On Whitbarrow

Whitbarrow is a beautiful limestone moorland between the English Lake District National Park and the horseshoe of Morecambe Bay. Beautiful and mysterious. I spent a transformative year living alone there in a small cottage on the edge of the moor, running every day and writing and composing and meditating. I healed a deep wound in myself while there with the help of the spirit of the moor. The mist would come rolling in with immense speed and I particularly loved it at that special time at dusk when the shadows lengthen and a blanket of silence slowly settles. Whitbarrow will always be one of those special places for me. This poem was my way of honouring the moor.



ON WHITBARROW

Soft is the wind on Whitbarrow
this day of blessings and breath.
Here where the sturdy juniper flows
I shall wolf-run to the ancient ash groves
and lay me down old wounds in sacred fire.
And lay me too in the fingers of
that wind-sculpted oak
As after summer’s solstice rise
midge-ridden at Swindale Stones,
I lay, day after day.
And day after day the grass screamed.
And I hid from the eyes of men.
Day after solitary day running
the shattered limestone ways,
in the style of a shaman.

Here by the fallen larch I sensed
the tundra of that One vast Soul.
Communed with spectres of fears,
laid about like mist.
Talked long and hard with that Other Self;
that other half of what I might yet be.
Here, upon this blessed palimpsest
did I write myself anew.

Here, among the white bones,
beneath the hymns of skylarks, did I
scatter seed, take up staff, and walk again.

The occult significance of Bovril!

My immaterial factoid of the month is the insight that BOVRIL is made up of two words BOVINE and VRIL. Bovine as you obviously know refers to the gentle ruminant with the seven stomachs whose collective farts contribute so dangerously to global warming. But what in the name of all the Gods is VRIL? Well dear reader it spawns from an early science fiction work by Edward Bulwer-Lytton ultimately titled ‘Vril: The Power of the Coming Race.’ Written round 1871. VRIL, you see is the energy source of a super race of angelic underground dwellers or super-troglodytes. The point I suppose is how even household names for objects can be invested with exotic or even magickal significance.

HAIKU FOR YOU

I love this little oriental form with a syllable count of 5-7-5. It's becoming increasingly popular in the West and these little seeds can form the basis of profound meditations. Each one is a stand-alone.










Flowing like water,
this is the one iron rule:
Seek the black-belt mind.

You can not be work.
You can not be what you do.
You have to be more!

Pynchon Borges Dick
Eco Calvino Wilber.
Like lights in the dark.

Do not be afraid.
Do not let fear take deep root
in your soul’s garden.

Money will leave you.
Fame too will abandon you.
Only love endures.

Soft skin close and safe.
Warm lips pressed against lips;
don’t forget such joy.

Of all the virtues,
a simple act of kindness
re-shapes the whole world.

Ride to the next hill!
Though armies stand against you,
have faith and prevail.

You are not your car.
You are not your clothes or house.
You are smoke in wind.

I love like sunlight,
like moonlight kisses water,
like wind strokes the grass.

Is April the cruellest month? I really don't think so.

So what’s new? The financial scam continues with the collapse of various off shore mis-trust funds and disbelief that Gordon Brown wants to throw even more of our money (which we don’t have) at the pin-striped ones. His entire instinct is to preserve a financial system that has at its very core inequality, greed and corruption. Of course it was Brown for the last decade who proposed and supported ever looser control of the London Stock Exchange and off shore mis-trusts. It was Brown the tin-pot chancellor who continued the Thatcher Project that lead to Wall St demanding the same loosening of controls as was happening in London. From Chile to Bonn he’s gadding about the G20 trying to broker a deal to save the system. But soon Gordon, you will be gone-gone to that happy land of memoir deals and expensive after dinner speeches-the sooner the better.
A golden opportunity exists to curb the excesses of Capitalism with some good old Socialist sticking plaster. Getting rid of the off shore tax havens. Capping executive pay. Changing the entire bonus system to rewards for long term secure investment practice. Getting rid of hedge funds. Public Work Investment. Re-nationalisation of key resources like the public utilities and the bloody railways…on the other hand don’t get me going on about the railways!

Alternatively we could always have a revolution, get rid of the entire financial system and turn the planet into one large eco-village where we all sit round squeezing in regular meditation between ruminatively chewing bamboo shoots and practicing yoga and crafts. It’s great stuff… bamboo.

What else? The Red Riding Trilogy! David Peace, bastard son of James Ellroy, I salute you you Yarkshire weirdo. Great TV. Great books. Read em. Dig him.

‘Funny Games’- Michael Hannekke’s strange film that made me very angry-was that the point? Being manipulated into an awareness of complicity with what is happening on-screen?

Reading ‘The Kiterunner’ by Khaled Hosseini. Beautifully written and heartbreaking.

Listening to ‘Low’ by David Bowie-a 1976 album which I’m rediscovering. Superb.

To my one and only blog follower I salute you O wise and foresightful friend. This is for you.




AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL


Hewn from granite
I was inlaid with copper
and silver and gold.
Lapis Lazuli my eyes
and burnished well,
till shining in the morning sun
I glowed and hummed.

A mystery wind blowing
through a conch shell.

A sound like gathering
or
redemption.

A sound more like ‘blown’ than ‘moan.’

Something running through.
Something bidding life.

Like the bloods headlong rush
or the river folding itself
to a conclusion after much
slow, flowing thought.
I’ve seen the Eden do this
with my own eyes!

The blowing heightened
once or twice.
As when I held my sons,
naked and smeared
with their mother’s blood
shivering in the immensity
of their new life.

For a moment it seemed
eternity pulled up her skirts
and said:
‘Man, in this second
you are alive for once!
Feel the power of NOW!

See through, over, into.
See the truth of the child.
Feel the miracle in your fingernails.

Feel it brush against your skin!’

And then you...
You took me to the deepest well,
I cast a bucket for a crock of gold
and you said:
‘Look! Look how deep the heart goes!
It is limitless really!’

And in the moment of falling.
Of letting go.
I was gathered up.
And in the moment of trusting,
I was loved so much.
And in the moment of saying:
‘Yes! I’ll take this life.
This one!
Its birth, its struggle
its countless breaths.
Its footsteps.
Its becoming and befriending.
Its shrinking from the light.
Its tears and weight
of so much fear.
Its heartbreak and its love.’

In that moment of NOW.

A life is stretched from these
small boundaried cairns.
Stertched against the canopy of infinity.
It is made to see it is not one thing
but the many brought to one.
A radiant point of NOW
that whispers:
‘THIS IS ALL!
THIS IS IT!
THIS IS EVERYTHING!
AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL!

A Man Dreams of Spring

;-)>

I am sexed-up by these spring winds
Unslaked like a gagged wolf beneath
A moon white as bone while women
Of all nations hang on or are flung
In the folds and puckers of my
all-conquering member