THE LOGIC OF FIRE - Vernon Edgar

Picture :-
the logic of war, by William T. Ayton

The logic of fire is divided to the no nonsense of corpo- reality. Atomicity's sublimiyity broke, rudely awoke in excruciating compromise of humanoid form. Cyclotronic dees drived dichotomic percussion. Bombarded, we awoke, broke through and through our pierced side of Christ_Adam bomb-blown stilted mentalities. Meta-terran trippers trapped in science fiction jails, mystics run amucked up botched hockshop pitch batch shits gunk stuck, stainin' to filter out great moontide's flash flood of bad scenarios, the para-news deletions, unholy Hal-Lucy machinations of poor-toned think tank, a roller coaster green, hourglass-assed spider omegas, automated camp with globe-wide showers, blasted planet's bitter-bitten escapist exhaust, robotomized bludgeonists in the last metal horror, the fate of the Third Men, and according to John, attack of the interstellar locusts, snares and snags of snarls and sundry elect lookin' for the iceberg in their lakes of fire, private eye spying private eye in public dark of alien nation.


FROM ' Prosaic Mosaic '

WELSH POET AS MEDICAL HISTORIAN - Glyn Penrhyn Jones

The supreme genius of the English language proclaimed that " the lunatic, the lover and the poet of imagination all compact", and it is clearly difficult to define a poet or bard, versifier or rhymster. The Poet Laureate has been described as a mere " Versifier Royal " and his office has included such notables in their own way as Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Austin, C.Day-Lewis and John Betjeman. Not only are we in difficulty in defining a poet, but doubly so in the term "Welsh poet" - be he again prydydd, bardd or rhigywr. The world at large generally assumes that Dylan Thomas was a Welsh poet- after all he was Welsh and he was a poet. So were Henry Vaughan, George Herbert, Vernon Watkins, Alun Lewis and even Edward Thomas, but they chose to write in English - their medium and their message was English, and thus they were essentially English poets and were virtually outside the Welsh literary and poetic tradition. I know that the Scots would hardly consider Robert Burns to be a Sassenach poet ( he did write in English)- perhaps they would compromise by calling him a Lallans poet, or more non-committally in the meaningless term, a British Poet. And then again was Yeats an Irish poet, when his fame as a poet rests on his English poetry but who was of a mixed French-Irish ancestry? There is no difficulty about calling Richard Wilson a Welsh painter or Alan Ramsey a Scots painter or Benjamin Britten an English composer, but when the medium of artistic expression is the spoken or written word in a language, then we must surely confine the term "Welsh poet" to those who use the medium of the Welsh lanuage.
That language is one of the oldest languages of Western Europe, and the earliest examples of its poetry date from the sixth century; it is truly remarkable that those ancient sixth century epics are comprehensible to the educated Welshman of today.Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon epic, dates from the eighth century but is basically Germanicand noe reads like a foreign tongue. If English literature, as we know it,began with Chaucher, then Welsh literature in comparison is of hallowed antiquity indeed. At least over the fourteen centuries of its tenacious if nowtenuous existence, Welsh poetry - apart from its inherent artistic values and beauty- abounds with social commentaries, reflecting the political and cultural evolution of Wales in the manner of all national literatures. And even more so in Wales, since the poet here has always enjoyed the sympathy and the acclaim of his fellow countrymen to a far greater extent than in England. He in turn has been everready with the judgements, praises and castigations that have been expected of him.
The internal evidence of some poetic compositions sheds light on the poets' own infirmities, and their incidence. We know, from the format of their paintings, that Cezanne, Renoir, Pisarro and Degas were all myopic, that El Greco was a stigmatic, and that John Constable was partially colou-blind. The ebb and flow of William Cowper's and John Clare's poetic geniuses indicate their manic-depressive state- episodic melancholia was a common eighteenth century affliction. Some of their contemporaries in eighteenth century Wales followed the same clinical fashion, Lewis Morris and Ieuan Fardd, both suffered from hypochondria, "the spleen". William Thomas (Islwyn), the poet of Gwent, followed suit in the nineteenth century and with him a whole corpus of mid-Victorian Welsh versifiers, obsessed with death, in the manner of John Donne, and generally referred to as the "Cemetery School". The fashionable addiction to laundenham in the early nineteenth century influenced the poetry of Coleridge and the prose of De Quincey; it also kindled the fervid imagination of Iolo Morganwg, the 'onlie begetter' of the Gorsedd of the Bards at the National Eisteddfod of Wales. Again, the physical infirmaties of the bards, may have contributed to their inspiraiotn; it is conceivable that Byron's talipes equinvarus influenced his political and poetic heroics, that Pope's spinal deformity contributed to his waspish epigrammatic quips. In Wales we are historically fortunate in that the character and the physical peculiarites of the bards were often evident in their names and epithets; to distinguish all the Joneses and Thomases of today we must have Jones the Milk and Thomas the Tax, and they have their poetic counterparts for Gruffydd Gryg, the sixteenth century Welsh poet was evidently 'cryg', a stammerer. Presumably both the 'Gwargam' and Daffydd Gam had congenital kyphosis. Llefored Wynepglaw had the flat face of Lupus, syphilis or leprosy; Ithel Grach presumably suffered fronm an exfoliative disease, possibly psoriasis.
