The weaver bending arms of twisted knotted yarns serves the loom and the loom a pattern makes. And bent upon the stool, his eyes direct upon the thread between weft and weave, his vision skips.
The shuttle smooth moves through the shed to the clack of treadles pressed; feeling more than seeing, every bone reactive To the rise and falling weaving shafts.
The sun arcs through the window overhead dying unnoticed in the west and in the cool unseen light of night, clouds arise to hide the stars. Bobbins twirling empty are replaced.
He labours not for kudos or for rates. As every yarn entwines it speaks; heddle and treadle selecting straighten out and the loom alive a drumming music makes.
Star and sun dance light within his bobbing head; the weavers’ needs are met, and the soul unfurls. Love that has a thousand-silent sounding ee’s Spins on to weave for all eternity.
[A writ to a jailer to produce a prisoner in person and to state the reasons of detention]
Soldier do your eyes have the lights that flash out of tanks in the face of the snub of a terrorist gun and in they shine when his message of soft lead erupts from the lips of a shimmering barrel?
Do they reanimate a frantic heart sick of your Karma, loosen the bowel; trigger the playback of loving regrets before the balance of blood is lost, spilling to the ground with slivers of lead?
Or soldier, did you die the night before in Believer’s Heaven, locked in the crotch of a dark haired Houri, filched so you thought from underneath Mohammed’s slippered feet; virgin and wanting your dissolution?
She perhaps, taking sap that trees the nerves before the five – first? Aids to earth exchanged for the bright sight of a plum on the breast! No doubt your bloodshot eyes and rising smoke wring a coupling promise from that climax.
You’re a crime soldier, you embarrassed the breach – you caused it release in black chamber the redness that wept the no time that takes time, sputter of pain; unrepentant, the lover at the head.
Soldier, the lipstick of blood is smudging your collar, face twists like a child’s’ first clay. Can you now see who judged and passed sentence on your innocence? Your slide is the breast. Soft lead, the mat of your down flowing river.
My love what cheerless world asleep in towered keeps and half-lit streets, waking dream on sullen skies ridged grey; Lay waste land and cause the grey weird sea chill the heart of you and me?
What world awoken from dreams of meadows, water mills, and painter’s scenes, would tolerate the angered sky, the leaf shorn tree; the frost that blights the first-born bud, above the half-closed mist born eye of love?
Oath of God would life not be worth living were love not rooted deep in giving? Selfish worlds are drunk, dreaming fantasy; such men are never found in sight crossing borders of the Christos Light.
Soft rose whose petal fusing heart will give attiring the sweetest heart to ever live, deliverance in the dawning day will come refusing the permanence of death, and arise to prove the cause of all the living never dies.
Photo by Jimmy Chan on Pexels.comListen as you read!
Granite Sliver Arrowhead I see you spurned by Pigmy Bowman yet you suffice and scathe the greening mortar… Mind that delibly records attempt my show and outward personality.
This ribbon of a madman’s weave is the tape of all my saying small border thin and compass hand the clutch and stay Fingers…. Placing granite slabs to face their palms of tungsten flesh toward the shortened eye.
Yet soon the tongue of this my wise and scrawl became as fever pitch and heavy as the hammer held halfway in arc deliberating as the mother would pressing down urging fingers in the lock of Isis eye to the agony that is mother And now is mine.
Is birth!
The warder had me carry seven days in labour waiting… before the fertilising seed became and his eye perceived the ribbon of wise inflicted with my word and writing.
He stared examined even to the letter head lost in mergence to the polished stone turning, smiled…. Father dimly smiling through the stain of glass in the you can never tell about face….
He left and straight informed the governor.
The hammer struck the child full born umbilical cut began to cry…. My eyes were full of faces demanding outstretching palms of tungsten flesh. Their right they screamed is feeding first why was I no askance waiting?
They spread upon my word the slime and their cement that matched the slab and then.. Fingers turned upon themselves they commanded- called my clutching hand to lease my living Scribe this chipping sliver of their granite.
They took.
…. that morning after before the ashen face nether time of wanting day whilst less the night there stood eight mourners neath the sky bowl blooding red in their caps of prison grey and the circle turning tribute was the sower spreading quicklime.
And in my cell
There stood another waiting for the shining mortar’s greening mould.
