Mike Vaughan-Jones - End Of The Show/ Piano Player

 Today we say goodbye ,to Mike, legendary local keyboard maestro, jazz  aficionado, potter of great delicacy. My thoughts go out to his family and friends.
Safe travelling.

Piano Player

Keys play their notes,

melodies, soar through the sky,

fingers dance along the keys,

energy rises and plays with beats,

surrenders minor chords,

pours soul over the land,

scales to trickle from the sky.

Scattering jazz like rhythms,

blues soliloquy,

seas of improvisation,

send us songs without words.

Gregory Corso (26/3/30 - 17/1/01) - I Held A Shelley Manuscript/Transformation and Escape

Today would have been the birthday of one of my favourite beat  Poets Gregory Corso,11 years after his death I still remember him, here's two poems by the great man, I thought I'd share.

I Held A Shelley Manuscript

My hands did numb to beauty
as they reached into Death and tightened!

O sovereign was my touch
upon the tan-ink's fragile page!

Quickly, my eyes move quickly,
sought for smell for dust for lace
for dry hair!

I would have taken the page
breathing in the crime!
For no evidence have I wrung from dreams-
yet what triumph is there in private credence?

Often, in some steep ancestral book,
when I find myself entangled with leopard-apples
and torched-skin mushrooms,
my cypressean skein outreaches the recorded age
and I, as though tipping a pitcher of milk,
pour secrecy upon the dying page.

Tranformation and Escape


1

I reached heaven and it was syrupy.
It was oppressively sweet.
Croaking substances stuck to my kness.
Of all substances St.Michael was stickiest.
I grabbed him and pasted him on my head.
I found God a gigantic fly paper.
I stayed out of his way.
I waled where everything smelled of burnt chocolate.
Meanwhile St.Michael was busy with his sword
hacking away at my hair.
I found Dante standing naked in a blob of honey.
Bears were liocking his thighs.
I snatched St Michael's sword
and quartered  myself in a great circular adhesive.
My torso fell upon an elastic equilibrium.
As though shot from a sting
my torso whizzed at God fly paper.
My legs sank into some unimaginable sog.
My head, though weighed with the weight of St.Michael,
did not fall.
Fine strands of multi-coloured gum
suspended it there.
My spirit stooped by my snared torso.
I pulled! I yanked! Rolled it left to right!
It bruised! It softened! It ould not free!
The struggle of an Eternity!
An eternity of pulls! of yanks!
Went back to my head,
St. Micael had sucked dry my brainpan!
Skull!
My skull!
Only skull in heaven!
Went to my legs.
St Peter was polishing his sandals with my knees!
I pounced upon him!
Pummelled his face in sugar in hioney in marmalade!
Under each arm I fled with my legs!
The police of heaven were in hot pursuit!
I hid within the sop of St Francis
Gasping in the confectionary of his gentility
I wept, caressing my intimidated legs.

2

They caught me.
They took my legs away.
They sentenced me in the firmanent of an ass.
The prison of an Eternity!
An Eternity of labor! of hee-haws!
Burdened with the soiled railment of saints
I schemed escape,
Lugging ampulae its daily fill
I schemed escape.
I schemed climbing impossible mountains.
I schemed under the Virgin's whip,
I schemed the sound of celestial joy.
I schemed to the sound of earth,
the wail of infants,
the groans of men,
the thud of coffins.
I schemed escape.
God was busy switching the spheres from hand to hand.
The time had come.
I cracked my jaws.
Broke my legs.
Sagged  belly-flat on plow
on pitchfork
on scythe.
My spirit leaked from the wounds.
A whole spiri pooled.
I rose from the carcass of my torment.
I stood in the brink of heaven.
And I swear that Great Territory did quake
when I fell free.

So thank you Gregory, and happy birthday, hope you're sleeping ok, whichever place the ride took you, running wild on Rabelsian spree, still mixing with the sharpest heads, still playing with misadventure.
Earlier post by me on Gregory here
http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/gregory-corso-wayward-geniusan.html

Conversation with Gregory Corso,
music by Calexico.
(from the late 1980's)

Meet Britain First, the new foot soldiers of Farage's Fascist state.

