POETS UNITED - SPACE

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.” – Oscar Wilde

I have been very busy working hard these past few weeks and hence have had little spare time that has to be apportioned very sparingly according to a strict set of priorities. Nevertheless, late at night behind the closed door of my study, when I can shut everyone and everything out, I allow myself a little latitude and I can take some time to be creative.

Here is a poem just written for the Poets United Midweek Motif challenge, which this week is all about “Space”.

To Let

There is a space in my heart: To Let –
Ever since you left,
A huge, echoing space the size of the universe
All enclosed in that small, fist-sized organ
Of shuddering flesh,
That is my empty heart.

There is a space in my heart: To Let –
Ever since you left,
I have been walking in there endlessly
And my footsteps echo hollow,
Each step taking great effort,
Each step leaving behind great pain.

There is a space in my heart: To Let –
It is very clean,
And quiet; warm in Winter, cool in Summer,
Of Northerly aspect – and the best of all,
It has a garden with great potential –
A little care will make it bloom.

There is a space in my heart: To Let –
Going cheaply –
In fact no money need change hands –
All that I need to fill it is sincerity,
Some affection, tenderness, understanding.
Love may enter as a sub-letter later.

POETS UNITED - ABSENCE

“Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.” - William Cowper

After a leave of absence, I am returning this week to Poets United, where the topic of the week is quite aptly, “Absence”. Here is my contribution:

Absence

The bed has turned to stone tonight,

Its granite sheets as cold as death;

The walls constrict each passing hour

And the room diminishes in size,

Crushing me in its fierce grip.

My empty hand searches in vain

For a familiar touch;

But emptiness crawls slowly on my skin

Eating away my flesh

Like acid corroding all it contacts.

My eyes extinguished,

Stare at the blackness;

But the abyss hides no secret light,

And night elongates

Eating away the days and all my hopes.

My silent lips dare not part,

For none will hear what they may whisper;

Your absence dulls all my senses,

Stops my heart and steals my soul

Leaving me empty, like a useless husk.

Rain falls outside, relentlessly

And inside my tears trickle down;

Your absence is a subtle poison

That robs my body of its will to live –

The only antidote, your swift return…

WINTER IS COMING

“People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.” - Anton Chekhov

And what Mr Chekhov implies is that the seasons are much more acutely felt and more likely to affect our mood when we are unhappy… Even in the midst of Spring’s delights a melancholy soul will make of the joyous season a funereal feast, the flowers merely a doleful accoutrement to the hearse. What if Summer’s glorious sun shines bright and hot? If one is sad, the heat’s enough to fever one’s brow and cause one’s brain to run into nightmarish places hotter than hellfire. And Autumn’s bounty and mellow delights will be overtaken by the dejection of the falling leaves, the rampant decay and falling rain. As far as Winter goes, a sorrowful heart may simply be itself and attune perfectly to the season’s frozen emptiness and endless despair.

Winter is Coming

The sun’s trajectory has shortened,

Now that his chariot runs a course

Much closer to the horizon.

The night is quicker to claim

The earth as her realm

And the moon barks orders

At the brilliant (but oh, so cold) stars.

The wind howls at night

And even the wild dogs are tamed

Becoming silent in obeisance.

Rain comes and falls, and fails

To tether the wind who takes each drop

And spins it into long, liquid streams

Until they fall like waving sheets.

The cold freezes puddles solid

And no leaves, no fruits no flowers

Survive the blizzard cruel.

And even colder still, inside,

My heart keeps on beating,

Gelid though it may be

To keep me alive, me who has died.

Like Summer, you have left me

And unlike Autumn you’ve given me

No ripe fruits, no grain, no berries.

My crop was poisoned by bitter tears,

Endless regrets, false promises, nightmares;

My Winter’s deep, bleak and long-lasting

Expecting no Spring’s arrival.

