The Remains of the Life. Mister Cohen's Attic

This is the second of four short pieces written quickly in writers' groups this week.  This one finished in a completely different place than I thought it would.  It was all going so well.  Until that sudden change of direction that took it into a place I didn't particularly want to be.  You will see what I mean.

The line structure is as it is for one reason only:  I was writing on the right-hand third of a sheet of paper having filled the left-hand two thirds with the poem I posted yesterday.

Tomorrow I'll post the first of two pieces from the writers' group the following day.  The prompt given for that related to the origin stories of different types of tea.  I didn't stay within that box.  At the Writers' Cafe we're very good at leaving boxes behind and just seeing where the words carry us.  Every time there's something produced that leaves me in awe.

After the auction of the house
Of the late Mister Cohen
I found his forgotten family waste
In the loft of my new home.

Three torn cookery books.
A broken framed, scratched photo
Portrait of an unknown soldier.
Worthless antiques.
A pair of porcelain potties.
Souvenirs of holidays in Taunton.
Silver plate spoons.  Half a set.
Tarnished beyond hope.
Moth-eaten wedding dress,
Once white, once born of love.

He left me newspapers:
Bundled.  1960s Daily Mails.
A Victorian taxidermy display
Of birds.  Decayed, under broken glass.

And in the locked chest
I had to break, forced by chisel
I found my prize.

Coins.  Stamps.
And a collection of Herr Cohen's love letters.
Each one from the Fuhrer himself.
Each one sealed with his kiss.

NaPoWriMo Day 20: The Atari Relationship. Or How You Destroyed Me

National Poetry Writing Month Day 20 - Written on Day 21.

I'm catching up a day.  It'll take a lot if I'm going to catch up on all the other days I missed.  The day 20 prompt was to write a poem incorporating the vocabulary or imagery of a game.

Because that was challenging enough already I challenged myself more.  I chose a game that I have never played.  I chose a game for which I don't know the rules.

Why didn't I just stick to something I know well like chess?  Or say that Sudoku isn't a puzzle - it's a brain game?  No, not me.  I have to pick on a game I don't know.  A game containing lots of vocabulary that almost nobody would understand if I incorporated it.  Do you know about semeai, tesuji and miai?  Perhaps you do if you happen to know how to play Go.

I wrote something though.  Based on the one word - apart from Go - that I know from the game of Go.  That word is atari - a position in which your stone or group has one remaining move.  You have to take it but after that you will be captured.  If you're in atari you've lost - or at least lost that part of the game.

Picture taken from a BBC report here about an AI program beating the European Go champion.  That only happened last year - compare that with how long ago it was the AIs started beating grand masters at chess.

The game of Go does appeal to me in many ways.  There's no luck involved.  The rules are very simple.  The tactics are highly complex.  It seems a very elegant game, a lot more so than chess.  Perhaps one day I'll learn it.  Perhaps too one day I'll return to chess.  I was never great at chess but I was okay and for a while improved quickly in my use of forks, skewers and such skills.

Atari

You said it was just a game.
Told me we'd just play together
In black and white simplicity.

We danced apart, eyed each other
Our lines not yet intersecting.
Eventually, inevitably, we met.
Lives colliding on points as
Possible turned to impossible.
I didn't see your truth. Only your beauty,
The way your flame lit every room.

Your smile near satanic, you showed false eyes.
Laughed hideously as I was forced
To climb that first ladder, pushed aside
Into a corner where you broke a piece from me.

I built walls. You cut them down.
I sought escape. You captured me.
You pushed, squeezed, attacked,
Never sacrificed the smallest territory.
I kept wanting to believe your promises.
Wouldn't leave the game. Couldn't leave go.

It's almost over now. Knife to my throat.
Gun to my heart. Just one move to make.
I want to run. There is no field left.
Not even a hole to hide, cowering alone.
One move. Between survival and annihilation.
One last stone to place. All options gone.
Liberty stolen. Manipulated, massacred me.

You look at me and grin, softly coax me
And even now I want to believe.
You love me. You just want to play.
I place the stone. Plead with you to stop.
You, triumphantly howling, make your move.
The ground of battle reverberates hollow.
As you break me one final time.

NaPoWriMo Day 11 - The Shaman and the Jackdaws

A response to a prompt given on day eleven of National Poetry Writing Month.

For various reasons and various excuses I'm not keeping up well with the month.

I am not telling you how much or how little of this happened to me.  I will just say that my Twitter name, Seren Ravenlight, is there for a reason.

Picture by Claudia Wascher, taken from here.

In speaking, the shaman revealed my gift:

A raven guide. Ride Morrigan's warrior waves,

Find Freya, feast in her harshest heavenlies.

Walk in your goddess vulnerability, barefoot on glass shards.

The medicine woman smiled, endorsed my gift,

Held me in her cold, naked embrace,

Pierced my depths with sharp sawn fingers,

Bid me to dream-sight through eternal darkness.

Then, shaking her robes, she left me.

Presently I slept, heard heaven's laughter

As if God rebuked my false-lived treachery.

Heaven, near destitute, was missing a raven.

Near despair, I was granted only jackdaws.

Watching, all sides surrounded. Waiting,

Bowed heads, lifted wings. I lay uncovered,

Flesh, bone, sinew, heart, each poison pierced

By corvid sight, all disordered secrets laid bare.

A bell. A silent voice commanded respect.

The seven turned away. The three walked on me.

Claws tearing flesh, a blood soaked cleansing.

Each talon ripped my marrow sin, my stained glass sorrows.

The one wrapped its wings, enveloped my penis,

Protecting my sex, singing spirit's acceptance.

The four pierced palms and feet, crucified me,

Granted free life through my Christly death.

And the two pecked our my eyes, swallowed short sightedness

Before shredding my coarse, arrogant mind.

Eyes That Follow You Round A Room - A Poem And A Prose Piece

A day for feeling mentally a little wrecked and I'm proud of myself because I made it to the Writers' Cafe this morning and managed not to walk out even though I was feeling totally nauseous with anxiety and for a while could hardly process verbal inputs among the noises from other parts of the cafe.  And the wallpaper?  Oh God the wallpaper.  I find it difficult on the best of days.  Today it came alive and at times engulfed my whole existence.

Our theme this morning was "Eyes That Follow You Round A Room" based on art work, John Berger and our own thoughts.  I wanted to get out of that place.  Instead I managed to write a few words.  The poem below.  And I had an idea, the first fruits of which are below in prose.  One scene out of what could be a larger tale.  I just free wrote it and the scene was not quite the one I'd had in my mind when I began.

The wall of wallpaper.  Someone CHOSE this paper.

The Joy of Painting

Alone unpainted.

Forced to bear my existence

Among silenced lives.

The don't speak to me.

Except to say their contentment

Is found on canvas.

In paint there's no pain.

Even the eyes of The Scream

Are calmer than my own.

Without words they call:

Join us.  Stretch yourself.  Bare flesh

and blood is your paint.

No walking future.

A blade is the artist's brush

Releasing my life.

In death I'll be preserved.

Freed into quiet.  Lifted high.

Held, framed on a wall.

The Faceless One

Having forced open the French window it was still difficult to climb inside, across a large desk and into Doctor Wilson's study.  On the way I knocked my knee hard into the window ledge, placed my hand down painfully onto something jagged, and knocked something heavy to the floor.  When it landed on the floor the thud sounded to me more like the chiming of the clock in St. Matthew's church down in the village square and I held myself motionless, hardly daring to breathe.  No lights were turned on though and I could hear nothing beyond the ambience of the night.

Once in the study I turned on my flashlight and found that the jagged item had been a crystal of some variety, purple and sharp.  I removed my glove to check my hand and was relieved to see that there was no blood.  Nevertheless I wiped down the crystal carefully.  The thud had been caused by a large paperweight.  I was only slightly shocked to see that the resin contained two human ears and a tongue.  I placed it carefully back on the desk hoping that I'd put it roughly where it had been before.  It wasn't what I had come for and it wouldn't do anyone any good were I to remove it.

I turned and scanned the study with my flashlight until the beam hit the bookcases on the other side of the room.  Somewhere among them was my prize.  I began to tiptoe towards the books, worried that each step would cause an almighty creak in the floorboards and the doctor would wake and discover me.  I didn't want to consider whether I might be able to talk my way out of the situation.  I doubted I could.

As I crept past a green leather sofa in the centre of the room I heard a squelching noise behind me.  Faint.  But definitely present.  I swung round and shone my light in the direction of the sound.  Nothing.  I was alone.  I scanned the room with the beam a few more times to make sure before turning back to my goal.  Two more steps.  The noise again.  I turned.  Was everything the same?  I thought so.  Something was making that noise though and my heart beat faster.  I knew I was beginning to sweat and hoped beyond hope that I could find the book and escape.  The doctor's study would be the worst place for a full blown panic attack.

I took deep breaths.  Willed myself to relax.  Told myself I was alone.  And then, I am almost ashamed to admit it, I crossed myself and said a prayer before heading with greater speed to the bookcases.  The squelch squelch began again and I tried to ignore it.  There's nothing there.  Nothing there.  Nothing there.  I tried to convince myself but in that situation I was the queen of sceptics.

I shone my flashlight across each shelf of books in turn.  Books of anatomy and physics were scattered among volumes of stage magic and actual magic and books of stories and poems by writers so obscure their names didn't even ring vague bells in my mind.  All the time the squelching.  Louder.  Closer.  Or was I imagining it?

I cursed my luck as I didn't find what I was seeking until the final shelf.  A precious book.  At least it was precious to me.  Because it had been mine.  I hadn't bought this book in a shop.  I had hand crafted each page, making the paper and the binding myself.  And I'd filled it with the results of my own researches.  Ten years of work distilled into one journal.  Stolen by Doctor Wilson.  The theft had taken place the previous year and it had taken this long to discover the perpetrator.  I hoped he hadn't been able to decode too many of my ciphered scratchings and drawings.

I hastily took the book and placed it into my bag.  Turning I saw a hint of movement on the dark floor.  The squelching stopped.  I shone my flashlight at the movement and there, in the middle of the floor, I saw two eyes.  Just eyes.  The eyeballs and connecting tissue that would normally hold an eye to a head.  No head.  No face.  No eyelids.  Just eyes.  Staring up at me.

I realised in that moment that the eyes had been following me round the room.  I realised too that Doctor Wilson's experiments had progressed further than I feared.  If he could remove a person's eyes and they could continue to live apart he had followed his science to a level I hadn't dreamed.  Perhaps I could help.  Rescue these instruments of vision.  Perhaps even one day locate the face they had been cut from and restore them.  Maybe I could find a way to communicate with an eye and it would help me find its true home.

Without a further thought I picked up the two eyes and placed them in my bag with my journal.  Thought could wait until I was standing in a place safer than the doctor's study.  I climbed back across the desk and out of the window, sliding it closed behind me.

And then I ran, putting as much distance as I could between myself and the night.

The Past Made Present - Glastonbury, 1985

On a family holiday, when I was fourteen, we visited Glastonbury for the day.  After a visit to Glastonbury Tor - where I had a most interesting talk with a stranger about how he liked to levitate there - we visited the village, including some of the more spiritual shops that have boomed there.  If I remember rightly I bought myself a book about occult exercises and practices. 

After lunch we visited Glastonbury Abbey which was unsurprisingly packed with tourists and coach parties.  Why shouldn't they be there - it's famous and a beautiful ruin.  Wandering off alone down some steps I found myself in St Mary's chapel - cooler, deserted at that time and with an atmosphere more powerful than the Tor.