But we must turn to the poems themselves-the vast majority of them in systemised alliterative verse, 'cynghanedd', that has characterised Welsh poetry from the beginning-for the eclectic facts of interest to the medical historian The earliset of these, in general, would only excite the military medical historian, referring as they do to the nasty, brutish, and short lives of the peasantry in tribal society. The Anglo-Saxon 'maldon' poem of the tenth century, the French 'Chanson de Roland' of the eleventh century, and the Icelandic sagas, all have common ground with the early Welsh epics of Aneurin and Taliesin and others of similar vintage. Deaths in battle are commonplace, entrails hang festooned on gorse bushes, 'Angeu a gawsant a mynych goddiant' (Death they have suffered and frequent pain). Heads cut off by the hundred ('Vi a leddis cant pen'.) But among these insistent sanguinary pageants the occasional gem such as the picture of ageing, which must have been an uncommon experience in those days, in the llywarchy Hen poems of about the seventh century. In a picture reminiscent of a Durer engraving, an old man admits 'wyf cefngrwm, wyf trwm, wyf truan'. ( I am bent, heavy and wretched) and his @pedwar prif casethau' (his four great hates) are 'pas, henaint, haint a hoed'(a cough, old age, disease and longing). His back is bent like his old wooden crook('baglan bren'). He is the Lear of Shakespeare.
A sequence of stanzas in this poem are recited by a 'claf' of Abercuarwg ( The sick man of Abercuawg.) One writer has suggested that he was a leper - at least his affliction appears to have kept him from the battlefield - perhaps the only blessing of his dreaded leprosy. The prevading belligerence of the pre-Norman Welsh canbe surmised from the fact that the Chronicles of the Princes. 'Brut y Tywysogion, record that between 949 and 1046 no less than 35 Welsh rulers died by violence, a further four being blinded. One entry for 1043 records that Hywel ab Owain,hing of Glamorgan, died in his old age, ademise so uncommon apparently as to deserve a special mention in this record of the monastic scribe.
But it was not warand pillage and the occasional catastrophic harvest in that very vulnerable society of early mediavel Wales that decimated lord and labourer alike ( gwych a gwachul). Always menacingly poised was the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse, pestilence. And Welsh poetry throughout the period of the Princes and right up to modern times was elonquent in lamentation and despair on the depredations of the traditional epidemics.
The true nature of these epidemics is often a matter of conjecture and conroversy. Professor Shrewsbury has questioned the nature of the Plague of the Phillisines, hitherto generally accepted as a classical visitation of bubonic-pneumonic plaque. ( It seems indeed that nothing is sacred). Since contemporary descriptions of the ancient epidemics are notoriously imprecise and unspecific, and speculation on thei nature is inevitable, a gentle academic jousting is enjoyed by all. Allusions in Welsh literature to pestlential disease are likewise frustratingly vaque, poetically bedecked perhaps, but clinically bare. Time and again the medical historian in this field is much like the clinician trying to sort out the symptoms of a patient who just will not stop talking. There are several instances in Welsh mediaeval poetry, in the 'cywyddau' of the poets of the princes and the later schools, where the manifestations of disease as presented are so protean and so obscurantly verbose that the affliction could be anything in the spectrum between devastating plaque and mass hysteria, However some @cywyddau' leave no doubt about the diagnosis and this is particularly and poignantly true when the poet himself is the immediate eye witness of the cataclysm, when his own family was threatened, and when his own children died in consequence.
There were episodic outbreaks of bubonic plaque in Wales throughout the fifteenth century- in the wake of the mid-fourteenth European pandemics; those episodes of @haint y nodau' ( the infection of the lymph-nodes') are vividly recorded in the 'cywyddau' of those Welsh poets who suffered personal tragedies. Ieuan Getin ap Iuean Lleision - although some manuscripts ascribe the authorship to Llywellyn Fychan ap Llywelyn Foelrhon- lost five children from the disease, firstly one Ifan, then another Ifan nine years later at the same time as the deaths of Dafydd, Morfudd and Dyddgu. There is little doubt what killed them; their father bewailed the 'swllt mewn cyswllt cesail'- 'the deadly shilling in the depth of the armpit'; glands like little onions here and there, as dangerous as hot embers, inch-long harbingers of death'. And then the haemorrhagic black rash, 'seeded like black peas, spread like sea-coal'. 'Galar oedd im eu gweld' he cried, ' I grieved to see them'.
Similar outbraks no doubt caused the deaths of the ten children of Gwilym ap Sefnyn, a north Wales poet of the mid-fifteenth century. Dafydd Llwyd o Fathafarn, of mid-Wales, about 1440-1450 described the death from the plaque of the girl he loved in a memorable 'cywydd', uniquely combining the poet's lament with a remarkable clinical objectivity. 'Ysgrifen chwarren a'i chwys yn llywio dan ei llewys, A hefyd i gyd ei gwar dimeiau fel mod mwyar'. ' The graphic gland, the trailing sweat, under her sleeve, Mites like berries around the nape of her neck'. The rash he described as 'powdered ermine on a lovely white skin'. as ' brown pepper and ink on white paper'. These English paraphrases are mundane compared with the Welsh original, but even these make us ruefully aware that the phraseology of our current medical textbooks is pretty insipid and humdrum.

