John Cooper Clarke ( b 5/1/49)- Apart from the Revolution, (some musings after Performance in April in Laugharne.)

Was lucky to see Mr Clarke, Sunday gone at the Millenium Centre down in Laugharne, as part of this villages very own Literature festival. On top form, their he stood before us, half stand up, half free verserfier, their was a full moon  & the tide was high, as so were most of the audience or so it seemed to me.
He entertained with his full dexterious verbiosity, Their he was ramshackle& gangly to the core, looking the same to me , as the last time I'd seen hiim way back in 1988 or thereabouts.
" Call me Johhny Clarke " he said " the man behind the hairstyle ".
Here was a master at work, patois working, motormouthing away to us grateful hoards , in the nicest possible way. 60 years young, lank like a beanpole his dark shades blitzing us whilst his acerbic rays unleashed. Valid social commentary shining bright, a poet on top, blazing ,alive.
Seeing the Bard Of Salford again was akin to a religious experience, so long have I worshipped this dark but bright light from afar.
When they called time on him, about 10 to 11, he seemed to have so much more to deliver.He wondered where he could get a bite to eat, " everything shut " cried a local. " Oh well he said", I think he said he'd see us soon, as he headed off into the night.
Me and my partner were hungry too by then, for more words, and yeah I suppose a bag of chips or something. Ah a wonderful evening, afterwards we took a stroll down to the bay to gaze at the moon, pay our respects, to Laugharnes's ghosts. We  wondered what Dylan Thomas might have thought. I think he would have acknowledged a mercurial greatness.

Laugharne Castle.

Anyweay hope it's not another 20 years before I see Mr Clarke again.

Apart from the Revolution.

Each drop of blood a rose shall be
all sorrow shall be dust
blown by breezes to the sea
whose fingers thrust
into the corners of restless night
where the creatures of the deep
avoid the flashing harbour lights
in search of endless sleep
there were executions
somebody had to pay
apart from the revolution
it's another working day

a million angels sing
peasants eating cake
wedding bells are ringing
the room begins to shake
the children free from measles all
have healthy teeth and gums
they live in the cathedrals
and worship in the slums
poverty and pollution
have all swept away
apart from the revolution
it's another working day.

Oh He ended on version of his classic Beardsley Street updated for now.
The following is not from the performance I saw.
Nice post over at rocket remnant's blog about the previous nights performance at Dylan Thomas's boathouse over on the right in the links.

Sod calm and get angry

Had so much to say today, but the computers are not working in the library. So I'm of in to the real world with a pissed of snarl. Hey the sun is shining at least.
Why do everyone I meet this morning seem so bloody happy,  is their a tory virus on the loose.
Their is a government .at the moment going round dismantling essential sevices, food prices are soaring, the cost of living is rocketing sky high, and theirs a man outside whistling away.
Am I simply on another planet , sometimes it seems I might possibly   be ,adrift  in my own space, oh hang on theirs a man in a badger suit outside haraunging  a local politician, ah thats more like it.  There about to be culled round here, ah their are people on this planet that care. Who stand up in this age and say no, loudly, thank goodness for that. Even if it means dressing up for the occassion.
Right I'm off, think I'll join the  living livid . Laters
Am  not a violent man but if I see a Tory I think I might whack one.
Oh and another thing
" The comforts of the rich depends on an abundance of the poor."
Voltaire.

Jean-Claude Charbonel & John Welson, Surrealism: The Celtic Eye

16th April - 2 July 2011

 

  Jean-Claud Charbonel - Le Chainon Manquant, 1998.

Looking forward to this exhibition, of two exciting vibrant painters, one Breton and the other Welsh. A true meeting of Celtic inspiration and imagination.

John Welson (b. 1953) has participated in over 200 exhibitions in both private and public galleries around the world since the early 1970's. From the late 1960's to the early 1990's he painted Figurative Surrealist Paintings, exhibiting with artists as diverse as Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, Lucian Freud and Damian Hirst. Since the mid 1990's he has produced Lyrical Abstracted Paintings inspired by the landscape of his native Wales,

Surrealist painter and sculptor and teacher Jean Claude  Charbonel'S (b. 1953)'s work explores the  mythical and legendary charge of Brittany, He has participated in numerous international exhibitions organized by the surrealist  movement. 

