
actualise the essence of who
you are. Only possible with
acute attentiveness. A series
of judgements, like stones
on a balance. Black. White.
Countenance. Counting. Encounter.
A vision of couples, copulating. That
sudden pull towards an opening.
Entrance, entranced. Connecting
with the seed of matter, a root
in water. Cells demystified.
Womb lit. A patterning growth.
Ghost parents shaped from form. The
surge and trauma blueprint. Caught
in floating transition. Then light,
gross, material, once seen,
less remembered. The bardo of
embodiment. Life.

The Bield - Perthshire - 2010

(Here's a piece written in response to Andrew Philip's call for poets to write about their holiday reading, which in itself was a response to an article in The Guardian, I think, notable for its absence of holiday poetry titles.)

Not so much a holiday . . . more a . . .

retreat retreat retreat

retreat retreat retreat

retreat retreat retreat

retreat retreat retreat

retreat retreat retreat

retreat retreat retreat

retreat retreat

retreat retreat

retreat

retreat

Thomas A. Clark in a walled garden paradise with a cat on my lap lazily sharpening its claws on my thigh; Thomas A. Clark before and after a long walk through hazy woods, stopping to sit on a bench in a bower while red deer leap through wheat fields skirting the trees; Thomas A.Clark as I walk the stony path back to the retreat house, small birds skirling a network of whistles in the hedgerow.

THE HUNDRED THOUSAND PLACES

....................................................

....................................................

....................................................

....................................................

.................................................... x100,000

The lady who runs the retreat house asked to see my book. Perhaps she expected an old contemplative classic, perhaps something by Thomas Merton or Henri Nouwen. I told her it was a book of poetry. I told her I was a poet.

“Really?” she said, “How wonderful!”

A book about walking, mindfully.

His walk

My walk

His walk

My . . .

walk

wauk

wok

wind

waak

wawk

awk

wack

waulk

wind

wlka

wak

wuak

kwo

kwa

kaw

wind

The green grass glowing. The huge sequoia drum trunk. The labyrinth, in and out of myself. The girl with the burn marks all down her face and arms, stumps for hands. Lying in the grass as rain clouds gathered overhead. Walking, mindfully. Listening, mindfully, Reading, mindfully.

I finished the book that weekend, and it added to the experience of retreat, of silence. And it made me want to find a place to be like this constantly. In the HUNDRED THOUSAND PLACES, at once, one by one, as the mind stretches outside time and into singularity of experience. Only the poets can speak of this.

Harmonium

cat/caught

all those dreams
oceans

the most hideous scream
tearing at the curtains

demon demon demon demonstrate

When I saw you talking to my mother I expected a novelty embrace. Your mind is full of art stars and mood music. Creativity claps then collapses at the first sign of industry.

We spin to a magnanimous karma and your ripe cheeks and tumbling hair have poured into my life at the most opportune moments. I remember when you fasted for my father.

berries

berries

a lunar eclipse

There are parallels, I know, circles and shapes that bespeak an elegant geometry.

Tell me how you were delivered.

Tell me how they brought you home.

Tell me how they nursed you.

A decaying mansion sits on the water while the sun fires the hillside sound of laughter in the garden.

cat/cat/boat/harmonium

Magpie'd (For Greg Evason)

not only
is she
dismissive
of my
perception
of the world's
constituent parts
but she seems
to want to
impose the matter
on me though
cold outside &
wet for june
with train tracks
running behind the
out patient's clinic
how easy to escape
the margins
without even
bothering
to inform the
pharmacist
magpies
gently
hallucinating
summer

Birthday Poem for Shona

shona
shone,

shin
shining,

shy
yet

shin
shining,

shone.

S*H*O*N*A

shingle shone

long gone gangling
gone

for SEAN,
for JOHN,
for SEAN JOHN.

Shin shiner

S*H*O*N*A S*H*I*N*A

Sheen Shimmy / Shun Shimmy / Shine Shimmy

for tunes
fortunes

in futures
for shona

fortunes
fortuitous
fort u itis

fortunes for shona in futures
for shining

four tons of fortunes

for shona
infutures


for SHONA in future******************* to SHINE********************

Lilt

Those cone combed faerie folk, swinging
from the chandeliers again, thinly cultured,
parasitically drunk on foam fume foam
and ragged pop,
I take a torch to them!
I take a torch to them! -
mad egg that I am –
and scatter and evolve my way
through bucketloads of DMT,
pinioned on an oozing pineal gland.
We have the zest! - And the
s-q-u-a-s-h pip puck sucking energy target, Wee Willie Winkie’s
eyeball to brain overheard a woman,
talking to a man,
the sweetest whisper in the slipsky

night. Open tear ducts to
champagne and let the love monkeys
feast the relevant scientific data,
leafy canopies, jungle berries,
squashed ginseng energy drinks
propped on beachy
health trends. In my

room, I’m swift to ignore the wind-down
sprite jerks juiced on play junk
from the juice yard. Terence had a zinger
that he bought from Dr Leary twice
the price and sold to me as
untamed shamanism.