Wearer of plaque mask



Dafydd Nanmor, another north Walian,descibed an epidemic with similar clinical features in 1448, and Tudor Aled, later in the fifteenth century, descibed how a nobleman of Flintshire and his family died of 'the black rash' ('Y Frech Ddu'0. In the sixteenth century Gruffydd ab Ieuan ap Llywellyn Fychan, of St Asaph, again in 'cywydd' form, described a Denbighshire outbreak of bubonic plaque- either the 1535 or the 1557 visitation to Shropshire and the other Border counties-@Gwenwyn yw'r bel lle y delo; Saeth y farwolaeth ye fo'- 'The bubo is poison wherever it comes; It is the arrow of death'. The threnody of Ieuan ap Madoc ap Dafydd about his fellow poet Syr Dafydd Trefor in the fifteeth century ' Gwae o'r nod ddyfod a'i ddwyn' ('Woe that the bubo wrested him away') certainly refers to bubonic plaque. It seems that Robin Ddu ap Siencyn Bledrudd O Fin, Gruffud Dwnn, Rhisiart ap Rhys, Lewis Morgannwg, and Ieuan ap Rhys ap Llywellyn, all fifteenth or early sixteenth century poets, were aware of the decimations of bubonic plaque. There is no doubt therefore that in the golden era of Welsh 'cynghanned @ poetry, the ubiquitious plaque often fired the poetic imagination.
Smallpox likewise; the Welsh poet often remarked on the pockmarked faces of so many of his countrymen. Tudor Aled, at the turn of the sixteenth century, when smallpox was commonplace , described the arms of a buckler-shield- perforated as if by smallpox- ('A'i freichiau oll o'r Frech Wen'0. Many of the popular lyric and ballads of the eighteenth century Wales referred to the 'frech wen', its deadlines and its disfigurements. One of the peasant bards of the 1730's, Cadwaladr Roberts of Pennant Melangell, bewailed his own fate in verse after an attack of smallpox and more particularly of his damaged matrimonial prospects, obviously pock-marked and very repugnant to the pretty maidens; thus, only hags for him for ever more! No doubt he was voicing the fears of many of his kind before the advent of variolation and vaccination.
The bards were naturally reluctant to record their venereal vicissitudes, and later-day academics still more reluctant to give them light of day.However Dafydd Llwyd o Fatarn, the author of the moving elegy to his lady who died of the plaque, himself contracted gonorrhoea, and waxed just as elonquently about that infection, apparently widespread at that time, about 1450. He admits though, as a loyal Welshman, that the infection was acquired in England. One or two of the rumbustious, if not Rabelaisian, Welsh poets of the eighteenth century, Lewis Morris and Thomas Edwards ( Twm o'r Nant) did imply that venereal infection was quite prevalent. In fact, a bardic and bucolic colleaque of Twm o'r Nant, Dafydd Samwell, an alcholic and a laudenum addict, naval surgeon and no mean poet himself, accompanied James Cook to the Pacific and there witnessed the death of his Captain.
In the immediate pre-industrial period of British history, several Welsh poets, particularly the ballad-mongers, recorded many of the more significent socio-medical events. The late 1720's were notorious years of death in many parts of Wales. Deaths were commonplace with the rural parish records providing a clear teatimony for the ravages of famine and of famine fever, typhus. One ballad writer of Bodedern, Anglesey, signally described the morbid years of 1728-29 in that locality. Again in the year 1740-42 typus and bloody flux added havoc to the general destitution, a morbid combination well known to the rustic poets of the prriod in Wales. Commentaries in verse, for popular edification, on similar catastrophies continued well into the twentieth century, being evocative and not only on the sociomedical milieu of expanding industrial south Wales, but also recording such visitations as the four major cholera epidemics between 1832 and 1866 and the typhoid outbreaks of the 1870's.
But onr of the foremost causes of death in nineteenth century Wales was tuberculosis, and to the Victorian Welsh poet this was manna for the muse. During the middle years ofthe 19th century some 3,000 people, mostly young, were dying annually of phthisis in Wales and the mortality rate here fell some 25 years after it had started to fall in England in the 1850's. As many of the deaths occurred in children and since the diseease was so widely morbid both in rural Wales and in the industrial south and noth-east many of the vernacular poets of the period testified, often from harrowing personal experience, to the banes and perils of consumption. J.R.Pryce (Golyddan), a medical apprentice, died of T.B in 1862 when the disease wasat its zenith of morbidity in Wales.
He was an introspective romantic and had modelled his poetry and his life on Keats. His Gwenonwy, who figures in his epic poem to Death, is directlly comparable to 'La Belle Dame...' but Golyddan was essentially a Victorian who was overwhelmed with the idea of death, at a time when death was commonplace, and in that respect was no different from Tennyson, Rossetti and other English contemporaries.
Welsh ballads of the late 17th century referred to the malevolent consumption; some poets of that perod list the clinical signs of disease in a way that leaves no doubt about its nature. Robert ap Gwilym Ddu, one of the most distinquished of the strict metre poets in Wales in the 19th century described the death of his only daughter from tuberculosis in 1834 in a 'cywydd' of the classical mould. There seems no doubt that she died of pneumonic phthisisis. The heavy debilitating and deadly cough, the drenching sweats, the toxic flush are all noted meticulously by the grieving father. The poetic form are the same, the familiar tradition was thesame, as in medieval Wales, but the disease now was pneumonic phtissis and not pneumonic plaque.
A little later, Elis Wyn, another poet of Gwyfrai, a notorious black spot for T.B until now, saw his sister die of the disease, as he must have seen many others. He noted the lassitude, the pallor, the weakening voice, the beady brow of the advanced T.B, patient. Between 1840 and 1880 a whole array of young Welsh poets died of T.B.; the deaths of so many promising young men is a stark reminder of social conditions in the towns and villages of mid-Victorian Wales.
This however was the last of the great pestilences, those catastrophies that caused the poet in Wales to voice the fears of the peasant. It is symptomatic of our history and of our nation that the Welsh poet of today, as our current Eisteddfodau confirm, is now concerned with the modern plaques of biological, chemical and cultural pollution. In this he is again a mirror of his generation; he may only protest plaintively about the growth of the subtopian Sahara but he is one of the breed that Shelley once caled 'the unacknowledged legislators of the World'.



