Tell Tales

So on a beautiful full moon night, one of those nights when the stars hide away and the moon swollen and full makes the world glow silver; I drove into town to see Tell Tails, a new performance piece by Bridget Nicklason-King.

The sort of night that is the power of women.

Tell Tails was a show inspired by Bridget’s granny. One can imagine the performer as a child listening intently as her grandmother told wild stories of adventure, danger and love. All completely true…and then some.

Old, old, ancient the stage is, older than writing. And the sparse, black stage is a new universe, a unique self contained world. This evening we were expected to believe that we were on the beach, on the edge of a wild salt sea. A churning sea made of broken glass. Tossed and smashed by fierce waves the empty wine bottles shatter and shatter again, until they are ground into dust, into sand of the beach. And the sand can be melted, reformed into glass, endlessly rocking.

And like the poet who uses the flowing, alternating vowel to create emotions, or as the cunning raven who picks up objects to alert and inform the others, so too the performer uses flowing alternating gesture, motion, to grasp ideas, to create meaning.

Not quite mime, rather something more like to dance, to an art of motion. Not quite a narrative. Rather Tell Tales was like a strange utopian burlesque. Music and dance. Comedy, clowning, cabaret, chaos. Wine, sand, and popcorn.

House lights off, a spot light, and Bridget Nicklason-King starts off the show hiding under a red sheet. Strange, protean, shapes under the sheet. A cluttering noise and we see her, bound, trying to come out of, trying to free herself from, this tattered worn and well used gladstone bag. Like a child being born? Does she wobble around like a baby foal unsure on its feet? Or is this a ecstatic, drunken, dance? One review, not seeing the bag as a uterus, saw it as Pandora's box “releasing its torrent of horrors before collapsing into the last rays of hope.”

Both views I am sure are right in their own way, and at the same time wrong. Wrong in the sense of not being concrete, not being complete.

But here is the point where the work may cause a divide. If you want your art, if you want the theater experience, to be all wrapped up and tidy, if you want all the various strands to come together in a neat bowpackage -- this work is not for you. If, however, you do not mind having to add structure, to fill in the spaces, if you understand that art, like life, is not neat and tidy, but rather fraught with errors that extend and liberate us; if you think that the genius and the fulfillment of art is to play, than this is a work for you.

The supporting staff around Bridget did a very good job, the set design, lighting, and sound blended together to support the performance, and were always discrete.

The only negative I can find is more a problem with the space. Bridget ended the show swimming in the broken glass sea. However due to the line of sight, I was unable to see this very well. I could, however, hear -- which in many ways is not a negative at all, but further to the idea of having to add elements to the show.

To find out more about this performance piece and Bridget Nicklason-King you should click on this link.

Speaking of magical islands.

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Homer Vomiting

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So we have seen squalls all day, in between moments of bright sunshine. I took some time off from the family to read a few paragraphs of Charon by Lucian. When I got to this passage a wild storm rose up. Hail banging on the roof, the windows shaking and rattling with the wind and rain. It was quite a tempest. An example of a recursive incantation? A Homeric recital that caused a storm in Dodges Ferry.

First a little background; Charon has come to Earth to see what it is that makes the shades weep so, when on his ferry. He comes across Hermes and Hermes agrees to show him about. But Charon can not see very well in the bright sunlight (he lives in Hades after all.) Hermes chants some lines of Homer over Charon and he can see! Marvellous he exclaims! Shall I tell you what I know of Homer? How do you, Hermes asks, now of Homer. Charon is insulted and says:

For I was ferrying his shade across the river,
He would not stop reciting - I listened
And I remembered. Even when a storm
That was not trivial overtook us.
When he began his chanting
Not everyone thought his song
To be of good omen for the journey.
He sang of Poseidon gathering the clouds
And troubling the waves. Like when
The cook uses a spoon to stir soup,
So did Poseidon's trident trouble the sea
Great gales he roused and much else besides.
Foaming the seas with his poetic words.
And for a moment I thought our ship
Would be overturned. Then the poet
Grew sea-sick and vomited up his
Recitations. All about was Scylla,
Charybdis, and Cyclops, and many more.
It was not hard for me to gobble up
Some lines from out of the mess.

Magic words that bring on the storm!