Nigel Farage, tosses of allegations of racism, again and again,  like it was a bad joke, having lost a fourth candidate, he releases again , his sickly smile and again ignores the ugly truth.
It is completely unacceptable, however  he likes to see it, his most enthusiastic supporter is the Leader of the  Neo-Nazi Organisation; Britain First, who goes by the name of Paul Golding.
A far right racist, that detests ordinary people, the working class, anybody that was not born here, who wants to see a right wing government elected that will hurt and damage people, mainly the disadvantaged and the poor.
His organisation are a vile  paramilitary styled far right nationalist  group, who have been responsible  for vigilante actions against mosques, Golding himself a thug who has been convicted of harrassment, his band of nazis  responsible  for stirring up racial hatred, whose origins lie  in the extreme wings of the Ulster Loyalism.
Beneath their publicity stunts and the hoodwinking of many on facebook and other forms of social media, the ugly face of fascism lurks.
The similarity with UKIP is strong, an organisation full of racists and extremists, here lies a dark murky world. Britain First are often seen as the self-appointed defence force of UKIP. They like UKIP are endlessly saying their views are misinterpreted, under threat of censorship, however they have a  policy  of purging their pages of any  critical contact and banning dissenting voices from ever coming back.
Combined with a history of intimidation, behold, these new footsoldiers of Farage's fascist state. It is a simple case of UKIP at the ballot box and Britain First on the streets. They are simply peas of the same  pod. However  much Mr Farage likes to present his organisation, and tries to distance himself from their support and association, their ideological opinions are markedly similar, both trading in the language of hatred, fear and division.
People  like these have no place on our society, as they seek to harm others, they must be stopped in their tracks, you can try at the ballot box, but better still on the  streets.
No Pasaran/ They shall not pass.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti ( b.24/3/19 ) - POET AS FISHERMAN / SPIRIT OF THE CRUSADES

POET  AS FISHERMAN

As I grow older I percieve
Life has its tail in its mouth
and other poets other painters
are no longer any kind of competition
Its the sky that's the challenge
the sky that still needs deciphering
even as astronomers strain to hear it
with their huge electric ears
the sky that whispers to us constantly
the final secrets of the universe
the sky that breathes in and out
as if it were the inside of a mouth
of the cosmos
the sky that is the land's edge also
and the sea's edge also
the sky with its many voices and no god
the sky that engulfs a sea of sound
and echoes it back to us
as in a wave against a seawall
Whole poems whole dictionaries
rolled up in a thunderclap
And every sunset an action painting
and every cloud a book of shadows
through which wildly fly
the vowels of birds about to cry
And the sky is clear to the fisherman
even if overcast
He  sees it for what it is :
a mirror of the sea
about to fall on him
in his wood boat on the dark horizon
We have to think of him as the poet
forever face to face with old reality
where no birds fly before a storm
And he knows what's coming down
before the dawn
and he's his own best lookout
listening for the sound of the universe
and singing out his sightings
of the land of the living.

SPIRIT OF THE CRUSADES

Stoney Wales
with its slate-grey roofs
in slate-grey Cardiff
and its greystone houses on greystone terraces
and its great high statue of
"The Spirit of the Crusades"
in the Wales National Museum
portraying a medieval knight
in grey metal armor and helmet
with visor down
on a great grey steed
with four grey foot soldiers
in close march abouthim
(two at the head of the horse
two behind)
wearing World War One helmets
and carrying World War One rifles
with fixed bayonets
And the Crusades are over
but they are still marching
over the grey sea-locked land
in a dead march
straight through the twentieth century

Gong -"Occupy"

In tribute to recently departed Daevid Allen of Soft Machine and Gong, and friend of William  Burroughs, UK and video artist Cynack created a psychedelic realisation of "Occupy",  the video  covers 13.8 billion years of capitalism.

My own poetical tribute can be found here :-

http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/you-cant-kill-spirit-for-daevid-allen.html

Artist makes US/Mexico border disappear

Visual artist Anna Teresa Fernandez, powerfully repaints the Mexican/US border, highlighting not just the ugliness of the fence, but the ugliness of the policies and attitudes that  helped to build and create this montrosity in the first place. She confronted the fence by putting on her black dress and painting the  sky blue. Unfortunately this ugly wall is  still here, as are others like the ones to be seen  in Palestine and the West Bank.This border stretches for 1.969 miles, a symbol of oppression, a dividing line between cultures, a physical  expression of the contempt for the poor, legislators have. It does not seem to solve problems but adds to the tension and racism and discrimination, but does not hinder peoples need for survival.
Despite it,  many still have a furious desire  to cross it, with migrants  not only facing dangers posed by an unforgiving desert, but also abuse  at the hands of US Border  guards, risking all,  dehydration, starvation and exhaustion, and ultimately for hundreds every year death, trying to succeed. It  should be noted  that  up to 60% of illegal US-Mexican Border crossings, actually succeed.
I personally believe it is time to make all borders disappear.