POETS UNITED - WITNESS

“My witness is the empty sky.” - Jack Kerouac

For this week’s theme in Poets United, we are exploring the concepts of “Martyrdom/Witness”. Forgive me if I’ve gone on a tangent, but the image of a flowerless gardenia (a martyr-witness) stuck in my mind…

My Words of Love

My words of love
Are taken by the wind;
My sighs of love
Lifted up high in the air
Unheard, unanswered, wasted
They vanish, taken by the wind.

These four walls
Only they hear me
They listen to my sighs
They share my tears
And ever silently
Are faithful witness to my hopes.

These empty pages
Echo my thoughts, my fears
My joyless days.
Pen, paper, ink know me well by now,
And words are self-propelled
While mirroring my meditations.

The virginal gardenia
On my windowsill awaits:
A martyr of lovelessness
Will only bloom
When other sighs except my own
Will it hear within these walls.

My words of love
Are taken by the wind;
My sighs of love
Lifted up high in the air
Unheard, unanswered, wasted
They vanish, taken by the wind.

POETS UNITED - A SONG DELICATE

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” - Noam Chomsky

Poets United this week has as its theme, “Let your song be delicate”. Here is my offering:

At Night

Night fell softly, covering all
As if in flakes of blue-black snow;
Silence reigns, sky revolves.

I fought with sleeplessness
And won – as for my prize:
Your remembrance in a dream.

And it was as though I had drunk
A deep draught of sweet red wine,
Mixed with oleander poison, green.

Stars sparkle like tears falling,
The moon absent, perhaps it has set,
And an owl hoots.

I stir and turn, wakeful once again,
The room cold, dark, quiet,
And by my side, an empty space…

POETS UNITED - NIGHT

“Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.” - William Cowper

This week, Poets United has as its Midweek Motif, the theme of “Night”.

Here is my offering:

A Winter’s Night

A Winter’s night:

And the chill pervades

The dark, dank air

And knocks insistently

On my frosty window.

The moon descends

And kisses the diamond stars goodbye,

While bare branches shake off

Little pieces of loneliness –

Ice, falling down on frozen earth.

My heart still beats,

And each muscle contraction

Reminds my frigid body

That it must keep on living

Though hope is long lost.

A Winter’s night:

Time grinding to a halt,

As tremulous candlelight

Attempts to tear the endless darkness

But my clock finally stops…

POETRY JAM - SOLITUDE/LONELINESS

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.” - May Sarton

Poetry Jam this week has set the theme of Loneliness/Solitude as a prompt for poetic outpourings.

Some people find themselves alone and immediately search for companionship, failing to differentiate between the two strikingly different faces of being alone: The self sufficiency of solitude and the gnawing pain of loneliness. It is a terrible thing when we have no choice in the matter – when we start by enjoying our solitude, but then as it turns into loneliness, we have no recourse to companionship…
Here is my offering:

The Castaway’s Island

the shipwreck
the survivor
–cruel sea!–
the laughing witch
the blue-green island
the ever moving waves
the hypnotising murmurs

the castaway
the solitudes
–gentle sea!–
the kind, lucid days
the island a prison of gold
the sunsets gilded yellow
the twilights violent violet

the shipwreck
the memories
–dark crystal sea!–
the impassive lizard
the island of a ghostly love
the palms battered by the wind
night awakening the shadows

The castaway:
A lonely death…
–Cruel, endless sea!–
Bleached bones on golden sands;
The island solitary, pitiless, self-serving
While on the horizon, deriding hope,
White sails of a ship appear.

POETRY JAM - QUIET

“Quiet is better than loud.” - Dieter Rams

Poetry Jam this week has set the theme of “quiet” for the participants of the weekly poetry challenge. My poem below is dedicated to the Northern Hemisphere readers who find themselves in the beginning of Winter…

Winter Reverie

Winter has arrived
Bringing with him,
The smell of decay: Rotting leaves,
Wet soil and the perfume of daphne.

Milky-white, still dawns,
With argent sun, feebly shining;
Plumes of grey smoke, evoking
Warm grates, hot buttered toast.

