Wednesday, 2 December 2015

Places Where I've Lived: Magnolia Court 2

I was at that time involved in the local spoken word community.  There was a coffee house on Commercial Drive in those days called La Quena where every month, on or near the full moon, the Howling Poets Society would let loose on not always receptive captive audiences.  At that time I was writing these long poetic cycles.  My work was well-received and I hoped I might one day find a publisher for my work.  I also found, to my surprise, that I was really very comfortable performing and interacting with an audience.  This was a huge confidence builder and frequently strangers would stop me on the street to tell me how much they enjoyed hearing my poetry.  I never found a publisher for my poetry, Gentle Reader, but I will devote the rest of this blog post to one of my poetic cycles that I read at Howling Poets, La Quena.


Colour Charts


 

                                                                                     Cycle 1

 

                                                                            I

 

                                                                               

Brown is the colour of coffee, chocolate, roasted flesh, earth and the skin of more than half the human race.

Brown is the merging of all the colours of the wheel

That spins and spans the gulf between heaven and earth,

Green are the leaves and grass that grow out of the brown earth,

And the expectorated snot that gleams

From the sunny grey concrete.

Blue is the sky in daylight,

The poppies that grow among the grazing brown yaks of Tibet,

And blue are the eyes of pale skinned beings

Whose white reign of power teeters over the precipice

Above the dazzling blue sea.

Red is the blood that spatters the grey concrete,

Soaks the brown earth,

And stains the green grass

Underneath the blue sky.

Red is the blood that pumps through our veins.

Brown skin and pale skin,

Sustaining and enlivening

The lover’s caress

And the wife-beater’s

frenzy.

Yellow is the gold

Hid in stone between orange topaz and purple amethyst

And yellow the sun’s blinding fury

Trapped in sunflowers and in dandelions blooming on front lawns forever.

 

Black

And white.

Light and negation of light

That warms the brown earth

That shoots forth the green grass

That feeds the black and white cows

That feed us with their white milk,

Yellow butter and cheese

And flesh red with dripping blood.

And the black and white cows

Rest in the shade

On the green and yellow grass

Beneath the blue sky of summer—

And this is the first day,

And the last night;

The last day, and the first night,

And God saw that it is good.

 

                                                                            II

 

The colour is pure, stark,

Amethyst transmuting into magenta, to crimson,

To scarlet, topaz, beryl and blinding emerald

To the most violent turquoise fire-heart of sapphire,

To amethyst again—

So another water droplet is transfigured by the morning sun

On the naked branch outside the window

Where hangs a pendant crystal channeling

The new daylight,

Shattered spectrums and broken rainbows

That stain the sparsely decorated white apartment walls.

The colours merge into white light,

Mercilessly illumining the naked foot,

Granting brutal emphasis

To early varicose veins

Gathering like a pencil sketched tattoo

On the ankle,

And the slightly ragged, stained big toenail

Which the young woman is painting crimson;

And the light gleams blinding white

On the naked muscular back

Of her sleeping lover.

Her ovaries conceal the promise of new life

Made fecund in loving embraces,

A promise of new life,

Of a new self,

Microscopic zygote that betrays

Those tender nights of passion.

 

So we have had our beginnings:

Childhood played out on violently green lawns,

Or shining beige linoleum,

Or brown fertile earth,

Or urine-stained concrete:

The colour wheel spins

In the rhythm of the planet

And the iridescent spider silk

That sways in slow motion,

Across forest trails

In gentle breezes of early summer evenings.

 

                                                                               III

 

Where did you get that dress?

That shade of red is you:

The colour of fire engines and blood, the colour of roses and peonies,

The colour of your daughter’s hair last week,

Of your grandson’s mohawk,

Red sky at morning and night,

Warning and delight

For red is the heart of the fire,

The soul of the flame

We have banked,

Doused,

Driven underground

Only to erupt again

And lick with hot tongues

Heels of guccied and aldoed feet.

Sex is the heart of that fire,

But spirit is the soul of the flame.