There are some words in this poem you may not be familiar with. In order of mention they are as follows: Hur: Is the name given to the inner core of planet Earth -the primary source of matter and mind root from which Earth developed. Aster: Is the name of a large planet in the Milky Way which exploded and gave birth to our solar system. Fohat: Is the animating principle electrifying every atom into life. During the process of manifestation, it is the cosmic energy which produces differentiation of primordial cosmic matter to form the different forms of consciousness, therefore Fohat is the link between Spirit and Matter, subject and object. The twice & thrice born person addressed by the creator in the last stanza should not be regarded as a pattern of reincarnation, rather they describe a process of soul reformation. Twice-born is earthly reformation, Thrice-born is heavenly reformation. This kind of reformation can otherwise be defined as ‘the camel able to pass through the eye of a needle’.
And so to the poem….You can listen to it here….
The story I am about to tell began before the first ammonite hardened its shell, before your blackheart mountains were rivers of red and swims of clear water had not yet fallen as rain; before even Hur was cast into Hell and the soporific dust that held prison his might had yet to be formed from the celestial storm of Aster’s last embrace with the stars.
Where Love was lost….
Love is forever becoming; the moment of life poised unto death, born in the heart existing apart from all that you know. Priceless, unreachable, mysterious Self.
The rarest of jewels….
The story I tell begins before tongue, before the screech, the roar, and the hissing of elements embattled to make of themselves creational worlds and Fohat had yet to cause It has no meaning to you twice-born until I caused life to know death. After the cooling Earth formed crust and the sulphurous clouds ceased their circle, there I took lung from the water and filled it with air. After cooling, and the first trees had breathing leaves
souls were born….
Light encrusted with matter in hope of Salvation, Fish, fowl, amphibia, and latterly beasts. Yes, they were soul born; amoebic hopes that by tempest, fire, and the heat of ice evolved by birth and death in every season. Taking as when taking must; leaving be, not having when having was no need. Yes, I was well pleased with progress however, success has its own undoing, Light separated from the Seeds of Soul. I should have known, identifying Myself with creation -the cause is of Me and the cause is unrepentant.
The cause became two -two became three Mind became Matter, Matter became mind….
And so, twice-born, soon to be thrice, many times born of my wheel forming heaven and sired by the captive imprisoned Hur, there’s no end to your becoming until I cease. Light and Matter will then achieve peace.
The sheen of folded draperies warm resplendent curves of your bronze bright body. Your smile an ever present remembrance, suggest joyous eyes that never weep.
Through the meagre apertures of half-hid windows, blue skies burst and grow their light upon your breast, the stilled image grasping at my loins evoking half-lit fantasies
never dreamt of in your head. Your strange unnatural silence rather than offending, draws me trance-like to your wood framed world. My staring -your silence
causes the consciousness I feel to achieve in this encounter the bewilderment of knowing; you in the painting, the self twice known I in my shell. a pearl-like stone.
Many times have I sat by the water mill in the damp grass and in the dry feasting my body upon the wheel splash slaking my senses; worshipping buttercup crowns and primrose groves, my mind free to landscape and sky dream knowing that havens are hard to come by; impermanent places.
Coming here when the seasons are fair and the beech woods sing with bird talk; caressing my ear with their melodies giving soul reformation. Observing the change of winter scarred trees, knuckles of soft bark renewing torn limbs the buds of new boughs appearing; without proclamation.
It saddens me to see the mill is deserted the paddles seized by chickweed and gorse, the stream gentle and ebbing away through watercress meadows. The miller who might have been head of the stream, Keeper and Dam Builder has powdered his hand between the mill stones, the last yield of flour having long since departed.
The curious have bought the tack of cob horses, Coriander grows in the cart ruts. The gate is unhinged and the mill purse empty of men. I see green lichen eat the smooth stone oak lintels sag over moss covered frames, and I am entranced by design, composition and colour –and wonder
what plants have rooted and grown in this silent omnivorous world, that will seize on my house, empty my purse and feed on my bone?
Last night my instant mind wraith like uncoiled its luminous head and like all good mysteries left my body in bed, warm to the skin of my spouse. Unsuspected left the house, passing through walls and other substantial things seeking no byway to celebrate freedom, vision only for the ubiquitous presence of a troubled friend.