The exhibition is not too far away for me up at the National Library of Wales in Aberyswyth.Have rather fond  memories of  living there when I was a student back in the 1980's, and working there afterwards for, There's  a very decent record shop up there too, called Andy's Record's. so a journey beckons. More info below.

http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=1511&date=2&tx t

R.S. Thomas ( 29/4/13 - 26/09/00) - The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possesss it. Life is not hurrying

On to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

Fernando Pessoa (13/6/ 1888 - 30/11/35) - Extract from The Book of Disqiet.

William Blake - The Ancient Of Days.

 Today, I do not hide behind or abandon myself to clinical labels, Today that is. I sit behind a keyboard that has enabled me to move beyond habitual wounds. This week is depression awareness week, for some everyday is depression awareness day.
Two years ago I never thought I'd be writing anything again. Today I still battle against the invisible currents circling around. Personally I have found through depression the ability to take a long and hard look at the world and take it apart at the seams, to once again critically engage in what were once disorientated moments of strangeness and  and fear and follow freedom's breath whenever it comes near.
I have been luck to discover true friends who have journeyed with me and my obstacles, making them closer still.
Everyone struggles, some of us unfortunately have to challenge every living moment.Statistics if you like that type of thing say that 1 in 5 of the World's population will succumb to depression at some point in their lifes, some of it will be short bouts, others will find themselves in its grasp for long periods of time.
At the moment the Government and the D.W.P ( Department of Work and Pensions) want to drown any confidence recently gained with their attacks on people on D.L.A ( Disability Living Alllowance) and Incapacity Benefit. People suddenly are facing the most stringent  evaluations of their mental health at a time when already full of indecision, their paths still unwinding. The most vulnerable of societies members being attacked  because of capitalism's greed.
I have found their is no magic formulae for the riddance of depression. Psychiatry I'm afraid often hinders and mountains overnight do not simply dissapeear.Medication often just masks problems and can make some people even more insecure.
Remember we live in a very hostile world, where people like to stigmatise and label. Yet despite this illness can be a liberating force, where specks of light set sail through black holes. Doing this blog has been just one aspect that keeps me surviving. Dance on we have nothing to lose but our chains.
The following extract to me paints a picture of depression in all its totality.
heddwch/peace.

From The Book of Disquiet.

It is one of those days when the monotony of everything oppresses me like being thrown into jail. The monotomy of everything is merely the monotony of myself, however. Each face, even if seen just yesterday, is different today, because today isn't yesterday. Each day is the day it is, and there was never another one like it in the world. Only our soul makes the identification - a genuinely felt but erroneous identification - by which everything becomes similar and simplified. The world is a set of disquiet things with varied edges, but if we're near-sighted, it's a continual and indecipherable fog.
I feel like fleeing. Like fleeing from what I know, fleeing from what's mine, fleeing from what I love. I want to depart, not for impossible Indias or for the great islands south of everything, but for any place at all - villages or wilderness - that isn't this place.  I want to stop seeing these unchanging faces, this routine, these days. I want to rest sleep come to me as life, not as rest. A cabin  on the seashore or even a cave in a rocky mountainside could give me this, but my will, unfortunately, cannot.
Slavery is the law of life, and it is the only law, for it must be observed: there is no revolt possible, no way to escape it. Some are born slaves, others become slaves, and still others are forced to accept alavery. Our faint-hearted love of freedom - which, if we had it, we would all reject, unable to get used to it - is proof  of how imagined our slavery is. I myself, having just said that I'd like a cabin or a cave where I could be free from the monotomy of everything, which is the monotomy of me - would I dare set out for this cabin or cave, knowing from experience that the monotomy, since it stems from me, will always be with me? I myself, suffocating from where I am because I am - where would I bretahe easier, if the sickness is in my lungs rather than in the things that surround me? I myself, who long for pure sunlight and open country, for the ocean in plain view and the unbroken horizon -  could I get used to my new bed, the food, not having to descend eight flights of stairs in the street, not entering the tobacco shop on the corner, not saying good-morning to the barber standing outside his shop?
Everything that surrounds us becomes part of us, infiltrating our physical sensations and our feelings of life, and like spittle of the great Spider it subtlty binds us to whatever is close, tucking us into a soft bed of slow death which is rocked by the wind. Everything is us, and we are everythuing, but what good is this, if everything is nothing? A ray of sunlight, a cloud whose shadow tell us it is passing, a breeze that rises, the silence that follows when it ceases, one or another face, a few voices, the incidental laughter of the girls who are talking, and then night with the meaningless, fractured hieroglyphs of the stars.