Lucidly cold nights,
Wet, shiny streets, on which
Only your footsteps echo, meandering
On the deserted, quiet, desolate footpaths.

Winter has arrived,
Clutching in his bony fist
Silken silences, fog-enveloped loneliness,
Cold, pure sheets and long, white nights.

POETRY JAM - ALONE

“Do not go gently into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.” - Dylan Thomas

Poetry Jam this week has chosen the following topic: “ALONE! This week I would like everyone to think about “alone”. What does it mean to be alone? How do you feel when you are alone? Is “alone” the same as “lonely”? What do you like to do when you are alone? Reflect on an alone-time you have had in the past.” Here is my contribution:

Solitude

I wear my solitude like an old shirt,

Faded, almost threadbare,

But still possessing the comfort

Born of long habit.

I taste my solitary ways like a dragée,

Whose sugar coating beguiles

Unwary taste buds, till the

Enclosed almond turns bitter.

Alone, I hear my heart beating

Amplified like raindrops on tin roof,

Or an expert solo drummer,

Executing a cadenza.

My singularity is perfume of violets,

Intense and overwhelming;

But so soon evanescent:

The scented becoming scentless.

Why is loneliness such a dreadful

And unwelcome guest, when

For so long, solitude has been one’s

Most faithful companion?

POETRY JAM - SUNSET

“It is such a secret place, the land of tears…” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Poetry Jam this week has chosen the prompt of “sunsets”. Contributors who take up the challenge come up with a poem around this topic. Here is my contribution:


Antique Engraving

The sun paints the west with saffron
The sky around it mauve.
The naked trees are shuddering,
Night comes fast, dark and cold.
In front of me the city stretches
Dressed in grey and black,
While in the horizon’s depths
Bell towers echo a melancholy sadness –
A baroque sadness, violet, heavy, lonesome.

A chimney spews out smoke
Spreading shadows like endless veils
That asphyxiate me,
Aided by the bony claws
Of dead branches.
My pain, a dying bird
Has nested in my throat,
And sorrow throttles me
With hands like pincers.

In the west, the golden glow is no more
Black clouds cover the sky.
Hope flies away, chased by the ill wind,
That gallops past,
Piercing my empty soul as it leaves.

LONELINESS AND SOLITUDE

“Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.” - Paul Tillich

John Donne states: 

“No man is an island, entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…
Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

While browsing a book last night I was surprised to learn of some amazing statistics that related to people living alone. These were culled from an advertiser’s handbook - and I have a great respect for such handbooks as they reflect exactly what is going on and who is involved (billions of dollars of profits are made by advertisers who have to know intimate details about how we live our lives and what makes us tick).  It seems that a growing trend in Western countries is the single-person household. Part of being human is the need and desire to be in intimate relationships and yet our society is constructing situations and pressures where being solitary is the easy option out.

In 1950 about 3% of the population of Western Europe and the USA lived alone. Currently in the UK seven million adults live alone (which is three times as many as 40 years ago). Estimates by “Social Trends” (a publication considered to be a bible of statistics) indicate that by 2020, one-person households will make up 40% of total households.  In France, the number of people living alone has more than doubled since 1968. Currently, over 50% of households in Frankfurt, Munich and Paris contain only a single person, while in London the proportion is 40%. This is the situation also in Sweden with 40% of households comprising a single person. Since 1960, the number of German 25- to 45-year-olds living alone has risen by 500%.

Why should people in the USA in a survey say watching “Friends” was a major part of their social life? Amazing stuff! Watching TV on one’s own has become a surrogate social experience! The number of people who spend time alone in front of a computer screen is increasing dramatically as well. How many of us choose to talk to someone on the telephone rather than make the effort of making time to see them? What is happening to us all so that more and more of us choose to go it alone? All this so as to reduce our contacts with other people to a minimum?