Finding the dark and humourless shell where colours are pale, and sounds deep as if heard from a well. In this house where the cry escaped and reached my ears beside my mate I see a soul in hibernation, a maelstrom of movement in which may be seen pain of intruders eschewing the Spirit, a legion of wants suppressing need the ache of a body seeking to balance in favour of peace, no matter the price or the length of the lease.
I am radiation a golden cascade a silver-winged creature, sensing soothing the troubled dark shade. Cleansing, creating, and fulfilling a vow commanding the sepulchre revive its undead. Holding the breathing unconscious sweet soul until life brightness stems from the spine and flows from the head.
United therein, harmony prevails purpose and will rebirthed she is no longer alone. I dissolve from her presence and seek my own bed. Returning to self through sickness and doubt lying awake, afraid and diminished a frantic heart upon a humourless bed, until music from the night shores comforts my head and I sleep the sleep of one who is dead.
Cold turn my putty blue and let me leave my sorry self-appointed imposition state of Senilità, this shadow of my footstep fear Frankenstein of my conceit of whom I aped in sweeter note as the satire sword when I was prentice of this night.
Tis the bruise upon my apple fallen, Brutus to my Caesar, the malformed child made conscious. And by my expertise I have the life-long-game of chess made stalemate whose colours now reveal no substance fiction belly laughing shallow truth.
All my fear is Senilità a thousand-tickling tales of doubt the smallest part of virile statement easy come by. The battery of baseless facts that made me man are the powdered leaves of a selfish summer. Now the water of my close is mixed the question of you do after death has burnt this mess of pottage and shaped me as the begging bowl.
Senilità You shame of all the Y man sought accepted scar and the weeping priest mortal made immortal bishop, Pharisee of double mean-less vision. To the monastery of children there confess with ease nonchalance of being server to the weeping priest of being Senilità.
Here by the speak of unripe fact sick the swelling puffing yeast the husk of all your learning home to Babel and name it grandeur of the Pharisee. Let your toothless cringing face be the symbolled skull cross-boned school of level thought and one horizon.
No -never I cannot as tears as negative I am the six-aged one life yes man cry wolf again, charge the greater part of me to war. I be the autumn of the shortest summer making where to start my cyclopaedic book of error.
………….. In the no start never finish real of the spark
Listen as you read!
Ah! The pain the wanting all over dilemma sober reach out sweet grape of confusion; a duchess spread out on her savage’s bed willing her blood red to the lips of her lackeying male, neither caring the speech or the stain of his whip. Taking the seventh of her seconding breaths at the weep of secretion.
Comes now the concentration; the apex of arc, the long-drawn laugh of the physical man. The peak, then the plummet of an up thrown stone; extinguishing fire. Then the cold Darkness of Earth and then the winter of a why gloom face frosting the smile of devil cares not into peaceful beginning; a child in the low of the arc, weak murmur of problem.
And yet in end it begins; in the no start never finish real of the spark, in the still heard gasp mute echo of Psi fleeing the white. In the good die young the crude soldier damning as with the devils and the un-vowed nun; the same design. All blind fisherman in the day-night casting pearls from the corporeal banks of unsettled sublimity.
It manifests as harpoon with a white heat line; the strongest plus and minus seed. All charge of the instrument cannon, Time Traveller to the state of perpetual climax; there as the spear of the deepest descent. The finder receiving the arranged and irrevocable choice the twin of sex; Satan-Father coalesced.
Cool waters imprisoned mass of colouration say fie now- sediment, syringe of my Elixir. Fie! Laugh you now the life is drawn to drinking state of Christos?
I left your immobility with the sigh of my becoming.
Whose reason called the crack of dawn my death?
Shadow barren of my love keep the silver of that State spend it on the flowers of your grave.
Creature after calling Solomon to testify himself keep your hammer inside your sarcophagus.
I remember roses imitations of the fire reflecting on the cheeks my last winter’s face crinkled with the onward coming Retribution-
that my lazy legs were faults of not attending church saw my Book the dog-eared blotted one
but even then
the coin of sailors slang would gutter sing the spit of my petulance leave me shrunk a little more to child.
And the roses I remember from the fire were the devil shadows beckoning.
Now I see you muted shell as the illusion of my living
Lie mirror!
I, the silver of your backing leave you transparent. You cannot fix my soul or image me in time.