THIS HAS BEEN ADAPTED FROM A PAPER READ BY
Glyn Penrhyn Jones
to the 9th British Congress on the history of Medicine
at Swansea on 7th September, 1973.
He suffered an untimely death shortly afterwards.

Oh George Osborne !!

Fragmentary

Place no reliance
on the speck of surface
where dust likes to crawl.
Remember when variations began
before reasons turned fallacious,
and our appettites grew enormous
when we queued up all morning
for our places in the sun.
Datura metel
Scopalamine Soda,
unusual dilations
scatter new fabrics of meaning,
that are often oblivious to danger.
Remember nothing is owed,
so join the circle of unusual ideation,
sometimes there are landing spaces
where no one dares to dream
and we all stand convicted.
Once we went to far,
now we return
beneath the noon- high sun
the future is lazy
tomorrow  already yawning.
In the distance a rainbow
artistically rearranged.
We get lost and await new recruits
announce our love,
abandon  commitments.
This is all we can do
forever, forever
on and on.
Much rememberence
dreaming and turning
by a  broken ticket machine
a reminder of better times.
Out of our depths
with passionate ideas,
slowly releasing
as the stars and moons collided
running wild with imagination
becoming inspired ,
and in the morning
answering the pulse
of rythmic emotion
incendinary fragments
proof of  reality.

MICHAEL MCCLURE - Moire, for Francis Crick

Michael McClure was born on October 20, 1932, in Marysville, Kansas. He moved to San Francisco in 1954 to study art. He found fame as one of the five poets including Allen Ginsberg, who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955. He subsequently became a key member of the Beats, immortalsed as " Pat McClear " in Jack Kerouac's " Big Sur " 1961. He formed a close alliance with Gary Snyder, another shaman poet, who talks through experience. Michael McClure was also a proud experimenter of psychedelics as a means of psychic liberation.
He later wrote a full account of the 1955 "Six Poets at the Six Gallery" reading in his book "Scratching the Beat Surface 1982. A prolific author of countles inspired tomes, a role model for Jim Morrison the Lizard King.
McClure still continues to sparkle his words drifting ito distant time and back again, collaborating with the musician Terry Riley, creating spotnaneous music and voice, he also collaborates regularly with his long term friend, the Doors keyboardist Ray Manzanarek. He has appeared in many cult movies , and it was in Scorcese's " Last Waltz " that I first encountered him reading a poem by Chaucher lilted rolled.
Toes tapping gently into the water, I find a lot of Zen in his breaths, with the sparkle of illumination dancing in Surrealist gardens.
An hour-long documentary film called " ABSTRACT ALCHEMIST OF FLESH " by Colin Still has just been released. An hour long fil exploring the range and diversity of his work. The film icludes a sequence in which the young poet declaims his poems in "beast language" to the lions in San Francisco Zoo.
Genius, well thats my opinion.
The following poem is inspired by the Nobel biologist Francis Crick. Nice !!!!!!!