In a consumer society it makes sense to minimise the number of people living in a household to the least possible – one… The more households one has to peddle goods to, the more the profits go up. One fridge is needed when living in a household of four, four fridges needed when four people each lives alone in a household. A person living alone can be more easily manipulated by media, has more dependency on solitary means of entertainment (TV, computer, radio etc) and is more amenable to all sorts of marketing ploys. A person alone relies on solely their ideas and their decisions are solely their own – this can often lead to impulses taking control and this can benefit the advertiser and the manufacturer.

The way that we interact with other people in our intimate relationships, the way that we view marriage, commitment, sex, love has also changed. People are less willing to put up with anything that is less than ideal in a partner. How many more marriages and relationships end simply because the partners are unwilling to compromise a little? It has suddenly become the norm to be selfish in all things relating to a relationship and to be completely non-negotiable in terms of living together and making concessions to the person sharing your life and household. Love has become more egocentric, and in a relationship one views the other person as an accessory to one’s own happiness rather than as an equal partner with exactly the same needs, rights and desires. People in a relationship often will find nowadays that living in two different households preserves this self-centred “balance” better.

What about the older person? Now that divorce has become more common and socially acceptable, how many more of these older people find themselves in a situation where they have been unceremoniously “dumped” and are forced to live alone? The nuclear family may well have been the aim of Western society and its adoption may have been almost universal, but what happens when this type of family undergoes fission? Its fragments persist after the explosion and each solitary piece travels outward in its lonely trajectory getting further away from each of its neighbours.

The extended family has many things about it that are far from ideal and there are some serious issues relating to individual freedom, personal choice, breathing space and being the master of one’s own fate. However, one of the good things about it is the support and intimacy it provides to each and every one of its members. There is always someone around to interact with, the sense of intimacy, companionship and unconditional love is something that one grows up with, and not only is given but one gives back too. It is more in touch with our tradition and history in terms of tribes and clans and age-old family groupings. Such a family structure promotes intimacy and social interaction and togetherness, but it deprives one of the glory of being in solitude, when one needs to be.

Which bring me back to the quote by John Tillich that I started with: “Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.” Finding the balance in this modern day world living in a predominantly urban environment is difficult tightrope to walk on. Independence and interdependence must be juggled artfully and the way that we manage it will ensure our contentment. Loneliness and solitude are two sides of the same coin and we flip that coin too often nowadays, and risk losing out on the joys of companionship.

CONTACT

“The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.” - Bill Watterson

A very busy day at work today, with hardly any time to sit back and have a quiet moment! We are working on so many urgent and critical projects at once that it’s really quite amazing that we are managing to carry on as normal with the routine day-to-day activities also. The good thing today at least was that I managed to catch up with three old friends (sure enough one was on the phone, one was on Skype and one on Messenger) and even though the conversations were short, it felt good to say “hello, how are you, how are things?”. Nowadays of course we don’t have any excuse for not keeping in contact – as I said, phone, Skype and Messenger – but even though I enjoyed the brief chats, I still felt I missed the “real” flesh and blood people and the wonderful feeling one has when chatting face-to-face for a leisurely amount of time…

The word of the day today is “contact”:

contact noun |ˈkänˌtakt|
1) The state or condition of physical touching: The tennis ball is in contact with the court surface for as little as 5 milliseconds.
• The state or condition of communicating or meeting: Lewis and Clark came into contact with numerous river tribes | He had lost contact with his friends.
• [as adj. ] Activated by or operating through physical touch: Contact dermatitis.
• A connection for the passage of an electric current from one thing to another, or a part or device by which such a connection is made: A one-way electrical contact between a metal and a semiconductor.
• (contacts) Contact lenses.
2) A meeting, communication, or relationship with someone: They have forged contacts with key people in business.
• A person who may be communicated with for information or assistance, esp. with regard to one's job: Francie had good contacts.
• A person who has associated with a patient with a contagious disease (and so may carry the infection).
verb |ˈkänˌtakt; kənˈtakt| [ trans. ]
Communicate with (someone), typically in order to give or receive specific information.
DERIVATIVES
contactable |ˈkänˌtaktəbəl; kənˈtak-| adjective
ORIGIN early 17th century: From Latin contactus, from contact- ‘touched, grasped, bordered on,’ from the verb contingere, from con- ‘together with’ + tangere ‘to touch.’