Bubble -you have burst Fie! Fie! I am in sight of no horizons I am the Minister
Pray hard for the men who hunt the deep sea in their cockleshell boats out of Clyde who scour the cold swims of Poseidon’s green head filling iced holds with dead alive-eyes. Where the North wind screech is God’s angered ethereal Hand, and fear is the shake of worn riveted plate and Love is a church locked up on the land.
Elemental wind do not keep them from shore They who dare open the water blue door.
Pray strong for men who haunt the cod swims Hymned only by the white garish moon and wind-snatched callings of seabirds scorning. Skins scolded eyes shrunk in the Arctic blast laughing as the pawls judder and grind heaving the trawl, engine complaining. Who love the deep sea with a savagery spit, swear, and piss in the lee.
Elemental wind do not rage for their souls their fathers have paid the fish stealing tolls.
Pray love for the sons of water and blood, patient for the calm, eager to net and ever ready to chase the white fish over mountainous crests, under the pale dark bruising wet sky. Casting net to web Gods’ octopus head clawing the fish from his shivering throat, their lives threatened by the weight of the prize.
Elemental wind, do not anger the sea Man and his mistress must ever be free.
In muddy mouthed Portsea Creek unwatched forgotten ships lay beached and breathless, dashed and smashed cut and bled, weather beaten, picked and broken by the dockside stooping crane’s bill collecting scrap.
Their final journeys over shallows dragging barnacle crusted bottoms over shingle groaned past the red flagged gunnery range, pulled and pushed by impatient tugs, aware falling tides and sucking mud claim victims.
Robbed by landsman, written out of registers, church empty bridges balefully glistening glare untold stories of once purposed lives, men who swore repeatedly like lovers on heat, trumpeting the union of engine and steel.
Now their ghosts can be heard in the small of the night blowing base horns, heaving anchors, turning their screws seaward, reliving purpose, blending rusted hulls to the sea and the never ending sky.
If you are not already aware -be warned, writing poetry is addictive. You may like me have other writing skills prose-like, non-fiction, fiction, or faction. If you get hooked on writing a poem, in your heart of hearts you know you cannot finish it until it’s a work of art -that means every word must count, they must be the right words, and the poem must be more than words alone convey.
It’s addictive because we can never be sure we have achieved, not only birthed but given long life to the piece.
In many years of ‘garret writing’ there’s one difficult lesson which must be learnt, that is -don’t file it in the pending tray, publish the damn thing, because art is an evolutionary process. Pieces do not mature into art if they remain stuck in your mind. The blank sheet of paper is only terrifying when the mind is still hosting ‘unfinished’ poems.
After you post it’s gone from your mind -later perhaps you might unpublish and rework. My experience tells me the piece gets better, and ….. and ….. it might also be unworkable -possibly a work of art!
Spume spatters night, the pickle-black stream a-tumble under moon, is whispering loud between lichen-stained stones, hissing about ruin of Man as it hastens to sea.
The clouds uncover a star mantled crescent illuminate a petrified gauntlet of stone pickle brown scars etched in yellow shape fingers grasping an invisible hilt.
All about my better body shadows dance thick-like bracken wracked by wind. I hear clattering hooves, sprays of flint shard see a thundering mass of muscle and blood,
flanks creaming red, a horse and rider a force on the run. I can feel the hurt labouring breath know her last service hastens in the dark to this musical place.
Astride her saddled brave heart, helmeted, metal shorn, steel spurred, a wounded warrior is breathing his last eyes bright and fixed on safe haven.
A mortal wound bloodies the cross of his surcoat, a lance haft splintered is sunk deep to the thigh; yet he rides as if ready to battle the Christian foe.
Left hand fists the bridle, the right grips a sword pointing to earth. It is the horse that gives way her heart bursts as she stumbles,
the stream too wide too deep too dark. The rider thrown lies broken on horns of veined rock, eyes fixed to the sky, his cape now a shred of dark shadow.
The last laboured breath of his charger is taken by the stream and moves on reborn in the song sung by the stones eternally free of saddle and rider.
Stillness has swallowed the warrior’s fire high flies his purpose, body-less at last, soul-like beyond sky bowl of stars seeking the grail of everlasting life.
And I stumble in time, unsure If my better body is the breath of life part drawn to the moon part to the stream transforming, dividing, living a dream.
