CORNIELLE ( Cornelis Guillame van Beverloo ) artist and poet, born 3 July 1922; died 5 September 2010

Sam Shepherd - RHYTHM

If everything could be sung to the standard rock and roll progression - C, A minor, F, G chords - then everything'd be simple. How many variations on a single theme. The greatest drum solo I ever heard was by a loose flap of a tarpaulin on top of my car hitting the wind at eighty. The second best is wind shield wipers in the rain, but more abstract, less animal. Like the rythyms of a rabbit scratching his chin. Vision rhythyms are neat like hawk swoops and swan dives. Slow motion space rythyms. Digging rhythyms like shovels and spades and hoes and rakes and snowplow rhythyms. Jack-hammer rhythyms make Ginger Baker and Keith Moon look like punk chumps. Oil can rhythyms, ratchet wrench rythyms. Playing cards in bicycle spokes. A string of rapid-fire, firecracker rhythyms. Propeller rythyms. Cricket rythyms. Dog claws clicking on hard wood floors. Clocks. Piston rhythyms. Dripping faucets. Tin hitting tin in the wind. Water slapping rocks. Flesh slapping flesh. Boxing rhythyms. Racing rhythyms. Rushing brooks. Radio static buzz in a car when the engine is the dictator. Directional turnsignal blinkers. Off and on neon lights. Blinking yellow arrows. Water pumps. Refrigerator hums. Thermostatic-controlled heating systems. Clicking elevators with the numbers lighting up for each floor. Snakes sliding through grass. In fact any animal through grass. At night. Buoy lights. Ship signals. Airplane warnings. Fire alarms. Rhythyms in a stuck car horn. Eating rythyms. Chewing rhythyms. The cud of a cow. The chomp of a horse. Knives being sharpened. Band saws. Skill saws. Hack saws. Buzz saws. Buck saws. Chain saws. Any saw rythym. Hammers and nails. Moneyclanking in a poker game. Cards shuffled. Bus meters. Taxi meters. Boiling water rhythyms. Clicking ballpoint pens. Clicking metal frogs. Roulette wheel spinning rhythyms. Tire rhythyms. Whittling. Stitching. Typing. Clicking knitting needles. Parrots sharpening their beaks on wood. Chickens scratching. Dogs digging for moles. Birds cleaning their feathers. Cocking guns. Spinning guns. Bolt actions. Lever actions. Snapping finger nails. Finger popping.Cracking knuckles. Snapping bones. Farting. Spitting. Shitting. Fucking rhythyms. Blinking eyes. Blowing nose. Coughing without control. Candle flicker rhythyms. Creakinghouses. Thawing ice.
And you call yourself a drummer?


FROM:

Hawkmoon, PAJ Publications, New York, 1981.

Harry Crosby ( American poet 1898 -1929) 2 Poems.

Firebrand

What is your feeling about the revolutionary spirit of your
age, as expressed, for instance, in such movements as
communism, surrealism, anarchism?
The revolutionary spirit of our age (as expressed by
communism, surrealism, anarchism, madness)is a hot
firebrand thrust into the dark lantern of the world.
In Nine Decades
a mad Queen shall be born.


Vision

I exchange eyes with the Mad Queen

the mirror crashes against my face and
bursts into a thousand suns
all over the city flags crackle and bang
fog horns scream in the harbor
the wind hurricanes through the window
and I begin to dance the dance of the
Kurd Shepherds

I stamp upon the floor
I whirl like dervishes

colors revolve dressing and undressing
I lash them with my fury
stark white with iron nlack
harsh red with blue
marble green with bright orange
and only gold remains naked

columns of steel riseand plunge
emerge and dissapear
pistoning in the river of my soul
thrusting upwards
thrusting downwards
thrusting inwards
thrusting outwards
penetrating

I roar with pain

black-footed ferrets dissapear into holes

the sun tattoed on my back
begins to spin
faster and faster
whirring whirling
throwing out a glory of sparks
sparks shoot off into space
sparks into shooting stars
shooting stars collide with comets

Explosions
Naked Colors Explode
into
Red Disaster

I crash out through the
window naked, widespread
upon a
Heliosauraus
I uproot an obelisk and plunge
it into the ink-pot of the
Black Sea
I write the word
SUN

Penillion Singing - Thomas Love Peacock (1785 - 1866)

Besides the single songs, there were songs in dialogue, approaching very nearly to the character of dramatic poetry; and penillion, or unconected stanzas, sung in series by different singers, the stanzas being complete in themselves, simple as Greek epigrams, and presenting in succession moral precepts, pictures of natural scenery, images of war or of festival, the lamentations of absence or captivity, and the complaints or triumphs of love. This penillion-singing long survived among the Welsh peasantry almost every other vestige of bardic customs, and may still be heard among them on the few occasions on which rack-renting, tax collecting, common-enclosing, methodist-preaching, and similar developments of the light of the age, have left them either the means or inclination of making merry.