Moire

for Francis Crick

1.THE CHANTING IN TIBET HAS NOT CEASED -
IT IS AS IMMORTAL AS MEAT.
2.HORNS, CYMBALS, AND LIGHNING BOLTS
OVER GLACIERS.
3.BEARDED SEA OTTERS CRACKING MUSSELS
ON STONES ON THEI STOMACHS.
4.COYOTES LAUGH AND PRANCE ON POINT
REYES.
5. REVIVE THE PLEISTTOCENE.
6.PLEISTOCENE IS NOT GLACIO-THERMAL-
IT IS MEAT-MAMMALIAN.
7.CRACKS IN THE SIDEWALK REFLECT THE
DISPERSION OF CLOUDS AND AURAS OF
COLOR.
8.REALTY IS A POINT. A PLATEAU, A MYSTERY.
9.IT MAY BE PENETRATED.
10.WILDFLOWERS; MAN ROOT, SEPTEMBER
BLACKBERRIES, MONKEYFLOWERS.
11.POEMS AND PERCEPTIONS PENETRATE THE
PLATEAU.
12.SUCCULENT GARDENS HANG ON CLIFFS.
13.THE VELVET BUTTERFLY AND THE SMILING
WEASEL.
14.BENIGN VISAGES FLOATING IN AIR.
15.SPIRIT IS ACTION.
16.ACTION IS PROTEIN.
17.BONES OF THE SABER TUSK IN ASPHALT.
18.MOTILE POEMS LIKE FINGERS OR ROOT
TIPS.
19.AMINO TRIGGERS IN SPACE.
20.WE ARE ACTIVITY.
21'BELOW US IS STEADY AND SOLID.
22.SOON ENOUGH.
23.PERHAPS WE RETURN TO A POOL- STEADY
AND SOLID.
24.NO MATTER- ANTI-MATTER.
25.WE HAVE THE JOY OF HERETICS.
26.
WE DID NOT CHOOSE IT - WE ARE.
27.PERFECT.
28.PERFECT PLATEAU BECOMING ODORS AND
TOUCHES.
29.I DID NOT KNOW THIS IS NATURE.
30.THE BLANKET FLOWS OUT OF THE WINDOW
-ON IT ARE YELLOW BANDS WOVEN WITH
RED BISON.
31.SOLID BLACKNESS ABOVE AND BELOW.
32.MUSIC BETWEEN.
33.FORESTS OF MOSS IN THE COLD STREAM.
34.BULK OF A DEAD SEA LION- DARK EYES
OPEN.
35.THE DESERT IS ALIVE
36.THE FIR FEELS THE SOLSTICE.
37.SENSE HORIZONTALLY, ASPIRE VERTI-
CALLY - AGNOSIA.
38.KEATS, DIRAC, DIONYSIUS THE AREOPA-
GITE.
39.TRUMPETS, CYMBALS, WARM GRASS, ROAR
OF A MOTORCYCLE.
40.LEATHER, QUARTZ, AND CINNAMON.
41.DISSOLTION IS A PRIVILEGE.
42.HAIL PLANARIAN !
43.SWEET, WARN AND ODOUROS IN THE
AUTUMN SUN.
44.BLACKER THAN BLACK, BLUE-BLACK - A
MIRROR REFLECTING REDS.
45.SCREAMS AND FLAMES OVER THE HORIZON.
46.CREAK OF EUCALYPTUS BOUGHS.
47.THE PLATEAU IS A POINT, THE MASK OF A
DIMENSION.
48.THE MASK IS ENFORCED BY ENSOCIALIZA-
TION OF PERCEPTIONS.
49.SEPTEMBER BLACKBERRIES ARE FREE.
50.THERE ARE STILL BLOSSOMS.
51.CONDENSATION FALLS PATTERING ON
LEAVES.
52.MACHINE GUNS COMMUNICATE BULLETS.
53.BOMBS ARE SYMBOLS FORMEAT THOUGHTS.
54.FACES OF MALEOVLOENCE AND FOLLY
STARE FROM THE WALLS.
55.THE FLEECE MOVING IN THE BREEZE BY THE
FIRE IS LOVELY.
56.WE ARE OLD WOLVES, INDIANS, CREAT-
URES.
57.ETERNITY BECOMES BROWN-GOLD FOR AN
INSTANT.
58.TIME IS THE LONG WAY BACK.
59.IGNORANCE, LIKE INFORMATION, IS A
LEVER.
60.THE BODY'S ODORS- THE BERRY'S ODORS.
61.THE MASS OF INFORMATION WHITES OUT.
62.RAINBOW AGAINST WHITE- PROJECTED
ON BLACK.
63.THE SELVES FLYING THROUGH THE BODY
HAVE FACES.
64.THEY STREAM WITH TAILS OF COLORS.
65.SENATIN MAY PRECEDE INFORMATIOM.
66.WE DIVE BOTH DOWN AND OUTWARD.
67.SOLIDARITY AND VIBRATION.
68.UNEXPECTE PROFILES AND FACES.
69.THE BRAMBLE TANGLE IS A MOVING SCULP-
TURE.
70.DRAGONS OF SPACE AND MATTER.
71.FALSE PERCEPTIONS MIMIC THE REAL- A
COVER.
72.THE BODY MAY BE DIAGRAMMED WITH
COLORS AND ODORS.
73.THERE IS A FIRE AND TRAJECTORIES OF
ENERGIES.
74.BEYOND THE MASK OF YHE POINT ARE
TRILLIONIC INTERLOCKED CONSTLLA-
TIONS.
75.PLEASUES ARE NOT RELATIVE BUT
ACTUAL - BLACKBERRIES, SEA LIONS,
TENDRILS.
76.PERCEPPTIONS ARE HERETIC - THEY
NEGATE ABSCENCE.
77.ABSENCE IS LACK OF PERCEPTION.
78.THE MUSSEL SHELL CRACKS ON THE ROCK.
79.WAVES OF WATER AND PROTOPLASM.
80.COYOTE SHIT- THE TAJ MAHAL.
81.WINGED TIGERS ENCASED IN TRANS-
PARENT SILVER.
82.MY WHISKERS - THE WOLF'S BEARD.