Idyllic loves’ creation is imagined lilac groves air enchanting havens of scented flowers lifting to the harvest moon.
This world we may not enter until this earthen road is ended, yet we may store good efforts seed do right as God’s creators.
Unbending onward to the light holding to heart loves’ first vow, that we unseasoned Spirits shall by all intentions be tried and tested and found well.
What makes this man remarkable is not his systemising of Catholic Canon Law, or founding the University of Rome, or formalising the custom of the Roman Jubilee, a special year of remission of sins and universal pardon, but by being remembered in Dante’s Divine Comedy as public enemy number one!
Born Benedetto Caetani, Pope Boniface has the unenviable notoriety of being named in Dante’s Inferno as an exponent of the black arts. He succeeded to Pope Celestine V to the papacy in 1294 and put forward some of the strongest claims of any pope to temporal as well as spiritual power. He involved himself often with foreign affairs, including in France, Sicily, Italy, and the First War of Scottish Independence. These views, and his chronic intervention in “temporal” affairs, led to many bitter quarrels with Albert I of Germany, Philip IV of France, and Dante Alighieri, who wrote his treatise De Monarchia to dispute Boniface’s claims of papal supremacy and placed the pope in the Eighth Circle of Hell in his Divine Comedy, among the simoniacs, i.e. those who sold church roles and sacred objects to empower them with the power of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands. Boniface issued a bull in 1303 declaring both spiritual and temporal power were under the pope’s jurisdiction, and kings were subordinate to the power of the Roman pontiff. Philip disobeyed and had the bull publicly burnt in Paris in 1302. Boniface excommunicated Philip and all others who prevented French clergy from traveling to the Holy See, after which the king sent his troops to attack the pope’s residence in Anagni on 7 September 1303 and capture him. Boniface was held for three days and beaten badly and died from a fever a month later. His successor Benedict VI undertook to defend his memory but died in the first year of his pontificate -it was said by poison, and the Holy See remained vacant for 11 months, when a Frenchman, the archbishop of Bordeaux was elected to the papal chair under the title of Clement V. There is little doubt he was Phillip’s choice who then pressured Clement V to stage a posthumous trial of Boniface, accusing him of heresy and sodomy. The Pope referred the process to the 1311 Council of Vienne, where two Templar knights challenged the claim to a trial by combat. With no one willing to fight them, the Council declared the matter closed. Boniface’s body was accidentally exhumed in 1605 and was found to be in relatively good condition, dispensing the legend that he had become frenzied, gnawing his hands, and bashing his brains out against the wall. The French case against Boniface involved many testimonies, which described Boniface as a free thinker, in the habit of mocking, and cynically regarding things sacred to the church, of practising the black arts. It was commonly reported in Italy, according to witnesses, Boniface had communication with and worshipped demons. One, a friar, brother Bernard de Sorano, said that when Boniface was a cardinal and held the office of notary to Nicholas III, he lay with the papal army before the castle of Puraino, and he having been sent to receive the surrender of the castle returned with the cardinal to Viterbo, where they were lodged in the palace. At night looking out of the window with the cardinal’s chamberlain they saw Boniface enter an adjoining garden, where in a mysterious manner, carrying a cock and an earthen pot he made a circle about himself on the ground with a sword. On seating himself therein he created a fire in the pot and killed the cock sprinkling its blood on the fire causing much smoke. He proceeded to read from a book conjuring up demons during which much noise was heard that made them terrified. One voice clearly heard said “Give us our share”. After this ceremony Boniface returned to his room which he slept in alone, but he was heard talking all night and strange voices answering him. Eventually under pressure to consider ‘other necessities’ Philip IV agreed to drop the prosecution, and at last, in 1312, Boniface was declared in the Council of Vienne, innocent of all the offences he had been charged. Make of this as you will, fundamentalists, monarchs, and politicians during the middle ages often said there was no smoke without fire. Boniface VIII has not been alone accused of heresy, and that includes the present Pope Francis (2013 -) whose words and actions have been said to be a comprehensive rejection of Catholic teachings on marriage and sexual activity, on the moral law, and on grace and forgiveness of sins. The pontiff has even been accused of using a satanic symbol at the opening mass of the Synod on Youth in 2018, when he “carried a staff in the form of a ‘stang,’ an object used in satanic rituals”.