Literature and Change

This is a response to an article by Tadhg Muller on the island website

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Sometime last century, when I was still a wee bairn, I had ideas about art. Looking back I can laugh at my naive ideas of becoming an author, an artist. Now I can see my career as little more than a spectacular abortion. I could alone bewail my outcast fate, or I could face up to my numerous personal failings, to a heroic lack of discipline, an almost pathological contempt for the editing process, the various bad choices I made. Or I could look back over a life of brutal violence, of drink and drugs, of death and suicide of work and family and love. Sometimes I look back, and I want to cry, sometimes I have to laugh. And then I think, “but above everything don't write unless you have to; if you need money make boots and we will respect you as a competent cobbler; if you write for money your work will show it.”

One of the greatest pleasure that comes with growing older is surveying the history of our lives. The joy of I told you so, the sorrow of I told you so...

Now. Cold wet winter night. Raw and wild. My heart is sad and sore.

Sometimes I stand in front of the bookshelf in the bookstore, and I sigh a sigh of relief at having dodged a bullet. A vast accumulation of books to be judged by covers, a wall of images and colours that captivate and scientifically seduce the eye, and thus the mind. Standing in the stink of the temple marketplace, amid this babble of books, I think of Plato's begging priests and soothsayers who go to rich men's doors and make them believe that they by means of sacrifices and incantations have accumulated a treasure of power from the gods that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals any misdeed of a man or his ancestors. And I listen as white-noise muttering gains intensity. Listening to, breathing in, becoming this cacophony of privileged voices and I tilt slightly my head, and half closing my eyes the words appear, certain words form themselves and a song bursts forth. An echo of the Iron Lady herself -- There is NO alternative. And in my reverie I overturn tables. And in my profanity I leave and drag myself through the negro streets looking for an angry fix. Cheap thrills! 48 pills!

This is a large part of the reason why I use poetry as my medium. Partly because I like the ephemeral nature of poetry, better than the novel, poetry allows one to easily diarise our daily struggles for sanity and clarity and my daily readings. Having a family and working, poetry allows me the freedom to create, without the full time effort novels or larger pieces demand. Poetry better than the novel allows one to make rapid changes of tone, mood and subject. And poetry better than non-fiction history allows one the freedom to see things as they could be, for the true is a gaol of what has actually happened. Poetry allows the flights of imagination required for political action. Poetry allows for the building of utopias. And most importantly, poetry, being the most despised and ridiculed of all literature these days keeps me at arms length of any thought of earning a living through art.

"I never mentioned a man but with the view
"Of selling my own works.
"The tip's a good one, as for literature
"It gives no man a sinecure.”

“And no one knows, at sight a masterpiece.
“And give up verse, my boy,
“There's nothing in it.”

So what is to be done? So much!

Not so much a manifesto or a prescription, rather a suggestion. Utopia. No more let us write of dystopia -- we live this daily. Our age demands utopias. Use as a model the sexually free, politically free, Zeus mocking and theoi humiliating cloud city of Pisthetaerus. Or the classless society of De Sade's Tomoe. This island kingdom, was not only sexually free, but promiscuity was mandated. In this imaginary land the king (who was more a figurehead than a ruler) would not allow himself to eat off gold plates while the children the makers eat black bread washed down with bitter tears. Or even the science fiction of Gene Roddenberry, author of the first interracial kiss on American television profaning a time beyond money and property where all needs are met as easily as plucking fruit from swollen trees.

Maybe some practical examples. In the gallery built by Hobart's very own Bruce Wayne, MONA, there is a certain poo machine which is loved and hated in equal measure. The Cloaca. It leaves me cold to be honest, I stand at look and understand, in my own erroneous manner. And I think, how great would this work of art be, if from one end it was fed babies (for it is when we are children that we are our most authentic) and out the other end it pooped chains. For is this not the fate of our children? To be digested and transformed into consumers of shit, to be everywhere enchained shitty gold bond citizens excreted by a reactionary kultur process that puts short term profit above all else.

Last year I went to see a play called Murder. This was a play about, unsurprisingly, murder using the music of Nick Cave. And I sat in the audience and I thought, why not a play called Poverty with maybe the music of (among others) the Gang of Four. This imaginary play could make people think and talk about poverty and the role it plays in our society, and how Capital needs poverty to survive.

How different would have been the arc of the life of Emma Bovary if she had read, really read, Justine (Good Behaviour Well Chastised). Careful reading would allow her to see the brutally honest morality of de Sade. A morality that would have allowed her to understand her betters as they are. Blood sucking vampyres who prey upon the souls of the weak and vulnerable. Who see war and famine as money making ventures. She would have learned to hate her oppressors, rather than idolising them and trying to worm her way into their society. For it is no coincidence that the greatest villains, the greatest murders and thieves are the wealthy and powerful in the novel. For this is as true of our age as it was in the time of the Sun King. Or as The Philosopher wrote “The fact is that the greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity. Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold.” As the ideals of the ruling class are the ideals of the age, so we see much written and spoken to convince us that our real enemy is not the wealthy but rather those poorer and more unfortunate than ourselves.

I do not know, I may be right, I may be wrong. I do know, however, that I am write for myself.

Rock Pools

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Hair heavy with sand and salt.

The swirling random patterns of foam
Leave strange shadows in the water...

As the shadow of the swimmer
Falls upon the sand and shimmers
The refracted fractures of sunlight
Upon the lumpy uneven sand,
So too does the prehistoric
Ray move a shadow across the sand
Graceful across the undulating
Echoed slowly becoming rock waves.

The flat grey sky falls upon the flat
Grey ocean, the flat bright blue
Sky falls across the blue vivid sea.

On the sand a small broken fleck
Of a scrape of purple inside
Mother of pearl mussel shell
Catches my eye, catches the sun.

More stars in the heavens than grains of sand.

In the rock pools starfish and urchins,
The strange marking of the snail glyphs.
The gentle flowing of the tide
And a torn jellyfish hangs the
Water column and waltzes back and forth
The tidal flow.

My warehouse eyes

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My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums.

The pied oystercatchers hunt haunt the shore.

In the morning I drive my daughter to school.
In the car, on the CD player, on repeat
Two times exact we hear Sad Eyed Lady.

We drive along poorly maintained regional roads
We drive along the thin single dual carriageway.
Bedad, it's for him that will always employ.
Curving and up and down avoiding the hills
Green with spring, Donegal green, bogus leprechaun
Green, emerald green, new life growing green,
Algal pond scum green, too many whiskeys green,
Wizard of Oz city green. And the bluest sky.

Glancing up side streets to Peloponnesian bays
Grasping after and eroding the island.
The constant slapping roar of the ocean
The pebbles rushing up and down the sand,
Loud calls of circling gulls and terns islands
Grow out from the flat restless blue green ocean.
Thalatta! Thalassa! The sea, the sea!
Rolling out to the great southern ice kingdom.
Like plump dactyl jangling Mulligan I seek
To Hellenize the island as I drive dream thin
Gray dark hard highway a scar on the landscape
Thinning winding its way past the houses and small
Communities. Past vineyards blooming green new growth
Past orchards wearing fairy flossed tiny flowers.
In the distance, across the water looms
The great Cezzane of a mountain, Wellington,
Table Top, Kunanyi, false reconstructed name,
Cloud gathering mountain dominates the south east.
Names are power, show imperial ownership.

The paddocks dotted with the bright white new lambs
Frolicking and gamboling besides dirty
Brown gray hairy tired constant chewing,
Weather beaten out in all weathers baaramewe;
Or the new born cows, calves lolling and mooing,
Until lying down the green grass as if drunk
From the warm fresh growth giving mothers milk.
High necked horses standing noble and silent.
The pecking clucking chooks drunken walk for food.

The little communities, the tumble down
Fences and old farm buildings, traffic slowing
Tractors putting and snorting diesel fumes.

And lurid yellow signs of council elections.
Vote for me and I will set you free. Yellow
Signs of those who lack imagination,
A council that can do no more than sell out
Local business and endeavour to large scale
Multi national commerce and restless greed.
No idea of the future now called the knowledge
Economy, no nothing for the young slowly
Moving away and leaving the district for
The old and fearful those with no ability
To see past the next quarter. Mean spirited,
Denying innocent bright eyed girl guides
A hall to call their own, but happy to build
A new city hall millions spent and no idea
Of what the future will be, no connections
To the world being born. Hanging on to the old.
Holding tight and so we all suffer as result.
Only a tip a dump a cell for excreta
Pouring out the arse end of industry
And forced upon consumption, planned obsolescence.

Oh, the farmers and the businessmen, they all did decide
To show you where the dead angels are that they used to hide.

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Open the Curtains

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Sure the gods can destroy anyone they wish at any time, but without devotees that gods become no more than a tale with which to scare naughty children at bedtime.

Open the curtains
Upon waking.

The children gently snoring.

The acute angle
Of the sun
Etches deep shadows
The covered with trees
Far off mountains.
Crisp cool moontime
Retreating.