FROM:-
The Book of Disquiet,
Translated from the Portugese by Richard Zenith
( Allen Lane/Penguin Books, 20001).

Some useful Links.

http://www.survivorspoetry.com/

http://www.depressionalliance.org/

http://madpride.org.uk/index.php

THE FURIES - Joshua Sylvester (1598- 28/9/1618)

Orestes Pursued by the Furies -

John Singer Sargent.

War is the mistress of enormity,
Mother of mischief, monster of deformity;
Laws, manners, arts she breaks, she mars, she chases,
Blood, tears, bowers, towers, she spills, smites, burns, and
razes.
Her brazen teeth shake all the earth a asunder:
Her mouth a firebrand, and her voice a thunder,
Her looks are lightning, every glance a flash,
Her fingers guns that all to powder smash;
Fear and despair, flight and disorder, post
With hasty march before her murderous host.
As burning, waste, rape, wrong, impiety,
Rage, ruin, siscord, horror, cruelty,
Sack, sacrilege, impunity and pride are srill stern consorts by
her barbarious side;
And poverty, sorrow, and desolation
Follow her armies' bloody transmigration.


NO TO WAR
http://demilitarize.org/

John Giorna (b.1936) - Life is a killer

John Giorna was the star of the Andy Warhol movie Sleep (1963). He  has became known as a leader in the development of poetry as a performance and entertainment medium.He has done through his own performances and also with his Giorna Poetry Systems, which have bought him international audiences. Giorno poetry Systems is now a widely distributed spoken word record label, and subsequently Dial-A-Poem which he created in 1968 extends poetry into the medium of mass communication.
When composing his poetry, Giorno  imagines an audience in front of him. "Spoken word " he wrote. " using breath and heat, pitch and volume, and the melodies inherent in the language, risking technology and music, and a deep connection with the audience, is te fulfillment of a poem. It's the entertainment industry ( you got to sweeten the deal) - transmitting an awareness of ordinary mind. As someone said to me after a performance, 'I hate poetry. But I love poets who sweat.' For me performing poetry is sustained sexual activity in a golden age of promiscuity, You can never be too generous."
His books include The American book of the Dead (1964),Balling Bhudda (1970), Cancer in My Left Ball (1973), and You Got to Burn to Shine: Selected Poetry and Prose  (1993).
His record albums and CDs include Biting off the Tongueof a Corpse (1975) and ( A Diamond Hidden in the Mouth of a Corpse ( 1985). He performs solo and with the John Giorno Band.
A pervading macabre sense of humour underlies his work and a strong outsider Queer sensibility.A collaborator with Mr William Burroughs himself, his confontational work and his energy has been an influence on other  performance poets since and rock bands have been quenched and influenced by his ideas. He has also been a long time practitioner of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Bhuddism. In the last 20 years or so he has been active in the AIDS Treatment project, which gives cash grants to poets and artists with the disease, He lives in New York City.Recenty he has collaborated with the Spanish rock singer Jarvier Colis.

Life is a Killer

Everyone says
What they do
is right
and money is
a good
thing
it can be
wonderful.

Road
drinking
driving
around
drinking beer,
they need me
more than
I need them,
where are you guys from,
stumbling off
into the night
thinking
about it
stiumbling off into the night
thinking about it.