FROM-
September Backberries - Michael McClure, 1974, New Directions

FREE BURMA

On the 19th June Aung San Suu Kyi Burma's democracy leader, will be spending her 65th birthday in detention and has now been detained for almost 15 years.
As of today she has been illegaly detained for a total of 14 years and 236 days. The people of Burma face daily harrasment and those that oppose the current dictatorship get regular beatings, and the youths of the nation face arbitrary arrest and false imprisonment.
Human rights violations are systematic. Their are over 2,200 political prisoners, and many laws that criminalize peacefull expression. Burma's dictator General Than Schee participates in a lavish lifestyle at the expediency to the Burmese population. The regime also holds a contentious relationship and approach to ethnic minorities.
Whoever reads this is lucky indeed, in Burma itself the Internet is severely restricted. The majority of the ordinary people of Burma still try to resist and oppose the regime,people are routinelly detained without charge or trial. Somethings gotta change.

Join the campaign to free Aung San Suu Kyi and the oppressed people of this country .

Particular campaigners for this cause are the

FREE BURMA CAMPAIGN

and of course

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL.


http//www.burmacampaign.org.uk

SABUROH KURODA - Afternoon 3

Countless things escape easily out of me,
As if a breeze blows through fingers.
There were some floatages,
Having settled on the sand
After drift.
I pick up a broken piece of pencil.
In the dry air, quietly,
My head burns, my hair burns.
Lao-tze!
What is more inflammable than head or hair?
As long as man does not move,
The horizon
Means to be blind.
Solitude, which reminds me of an old woman,
Eating a peanut, alone in the dead of night,
Runs at full speed on a white bicycle,
Scattering a handful of ashes.
A crab shows its face out of the pit.
A crab puts its face into the pit.

IWAN LLWYD - Bardd, R.I.P ( 15/11/57 -28/5/10)

It was with sadness that last Friday in Hay on Wye, I heard of the death of renowned Welsh poet, Iwan Llwyd. He was found dead at a house in Bangor, Gwynedd.lived in Tal-y-bont, Bangor. He was a formidable presence on the Welsh language poetry scene and published many a acclaimed collections of poetry.
I first encountered him when he played bass guitar with the Welsh Blues singer and guitarist Steve Eaves, and have since then followed his career as a poet, I was particularly impressed by a programme he made for S.4.c called " eldorado" made in collaboration in 1999 with another Welsh poet named Twm Morys, in which the two of them travelled through various parts of South America. I also remember seein' him perform some of his poems with the fine anglo Welsh poet Nigel Jenkins.
Prior to this he won the National Eisteddfod at the Rhymney Valley Eisteddfod , South Wales for his collection Gwreichion ( Spark). He was a graduate of the University Of Wales where he studied Medieval Sudies.
His poetry was translated widely into Spanish,Czech, Italian and Bulgarian and subsequently into English. His presence will be missed. He leaves a wife and daughter. The people of Wales and consequently the World ( Y Byd ) have lost another great voice.

FAR ROCKAWAY

Dwi am fynd a thi  i Far Rockaway
Far Rockaway, mae enw'r lle
yn gitar yn fy mhen, yn gor
o rythmau haf a llanw'r mor:
yn sgwrs cariadon dros goffi cry
ar ol taith drwy'r nos mewn pick-up du,
yn oglau petrol ar ol glaw,
yn chwilio'r lleuad  yn llaw,
yn hela brogaod ar gefnffordd wleb,
yn wefr o fod yn nabod neb:

dwi am fynd a thi i Far Rockaway,
Far Rockaway
lle mae cwr y ne
yn golchi'i thraed ym mudreddi'r traeth,
ac yn ffeirio hwiangerddi ffraeth,
lle mae enfys y graffiti'n ffin
rhwng y waiiau noeth a'r haul mawr blin,
lle mae'r trac yn teithi'r llwybr cul
rhwng gwen nos Sadwrn a gwg y Sul,
a ninnau'n dau yn rhannu baich
ein cyfrinachau fraich ym mraich:

dwi fynd a thi i Far Rockaway,
Far Rockaway,
lle mae heddlu'r dre
yn sgwennu cerddi wrth ddisgwyl tren
ac yn sgwrsio efo'u gynnau'n glen,
lle mae'r beirdd ar eu hystolion tal
yn cynganneddu ar bedair wal,
yn yfed wisgi efo'r gwlith,
yn chwarae gwyddbwyll a'u llaw chwith,
mae cusan hir yn enw'r lle-
Far Rockaway, Far Rockaway.