Red as the blood that flowed that day

When the earth shook and night visited

The middle of the day,

When God screamed out his death agony,

Red as the cleansing blood

That flowed from the sacred feet,

Preparing the way

For new life,

And life a thousand times ten thousand times over,

Onto the grey stone, the brown earth,

The green and yellow grass

On the holiest day of a Palestinian spring.

 

The blood that stains the virgin bride’s sheet

Is the blood that coloured the guillotine blade

And neck of Marie Antoinnette’s severed head:

And the red blood

Of martyrs, saints and Awshwitz victims,

Casualties of Abu Ghreib, Guantanamo, Srebrenica and

St. Bartholemew’s day,

Meat from the slaughterhouses

Of Pol Pot, George Bush, and Herod the Great:

It has all flowed in, it has all flowed in,

Soaking, drenching, life into life,

The thirsty brown earth;

Dragon’s teeth sown in tended furrows

Bringing forth to life

The violent seed

That chokes our planet

With thistles, weeds and blood-dripping thorns.

 

The morning cry becomes the evening lullaby

For the mother who survives

Her childbed agony.

There is no birth, no life,

No descending of the flaming dove,

But for the shedding of blood,

But for the agony of the red blood

That screams for vindication, vengeance and justice

From hearts of bedrock and stone.

 

                                                                   Second Cycle

                                        

                                                                              I

 

White seagulls drift

On invisible air currents

In the blue sky,

Vultures reincarnated as doves

Descending now and picking clean the season’s roadkill,

Till the yellow-white bones are scattered

Across the yellow strip that divides and brightens

Into left and right hemispheres of an asphalt brain

The rural highway.

A red Volvo rolls by—

The driver is wearing a blue and gold silk tie

He purchased in Bangkok on a recent dirty holiday,

Just after closing an international deal

Resulting in less millet for the blue earthen bowl

Out of which a family in Africa has been eating.

He is on his way to a tryst

With the young woman in the green dress

He met in one of the trashy bars

He loves to go slumming in—

She is the ex-partner of the young stud in the purple tank top

Who is driving the grey van behind him.

(He used to beat her: her reason for finally leaving him.)

The young woman will tie him down

With the black electrical cord

That is coiled like snakes twining ‘round the healer’s staff—

The cane she will beat him with—

Until the red welts have

Begun to form like international boundaries on a map

All over the smooth terrain of his freckled white back.

 

The gulls are circling in the blue sky

Above the shining green fields,

Spying their next victim on the highway

That is littered on both sides

With red and blue cigarette packages.

A yellow butterfly lights on a red poppy

Blooming next to a discarded green bottle

That stings with the sun’s brilliance

The weary eyes

Of matrons obsessed with colour charts,

And coordinating pink and jade green upholstery

With bronze broadloom

And taupe coloured draperies.

In poorly-lit studios

Artists wrestle with toxic pigments

And lethal solvents,

Capturing, interpreting

And bringing to life on overpriced canvas

The mystic immediacy of colour born in light,

Light born in colour

In that sacred nanosecond when it strikes the eye,

Seen and being seen for the first time,

Yellow butterflies, red poppies

And shining green beer bottles.

 

A muskrat, flattened by the red Volvo bleeds crimson

All over the yellow line;

The white gulls are descending.

 

                                                                          II

 

Blue and green are the colours of the earth

And the catseye marbles

And the t shirts and jeans of the children

Who roll them,

And blue and green are the school building walls

Against which they negotiate

Their little glass spheres.

 

Blue and green are the massive hydrangeas

That give grandmothers more pleasure and delight

Than years of nights endured in their husbands’ flaccid arms.

The gulls are circling in the blue sky,

Blue like summer hydrangeas.

 

The red Volvo is parked

In the driveway of the ramshackle blue house

Across the street

From the children who, next year, will be lighting up

White cigarettes

After the last cat’s eye marble

Has been rolled in contrapuntal rhythm with this blue and green earth

Into dark and fathomless asphalt space.

