Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Elephant Dung Paper




This is an ink drawing on elephant dung paper of Libbs and her three chickens and me making rosewater. I love drawing with ink and old bendy nibs on elephant dung paper. It is impossible to assume control and each hand made sheet is so individual and subtly beautiful it feels almost superfluous to draw on even though it asks to be touched.  Most of all - it makes me laugh at the silliness of taking one's small self oh so seriously whilst next to the noble elephant and its dung. Far too much seriousness lately. As quick as can do and without thinking...

crazy legs
wispy arms
caverns are always dark

turtle eggs
frost that harms
icicles stick up and bark

soups hot
butter's cold
lettuce wilted 
now I'm old

surprise surprise
it's a party day
tomorrow will also go away

creatures get comfort
the sky is bold
i am blue when i am cold

resurgence is dignified
lying sucks
i am broke without any bucks

lottie is fat
jack is mean
percy's a poet
a bean can be green

this is silly
no it's not
what is silly
is to sit and rot

the world is crazy
maybe it's alway been
when the way of the world
is the way of men

if you go to the store
with an unkept look
the clerks will follow you
like you are a crook

if you have no money
and struggle to pay
you will forget to look
at the sky each day

if you don't laugh
and forget to play
a miserable life
will come your way

when will you laugh
at the people who snoop
in other's business
because theirs is poop

if you obsess over
liars and cheats
you'll end up bitter
they'll get all the sweets

meditate on the divine
burn incense and precious oils
say this is mine
leave the trashy to their spoils

stay free of the critic
and wary of the leach
be they idiot or psychic
they do well in speech

tell the universe
you are stuck, uninspired
you've lost your purse 
in the sludge you are mired

know this is temporary
there's no ghost to give
talk to a fairy
wake up and live

it is better to try
and end with a mess
than to sit and to cry
over somebody else's mess. basically.

it is now late in the day
and early in the evening
what's better than a play
to set the bells ringing

ring ring ring ring
take a trolley to the park
ding dang dung ding
sing a song in the dark

the end


and now to click on the 'publish' button and don't look at this till tomorrow. But wait, here's a link (which must be copied and pasted) to the Thai Elephant Conservation Center. Click on the 'Process'  tab at the top to see how elephant paper is made:

http://www.elephantdungpaper.com/fact.html

....



Saturday, June 16, 2012

Floating


Slip sightless into time's true entrance...

Be with time, alone in time.
It is an art
 this journey with time
the companion who has translated
 everything we have known
into earthly form.  

Even so, time is only one way to travel.
There are others. Like fallen leaves
they littered the land before it became
flat then round then flat again
 as we nailed down the ends of the world
called it civilization and came to recognize
 only those thoughts
which followed one after the other
and were easily translated into words.

...this is only difficult when I search for a beginning
when I search for a time
when this was not so.

...