I will take you to Far Rockaway,
Far Rockaway,
the name strums
a guitar in my head, sings a choir
of summer and sea-tide rhythyms:
talks of lovers over black coffe
on a night-ride ii a pick up truck,
smells of gasoline after rain,
hand in hand on the trial of the moon,
hunting bullfrogs on a wet lane,
the thrill of that half -remembered tune:

I will take you to Far Rockaway,
Far Rockaway,
where the heavens' hem
trails in the muddied seashore
and trades witty lullabies,
where the graffiti rainbow is a frontier
between the naked walls and the simmering sun,
where the track follows the narrow path
between Saturday's smiles and Sunday's scowl,
as we both share our secret burdens
arm in arm:
I will take you to Far Rockaway,
Far Rockaway,
where the city police
are sketching poems as they await the train,
and the poets on their high-rise ladders
are daubing cynghanned on four walls
drinking whiskey and dew,
playing left-handed chess;
the name is one long drawn out kiss--
Far Rockaway, Far Rockaway.

Translated from the Welsh by Iwan Llwyd.
_

GER PONT RICHMOND

Unwaith, lle'r oedd Walt Whitman
yn ganolfan rhy beryg i barcio
yn New Jersey,

clywais feddyd o fardd
yn disgrifio anadl ysgyfaint heintiendig
fel miliynau o ser un malu:

mae'n anodd cipio delwedd felly
o awyr lwyd sryd Richmond
ar bnawn Gwener Llwm,

ac awyrennau
yn dangos eu botwm bol
wrth lanio tua'r gogledd;

'does gen i ddim cwmpaned yma,
dim cynefin
dim ond rhest ar resi

o strydoedd swberbia
ac Audis a BMWs
yn gadwynau am y gorwel:

'doedd gan hyd yn oed
ddynes y siop bapur nwydd
ddim sgwrs dros ben ei phenawdau;

ac nid yw llygaid y merched
sy'n paldaru yn i Ristorante Murano
ddim yn dawnsio'r salsa

fel genod Rio a Beunos Aires:
mentraf i ganol y mwg felly
a thanio sigar.
-

NEAR RICHMOND BRIDGE
Once, where Walt Whitman
was a cente too dangerous to park
in New Jersey,

I heard a poet who had a way with healing
describe the breathing of diseased lungs
as a million stars being crushed:

it;s difficult to snatch such an image
from the grey air of a stree in Richmond
on a dull Friday afternoon,

with the planes
showing their shining bellies
as they land to the north;

I have no compass here,
no habitat
only rows and rows

of suburban homes,
ans Audis and BMWs
chaining the horizon:

even the woman who ran
the newspaper stand
had no converstion over her headlines;

and the eyes of the girls
chattering away in the Ristorante Murano
are not dancing the salsa

like the girls of Rio and Beunos Aires:
I'll venture back into the smoke then,
and light a cigar

Madrid 30/10/99


Translation : Iwan Llwyd
- -
BORE SADWRN
Mae cariad ifanc
fel crww cynta'.
yn chwerw fel arfer,
a'r blas yn para':

ond wedi i'r blynyddoedd
dro'r chwerw'n felys,
wedyn mae cariad
fel tanio matsys
-
SATURDAY MORNING

the young love
like first beer
bitter like usual
and the flavour continues

but the years have turned
bitter sweet
after love
like carbons after matches.

Apologies translation my own

-
DYLAN THOMAS
Mawrnad

(i DLIW)

Yn rhy gall i farw, yn eiddil a dall y daeth
i'r lon dywyll, ac ni allai droi adre'n wyw;
gwr dirgel a chlen, a'i falchder yn ddewrser caeth

ar ddydd ei gymundeb mawr. Boedd iddo fyw
eto'n brasgamu, o'r diwedd, ar allt y groes
a'i nefoedd yn ifanc, dan y glaswellt a'r glaw,

oedd yn llwch ac yn lleddf; yn llaid oer
cyffredinedd mawrolaeth, na foed iddo gloffi ei gam
na gorffwys un eiliad, cyn derbyn bendith y lloer;

oedd fy ngweddi yn yr ystafell ger ei wely dall,
yn y ty di-gymun, un funud cyn i bob un
bore a golau a nos gyrraed. Roedd afonydd y fall

yn llifo drwy gledr ei law, a gwelais lun
yn ei llygaid pwl oedd yn dangos gwaelod y mor.
Dos i gagnefedd rhyfedd y graig, meddwn i

wrth yr anadl oedd yn ei adael o.
-

DYLAN THOMAS

Elegy

Too proud to die, broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold, kind man brave in his burning pride

On that darkest day. Oh, forever may
He live lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, and there grow young, under the grass, in love,

Among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the days of his death, though above
All he longed all dark for his mother's breast

Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Let him find no rest but be fathered and found.

I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
In the muted house, one minute before
Noon, and night, and light. The rivers of the dead.

Moved in the poor hand I held, and I saw
Through his faded eyes to the roots of the sea.
Go calm to your crucifixed hill, I told

The air that drew away from him.
-

Aplologies poems missing tollbachs

Further Reading :-

Dan Anasthetig/ Under Anaesthetic, 1987.
Dan Ddylanwed? Under the influence, 1997.
Hanner Cant, Gwasg Taf 2007.
Eldorado with Twm Morys, 1999

MASKS OF DIVISION.