A Poem as Quick as the Government Cutz

What a slough! - Kill Pol Pot,
Or Hitler, or George Osborne (keep reading),
that frigid Anti-Christ and slavering
Beast -
100% kidz, 100%! -
Ice & lapdog drool
All over
My epiphany!
My eternity!
Slogged off guts of dead dog
cutscutscut & kiss a cunt
& say g%dnight "children"
GOODNIGHT!
The cat is in the bag
Is in da mouse is in Da House
& I'll sleep, petal,
I'll sleep
With the efficiency of the
German moto trade
Turning tricks
On Chinese nuts
(My freakin epiphany!!!
All over Chinese nuts

(Ran into a French rioter the
Other day,
Said better off dead
Than fed a bunch of
Munch/truncheon
Pour le petit dejeuner.

(Just kidding, George - you're GORGEOUS!)

2011
2012

TICK
TICK
TICK

THE END!

Fertility Verse

Scoop organism
from cheek smudge

mother spit
against depression

in purple veined
boiler suit (sundae

sackcloth virgin).
She proffers twice

the meat
she blanches

head boiled
to a velvet

top hat cocked
between her

peach pink thighs.
The crush of

clouds her squint
fells trees &

scrapes the prickly
plant spine thrust

in maturation.
Lick her

belly flat
& soundless

coil a sweet
voluptuous palm

where divination
smirks like

childless pottery.

Kelvingrove

Ma heid's fu ae letters

waukin through this park

the skirl ae the pipes

washin it clean so's

the letters fly up tae the sky

blue sky poems curlin

at the edges fur the

glories ae the nation.

Notes on a Joseph Beuys Exhibition

1.

earth berth fat felt,
& blood & shit & semen;
electrical code crack crust company
for the belly of a pregnant doe.

stag lilt,
recovery breath,
to name my saviour hourly.

maul
the pulse
of air
as snake
entrance.


2.

chair

sound pump peace

art salmon

groundnut.

Wish Gate

1.

ocean spear path. vile head riot. dance. deliver. plastic forest.

cave curtain. quake denial. bury shine fin. uproot divine.

mass ascension. trust epiphany. salmon path. shalom. cajole.

blissful vine. unwind trapeze act. sodomise. licentious lull.

twist divan tease. rot pariah. silver shoot galactic tail.

rescue mermaid. salt perversion. statuesque. demure. demean.



2.

map bliss. uncertainty. wild future. dog drawings.

cult luck. veneration.



3.

ideal nerve surge. ripe sensation. elysium.



4.

dog draw cult cure quake core slow vine path sheen mist mail uprising.



5.

slush. field. woosh.



6.

marble. occult pantheon. demonology. wish gate.

The Horror

peep pop peep pop peep pop peep pop
peep pop peep pop peep pop peep pop
peep pop peep pop peep pop peep pop
peep pop peep pop peep pop peep pop
peep pop peep pop peep pop peep pop
peep pop peep pop peep pop peep pop
peep pop peep pop peep pop peep pop
peep pop peep pop peep pop peep pop
peep pop peep pop peep pop peep pop
peep pop peep pop peep pop peep pop
peep pop peep pop peep pop peep pop

Sitting in a Field in the Sun When it Suddenly Dawns on Me that Life is Never Ending

steeple & tree
steeple & tree
steeple & tree
steeple & tree
steeple & tree
steeple & tree
steeple & tree
steeple & tree


& dome

& dome

hollowhill

birth & burial

& dome


Trees draw life draw life draw light draw life draw water draw moisture draw Trees draw life draw light draw water draw moisture draw life draw Trees draw life draw light draw water draw moisture draw nutrients draw nourishment draw Trees draw life draw water draw nourishment draw nutrients draw Trees draw life draw light draw water draw Trees draw nutrients draw nourishment draw Trees draw life draw light draw Trees draw light draw Trees draw life draw Trees draw life draw Trees draw Trees