Driving my love into
The city of work
(Her hell of alienation)
The overnight killed
Animals curl the warming
Blacktop - seemingly asleep.

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Around 300,000 animals are killed on Tasmania’s roads every year. The death toll includes 3,000 Tasmanian Devils a year. Roadkill is a major threat to the survival of the species now that it is depleted by facial tumour disease.
Save Our Animals

Many Pathed Gaia

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From atop the shallow rise
The road black and lean rolls
Down and out vanishing point

Here, on my right, knee high grass
Browns the paddock many pathed.
Wanderings of sheep. Thin clouds
Chittering rise hidden the grass
Flutter and sing and settle.

Introduced. And I am left
Dreaming vague discontent,
This landscape of signposts
And fences and bare hills.

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Why write a poem at all? And why this piece of crap, adding to the mountain of crap that is the modern poetry landscape. Boredom mostly, vanity - the foolish idea that I have something worth hearing, and of course compulsive thinking too much.

Euruaguia: wide street, or in this case many pathed. From the hymn to Demeter, describing the rape of Persephone by many named Aidas; the unseen, the all receiver, the host of many.

And the girl was amazed and reached out with both hands to take the lovely toy; but the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa, and the lord, Host of Many, with his immortal horses sprang out upon her...

One sunny afternoon driving home, I saw the paths made by the sheep across the paddock, and I thought of Kore being taken by Hades. And then looking out the window the starlings rose, hidden by the high grass, and the rest just sort of wrote itself.

Enjoy it or not, use it or not, but if you do please link back to original.

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Polytropos

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Hermes is fast becoming one of my favourite of the ancient Greek gods. Why is that? He is, like Ulysses, referred to as polytropos - being of many turns. Tropos is a word that has several meanings. Many of the words in ancient Greek had to perform many tasks. Most of the definitions of tropos centre around being a turn, a mode, a fashion or a manner. From this we get our modern, maybe overused word trope; meaning a figure of speech.

Versatile. Cunning he was, a thief and a watcher in the night. He stole the cattle of Apollo and built the first lyre from a tortoise shell and the guts of the stolen cattle. A rover and a drover, the bringer of dreams and of good luck. As he is messenger between the gods and mortals he becomes the guardian of boundaries and the guardian of interpretations. He protects harlots and thieves and crones. In his mode (or trope) as messenger he helps travellers and runners. He is often shown as an adolescent in the art works, alluding to role as a guardian of transitions. It was in this role as guardian of boundaries that he suffered the sacrilege referred to as the Destruction of the Hermai. Statues of Hermes had been set up in many places in Athens. These were simple blocks of stone with the head of the god, as well as his exaggerated phallus. These markers were also rumoured to ward off evil. On the eve of the ill-fated Sicilian Expedition unknown vandals smashed off the penis, as well as (even worse) mutilating the face of many of these statues. This was understandably the cause of great anxiety in the city, and in retrospect should have resulted in cancelling the project, which become in many ways the Stalingrad of the ancient world.

Hermes may be an old god, for he is mentioned in Linear B inscriptions found in Knossos and Pylos as e-ma-a. Others traditions say that he may been an import from the East. Although to my thinking it is best to think of the Eastern Mediterranean as being a single culture. Regardless of his origin he was worshiped in the more remote, wild places such as Arcadia. As such he was the patron of farmers and shepherds. Amusing to me to think the laconic dry witted farmer type gave rise to the smooth talking interpreter. From his early shaman origins he would have been involved in divination, of crossing between this world and the other. Evolving into the trickster dream bringing god, and giving us the words hermetic and hermeneutics.

Also it is interesting to compare Kriophoros Hermes (Ram Bearing Hermes) to early Christian imagery of the Good Shepherd. But that is another story for another day.






























Polytropos indeed.

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Homeric Hymn 17 - To Hermes

Of Cyllenian Hermes I sing! Slayer of Argos,
Guardian of Cyllene and of Arcadia
Rich in flocks of goats and sheep.

Luck bringing messenger of the gods.
Own child of Maia, daughter of Atlas,
Who had intercourse with Zeus.

Bashful she shunned
The crowded tumult
Of the deathless ones.

Into her shaded cavern
Came the son of Kronous.
To the young fair haired
Cutely trimmed new wife.

They made love in the dark
Of the night entwined in her hair

While smoothed limbed
Hera slept sweetly.

They escaped the notice
Of the deathless gods
And the mortal ones.