Under a clear sky
sitting next to Daily Telegraph reader
wondering how they bark,
am adrift in foggy insecurity
too much calm
not enough pity.
20 dead in international waters
maybe more,
12 more near Whitehaven shore,
dreams in shatters
no calm,
dirty tears are descending
driven mad men
carrying an army of pain.
Exit wounds blew away their skulls,
deaths tonque slips quietly into murky water.
Where is the Peace
falling, falling, falling,
crackling with gunfire.
Flotillas of hope will again set sail
carried on new waves of optimism,
far adrift in the ocean.
Gotta keep moving on
clouds of unchartered breaths
navigating away
from the darkness.
Free ourselves
from all this division
before it's far too late,
lets start tomorrow with Palestine.



Written 4/6/10

KEHLOG ALBRAN - 1933- 1927

The author was a lifelong member of the Diner's Club and did much of his most creative writing there. His style was that of a man with a much larger brain. Born in Brest-Litovsk, much of his earlier work was published in his native dialect in which language he is still greatly revered. In an area embracing several hectares in that city, he is still looked upon as a demi-god. His drawings and paintings have been exhibited in Quito, Ecuador. His artistic and literary style have been compared by Chester Gould to the work of Ernest Bushmiller and by Bushmiller to the work of Gould. Upon moving to America, his greatest desires were to write in his adopted language. English; to make a million dollars, and to retire from pseudo-philosophy so that he might open a chain of laundromats. It is the world's loss that he never succeeeded in writing in English.
During much of Albran's lifetime, he was widely thought to be dead. This confusion was the result of the trance-like state Albran affected at public appearances. Con-versely, as one might expect of so mystical a figure, after his death many of his followers continued to believe him still alive. Various schools or sects ultmately developed: the Alban Lives School, the Albran Never lived School, and the Two Albrans Faction.
Though a rationale for these conflictin factions can be attributed to Alban's erratic behavior and lifeless appearance in public, in private life Albran was a different person. Given to high camaraderie and practical jokes, he once commented that the Whoopie Cushion had done more for mankind's betterment than Marx, Christ and Oral Roberts rolled into one.
Though a man of spirit, he was also a man of the flesh. He especially enjoyed having a thin stream of his favourite beverage (Dubronnet and Diet-Rite) poured into his mouth by a lady friend while he lay in a transparent Plexiglas bathtub filled with Blueberry Yoghurt.
To the accusations that he was a whoremonger and womanizer, he frequently replied, "Oh, Yeah? Prove it." Or, sometimes, "So was Rasputin."
That he is indeed dead is now an undisputrd fact, though the date of death remains shrouded in mystery as a result of Albran's own diabolical scheme. His glossy but perfectly body was discovered months or perhaps years later by his literary agent in the tiny, austere room in which he spent his final years. Apparently sensing that the end was near, Albran had hung a five gallon plastic bag of shellac on the ceiling immediately over the chair where he spent so much of his time watching daytime television. As his hand slipped from the arm of the chair, it pulled a wire releasing the shellac which coated his entire body and most of the chair to a depth exceeding a quarter of an inch in many places. Thus, Albran contributed to his own immortality, as well as that of the chair.

"HIS POWER came from some great resevoir of distlled water, else it could not have been so transparent yet liquid, so apparently lacking sophistication while at the same time actually lacking sophistication. So tasteless, yet wet."
CLIVE RODNEY FARK.

Man will never penetrate outer space. - Albran, August 1942

Man will never penetrate outer space without a rocket. - Albran, August 1962.


FROM THE QUESTIONS.

I ran to the high Spot to think of the
oncoming perversions and prevailed upon
my subconscious to deliver artifacts of a
bigted perceptio. But, I was not asleep,
therefore... awake. And not alone.

A parent is a child, the child a parent.
A mother is a daughter, a father is a son.
A father is the son of a son,
the mother is the daughter of a maid.
A maid is the daughter of a child.
A turtle is a grasshopper.
A grasshopper is a worm.
A worm is icky.


AND an artist said,
Speak to us of Praise.
He then said:
Spinning Gold from words of Praise does
not require a maiden's hand, or the caco-
phonous stare of a blind frog.
But it would be a nice gesture.

AND a merchant asked,
What of Wheels?
The Master replied:
A Wheel is round, much like an apple.
Both have a simplicity in their nature.

A Wheel can rotate, which causes it to
move in a circle.
This I observed while quite young.
Some have yet to learn the wisdom of
the circle.

An apple can fall from a tree and
become unnotice as it rots and goes
back to earth.
A Wheel can fall from atree and will be
noticed immediately, for it is not natural
for wheels to grow on trees.
A cart with four strong Wheels soes not
deserve more than a passing glance, but a
cart riding atop four apples would cause
men to wonder.

What is normal to an apple is not normal
to a Wheel.
But both are like circles.
And both are very much alike.
Except for the Apple.



LONG LIVE THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION.