I

You rise out of flat stone
the shield
of your heart.
The moon crosses the sun.
Do we
become light
when we dream?

The folds of your corduroy
like ridges and hollows
furrows where the Spring runoff
sculpts a geology
in a landscape of tundra.

"passageways and connections that
happen deep within us when in relation
to another..." Nancy Otto

In our Klondike, cross and beams
hold the tunnels we dig through
to find the gold in each other,
rich veins tracing through the rock
like sunlight.

II

Spring is a tendril
of green;
the leaves a papery mass of veins unfolding.

Cliffs of grass by the old mine ripple
in the wind.

We are like those two trees
ancient, weathered, yet
our roots thoroughly
intertwined.

What is
underground
is what holds us.

The deeper passageways
and connections.

III

I wear the crescent moon in my hair,
the cold northern air;
you are the sun buried in the land,
illumined from within.

The sharp edges
in each moment
bind us.

My Adoni, my Aholi,

even in this harsh typography
you are a landscape of love,
a cartography of desire.

©Brenda Clews 2006




>





Photographs were taken by me.

Poem and commentary written in April, 2006:


The title that I had thought of is a line from a poem by Hafiz, the 14th c Sufi master:
Our Destiny Is To Turn Into Light.

Here's the poem:

Faithful Lover

The moon came to me last night
With a sweet question.

She said,

"The sun has been my faithful lover
For millions of years.

Whenever I offer my body to him
Brilliant light pours from his heart.

Thousands then notice my happiness
And delight in pointing
Towards my beauty.

Hafiz,
Is it true that our destiny
Is to turn into Light
itself?"

Hafiz, The Gift, trans. Daniel Ladinsky (Toronto: Penguin, 1999), p.159.


While my poem is about light, it's really about roots, and works off Nancy Otto's lines (she's an artist who creates small, stunning glass sculptures where she explores our inner consciousnesses, our inner lives, the deep channels and underground ways that we connect).

Adoni and Aholi are both gods of nature: one ancient Phoenician; the other, ruler of the Pikya clan of Native Americans. Nature is usually imaged as a woman, but sometimes as a man - the dying & resurrected god.

Also I'm currently not just crazy about Hafiz, but also Pablo Neruda, his love poems, and Juan O'Neill's translation of Macchu Picchu.

I am moved deeply by this image. Antonio Servillo seems to paint my life as it often feels. Meaning his art speaks to me on deep levels of experience. Life is anything but a giddy, happy run-through. Though there is laughter, without which it would be impossible. The woman in Servillo's painting struggles. Such deep and abiding passion I see in her amidst many constraints.


                                                        

direct link: Salt of the Sea.
Livio Amato's, 'Dream Opening,' from his album, "Sensitivity"


Salt of the Sea

             She said seawards-
            "Salt in the seas
            like the blood in tears, 
         a forced forment of waves: 
         our cries, rushed into 
         life, and death,
         a barge that carries
         souls to the other side
               of nowhere."

The moon slides
into a shell
conch, cone, harp, volva
      that hears
      our whisperings-
            breeze, seafoam.

This season of weathered wood, amniotic
scent.

Inner forces drive the ocean.

Mystery emerges and recedes like waves
opening dreams.

Osprey and clouds sail high over surf.

      Print the soul in the flag to fray. 
Rocks rubbing in water become sand.
Wet sand under the pincers of crabs who burrow.
The warp and weave of the ocean slapping
            at our consciousnesses.

You came, on a minion of steel, the noise
of condensed crowds. Like an engine 
of grief. Imprinted with caustic 
wax winds. Ripe as a
salt flower.

With blue love on your lips
the colour of seaspray.

           ≈

The sea drops its showers
of diamonds on our skin.

We waited for each other
in the violins
of wind.

The water
thick with history.

I placed my heart
in your stone
chest.

A wave gives to another wave
its white wedding foam.

Here in the depths of understanding
among the seahorses and anemones,
graves, lovers, sunken dreams,
buried treasures.


       "Love, love until the night 
        falls swiftly."
                Pablo Neruda

(I took this photo in North Vancouver, 2003)

                                                        

direct link to the recording of the poem: Starfire in the Night.
Moi, poetry, voice, mix. Music: Frank Harper's beautiful 'Moon's Eve,'
from "Fingerstyle - Set 1": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/62508.





Album cover from a painting of mine - see original poem and painting,
from a post on Feb 27, 2009. (And actually I think I threw out the painting
in a funk one day.)




click on images for larger size

                                                        

direct link: Hieroglyphic of Purple Lotuses.
Music, the last half of Ka eN's, "Oriental Dreams"
(shortened for the length of the poem, do listen to the whole track,
it's lovely): http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/42617

A poetry recording - I continue experimenting with vocal patterns. :-)
My son called this one "trippy." Rather a compliment, I felt. :-)
.



A poem on poetry. Surreal, with an interweaving love poem.

The first writing ever discovered is of accounts, financial dealings. Not myth, or poetry:

"First our bodies; then our souls.
I owe you; you owe me; they owe us; we owe them."

History - the Rossetta Stone, the key to reading the hieroglyphics of Ancient Egyptian language. Translation.

How we translate each other.

The strange and mystical magic of Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, their stately and regal motion, on a barge in the landscape of our surreal dreams:

"Or why the barge transporting
stone still gods with the heads of
falcons
wearing Khonsu headdresses,
full moons on crescent moons,
is heaped with purple
lotuses.

Khonsu
great snake who
fertilizes the
cosmic egg.

Sometimes."

click images for larger size

                                                        

direct link: Drumbeat

I wrote this poem at the end of January in 2008, and have always wished to record it. Perhaps a year ago I found Chriss Onac's track, TRANSE, a drumming solo, on his album, Tribal, at Jamendo. But until yesterday I lacked the courage to try a recording. It took all day and most of the evening, with one upload and an immediate delete too!

As I push further into experimentation, tweeking, playing, exploring sonic possibilities, I find I am moving from straight poetry readings to more of a performance piece, adding filters to each of the vocal recordings. While I usually layer the same takes with different filters, I also include other takes, which might sound like echoes but actually aren't. Whether this adds a richness to the sonic scape of the piece, I don't know, but that's what I'd like to aim towards. Multiplicities, oh yeah!

In this recording, I did not want a cerebral reading, as is so often the case with poetry, but something primal, with emotion.

Recording it over and over, my window shut tight against the outdoor noise, fans turned off, in the Summer heat I began to sweat, and then let go, shimmying, shaking, drumming with my hands, fast in the air, reciting the poem. There is an emotional pitch in this recording  that I am not sure works, though it does incline towards an element of rock music, somehow (laughing).


Drumbeat

The palm drops
on the inside
of the skin
animal drumming
beating on the drum
drumbeating the night
beating on the eardrum
drum drumming deeply
drawing the heartbeat drumbeat.

My body is the drumbeat
drumbeating my skin
sweating, hot,
drumbeating my body's
percussion, rub, snare,
pounding, colliding of
musical pulses
lyrical sinewy
or staccato modern
or wild shamanic
hair flying
free.

Red shiny satin clinging,
wet
sweat.

The djembe hip bag that I scrubbed, suede dyed to emulate Holstein cow naugahyde, in black and cream, with a wild boar bristle brush and saddle soap because of the dark streaks, smells of animal hide.

I hold it to my nose, and smell. Animal. Hide.
The drumming of the jungle.
An animal skin.

Taut.

Primal beat bounding
resonating, resounding.

You gaze at me, though you haven't looked at me.

I am in your gaze without your seeing me.

It is my hunger you remember feeding,
that you want to feed.
Our heat burns hotly.

Drumbeating
the rhythms beating in us,
the African djembes
dance us.




(click for larger size)






Some of the layers in Drumbeat recording...



Also, Jan wrote that my reading in Drumbeat is "natural force" rather than a "forced oratory in the rendition"... wow, thank you. Love you guys, your generosity is so beautiful. xo♡

_________________
Robert A writes, at Gather: "Brenda - Spikey; meaning very sharp edges where some frequencies really jump out and overwhelm and distract from the other tracks. Looking at the waveform chart, I'm not sure what system you recorded this on, but in most systems (ProTools, Ableton, Cubase, etc) you have the options of using plug-ins, like compression to run over the selected track when you're cleaning up your production at the end. Looking at the waveforms, it looks like you could also get some benefit from keeping some of your levels lower to prevent distortion and that way you can keep some headroom to decide how you want to make the relative tracks work together when you're done. Also, it looks like your panning is all in the same place except one track. If you move your panning to different locations you'll end up with a larger more 3D sound that will make your poetry and presentation more epic.

