from Blackwater Quartet, selection 7

Diary of a Has-Been

Others waved goodbye.
 
Slow-motion, shoeshine station
a freezeframe of the ’40s,
I doze in the sidings— dog-latin phantom
riding high to Dixie.

Blue-alcohol lightning evaporates,
near the Gulf Coast highway
knuckles of rolling freight stretched, shunting
miles of track down to Mobile.
 
The neon at The Blue Moon
sputters a scissor-cut geometry
through the ceiling fan’s slow circuit,
teasing layered haze from tables
where the cards are cut.
 
Rough ghosts roll out at closing,
the bootleg precinct of the turning mind, the last breath
the knife blade catches,
a notion of time, of worlds fallen
between minutes, reborn as other worlds,
but not in this place where times are torn.
 
I stand beneath the awning
in the horizontal rains, crazed stucco mottled white
and yellow shutters banging.
 
Winds define the bottleneck peninsula,
the string of traffic lights a testament
to nervous gods we praised.
 
Providence settles in soft light through
broken panes, past ragged palms
and gathered grains of discontent, of losses
not lifted when the highway called.
 
The storms fade into the lower Keys, guttering in Cuba.
 
A lizard basks in the alphabet sun,
jewelled shadow stalled.

The Lost Corvette

Recently, I read that a 12-metre sinkhole (40 feet, in old money) had opened up under the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky, with the loss of several classic cars. 

Sinkholes result when sub-surface limestone (or similar) is eroded by groundwater passing through the pourous rock, leaving small gaps and fissures that eventually connect into larger voids. Beneath its rolling "bluegrass" and rugged woods, Kentucky itself is one big chunk of limestone, the result of the area having been covered by an inland sea several hundred millions of years ago. 

I know this, not because I'm a geologist, but because I was born there, and lived there for more than thirty years. Walk along any country path and you'll find that the stones and gravel beneath your feet are in fact petrified shells and plants from this ancient sea.

One summer, probably around 1958, my family drove down to Mammoth Cave National Park, and stayed in a small local hotel for a day or two, to explore the vast cave system there. It was at that time in its earlier incarnation as a commerical venture as part of the U.S. National Park Service.

"The Park preserves the cave system and a part of the Green River valley and hilly country of south central Kentucky. This is the world's longest known cave system, with more than 400 miles explored. Early guide Stephen Bishop called the cave a "grand, gloomy and peculiar place," but its vast chambers and complex labyrinths have earned its name - Mammoth." So much for the brochure....

The groundwater erosion over thousands of years created the vast system, and I think at one time explorers thought the system linked into a large group of caves in Tennessee. Not sure what happened with that.

A few things come to mind about that visit. As a family, we never had holidays in the sense of contemporary expectations of travel, so it was a big deal to go anywhere. As tourists, we saw what still are unusual things: a long, low (stone) ceiling space set out as a cafeteria, cavernous (literally) spaces that could be described as cathedral-like, an underground river with boats, and small, semi-transparent fish with no eyes.

I also remember walking along a narrow passageway, itself the result of erosion through rocks, the smooth, sheer stone faces rising vertically on either side of the trail. We made our way along, as part of a larger group of tourists, and I suddenly stopped, pressing my hands stiff-armed against the walls either side, shouting back to my parents and sister, "Quick! Go through! I'll hold back the walls!" I noted that both my parents were struggling not to burst out laughing, as their eight-year old son did something stupid, and funny.

The other thing I remember was that as we made our way through the passage into another space, I felt my Father's hand rest on my shoulder, which I registered with a thrill of delight. I can say with some degree of conviction that he was not a physically demonstrative man, apart from punishments, and to have this display of spontaneous affection from him was as strange as rowing along a dark river, a darkness that remained "gloomy and peculiar" unless struck by the light of a guide's torch.

I like to imagine one of the missing Corvettes eventually popping up though some deep fissure, sliding along silently through dark water, and reflected there in its candy-coloured lacquer, a fish, eyeless, through its soap-bubble skin its tiny white heart, beating and beating. 

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 6

Raising Dixie Jesus

Floating weightless
in the focus of the prism, a true believer
balanced in the Brownie’s bubble viewer:
it’s Easter,1958.
The screen door knocks closing.
I stand unruffled,
formal in the formality of the blessed.
 
Mother steadies and the shutter pops.
The two-tone, pink on pink
of our high-finned family Dodge
fades to black and white.
On the morning of the risen dead
I stare into its headlight glare and wait for my release.
 
In the Methodist church at the top of Main,
the organ’s vox humana brocades
John Wesley’s silvery, lowbrow rhymes,
in the nave Christ espalier, the greenstick break of day
born in frantic pastorals
where sops from Proverbs pasteurise the dead.
 
The fallen fall still,
broken in the levees and the jambalaya farms,
Africans hanging lantern-like
from neo-classical façades.
Nothing saves you from yourself.
The panorama of the sky and all below it
perish in a whisper, reborn in Alabama.
 
…I clock in at the factory, chasing overtime on Sundays—
home later in the yard, washing the pickup,
the cherryflake metallic paint
so bright, I could reach right through
to touch that other face, beyond that trick of light
the brother so familiar. 

He comes to me then, in the heat of the day
hard by the axletree, where rebel lords
repair the fierce horizon.

Afterimages

A handhold of rope threaded the iron eyelets, winding upwards with the narrow stairs.

Sheila climbed ahead, remarking on the ability of stone to retain cold, even now in the

heat of the day. At the neat, Norman archway, she produced a comically large key, its

appearance not unlike a wire coat hanger twisted round on itself a number of times, its

weight a bottle of beer.

The room, three paces by four, was walled with documents, parish records dating from

the mid thirteenth century right up to the service last Sunday. In the wall opposite, a

small, leaded pane was painted with the trees and blue sky of Norfolk summer.

Sheila opened a large floor chest, which she thought was late eighteenth century; each

hinge was the length of my forearm. She handed me a book, its creamy cover holed

partly, as if burnt. “Sheepskin,” Sheila offered, “or maybe goat.” I thumbed through the

register – soldiers, farmhands, widows – everyone’s life set out in neat copperplate, a

record of the parish, one November day, 1716. It was raining that day; on one page, rain

stains clearly dappled the ink. Whoever was in charge must have been out and about the

town.

Sheila made a cup of tea.

A dehumidifier chugged quietly in the corner. Sheila peered into the drip well. “That’s

odd,” she mused, without any further explanation.

She waved casually in the direction of a small glass cabinet, and a Latin document

recording the permissions for the ‘new’ tower, c 1450, a dull red wax seal revealing the

impress of the Abbott of St Albans. Beneath the cabinet, more books and loosely bound

folios.

“This is one of my favourites, but not so very old, really,” she said, drawing me over to

another cabinet in the corner, and a poster there printed mainly in bright red, advertising

Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. The call to teas and cricket was in perfect

condition.

I left Sheila sitting at a small table, making notes, wishing me goodbye without looking

up, and made my way back down the twisting stairs.

At the end of the North aisle, four tourists stood, looking up at a massive brass

chandelier. It looked dangerous to stand beneath, suspended daintily ten metres from the

hammer-beam ceiling. Imagine a long piece of string, and hanging from it a Fiat

Quattrocento, but in brass, sprigged with candles, with ‘1712’ stamped on the boot.

As the tourists opened the oak door to leave, the June sun met the deep, cool dark and

disappeared.

Turtle Soup

Reading a recent New Scientist, I was intrigued by the recent findings of scientists at the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole They've detected primordial gravitational waves in Deep Space, and this appears to support the theory of Inflation, that is, cosmic expansion, the instant where at the speed of light the early universe expanded from the size of a subatomic pissant to, well, everywhere. Scientists are also working on data from the Plank Space Telescope, which, if it corroborates the BICEP2 findings, may confirm the theory- or not.

An issue that arises from the mathematical models of Inflation is that there are several versions of the event. All apparently meet the mathematical requirement, but which flavour do we like best? Chaotic? Natural? Higgs-like?

To further complicate things, the waves recently detected appear more pronounced than the mathematical models predict. Gravitational waves could exist, entangled, with differences in density, but paradoxically this may in fact help rule out the theory altogether. Instead, the supporters of String Theory may have their day.

The String Theory example given is that of a rolled-up piece of paper, representing a nine-dimensional universe. Around it are rubber bands. The bands are in fact vibrating strings, and if any of these strings meet or cross, a twisted loop can be formed (so states the model), which would release three dimensions of space and one of time. Arguments against String Theory are based on the fact that it comes without data. If the BICEP2/Plank data disallows the theory of Inflation, we may find ourselves in the even wilder reaches of ST.

It occurred to me that when the Big Bang is depicted through a video graphic, even on programmes where Science is the main focus, we are shown the event as though viewing an explosion from a safe distance. How can this be? If we are viewing a representation of BB, there is nothing else, so from what platform are we observing the phenomenon? Big black space, then in the middle of it, Big Bang. Go figure.