This shouldn't be a surprise given the Christian and pre-Christian history of the site.  Looking online a moment ago I found this statement:  The Mary Chapel in the Abbey lies in the Vulva of the Birth-Giving Goddess of Glastonbury. This is one of the most potent places on the Island.  Make of that what you will!  People write all kinds of things about Glastonbury, based on all kinds of spiritual belief and practice, which is appropriate for somewhere that was such a centre for both paganism and Christianity.  I will leave it up to you whether Glastonbury really was Avalon, home of the Goddess.

Last week I was thinking about early experiences of "the sacred".  Without defining "sacred" I am pretty certain that I experienced it/him/her/them that day in the few brief minutes that I stood, alone, before the altar of that chapel.

Writing came as I sat in a cafe.  It's in the form of a sestina.  Six stanzas of six lines and an extra three lines at the end, with the last words of each line rotated through the different lines of each stanza.  There's an official way to rotate them but I was sitting in a cafe with no access to anything that told me the "right" way, so this may all be "wrong".  In any case it's not good poetry.  I hope next year to write far more - to learn something of the art - and eventually produce something decent.



Abbey of noise, far from Cistercian silence
Hurrying coaches, camera snappers seek the common view
Japanese tourism - the south-west in a day.
Here stood Arthur; Joseph planted his tree.
We must see it all, rush, rush, rushing
This, no holy hour of freedom to seek the monastic.

Abbey of noise, I seek God, I, monastic,
Walking alone, from tourism, tack, time, into a silence.
Underneath, under the crowds, root of cloistered tree.
Above, the teashop calling, the people still rushing
Below, place of prayer, of silent, silenced voices singing: God in view.
Below, presence of lost centuries manifests this day.

Away from shallow, short life, the longevity of the tree,
The chapel altar stands stark, a remembrance of the day
Monkish voices were squeezed, squashed, quelled in the rushing
Of a King seeking to rule God, abolishing the monastic.
The chants, the rich intonement, God's praises turned to silence.
Five hundred years, God unchanging, time cannot shroud the view.

I stood in profound riches, feeling guilt for not rushing,
Alone with the alone - but why not with camera pointed at that tree?
Inside, impulse escapes, birthing the thrill of the monastic.
In quiet, in immense living atmosphere, the sacred opened my view.
Minutes, just minutes, stretched like chant memory into a day.
Above, above, bustle, noisy chaos; but for me, long silence.

I would have stayed, could not stay, force to leave that view.
Moments of a life, just a glimpse of the eternal monastic.
Moments of a meaning, brief, all changing, revolutions in silence.
Come back, return to the wells that enabled this day,
Back to family, to that other deep rooted tree
Back to above, we too were tourists - more to see, onwards, rushing.

Years pass but still present to me are those moments, that day.
A moment of calm, stilling the rushing.
Whatever darkened horror appears, the beyond comes to my view.
In the deafening noises, a present past, a moment of silence
That set in place a yearning for a life monastic,
For timeless prayer roots, deepening of the tree.

Abbey of silence.  Gone but called to view.
I was not there a day but it's strong seeds became my tree.
I've lived, rush, rush, rushing.  But ever inward, turning to monastic.

The Death of My God. And The Dancing Stars.

When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!" (Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra)

GOD was dead

I had killed Him

Yet I turned to truth,

to light, to the real.

I sought the above,

the spiritual heights.

No God.  No God.

But beautiful, bountiful,

brilliant, blinker-breaking

boundless BEYOND.

 ___________________

 Yet, even embracing God

I lived a lie.

God was still dead.

I still killed Him.

Those centred words describe something of my God, from the time I turned as a child from a Christianity that I didn't begin to understand, to the often unhealthy Christianity I embraced as an adult.

Nietzsche wrote:  "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"    The Gay Science

Does this mean there is no God.  I don't think so - only that many of the concepts of God that we have used are dead.  Or dying.  They were too limiting.  If God is truly God, then God is bigger than any human words or thoughts or imaginations.  To contain Him in one book, one interpretation is to risk missing Him altogether.