We so often speak of keeping “in contact” with people nowadays but actual physical touching or physical presence is not involved. We have contacts all over the world with whom we communicate electronically, but no actual “contact” is involved. We seem to be turning into people who physically touch others less and less, even though we may boast a huge number of “friends” and “contacts” in our electronic communication channels. Are we becoming a species of loners and solitary recluses, socialising only in virtual spaces? We seem to be thriving on multiple contacts with other hermits living a safe distance away from us?

In the train I often see people absolutely cringe during rush hour when there is the slightest chance that they may contact someone. The other day someone nearly toppled over as he stepped back to avoid being too close to another person. He was embarrassed, but at a safe distance, notwithstanding the near fall. I remembered the situation in India when I was there and the sardine-like proximity of people in trains and I almost burst out laughing there in the train, but I restrained myself, only because there were so many people crowding me!

Is this progressive, debilitating isolation and tendency to become loners that forces us sometimes to seek out crowded public events? Is the privation of contact that makes us seek out the crowds of football games, public events, protests, demonstrations, large parties? Do we need to periodically reassure ourselves of the gratifying presence of large numbers of our own kind close to us? Is this part of the reason why massage is such a popular therapy nowadays? Is it because it provides us with the sense of touch and contact that we miss in our daily solitary life? Is this what causes some people to perhaps thrive the close contact of peak hour trains?

Perhaps we are becoming too civilised for our own good. Contact but more specifically physical touch, is one of the most fundamental of our sensory perceptions and one that can trigger some of the most significant emotional responses. We may have iPhones and Skype, computers and messenger applications, Facebook and Twitter, but the fundamental and most satisfying way of communicating with other people remains the face-to-face meeting and the wonderful sense of touch.

ART SUNDAY - DRYSDALE

“Australia is properly speaking an island, but it is so much larger than every other island on the face of the globe, that it is classed as a continent in order to convey to the mind a just idea of its magnitude.” – Charles Sturt

For Art Sunday today, an Australian artist, Russell Drysdale (1912 - 1981). He was born in England in 1912, and arrived in Australia in 1923. Russell Drysdale is regarded as a pioneer of Australian modern regional painting. Breaking radically with the Heidelberg School’s romanticised and impressionistic view of rural Australia and bourgeois scenes styled on the European traditions, Drysdale used the originality of his artistic style and vision to effectively shape an alternative national identity based on his own honest vision of the harsh nature and distinctiveness of life within the Australian inland.

When Drysdale died in 1981 he was regarded as a national hero, his art was widely known and greatly admired. His images of rural country towns and outback landscapes, often with their inhabitants, were instrumental in defining a national identity at a time of tremendous social change in Australian history. For audiences in Australia and abroad, Drysdale's paintings reflected the essence of Australia and its people. Drysdale's themes, including identity, isolation, the land and its people, multiculturalism and indigenous Australians, are explored in his art.

"The Cricketers" (1948) is perhaps Drysdale’s most famous painting, and one of the most frequently reproduced images in twentieth-century Australian art. The subject of three figures set amid the stark walls of buildings in a deserted town, bathed in unnatural light, is a haunting and extremely original interpretation of a familiar sporting theme.

The painting was a loose commission from the English publisher, Walter Hutchinson. Hutchinson's collection of approximately three thousand paintings opened to the public in February 1949 at Hutchinson House, London, and was known as the National Collection of British Sports and Pastimes. Hutchinson wanted a painting of an Australian cricket match and asked his Melbourne office to arrange a commission from one of Australia's best-known artists. The request was referred to Leonard Voss Smith, a noted collector and dealer who worked for Hutchinson. Voss Smith mentioned the matter to Drysdale, who at the time was occupied with subjects of Hill End.