When I was
15 years old
I knew everything
there was
to know,
and now that I'm old,
it was true.

I got dragged
along on
this one
by my foot,
if I wasn't so
tired
I would have
a good
time
If I Wasn't so tired
I'd have a good time
If I wasn't so tired I'd have
a good time.

Tossing
and turning,
cause there's
a nest
of wasps
coursing
through your
bloodstream
cause there's a nest of wasps
coursing through your bloodsream.

If you think
about it
how could
it have come
to this
if you think about it
how could it have come to this,
it's coming
down the road
the red
lights,
and it's
there
and it's there
and it's there
and it's there.

Try your
best
and think
you're good,
that's what
I want
being inside you
that's what i want
being inside you
that's what I want being besides you,
endless
thresholds,
and you hope
you're doing
it right.

How are you
feeling good
how are you
feeling
good
how are
you feeling
good
how are you feeling
good
how are you feeling good,
you need
national
attention.

Cause essentially
all you
ever accomplshed
was snort
some smack
and sit
on a zafu
watching
your breath.

How the hell
did I end
up doing
this
how the hell did
I end up doing this
for a job?

I can't say
I don't need
anybody
cause I need
the Bhuddas,
and there's nothing
I can say
about them.

Everyone is at
a complete
disadvantage,
you're being taken
to dinner
at La Coter Basque
and youre eating
9 lives
liver,
and drinking
wine,
the women
they are taking
prisoners.
I'm not going
nowhere, I rippefd up
my suitcases
I ripped up my suitcases.

Crank me
up
and keep me
open
crank me up
and keep me open
and keep me open
crank me up and keep me open,
nothing
recedes
like success.

Whatever
happens
it will seem
the way
it seems
now,
it doesn't matter
what you
feel,
how perfectly
correct
or amazing
the clarity,
everything
you think
is deluded
eveything you think
is deluded
eveything you think is deluded,
life
is a killer.

1982

Quotes from ' You Got to Burn to Shine: Selected Poetry and Prose,
New York, 1993.

HEDGEHOGS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

Hedgehogs again active after winter hibernation.

' The hedgehog's meat is apple, worms and grapes: when he findeth them upon the earth, he rolleth on them until he hath fylled up all his prickles, and then carrieth them home to his den...and so forth he goeth, making a noise like a cart wheel. The prickly thorns on their backs will not suffer them to have copulation like Dogs or Swine, and for this cause they are a very little while in copulatiion, because they cannot stand long belly to belly upon their hind legs. With the same skin flayed off, and the prickles, brushes are made for garments, so that they complain ill which affirm that there is no good nor profit from this beast.'

Edward Topsell History of Four-footed Beasts 1607

' For a lunatic, Take a hedge-hog and make broth of him, and let the patient eat of the broth and flesh.'

Fairfax Household Brook. 17th/18th century.

That's allright then, but be careful how you go, remember do not trust the tories or their partners in crime. Let us not forget, we are still led, if not by a loser, then by a politician who has no trophy to show, no winners badge to wear, no mandate of the kind that gave Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and  even John Major an immediate bond with the electorate. Then again none of that lot were much good either. Oh dear, what matters to me in this moment in time is the fact that the tories are liars, as a hedgehog pointed out to me earlier it was their friends the bankers whose greed for bonuses eventually bought the whole current edifice down about our ears. The hedgehogs are not going to take this lying down and neither should we. United we must fight the cuts and kick out the Tories now.