From :- The Misfortunes of Elphin

Hen benillion ( literally 'old verses') are a unique form of folk poetry in Britain. Dating from the 16th century and earlier these short verses, or chains of verses, were composed to be spoken or sung to a harp accompianiment. They have been performed at socialgathering in Wales for centuries, enriching the collective public memory with their mix of proverbs, saws, catchphrases and commentary on local events characters. They are, quite literally, a people's poetry, and regular reciters would have hunreds in their repetoires. They were written in free, as opposed to traditional fixed metres.

from:- A people' poetry, seren , 1997.

PENILLION

Hardd yw Conwy, hardd yw Nefyn,
Hardd yw brigau coedydd Mostyn,
Haddaff lle'r wy'n allu 'nabod
Yn y byd yw dyffryn Meifod.

(Conway is fair, Nevin is fair, the tips of the Mostyn trees are fair, the fairest place I can ever know in the world is Meivod Valley. )

Cleddwch fi, pan fyddwyf farw,
Yn y coed dan ddail y derw;
Chwi gewch weled llanc penfelyn
Ar fy medd yn canu'r delyn.

( Bury me, when I am dead, in the trees under the oak leaves; you shall see a yellow-haired youth on my grave playing the harp.)

Mae dwy galon yn fy mynwes,
Un yn oer a'r llall yn gynness;
Un yn gynnes am ei charu,
A'r llall yn oer rhag ofn ei cholli.

( There are two hearts in my bosom, one is cold and the other warm; one is warm through love of her, and the other is cold through fear of losing her.)

Futher Penillion translated By Mr Glyn Jones

Amser sydd i dewi ar bopeth,
amser sydd i ddwedyd rhywbeth,
Ond ni ellir cael un amser
I ddweud popeth yn ddibryder.

( Theres a time for saying nothing;there's a time for saying something; there never is a time for pouring the whole truth out and nver caring.)

Cyn i mi yfed nid oeedwdwn yn gweled
Ffordd yn y byd i dalu fy nyled.
Ond wedi im yfed yr oeddwn yn gweled
Digon i dalu a digon i yfed.

( Before I got boozed up I just couldn't see, how to pay all the bills they kept sending me, But when I got drunk, oh I knew how to get more money to booze with and pay off my debt.)

Maent yn dewdyd bod yr wylan
Ar y traeth yn cadw tafarn,
Ac yn gwerthu'n rhad y ddiod, -
Dyna un o'r saith rhyfedodd.

I'm told the seagull in some cavern
By the sea-shore keeps a tavern,
Where he sells cheap beer for fun.
Of the Seven Wonders - this is one!

Tebyg ydyww'r delyn dyner
I ferch wen a'i chnwad melysber;
Wrth ei theimlo mewn cyfrinach,
Fe ddaw honno'n fwynach, fwynach.

The gentle harp is like a fresh
Young maiden, and her tender flesh;
What follows fingering her in secret
Is something sweeter and more dulcet.

Pen-Y- Gadair

Edwin Morgan - Colossus of Scotish Poetry has left the building ( 27/4/1920- 17/8/2010).

Edwin Morgan who died last week was the national poet of Sotland, a masterful writer with a vast palatte to draw on, he was both poet and scholar. He was a true innovator and experimenter influenced by numerous forms such as the Black Mountain poets, the Beats ( he was a friend and champion of Alexander Trocchi) Russian modernism, and the Portugese concrete poets. Born in Glasgow in 1920 to presbertarian parents he had a strong sense of fun, mischevious but gentle. His love poems very tender, although gay he never actually came out until ageds 70, so until then the love objects in his love poems were not gendered. He was loved nevertheless by his people, along with Sorley MacClean and Alisdair Gray he opened my eyes to Scottish culture, and its details .He was a true individual who saw himself as a republican Scottish nationalist and was of deep and passionate feeling. Outspoken but gentle. Surrealistic laughter, never guess what's round the corner. Tender, passionate.
He served with the RAMC as a conscientious objector during the second World War in the Middle East. He became a lecturer in English at the University of Glasgow until his retirement in 1980.
He caught in full sight his lyric epiphanies, in the focus and refocus of sequences, the wily reification of words in concrete poems, and the wierd rhythyms of sound poems. His transforming imagination was democratic, generous and inclusive. Ian Crichton Smith wrote that Morgan's poetry ' welcomes the twentieth century, with its gadgets, its paradoxes, graffiti, new languages, torn advertisements, uncoscious jokes, voyages...' His words were always an adventure and were like looking at a stained glass of paradise. A magpies eye for detail , in tune with modern pop culture not afraid at speaking out, mocking,anger, rage but then capable of huge reliefs of quick fire humour.
I heard him last on an album by the Scottish band Idlewild in which he recited a poem , "Scottish Fiction " . In later years he lived in a care home as his health got worse but he never stopped writing.
Yesterday as I wrote these words on a computer I was using in the local library suddenly all the computers crashed and their was a sudden emptiness that I can't explain, I do know I believe in the power of poetry and yet another leaf had fallen. May he be at peace. A writer of many many wonderful books check them out.