I'm not the greatest production expert in the world, but you can hear some of my recordings featured on my profile page.

And yes, Annette Peacock is very cool. I got into her when she worked with Bill Bruford."

So, back to the audio programs to see if I can clean up my recording a bit. :)

My response to his comment: "I will study what you've written like an arcane text of magical spells! I use Garage Band... lately into the various filters. I layer recordings, sometimes the same one, usually at least one other, too. I pull track by track into Audacity and work on the levels. Beyond that, I'd be lost.

Compression - meaning normalize? I've used levelator for the voice often, but didn't this time. It certainly boosts the inner, central sound and removes the spikes. And I've run Audacity's normalize too, only not on this recording.

I'll go back to it. Try Levelator on the voice, to see. I find it normalizes too much, and so nowadays I use it, while also layering with an original with its highs and lows. Emotion resides in the highs and lows, at least to my ears.

I've never used panning, ever. Scared to go near it, in other words.

Though delightedly I did use a 'Wandering Voice' filter on one of the tracks, which I really enjoyed. :-)"

Will work on it again over the next few days. What's nice about SoundClick is that you can upload edited versions into the same spot.


                                                        

Sand Is On Fire: a poem ball
a steganographic, hidden poem, wrapped up in disguise
(you'd need PS to unfold, a layered version)




Sand Is On Fire, 15"x13", 38cmx33cm, india inks, soluble
pastels on archival paper, 2010 (actually just now, crazy
inking away on my bed, lucky the open bottle of permanent
ink didn't spill!)
The original -ok, I shouldn't give it away so soon, right?!

In the burning ocean. Where oil spills plumes drag through the world's gloom. Swoop of your feathers. Gloss the rocks. You can't know where we go at night. Or why the morning shines. Or the glimmer of gold before sunset. Relentless tidal cycles. Let me tear at the crests and troughs. Go in. GO IN. Shiver. Sin. Dark water, grey clouds. A rain of black ink falls from the sky. Drips. Rips, slashes the wet heaving page. Heat of sand on fire. Burn the slick, ocean on fire. Coral crevices. Grottos. Invite. Come in, why don't you. Open. Open. Open. Arms reach up. Seeds rain down. Wash the foam. Pray forests. Burning despair of illusion. Fruit of veils to burn in. They said GO IN.

__
Response to Big Tent Poetry’s prompt (where other entries are linked in the comments).



                                                        

Mandalas

                                                        

How Do They Knit a Chain Link Fence.
Always have found 'construction' videos fascinating.


                                                        

to stream or download from the Internet Archives, click this link: Ravishing Light, a Solar Videopoem

Although I posted this video, via YouTube, back in April, I have now uploaded it to the Internet Archives.

After watching many hours of NASA's amazing SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) footage of the sun at the Internet Archives, I downloaded some short videos and from them distilled the clips you see in this video. I am delighted to find this footage and to create a solar videopoem.

A vision of such power that what went before falls away in a rapturous death. A rapturous death of the ego. An unerasable enlightenment. That Rubicon. I was inspired to write this piece after seeing the movie, 'Sunshine,' which also uses footage from NASA's SOHO Observatory.

Prose poem written in July 2007 (also available at the Internet Archives as a separate recording); videopoem created April 2010.

These are the videos I finally chose and downloaded. I used clips from some of them for my short videopoem:

wave- archive.org/details/CIL-10079
SOHO_TRACE_Intro_YouTube- archive.org/details/GMM-10421
recon- archive.org/details/SPD-SOHO-STRIPreconSTRIP
quiet20010310ntscarchive- archive.org/details/SVS-2766?start=4.5
EITflameszm- archive.org/details/SPD-SOHO-STRIPEITflameszmSTRIP
304blow- archive.org/details/SPD-SOHO-STRIP304blowSTRIP
archive.org/details/SVS-3286
EITbulb- archive.org/details/SPD-SOHO-STRIPEITbulbSTRIP
flarezoom640x480- archive.org/details/SVS-2496
helio_fleet_v1.1- archive.org/details/SVS-3570