Drysdale's painting of country boys having an informal game of cricket against a building at Hill End was not what Walter Hutchinson was expecting, and he was shocked when the painting arrived in London. He cabled Melbourne and fired Voss Smith. The next day, having ascertained that Drysdale was indeed a distinguished Australian artist, Hutchinson cabled to reinstate him…

SISTER MOON

“Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.” – Lamartine

Saturday night and missing my special someone a lot. The time apart hones the keenness of our yearnings. The distance between us magnifies the desire to be together. The thought of you makes me smile, even though my heart languishes away from you.

Here’s hoping for safe travels and a speedy return. In the darkness of the new moon I await for your return and the resilvering of the night by the fullness of the moon.

THE MOON ALONE

“As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delight of presence best known by the torments of absence.” - Alcibiades

A poem dedicated to someone special, far away…

The Moon Alone

The wind blows all the stars away,
Sweeps them under the carpet of the clouds.
The moon alone remains high
On her silver balcony,
And smiles.

She watches me and stifles a laugh
As I search for my lost heart;
Mislaid perhaps – or hiding in a summer’s night,
Or taken by a spring morning;
Stolen?

The clouds gather and draw the curtains
Giving the moon the privacy she wants, alone.
I too sit alone, where is my soul tonight?
Flying with the gulls,
Or sailing.

The wind whistles a lonely song tonight,
The leaves shake, the tiles rattle,
The window creaks, and I’m awake, sighing.
Are you watching the moon? You too alone,
Sleepless?


Jacqui BB hosts Poetry Wednesday.

WAITING

“Old Time, in whose banks we deposit our notes
Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats;
He keeps all his customers still in arrears
By lending them minutes and charging them years.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Continuing my peregrinations through my old notebooks and journals, finding words written long ago. How we change as we grow older… It seems only yesterday that I was writing these words and yet more than two decades have gone by. Looking at old photographs and seeing another person, full well knowing that stranger is I. The world changes, we change, and it’s only these words scribbled on yellowing paper that remain the same, but not constant. Even the meaning they are meant to capture varies with time and with my perception of the words themselves, are altered by time and experience.

Waiting

Sometimes, I feel you’re so close
When for a split second,
I find you in a stranger’s fleeting glance.
Or when I hear by chance
Words said for someone else’s ear,
And I, I make believe they were for me.
But other times,
You’re far away, light years away,
Just like tonight…

It seems impossible that we two shall meet,
But then, I close my eyes
And feel you next to me,
Even if insubstantial,
Even if only in my dreams.

Sometimes, you seem so close,
But at the same time so distant,
That I lose heart, lose hope,
I think that never shall I find you.
And then sometimes,
I think you’ll knock on my door
And come into my life,
Like you’d enter my room,
Just like tonight…

Jacqui BB hosts Poetry Wednesday!

MINING THE ARCHIVES

“Man loves company even if it is only that of a small burning candle.” - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Mining the archives of old notebooks, I came across this poem written aeons ago. The memory of its writing is still fresh because it is associated with the piece of music that prompted its creation. It is the instrumental piece whose title is also serving as the title of the poem. It is by Greek singer-songwriter Georges Moustaki who became famous in France in the 1960s. This short guitar piece is a perfect little miniature and encapsulated at the time my feelings, which I hoped to express by writing this poem, vocalising the emotion implicit in the music.

Rue de Fossés Saint-Jacques

My loneliness,
A silver needle in my heart,
A wreath of flames on my head.
My loneliness,
A knot caught in my throat, stifling me,
Poisoned bitter wine,
On my lips killing me
With every sip, repeatedly.

My loneliness,
A guitar ringing out,
(With the G slightly out of tune)
In an empty room.
My loneliness,
A single bed, a white sheet
Like a snow-covered frigid plain.

My loneliness,
A promise that was never kept,
Wasted words only,
Taken like dead leaves by the wind.
My loneliness,
A salty tear and brumy eyes,
Secret sighs in a dark room,
The counting of hours until dawn.



Jacqui BB hosts Poetry Wednesday.