Of you I rejoice,
Son of Zeus and Maia
Of you I begin,
And so pass over
To other melodies.

Rejoice!
Joy giving guide,
Bringer of good luck.


pictures are from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:0007MAN-Herma.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hermes_crioforo.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Good.Shepherd.Vatican.Museum.jpg

Kubele

Here we see Cybele (Kubele) being pulled in her cart by lions, in a image taken from http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Cybele.html

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Hymn 14 to the Mother of the Gods

Sing clear tone Muse, daughter of Great Zeus.

Sing the mother of all
Mortal and immortal.

She is well pleased with
The rattle of seistron
The clashing of shields
The wail of flutes, the cry of wolves
The roar of bright eyed lions
Echoing across wooded mountains.

Rejoice in the goddess and sing your song.

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The Mother of The Gods. Identified with the Minoan Rhea, and the Greek goddess Gaia, among many others. A complex series of tales and rituals surround this goddess. She is the source of the extraordinary poem by the Roman poet Catullus, a powerful work that talks of the frenzied rituals of the goddess, and the remorse of the self castrated acolyte.

Cybele seems to have existed in the pre-historic bronze age eastern Mediterranean region, and extended across most of the cultures of the time. Even in Rome, where she was brought during the Second Punic War (about 204 BC) to fulfil a Sibylline prophecy. This was seconded by the oracle at Delphi. As the Romans defeated the Carthaginians, it must have been true.

As a goddess of ecstasy the Great Mother existed across much of Bronze Age Europe, only to be overthrown by the Sky King Gods. With a series of names and attribute, she is far too complex a deity to discuss successfully on this blog, I will leave the discussion here, and leave any more research to the reader. Remarking only that the pathway from a primitive communist, matricentric society to our present patriarchal existence could only have been physical violence.

Potnia Theron

photo from http://www.utexas.edu/courses/larrymyth/images/2E-Artemis-Actaeon.jpg

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Hymn 9 to Artemis


Sing Muse, of Artemis,
Sister of the far worker.
Virgin spitter of arrows,
Fed at the same table as Apollo.

She refreshes her horses
The waters of reedy thick Meletos.

Swiftly through Smyrna
She drives her golden chariot
To Klaros rich in vines while
Apollo of the silver bow awaits
The arrow-pourer.

Hail Goddess! At the same time
Embroider lyrics. Of you I sing.
And now I shall pass over
Into another mournful song.

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this one from http://albertis-window.blogspot.com/2011/02/diana-of-ephesus-keeping-abreast-with.html


some words on Artemis

Artemis has many different guises, she seemed to start as a fertility goddess, as in Artemis of Ephusus and later takes the role of the virgin mistress of wild animals. She is quite cruel in her protection of her sacred animals, and in the protection of her virginity.

When I read of Artemis and Apollo and the serenity with which they can torture and kill us mortals I am reminded of Rilke's Angels from the first of his Duino Elegies. (which was written in Trieste while Joyce was writing Ulysses.)

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic
Orders? And even if one were to suddenly
take me to its heart, I would vanish into its
stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. Every Angel is terror.

Ekatos - the far shooter, a name for Apollo, the younger twin brother to Artemis.

Iocheairan - This word is commonly translated as arrow pourer. Ios is the word for arrow as well as the word for venom. I combined the arrow and the venom of the snake and made the image of the mistress of the wild beasts (potnia theron) spitting arrows, as a snake will spit venom.

Bathuschoinoio - combining Bathos; deep, used in many metaphorical ways as well, including the connotation that is still current, profound, and schoinos which means reeds. Coincidently schoinos can be used to mean arrow or javelin.

Meletos a river, which may have been near to city of Smyrna.

Kleros - a site sacred to Apollo, where there was once an oracle.

Humnos - a hymn, but also a word with wider intimations, a simple strain or melody but also a hymn, an ode to the gods, but also a mournful song. As all art has an element of sorrow I used to translation of mournful song.

Again I am no scholar in the classics, but a vain and puny amateur who gains enjoyment trying to make sense of the word about us.

Eye Candy

I have taken lots of photos - digital cameras facilitate this greatly. I get bored and so I made some into a standard wallpaper size (1024x768). All of 'em snapped in tasmania.

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Orielton Lagoon

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Monogamy is a trait of birds and humans. Seven Mile Beach

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One of many rainbows, I guess if it rains all the time...

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After the rain.

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Kelly Steps - leading onto Kelly Street. Accidently?