The Change

For all its banks bursting with bullion,
the land of injustice will not prosper.

The skyscrapers shine as if they could never
smell black smoke or shake to thunder.

Tanks, whips, dogs, laws - the panopoly
cracks steadily, being built over a fault.

Of course there are battleships, communications,
planes; but the sophisticated do not have it.

The spirit has it, the spirit of the people has it
townships, shantytowns, jails, funerals

have it. It is no use digging in,
rulers, unless you dig a pit to be

tipped into. Ruling has gone on too long,
will not be saved by armbands or the laager.

The unjust know this very well.
They lay ears to the ground, hear hooves.

Beasts, one time; an express, one time;
men, one time; history, one time.

Straighten up and pat your holsters.
Self-righteousness and a ramrod back

will not help. The sun goes down with you,
other fruits ripen for other lips.

1987

A Good Year for Death

Where is Callas la Divina
with her black velvet and her white passion?
Where are the women and women and women
she threw into life for an hour from her throat
to float and fight? She cannot hear
the last bravo.
Death has danced her tune away.

Where is Nabokov with his butterfly-net,
his galoshes, his mushrooms, his index-cards?
He has gone in a whiff of bilberries and blinis,
his fire has paled, his puns have flunked.
Shades crowd the lakeside hydrangeas and sallows
skim quick and low.
Death has danced his tune away.

Where is Bolan, the elfin, now?
Who has taken his spangles and songs,
bongos and gongs, and his white swan?
Who has pied-piper'd the pied piper
ino that childless, teenless wood?
The metal shadow,
Death, has danced his tune away.

Where is Presley all in silver,
with his sideburns and his quiver
of simple rock, and what is that army
he's uniformed for, in a white sheet,
will theslowstep motorcade battalion
never let him go?
Death has danced his tune away.

And where is Lowell that sweet mad poet
with his rumpled suit and uranium finger?
A giant forsythia covers the Pentagon
with better than gold, but the magnolias
wax the Potomacwhite with grief-
in words at least. Be true, be brief:
we lack his fellow.
Death has danced his tune away.

(26/9/77) - a description of 5 famous people from the world of popular culture who died in 1977.

Smoke

I scratch a gap in the curtains:
the darkest mornings of the year
goes grey slowly, chains of orange street-lights
lose out east in Glasgo's haze. The smell
of cigarette smoke fills the bedroom. I drown
in it, I gulp you through my lungs again
and hardly find whatcan be breathed.
Are you destroying me? Or is it a comedy?
To get together naked in bed, was that all?
To say you had done it? And that we did nothing
was what you had done. Iago and Cassio
had a better night. It must be a laugh
to see us both washed out with lying there.
It doesn't feel like laughing, though,
it feels like gasping, shrieking, tearing, all in silence
as I leave your long curved back
and go through to the kettle and the eggs.


Opening the Cage
14 variations on 14 words

I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry.
John Cage

I have to say poetry and is that nothing and am I saying it
I am and I have poetry to say and is that nothing saying it
I am nothing and I have poetry to say and that is saying it
I that am saying poetry have nothing and it is I and to say
And I say that I am to have poetry and saying it is nothing
I am poetry and nothing and saying it is to say that I have
To have nothing is poetry and I am saying that and I say it
Poetry is saying I have nothing and I am to say that and it
Saying nothing I am poetry and I have to say that and it is
It is and I am and I have poetry saying say that to nothing
It is saying poetry to nothing and I say I have and am that
Poetry is saying I have it and I am nothing and to say that
And that nothing is poetry I am saying and I have to say it
Saying poetry is nothing and to that I say I am and have it











The Loch Ness Monster's Song

Sssnnwhuffffll?
Hnwhuffl ffnnwfl hnl hfl?
Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl g g g g glbgl.
Drublhaflablhaflubhafgabhaflhafl fl fl -
gm grawwwww grf grawf awfgm graw gn.
Hovpplodock-doplovok-plovodokot-doplodokosh?
Splgraw fok fok splgrafhatchgabrl fok splfok!
Zgra kra gka fok!
Grof grawff gahf?
Gombl mbl bl-
blm plm,
blm plm,
blm plm,
blp.