PROJECTIVE EQUILIBRATIONS.... a kind of manifesto

Resist the order
celebrate diversity
shake rattle and roll
and all that jazz.
Tremble
through the night
toss the closed heart
through smashed windows.
Make rythyms
from recycled howls
join the dots
that until now have been
closed.
Follow whimper
the bark of the moon
disentangle
from the straight path
leave reason alone,
it will find you
if it must.
Swallow oblivion
inhale poison,
run wild
catch fire.
Slip from the sky
false gods,
false starts
become your own paradise
strangle power.
Abandon all positions
echoe the resonance,
liberate every enemy
renounce war.
Let every light be
for all,
applaud tolerance
messages filled with hope
decrie the battles
against mankind.
Nurse the spirit
that does not divide
speak and listen
to those who have the time.
Tear poems into pieces
recreant confusion,
drift into world's dimension
enjoy the breeze.
Plant away
shadows
for others to seek
do not by silence confess
your guilt.
Hold on
stretch beyond
conformity,
every direction shifts.
May illusion
shift through language,
through space
through time,
become profane, imperceivable
look for a sign
then rearrange,
infiltrate disingeuous links
never stop learning.
Consume integrity
dance with desire,
do not rekindle regret
pass it on.

Robert Desnos. (4/7/00 - 8/6/45) - Some Poems.

AWAKENINGS


It's strange how you wake sometimes in the middle of the night in the
middle of sleep someone has knocked on a door and in the extraordinary
city of midnight of half- waking
and half-memory heavy gates clang from street to street

Who is this nocturnal visitor with an unknown face
what does he seek what does he spy
Is he a poor man demanding bread and shelter
Is he a thief is he a bird
Is he a reflection of ourselves in the mirror
Back from a transparent abyss
Trying to re-enter us

Then he realizes that we've changed
that the key no longer turns in the lock
Of the mysterious door of bodies
Even if he's only left us for a few minutes
at the troublesome moment when we put out the light

What does he become then
Where does he wander? Does he suffer?
Is this the origin of ghosts?
the origin of dreams?
the birth of regrets?

No longer knock at my door visitor
There's no room on my hearth or in my heart
For the old images of myself
Perhaps you recognise me
I'll never know how do you recognise yourself.




GOOD DAY GOOD EVENING

Its night be the flame
And the red that colours the clouds
Good day sir Good evening madam
You don't look your age

What does it matter if your embraces
Make the twin stars bleed
What does it matter if your face is painted
if hoarsfrost glitters on the branches

Of granite or marble
Your age will show
And the shade of the great trees
will walk on your graves.



PARABOLA (2)



Parabola my nurse...
A parabola was bored in its cage
A parabbola wanted to land on the branch
The branch is too low
The sun too high
I watch the flight of birds
They fall then climb again
The branch is too low
The sun too high
There are some strange birds
Their nest is somewhere
Quite far from the earth
The branch is too low
The sun too high.



MY SIREN


My siren is blue as the veins where she swims
For the moment she sleeps on mother-of-pearl
And on the ocean I create for her
She can visit the magic grottoes of preposterous isles
There some very foolih birds
converse with crocodiles who never finish up
And the very foolish birds fly above the blue siren
The crocodiles return to their drink
And the island doesn't come back
doesn't come back from where it's placed
where my siren and I have forgotten it
My siren has some very beautiful stars in her sky
Blonde stars with black eyes
Red haired stars with sparkling teeth
and dark stars with beautiful breasts
Each night three by three
altenating the color of their hair
These stars visit my siren
This makes for lots of comings and goings in the sky
But my siren has seven boats on her ocean
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Saturday and Sunday
Some with steam and others with sails
Some rapid the others slow
But all beautiful all charming
with sailors who know their craft.

My siren has soaps in all shapes and colors
To wash her lovely skin
My siren has many soaps
One for her hands
Another for her feet
One for yesterday
One for tomorrow
One for each eye
And that one for her scaly tail
And this other one for her tail
And this other one for her hair
And another one for her belly
And another one for her back.

My siren sings for no one but me
I tell my friends to listen to her in vain
No one ever hears her
Except one, only one
But though his air is sincere
I mistrust him, he might be a liar.

TRANSLATED BY AMY LEVIN
FROM :-
EAT IT ALIVE, published by the University of Colorado
Boulder Creative Writing programme,
Volume 3, Issue 5,
December 1981

Paris born surrealist, founder of the Literary Surrealist movement, died at the age of 45 from typhoid, after the Red Army liberated Terezin, a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.

.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Desnos 

 Last known photo of Robert Desnos, Theresienstadt concentration camp, 1945