Link to artists webpage :-

http://anateresafernandez.com/

Borrando La Barda/ Erasing the Border.

Nourishment ( after seeing , this mornings solar eclipse)

This morning,
woke a little earlier than usual,
managed to see sun being  obscured,
by moon and drifting cloud,
the air was cold, all seemed quiet,
time seemed to move slow.

Gradually,
lady moon, moved her shadow,
cockerel's wailed, flight of birds,
took their daily path,
to be seen again,
swooping  down , 
releasing song.

Out of dim light,
some kind of order returned,
the mighty sun smiled,
shone down,with the light of day,
as springs' waking senses,
came out to play.

In observation,
senses got rekindled,
some form of connection,
revealed again, in this borderless world,
the blossom of futures constantly changing presence,
now, the earth still feels eerie,
in the library, my mind drifting,
flying outward, homeward bound.


( afterthought; imagine an eclipse, that never ends, the people of Syria and Palestine whose light is always seemingly deemed.)

Tolpuddle Martyrs remembered

On March 18th 1834, six farm labourers in Tolpuddle, Dorset England  were found guilty of taking an illegal oath and forming a union, the friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers in a backdrop of  harsh working conditions.They met at a now world famous Sycamore in Dorset  to sign their oath. Under this tree in 1834,  exploited by their employers – paid just 9 shillings a week and living in dreadful poverty – formed the first trades union in Britain to bargain for better pay and working conditions under the leadership of George Loveless.This tree is still growing strong.
The landowners, led by James Frampton and supported by the government, were desperate to put a stop to the union and to control increasing outbreaks of dissent. The Tolpuddle Six were arrested, sent to Dorchester for Trial, charged under the 1797 Mutiny Act. They were convicted of swearing a secret oath as members of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers, sentenced to seven years and transported to Botany Bay, simply because they had made a stand against the poor treatment they received from their employees. Support for the Tolpuddle Martyrs was enormous, a massive demonstration marched through London and  over 8,000 people signed a petition protesting their sentence.
The protest campaign proved to be a success  with the Tolpuddle martyrs returning home in triumph. Their story is about how ordinary working  people combined together to defend their lives. The idea of solidarity as a basic human right is now an international demand. The act of solidarity works.
They  are commemorated every year at the Tolpuddle Martyrs festival every July, I have been planning to make a pilgrimage for years. Here is a link http://www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk/
We need dissent and incendiary action in this land, now more than ever, to help shape it into a better place.

The Martyrs tree

 

 https://www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk

Disregarding Gaza

A short  documentary that examines the absence  of Gaza and the Palestinians from the Israeli mainstream
 media and 2015 elections.
What kind of information are Israelis getting  from their press?
What king of information is missing?
And how does this effect the reality on the ground?

Remembering Rachel Corrie ( 10/4/79 - 16/3/03)

It has become traditional to remember today Rachel  Corrie, a 23 year old American peace activist from Olympia, Washington, who was crushed to death on this day by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003, while undertaking non violent direct action to protect the home of a Palestinian family from demolition.
She was a member  of the International Solidarity Movement. An organisation that exists to help with non-violent protests against the Israeli occupation. It seeks to pressure the Israelis  and the Israel Defence force  into ending its occupation of Palestinian land, using a number of non-violent tactics, such as violating Israeli curfews  imposed on  Palestinian areas, removing roadblocks and blocking military tanks and bulldozers.
Rachel Corrie went to Rafah in the Gaza Strip in  January 2003 and was horrified at the destruction she found. She saw daily homes being destroyed  and people being detained on a daily basis. She recorded all she saw in letters and emails that she sent home to her family. She once wrote " the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the willful destruction of their lives,makes it seem unreal to me."
Sadly this reality combined with her  courage cost her, her life. She was run over twice  by a Caterpiller Bulldozer and killed. Her memory lives on, and because of her actions, she helps inspire many people around the  globe, who search for freedom and justice for the Palestinian people. Her memory kept alive by her deeds and her words that she left behind.

Here is a link to the Rachel Corrie foundation set up to remember her

http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/

and here is  a link to the International Solidarity Movement

http://palsolidarity.org/

Rachel Corrie - American Hero!