There are cultures, from the Hindu to the Delaware Indians, that believe the world rests on the back of a giant turtle, termed by the Chinese as Black Warrior and elsewhere simply as the Great Turtle. While it may seem absurd, it should give us pause for thought. Where space-time can be proved to exist as the result of the crossing of vibrating strings around a nine-dimensional universe rolled up like an evening paper, the turtle thing doesn't sound so far-fetched; I think we should add it into the theoretical mix. 

After all, watching Big Bang going off like a firecracker in the distance, we're probably standing on something.

Censorship and Poetry

I came across the site G+ Poets when I set up this blog, and joined in various posts, such as 'Critique Requested' and 'Discussion.' It was diverting, and there were a few poems, perhaps one in a hundred, that in fact were deserving of journal publication. In those cases, it was useful to be able to comment directly with the poet and discuss thier work.

Under the 'Weekend Showcase' tab, writers can post two poems for feedback/comment and the obligatory "+1" which works in a way not dissimilar to a Facebook "like."

I posted two poems, overtly political pieces related to recent events in Sochi and Ukraine. They had been posted only for a few minutes and people were responding to them in a positive way. Shortly thereafter, one of the site's Moderators posted that they were taking the poems down, as they violated the community's PG guidelines.

The objection, apparently, was to the name of the Russian political movement, Pussy Riot, and to the now homogeneous, relatively innocuous word, 'bullshit.' Their comment began, "We really wish poets would write more political poems and stop navel-gazing, but..." 

My response was that they could, according to their rules, print the name of those ultra rightwing nitwits, the Tea Party, all day long, but not the name of the Russian dissonants, Pussy Riot, all in the name of Mom-and-Pop values. PR's history of civil disobedience can be accessed through any media, and it's the nature of political activism that promotes uncomfortable viewing or, in this case, reading.

In my view the Moderators are themselves drifting into the realm of censorship territory currently associated with recent Russian activities in Ukraine, so it was somewhat ironic that they should object to real-time poetry events couched in directly provocative language.

On the same day, one of the Moderators, under a 'favorite poem' tab, promoted a piece by a poet with whom I wasn't familiar, but who is widely read in the United States. The Moderator stated that this poet's writing changed the direction of his his own work. Naturally, I was intrigued initially, but then disappointed. For me, the poem was grammatically awkward, but not in a way that was meant to impart a style of language experiment. The ending, wherein the poet describes herself in the sex act, had a sniggering, juvenile pretension about it that I found unintentionally comic.

While everyone has their own reading preferences, and my own in the case above are clearly out of sync with a wider reading public, there is a further point to be made. It's not unusual to find poems posted there that have a whispery, soft porn vibe (including the poem mentioned above), and these are accepted with a nod of acquiescence. 

Apart from being poorly crafted, such poems pander to readers who imagine that such writing promotes self-discovery, that is to say, "find" one's self. In fact, they are cheesy, self-indulgent exercises that serve no credible purpose in respect of poem-making. If you're running a site as though it was a Disney film set, pink-ribboned and choreographed to please within a remarkably narrow bandwidth, care should be taken to ensure that the cast and crew aren't blowing weed and having wild monkey sex between takes in the back room.

When I weigh-up such pretensions against the activities of people who are beaten and jailed because their views are at odds with those in power, I know where my loyalties lie.
 
I suppose it's just as well that I didn't post the poem about sex-worker trafficking in Europe.

I've now left the community.

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 5

Objet D’Art, Miscellany and Views
 

A soapstone buddha
paperweight lends gravitas to loose-leaf
sketches of the doors
and windows, ha-ha,
the folly and the ruined relief,
the inkwash of ivy and hellebores.
 
A bronze figurine,
French, late 18c, crowds the lesser lots,
a nervy line of
burnished nicotine.
Next, engravings of sans-culottes
razing the Bastille, etched with smoke above;
 
plate-silver service,
a ‘modern’ atlas coloured with empire,
memoirs of Paris
between the wars, kisscurl
sweethearts in porcelain, sire
stock paintings, a pamphlet, “Against Hubris”—
 
your shoes, the shell pink
satin with the Deco heels, the tissue
wrappings, reminded
me of New Year’s, zinc
bathtub cooling fizz, the horseshoe
of roses, the wishing star love blinded.
 
A stranger took your
diaries. The secret nod, a sign for sign
and all was his. The
light rays bend in pure
white ribbons through the room. A fine
dust shrugs its weasel anonymity.