The muskrat’s bones have been picked clean by the gulls,

And gleam white as the clouds gathering in the west,

White as the gulls’ gleaming white breasts,

White as the cane which the woman in the green dress

Will use to beat her prone and delighted lover.

 

                                                                        III

 

The romaine is green, tossed with bronze heirloom tomatoes

And purple raddicchio,

That will be recycled in shit every bit as brown as

The chocolate mousse.

The candles are red,

And the yellow flames hurt the eye with their swollen energy.

The green and blue marbles were long ago buried in the landfill

Where poppies once bloomed amid green bottles.

Diamonds glitter, imprisoned rainbows from

The old woman’s earlobes and crinkled white throat.

The pomegranates in the centre-piece gleam crimson

With gold lights caught from the fire,

Metaphorical ovaries.

The men, sleek and power-suited

With their immaculately coutured wives

Once shot green and blue marbles on the black schoolyard asphalt,

Just before the woman in the green dress

Perished across the street

In her own red blood,

When she slashed her wrists one hot summer night.

Her lover has become wealthy.

He is no longer young,

The colours of life denouce

The death held at bay,

Being swallowed

In gulps of golden claret

Into the craw

Of middle class denial.

Two lanes have been added to the highway.

The gulls still circle in the blue sky.

 

An elegant young wife

Has told no one,

Not even the psychiatrist whom she blows twice a week,

That she wants to take a can of gasoline

And empty it all over and all around her house,

The German and Italian cars,

The landscaped grounds,

And then along the yellow line down the middle of the expanded highway,

An unbroken, gleaming trail of fossil fuel,

Coloured amber like the cognac after dinner.

From the top of the hill

She will sit in the long grass

And drop a lit match

And watch as the fire serpent of retribution,

Flame of living gold

Descends on the house,

The foreign cars,

The manicured lawn,

The red candles and pomegranates,

Engulfing them all in one purgatorial flame.

She will watch from the hill

As the flame rises in judgment,

Burning in the eternal night,

Burning forever.

Tomorrow she’ll do this.

Her shrink will see that she is acquitted.

 

After dessert—

She has lost track of the conversation

And reaches for her gold lighter

And blue cigarette package

With warnings of death

Emblazoned in black and white.

One day she will strangle her mother-in-law who sits across the table

Garroting her with her own pearls

Young woman and crone together succumbing

Underneath the brown mahogany table

In presence of the golden flame

And pomegranates of dappled crimson.

 

                                                               Third Cycle

 

                                                                        I

 

The sunlight in the crystal spray of the public fountain

Betrays the colours of our origins—

From God’s promise to Noah

To the promised apocalypse,

So the rainbow of promise spans from biblical antiquity

To post-apocalyptic aspirations.

 

This is the light from which we have sprung,

And this is the light into which we shall return.

The red of the spectrum

Is the deep red with which the girl seated at the edge of

The fountain

Has coloured her hair for this week,

On an inspiration that came with the blood

Of her recent period,

Red as the parrots of Brazil and New Guinea,

Red as the butterflies and hibiscus flowers of Costa Rica,

Red as the blood of her female vindication,

And the blood of the martyred and slain

That soaks into the hallowed brown earth

Making it fertile again.

Red is the colour of pomegranates, rubies and ovaries.

Red is the edge of the sacred sword

That swathes across the wheatfields and vineyards

Of earth and heaven,

Bringing in the bloodied sheaves,

The vintage wine

Of the blessed blood that saves us.

 

The girl’s tattoos are green and blue,

Against the gold-white gleam of her naked arm

That splashes through the iridescent fountain spray.

 

Yellow is the sheen of purest gold,

Buttercups, and the cellophane coffee crisp wrapper

Crumpled and blowing like a golden tumbleweed,

A perished memory of the corporate greed

The empty stomach and the bleeding back

Of the child who picked the cacoa beans

That sweetened today your fat dirty mouth in a nice light snack.

Like a yellow wraith it flutters and sails in the breeze

Across the dusty pavement,

Ending at the stone wall stained by the fragrant yellow piss

Last night by a drunken male reveller.

