JUST FOUND THIS POEM OF MINE – WRITTEN IN 1980 – 31 YEARS AGO – AGED 23 – UNTITLED
PEOPLE EVERYWHERE IN LIFE
FROM EVERY WALK AND STATION
FROM EVERY TOWN AND CITY
AND EVERY STATE AND NATION
HAVE GIVEN ME SO MANY THINGS
TANGIBLE AND DEAR
I CAN’T BEGIN TO COUNT THEM ALL
OR EVEN MAKE THEM CLEAR.
I ONLY KNOW I OWE SO MUCH
TO PEOPLE EVERYWHERE
AND WHEN I PUT MY THOUGHTS IN VERSE
IT’S A SIMPLE WAY TO SHARE
THE MUSINGS OF A THANKFUL HEART
A HEART MUCH LIKE YOUR OWN
FOR NOTHING THAT I THINK OR WRITE
IS MINE AND MINE ALONE …
SO IF YOU FIND SOME BEAUTY IN ANY WORD OR LINE
IT’S JUST YOUR SOUL’S REFLECTION
IN PROXIMITY TO MINE.
by Carmel Jones
Narratives which challenge logic make for the best read. Apart from ALL Angela Carter’s novels, one of my faves has to be, THE FEMALE MAN by Joanna Russ. An exciting, subversive and very witty Feminist Sci-fi novel. It had a massive impact on me when I first read it, and still continues to influence my outlook on life. Through a plurality of narrative voices, each one existing in a different time/space, Russ explores the fragmentary existence which patriarchal society enforces on female identity. Also, it triggered my recognition that; being female is NOT the same as being feminine!
Cath
i”ll tell you a story.
i grew up in a house with brothers and sisters and a mother and father whose knowledges far out-weighed any width and breadth of ‘intelligence’ ….. we sang Irish rebel songs, painted, listened to music and dressed up a lot! We all took our own paths, carving our way through moments with perception and insight (gifts encouraged in us by mam and dad who made us very aware of our individual uniqueness). Literature is a broad term and relates to our language(s), morals, imagination and creativity – it can be ‘felt’ in the books we read, the music we hear, the visions we see and in the people we meet – it touches us in its separate moments and by no means defines our ‘intelligence’ – all forms of language merely becomes the narrative (a vehicle in which we travel and exist) – through which we are felt and feel others and know our BEING!
Cath
Distillation.
Rose-blooms
blooming in Auschwitz
their stain spreading –
through poppy fields and
Tulips from Amsterdam.
Tall thin dancing heads –
bowdlerizing cuts that
run deep through your stems.
Who hath not seen thee in thy glory sitting by a Cider-Press –
Thy head uplifted by the winnowing wind?
Blown like Thistle-Down
The dirt of the day clings to your boots –
While thousands of hands thread time through a
needle in a haystack,
the slow trap of steel wrapping around your heart
– beating loudly in the warmth of the morning’s glory!
Days are hanging
like ripe apples on a tree
– billiard balls not moving on the table of life
– father time from his steep tower smiling indifferently
– mother earth sleeping soundly in her bower
while the hours ooze life –
saturating your meaning –
pools of distillation
in a blurred mirror of image and embodiment
– pictures of death.
The Gateway to Heaven is closed –
Eden as if a lost paradise now turned cold.
Phallic Organization in La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats
Ah, what can ail thee, wretched Knight,
Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Ah, what can ail thee, wretched Knight,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery’s child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery’s song.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gaz’d and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes–
So kiss’d to sleep.
And there we slumber’d on the moss,
And there I dream’d, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry’d–“La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!”
I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.
And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
This poem excites meaning in images of decay and isolation and invites the reader to experience a two-dimensional phallic/thetic order, or should I say ‘dis-order’? The Knight’s journey towards symbolic closure (perpetual ‘death’) is of course accompanied by the Lady of the Meads promise of pleasure, shaping a double-discourse within the narrative that becomes the dream-cape – a wild zone, full of libidinal drives! propelled towards death through linguistic repetition and the compulsion to ‘repeat’, the Knight does not know where he is. Foreign and strange to himself (castrated by the gaze of the other), the Knight constantly evokes his own re-birth ……. on a cold hill’s side ………. I love Keats’ ‘surplus of seeing’ in this poem …… the more he (The Knight) strays the more he is saved!
Cath Corri
Emily’s Hands.
Are trembling –
not with fear but with joy!
Emily’s hands are trembling …
like a leaf of a fragile tree
she knows where the warm winds of change
will carry her.
Her fingers, like thin white dancers
on the keyboard of life,
mean something more than
simple flesh and bone.
In the bowl and cusp
of her warm palms her babies
rest
and the men, women,
mothers and sisters of the world
are touched by the slow
drip of time
which is called EMILY.
Her hands mean something
more than simple flesh and blood –
when her finger points at you
she is talking of the
sublime need for her touch –
judge nobody
lest you judge yourself!
Remember –
her touch has nurtured us –
kept our souls vibrant with a promise
of salvation –
her hands a symbol of the touch
of another’s love.
When you smile she shines –
When you hold out your hand to another –
you are saved!