Saturday 18 April 2020

Lean on Me...

teacher keep on teaching...

Playing for Change...

Walk of Life...

Leonard Cohen sings Garcia Lorca...

I've played this over and over...So moving...
Always wanted to dance with my partner...
But in this world, it could not happen...
Yet now...
I feel it has...

Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallways where love's never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea
There's a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews 
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They've been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it's been dying for years

There's an attic where children are playing
Where I've got to lie down with you soon
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow
All your sheep and your lilies of snow

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its "I'll never forget you, you know!"

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea
And I'll dance with you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a river's disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist

Oh my love, Oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It's yours now.
It's all that there is



Hope is a thing with feather...

shift your energy...

Why do we read and write poetry...



'Dead Poets' Society' continues to reach out and stir us into valuing our inner, poetic insights...
In this scene, John Keating (Robin Williams) teaches his pupils the reason for reading and writing poetry, quoting Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass'...

The Ancient Mariner begins...

The Ancient Mariner Big Read, commissioned by The Arts Institute at Plymouth University, will see the 150-verse poem divided into 40 readings.

barbecue circle...



barbecue circle
ghostly connections with
Stonehenge


My neighbours, a few weeks ago, set up this outdoor barbecue area in their backyard...
It has been used once...

when you connect...

an odd one...

covid-19 mobile tracking app...?

poetry?

CzesĹ‚aw MiĹ‚osz (1911-2004) was a Polish-American poet who won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In exile from a world which no longer exists, a witness to the Nazi devastation of Poland and the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, Milosz deals in his poetry with the central issues of our time: the impact of history upon moral being, the search for ways to survive spiritual ruin in a ruined world. Source: Poetry Foundation

resilience in fire and drought...

This morning I ventured to Story Lounge presented by the City of Melbourne Libraries.
(I am trying to explore new worlds in this pandemic to keep my curiosity polished and alive.)
There I found 2 writers I know nothing about...and loved instantly...
They were Alice Bishop and Cate Kennedy - 2 Victorian writers...
The main themes for both writers involved disasters and resilience

Alice Bishop - A Constant Hum
(collection of short stories - based on the aftermath of the 2009 Black Saturday fires)
Maps (micro short story - just a few sentences)
'there's something calming when I see no blackened scar through green'...
My comment recorded on City of Melbourne Libraries YouTube:
The Alice Bishop story has a sense of taking in the breath and holding it...a sense of breathlessness...a sense of waiting at a crossroads to find a sign ...Absolutely beautiful piece of sharp, intense, 'soul shaking' writing...

Cate Kennedy (from the hot and dry north-western Victoria region)
 - The Taste of River Water -
(collection of poetry about drought)
8 by 10 colour enlargement $16.50 (Cate Kennedy reads her poem HERE)
'This was the first moment my children ever saw rain...'
 'the tired love in her husband's hand..'
'another untold story and that's why I'm telling you now...'
My comment recorded on City of Melbourne Libraries YouTube:
The narrator in Cate Kennedy's poem is an enigmatic, interesting voice...almost like a watcher... a journalist seeking that special insight beyond the mainstream news? Reminds me of Frank Bongiornau's challenge to record/journal - April 10, recorded on Twitter. He challenged us all to our personal record daily life in the midst of this current pandemic. How are we surviving? He pointed out that we could be establishing primary sources for the future historian. I have taken up the challenge and I'm recording the highs and lows of surviving...trying to include many kinds of surviving e.g I am churning out haiku and micropoetry to represent the inner tides. In short, I am trying to record beyond the ever-changing mainstream politics and policies...I guess, ultimately I could be like the narrator of the poem... I could even be the very woman who won 2nd prize for her photo. Enjoyed your readings. Beautifully paced. (Sorry...Perhaps I am raving...I'll stop)

P.S.I am good at being awarded 'second prize' because I don't follow 'the rules' exactly.
I may even sink to 'highly commended', because somehow I just don't fit the labels and tags required.

front steps...



front steps
my little furball and I
face the outside world
together



dark waters seethe...

swearing can be good for the soul?....

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