 

From the brown earth springs the tender green blade and shoot—

Green is the colour of spring,

Granny smith apples,

And the sports car racing down the rural highway

Flanked by green fields and trees,

Bearing contraband of white Peruvian cocaine and green Brazilian emeralds,

The earth’s sacred green

Mined from the midst

Of the defoliated green rainforest,

The rapidly dwindling lungs of the earth.

Cut and polished and set in platinum and gold

That glitter from crinkled white throats

And soft pink fingers

Of the destroyers of the earth.

 

The youth on the skateboard would be naked

But for his cut-off jeans,

Nipple and nose rings

And green and blue tattoos, like the girl’s,

That decorate in vinous wreathes

His shining pale skin.

He rolls up to the girl with the red hair—

She will never tell him how near he came to fathering their child—

They do not see the spectrum,

Not even the blue and violet bands at the bottom,

Bluer than the cigarette package he has just pulled

From his pocket,

Bluer than the pale-eyed gaze he sets on

The girl’s

tattooed arm,

and bluer than the smoke that rises from the lit end

of the glowing orange tip

of the cigarette he has just lit her.

 

                                                                               II

 

The sun has moved,

Though actually the earth’s position has merely shifted

In its perpetual rotation,

The rainbow of promise has vanished,

Subsumed in the golden-white light,

Alpha and Omega,

Beginning and end.

White, the colour of snow,

Of heroin and cocaine,

And salt consecrated and sprinkled across the defiled earth,

To make it clean, to make it holy;

And white are the clouds

And the spray of the fountain

And the salt spray of the ocean

That smashes the sea god’s fury

Against the hard black rocks.

White is the mother of all colours..

But light is the father of white.

And the mother of white

Is the black yin,

Consort to the white yang,

That spins and wheels together

Like the changing phases of the moon

That pulls on the ocean tide,

And teases the red blood

That keeps us alive,

Launching us like lost catamarans into its ebb and flow

As we dance into the night

And into the dark,

Perpetual carnival mardi-gras,

Dance of death,

For black is the mother

And death is the daughter,

And the daughter and mother of the light

Is the yin,

The dark secret place,

Universal womb

From which all has sprung,

Manic kaleidoscope of created order,

Self-destructing and giving birth to chaos

Re-ordering the colours,

The black mother and the father light,

As they dance in mutual synchronicity

From the primal to the final promise

Across the radiant arc of the covenant

That shines in the crystal spray.

 

                                                                           III

 

The blue and green peacock in the garden

Feeds among the red and yellow roses,

And stretches his shining blue neck to reach at the golden wheat

Scattered before the sundial.

He rises on copper and granite wings to the top of the garden wall.

Depending on the angle of the light

His train can shine emerald, gold, or copper, or sapphire,

The iridescent eyes staring but not seeing

The intertwined limbs of the lovers rolling in the shade

Of the laurel hedge that grows

On the other side of the pomegranate tree

That flourishes in the centre of the garden.

The peacock screams into the light-dappled air,

Drowning, but not silencing the lovers’ stifled cries

And another red pomegranate has fallen to the ground.

 

The paving stones shine like ivory, gold and pearl in the midday sun;

The lovers sleep naked in the cool shade and the peacock faces the sun.

They haven’t noticed the brown rats

Vying with black ravens

For the fallen pomegranate;

No one has found the gate that leads in and out of the garden,

Our starting and our finishing point

In our pilgrimage along the mystic sundial

Where soon we must all come to rest in its longest shadow

Alongside the sleeping lovers.

 

And soon all beginnings spring forth from all endings,

For the day begins and ends

And begins again in darkness,

In the longest shadow,

And still the light beckons,

Though the darkness tempts and beguiles.

They will merge together in the centre of the golden city

Where the light and darkness,

The night and the day

Co-mingle among the entwined and gleaming limbs of the sleeping lovers,

Where they will rekindle again into being the sacred and eternal fire

That will recreate the day and the night,

And will gather together their offspring darkness and light,

Merging them together

And making them

One

And the very same.

 

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