To contain him in one gender - as I, following Christian tradition, have done here, is to risk missing Her or Them, to risk so much of what God must be being lost to view.

Nietzsche, in rejecting not just the concept but the entire exterior immense sacred, missed God and proposed other meaning, that man - the bridge not the goal - is something to be surpassed, and that in itself is a laudable aim.  Nietzsche wrote much that I disagree with, but his writing is often wonderful and his ideas challenge in a good way, and I recommend a slow read of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  The book isn't too long - but the ideas are massive and can be seen trying to work themselves out in sizable aspects of 20th Century history and thought.

God is dead.  We have killed him in our thinking, our narrowness, mistaking our own blindness for clear vision.

I killed him.  And, looking back, as I have been doing recently, I find that I very often killed him more as a believing, theistic, Christian, worshipper than as an agnostic seeker of revelation and ever fresh insight.  It's not that Christianity is bad.  Christianity can be full of wonder.  It's not that Christianity is the God killer.  But my Christianity was often the God killer.  Too often I held so fast to dogma that I forgot that God is the God of play and that dogma, as Matthew Fox wrote, can at most only be the outline, the border of the fields in which we play. 

With the unexpected effects this year has had on all my beliefs and imaginations, now is the time for me to learn to stop killing God.  At this point I do not know whether I will hold on to a Christianity that most Christians would recognise as "sound".  But whatever happens I need to include the searching, the openness, the disquieted chaos, the recognition that the boundless beyond will always bring new thrilling surprises and transformations.

Just as Zarathustra explained, "One must still have a chaos inside oneself to give birth to a dancing star."

May we all find the excitement in chaos, in uncertainty, so that we can all give birth to dancing stars.

A Psychotherapist, a Poem, Pythagoras, and a Publication

White Lodge went by several names.


It was known as The College of Psychotherapeutics.  White Lodge had several aims.  One was to help others become healed and live unfractured lives.  Another was to train others to help others become healed and live unfractured lives.  The ultimate purpose behind those aims at White Lodge was that they would work themselves out of their jobs, that those jobs would no longer be needed.

As part of the work of White Lodge, a little magazine journal was regularly published, The Psychotherapist.  I received that journal for several years but, as with everything else from that time, I destroyed them, threw them away or sold them in my Christian evangelical zeal.  The journal contained articles from the staff and students at White Lodge, poetry, stories.  Always an interesting read, if issues were still available as a bumper compilation volume or a digital file then I'd get hold of them.

I wrote poems.  I submitted a couple informally to The Pyschotherapist.  Very informally, as I probably had never been intending to submit them for anything.  And I think they both appeared in print.  The short one certainly did - a triolet.

I'd been taking an adult education writing class in the evenings - I'd had to get permission from the school headmaster to take the class because I wasn't an adult.  An entertaining class, we were set homework each week to write very different things in very different formats.  One week had had to write short poems - haiku, clerihews, triolets, and a longer poem, a sestina.

Until this moment I had forgotten the word sestina.  But I wrote one.  I have no idea what the 39 lines were about but seem to recall it had minor merit.  Perhaps this week I should write another.  It's a disciplined form.  Six stanzas of six lines followed by a three line envoi.  The words that end the lines of the first stanza also end the lines of the other five stanzas, but they are rotated to appear in different lines.  Lots of people have written sestinas.  Here's a link to one, The Guest Ellen at the Supper for Street People by David Ferry.  I'm a poetry ignoramus so hadn't heard of Ferry but am impressed by this poem.

The sestina is lost.  If it did turn up I'd probably be very embarrassed by it.  But I still remember one of the clerihews.

Pythagoras, Pythagoras,

You'll never quite catch up with us.

Most of your rules are out of date,

But your rule of the triangle still works great.

Very silly - but that's normal for clerihews.  Some are much more clever than mine - but I was only sixteen.  That's my excuse anyway!

