Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Jeff Skewes #13 Into the forest



Climbing began facing the sun believing the promise lay just beyond 



arcade roads
paths
and arteries
share the timing
caterpillars learn
to fly

here there
once thriving markets
people caravaned
shape shifted
left tracks
in all directions

what sparks a Renaissance
conjurers spring timed pale orange
rain showers
clouds to
dream-up Shangri-la
what use life's poetry

lives in ruins
rumored buried
under lost towns
centuries old
texts pass 
to whom know

countless lives
misplaced
forgotten
ghosted
en-route
eastward?

nomads 
communes
tune 
where trade
is spare
dancing here and 

their scattered relics
dust and more
find ways
into open skies
become
the map co-ordinates

forests whisper 
to themselves
turn left / right
go straight start again
taller trees form major chords
chorus: the actor gone it's only you and me

frozen and failed
phony peace wars
always turned
whole
generations
upside down

in code at first 
texts
were read by braille
woven to satsang
by older hands
until translation stood still

some ancient tale
by peculiar means
quelled hearts
quieten minds
their fabled lines
suspending doubt

so belief
in who
knows
sees
time
just

stopped




image:(Kelly) Green (detail) synthetic polymer and enamel paint on stretched canvas / jskewes


2 comments:

  1. here I've deconstructed a descriptive piece of the climbing through an allegorical forest, paring it back to very simplified content set in stanzas aiming to set a rhythm and experiment with the pace/timing differently...

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  2. note to myself(and anyone else): I was going to rework this and change the title (Wilderness) and add the image I have in mind.
    But on the re-read I decided to leave it, for now at least. I think something is working.
    The one stanza that still unsettles is the "frozen and phony peace wars..." stanza. I had intended here to throw in a disrupter to remind or suggest what causes a civilisation to fall (into ruins) and that this fall and potential cause was an old repeated story across time (of course other causes occur too). So for now it stews...

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