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Wall of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

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A big introduced bee gathering from an introduced plant. - Where the bee sucks, there suck I.

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The Apple Isle.

Reticulum

Into the Heraclitian fyre. Reading a book on microbiology, specifically about the structures within cells. It seems the endoplasmic reticulum has taken on more roles than when I was in high school; well it is good to see talent rewarded. Reticulum is defined as from a latin word for network, more poking about gave other meanings and uses of the word reticulum, including the stomach of a cow, a constellation, even a snood. So I jammed all these fragments into a notebook poem. Entered it into a contest and did not even rate a mention. So here it is...

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Upon false bridge, above the bloody sand
Trident fisherman taunts and turns vaunting twists
While sea monster fish men fight clumsy.
Thrown, the weighted net expands and flies
Across the distance, bringing victory
And defeat. The one event contrasting.

I take the dog for a run in the dawn
Twilight early morning and the red sky
Burns and glows the bodies of sinners
Stoking the deadly judgement fires
Beyond the obsidian smooth lagoon.

Shallow filled of the retreating ice,
More ten thousand isolating years ago.
On the shallow ridge line to the south,
Red lights blink automatic guiding planes.
Surrounded always a thin spiders web
Network of roads and highways of commerce.

The brush again and over again rolls
Thin net long hair covered for service.
The tides roll daily back and forth gentle.
Hungry and exhausted flights of sea birds
Rest rare salt marsh fringed glasswort and pig face
Winged far Siberia. Calling in the night
Feeble and tired and the tiny sea star
Ejecting live surprising birth only three
The entire world and across the waters
Low and flat toxic algal bloom lagoon
Ignoble west flank black line barrack causeway
Blinking away dreamy sleep lights Sorrel.

Low in the south west sky the rhombus
Thin hair cross hairs of an eyepiece.
Cattle low and wander the green pasture
Eating and fourfold digesting unknown
Cattle thoughts as myriad folds catalyse
Blind countless transactions and combinations.
Endless the surface. Wide transformations
Are performed and the suns energy released.

Waking the first light frost of morning
I arrange the kindling and split logs,
And touching a match bring warming fire.
On the pitted surface the suns energy
Forges frothy warmth and cosy home house life.

Driving visit historic Richmond gaol
And the rooms of punishment that brought
Civilization the land without the fall
And the wrist binding tripod cat o' nine tails
Extended the love of Christ and the shorn
Hair of the women fleeing rape and the coffin
Sized black rooms of silent aloneness.
The children are too fearful to enter,
After almost two hundred years of silence.

Settlement Eve - The Witch of the Beach

Standing at yet again a cross roads of my life. went down to the cross roads (with my black dog cloud) fell down on my knees...

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After four months the deed is all but done.

Purging new watery stomach illness.
Lunar flood and ebb, endless tidal rolls.

The flooding tide is exuberance.
The ebbing tide is melancholy.

Myriad shakers whispering over years
Of seashore and her myriad names and roles.

Fashioned a thigh bone unearthed dead child flute
To enchant with listless drowsiness the cruel ones.

The wailing sailing ship rolled industrial seas
And the crew felt jilted by the Boston and London
Owner masters. We need to increase our share.
For are we not the ones who toil the stony
Seas, who climb and fall monotonous motion waves?
Did we not, just last week, farewell mates young and true?
Sun burnt, wind burnt, cold burnt, salt burnt the crew flared
In impious revolt, and hacked about and threw
Christian captain headless over wave splashed side.
Face down the sand the entrance to the inlet.
Earth of the sun made his corpse swell and hotter he grew.
And vigorous came shining greenery and plants,
And ingenious came signing birds and stowaway
Creatures, soon he was covered with sandy life.
On the crew sailed on to fabulous islands
Of the Brazilian freedom coast where lived legion
Squads and ships of freebooters and ragamuffins,
Building families, enlightenment wealth promise,
Made for all in harmony and with equality.
Wisely had the masters insured again lost loot.
Boston and London slept no gains. And the caution
To this day still sleep guards the inlet. Dreaming songs
Remembering cloudless bells to jingle the sea foam
Rolling endless up and down ocean sand shore.

The old woman tosses and shakes her long wet hair,
The gardens of kelp swaying the turbulent seas.
Feared by some she dances and leaps playful dolphins.
Wandering sand songs and bells and haunts ancient
Walking the beach she reads and deciphers fortunes
To come, births and deaths into the future. The shape
Of the foam the sounds of rolling swells and sea shells.