And I still remember one of the triolets.  It's not exactly to the level of Thomas Hardy's triolet but, as I plead, I was sixteen.  And I'm not a poetic genius.  So this is the triolet that turned up in the pages of The Psychotherapist.  Since that time I have rarely written poems.  The only poetry I've tried this decade has been written in the last six months and is already on this blog.  And since that time I've certainly not been a published poet!

Why am I here?

I'd quite like to die.

If I did, people would cheer.

Why am I here?

Why won't people hear

When I talk and I cry?

Why am I here?

I'd quite like to die.

I knew depression.  I knew about feeling bad.  And a memory came out as I wrote.  By the time I wrote it for the class and then took it to White Lodge I was happier and did not want to die.  Later the school English teacher set us homework to write a suicide note.  We had such joyful school lessons!  Fortunately the teacher didn't turn out to be an evil cult leader, "Bring in your suicide letters children, and then we can enter into the spirit of things."  I began my note with that poem - and my note received an A+ grade.

My experiences of depression were awful.  Later experiences were worse.  But I can't claim it's all been worthless - they did at least give me good marks in an English lesson.

(This has been written without aim or plan and without any conscious memory of words like sestina)

Psalm Workshop

Before the summer, a few weeks after I started to attend MCC, the church ran a psalm writing workshop.  Several of us gathered one Saturday morning and we each wrote psalms - mainly in words but also in pictures.  My first attempt in several years at writing something other than sermons.  Sharing those words and pictures afterwards revealed a set of gifted, creative people - writers of far more impressive words than the ones that follow.

I wrote a lot about how my life had been, the thoughts I'd had about myself and the relationship with "God" that I'd had - based on what I thought that God was and what I thought he had said about people.  I later cut down those words to three lines.

 

With fractured head and heart I said the right words and lied.
My fundamental fault was all I saw but could not find
and mercy was pleaded for and the gift of freedom rejected.

And then I turned to life as I saw it by then - a lot had changed.  I chose a verse from the Biblical psalms.  A verse I'd heard many times before but not accepted.  I couldn't accept because it wasn't how I saw myself.  The following is some of what was written that day.  I believe now that this is true of me.  Not just true of me - but true for every human being who has lived or will ever live.

We are all wonderful, splendid, magnificent creatures.

Psalm 139:14:    I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.    Wonderful are your works;        this I know very well.

You O God made me, created in beauty.
You O God made me, and you saw that I was good.

Can I reject the divinely inspired splendour that is me?
Can I reject this glorious being you embrace?

I am your wonderful work
    Enlighten me of the wonders of my uniqueness.
That I may Know Your love
    And weep in the freedom of thankfulness.

Beautiful lover, bowing to me, kissing your child
Teach me my beauty
    that passionate, extravagant thankfulness may thrive,
So all I can do is bow to you;

    Kissing you, my creator
    Kissing your child, my salvation
    Kissing your spirit, my comfort.

You created me in magnificent beauty,
And God saw that I was very good.

Six Months

A few words jotted down while sitting in a coffee house, 3rd December.

Be warned again, this has a very low quality threshold due to being slammed down onto paper in under 10 minutes.  It's honest - but certainly not crafted.  All the repetition was (mainly) intentional.




Unforeseen, from unforeseen.
Six months, a lifetime
Pain filled joy, joy filled pain.

I stood before myself.
Stripped naked in the clothes I wore
Naked, revealed, plain as the face
Through which I found release.

I stood before myself.
Stripped of illusion, the manhood I wore
Truth, revealed, plain as the body,
The flesh that hid the she who is.


The unforeseen, clearly seen.
Six months, beautiful revelation
Pain into clarity, tears into joy.

I stand before myself
Naked, washed clean by the torrents
Stripped of the lies, barricades broken
Into the unity of open knowledge.

I stand before myself
Stripped naked, bare flesh of a new life
She, revealed, plain as that man's face
She, brilliant freedom, released in love


Unforeseen, from unforeseen.
New life begins now.

Unforeseen, from unforeseen.
Given future, given hope.