Saturday, January 28, 2012

Passenger Number Three



When searching for a dragon,
the one who sleeps at sea,
take sail with a Phoenician 
in a boat that carries three.

With you and the Phoenician,
of three, that makes but two. 
That which fills the space that's left
is woven from bamboo.

This basket's lined with mirrors
reflecting moon and sea.
This paper covered lantern
is passenger number three. 

Don't look into the lantern.
Ha! this you shouldn't do,
for all that you will find there
is a mirror holding you...

...alone with your reflection
in a boat that carries three.
Beyond your sight a dragon
crests the surface of the sea.

.......

(the moral of the story - when sailing with Phoenicians,
wait till you get home to look in the mirror.)

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Sopa Strike

I couldn't get the link-in to the Sopa Strike to work on my blog - so I have pasted up the black banner used by some websites and The Oatmeal's black-out page to show I am participating in the strike against SOPA which I suppose in itself could be construed as an act of piracy...



.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Feeling Creative Lately?


Like they say, life looses its mystery when you're hungry and it's hard to be fancy free when you're footloose and it's winter and being without a home was not by choice. You see people enduring this every day. It troubles you and you can't forget about it when you turn your hand to your work. Fantasy still has its allure because it's cheap but you fantasize about turning the heat on full blast and to hell with the bill. Appreciation of the Theatre of the Absurd was never more appropriate though it's hardly light reading and your mind is absent. You find focus by cataloging life's inequalities, the more recent the better. Your dreams rarely soar and you are suffering a materialistic bent so that when you search for beauty in the humans around you, you suspect it's being concealed in the possessions and lifestyles which others hoard, the greedy bastards. Furthermore, the most accessible of all beauties, Nature, is being diminished every passing second through human machinations. You find comfort in the recognition that more and more people are loosing hope because validation is a comfort, of sorts. Then, as if that isn't bad enough, mainstream media streams through your life in amnesic inducing wave after wave after wave, each leaving in its wake a stagnant setting, a saturated environment where only the likes of ignorance and idiocy can find bliss...you have been sucked in and if you are not blocked off, your work either looks to you like a Hallmark greeting card or you have been 'getting involved' by writing stuff that increasingly resembles the rants of a madman...woman...

So what do you do? You tell yourself that some of the world's finest inventions, works of art, literature, music have been created under worse conditions than these - be they in reaction to, or in tribute to, in defiance of, or seeking refuge from...so what? You know this. This doesn't help...but at the very least, the creative works of these people are more deserving of attention than the destructive psycho...no, I haven't found a solution. I'm still caught up in the problem, but I'm not giving up.