At the Television Set

Take care if you kiss me,
you know it doesn't die.
The lamplight reaches out, draws it
blandly- all of it- inyo fixity,
troops of blue shadows like the soundless gunfight,
yellow shadows like your cheek by the lamp
where you lie watching, half watching
between the yellow and the blue.
I half see you, half know you.
Take care if you turn now to face me.
Foe even in this room we are moving out through stars
and forms that never let us back, your hand
lying lighyly on my thigh and my hand on your shoulder
are transfixed only there, not here.

What can you bear that would last
like a rock through cancer and white hair?

Yet it is not easy
to take stock of miseries
when the soft light flickers
along our aems in the stillness
where decisions are made.
You have to look art me,
and then it's time that falls
talking slowly to sleep.



As I have said Edwin Morgan bought out a vast quantity of work
nevertheless I would strongly recommend his collected poems on Carcanet. Think it was reprinted in late 1990s.

James Kirkup - Tea in a Space-Ship.

In this world a tablecloth need not be laid
On any table, but is spread out anywhere
Upon the always equidistant and
Invisible legs of gravity's wild air

The tea, which never would grow cold,
Gathers itself into a wet and steaming ball,
And hurls its liquid molecules at anybody's head,
Or dances, eternal bilboquet,
In annd out of the suspended cups up-
Ended in the weightless hands
Of chronically nervous jerks
Who yet would never spill a drop,
Their mouths agape for passing cakes.

Lumps of sparking sugar
Sling themselves out of their crytal bowl
With a disordered fountain's
Ornamental stops and starts.
The milk describes a permanent parabola
Girdled with satellites of spinning tarts.

The future lives with graciousness.
The hostess finds her problems eased,
For thereis honey still for tea
And butter keps the ceiling greased.

She will provide, of course,
No cake-forks, spoons or knives.
They are so sharp, so dangerously gadabout,
It is regarded as a social misdemeanor
To put them out.

VINTAGE SOVIET RUSSIAN TEA CUPS.


For Bonnie, good moggie
faithful friend and companion
R.I.P

Datblygu- Ugain I Un

another classic from the mercurial Mr David Rupert Edwards, home again
lets hope their is hope.

Dafydd ap Gwilym, (c. 1325-c. 85) - To the Gull.

Bird that dwellest in the spray,
White as yon moon's calm array,
Dust thy beauty ne'er may stain,
Sunbeam-gauntlet of the maim!
Soaring with aerial motion
On the surges of the ocean.
Bird of lofty pinion, fed
On the fishes of the sea,
Wilt thou not disdain or dread
Hence to learn a rhapsody-
Rhymes of praise to her whose dart
Ever rrankles in my heart?
Wilt tou (lily of the sea!0
Draw near, hand-in-hand with me,
To the beatous maiden's home;
(Nun that dwellest in the foam!0
With thy glossy figure climb
Round her castle's walls sublime.
Soon the girl of virgin hue,
On those tow'rs will meet thy view.
Tell her ev'ry rapt'rous word
Thou of her from me hast heard:
Court her glance - be polished - wise,
When on thee she turns her eyes:
Say her poet loves her more
Than bard ever lov'd before;
That a maid so pure and bright
By Taliesin ne'er was sung,
Nor wild Myrddin's flatt'ring tongue.
Sea-gull if she meets thy sight,
Tell her that I must resign
Life, if she will not be mine:-
With unequalled pangs I pine!

Translated from the Welsh by :-
ARTHUR JAMES JONES ( MAELOG )

UK Zionist Federation Team Up With English Fascist Group EDL, Strangebedfellows indeed, wonders never cease.

A PORTRAIT OF A POET by Lewis Morris (1700 - 1765)

I wonder how the poor devil of an offeiriad ( priest ) goes on now. I don't hear anything of his being to be turned out. I suppose they don't drink as much as they did, poverty hinders them, and the alehouse will not give them credit. Nawdd Duw rhag y fath ddyn! ( God protect us from such a man! ) What beggar, tinker, or sowgelder ever groped more in the dirt? A tomturd man is a gentleman to him. The juice of tobbacco in two strams runs out of his mouth. He drinks gin or beer till he cannot see his way home and has not half the sense of an ass, rowls in the mire like a pig, runs through the streets with a pot in his hand to look out for beer; looks wild like a mountsain cat, and yet whenhe is sober his good angel returns and he writes verses sweeter than honey and stronger than wine. How is this to be solved? His body is borrowed or descended from the dregs of mankind and his spirit from among the celestial choir: what a stinking dirty habitation it must have.


From: 'Morris Letters'