Lindholm's "Wizard of the Pigeons"

Megan Lindholm's 1984 novel Wizard of the Pigeons is a novel that combines street grit and magical realism, urban fantasy and PTSD, with all the respect, wonder, and empathy in the world.

"A Jar of Pain": Lyrics By Jackie Leven

CLASSIC NORTHERN DIVERSIONS

I took a train out of leeds in the smear and stain

I saw the city pass by in the shuffling rain

I'm in huddersfield drinking in the slubber's arms

and i walked through slush by broken farms

where huddling sheep are turning grey

in the cold light of a nothing day

it took me fifty long years just to work out

that because i was angry didn't mean i was right

now i'm sitting in a bar alone

with the jukebox playing a terrible song

the bartender says I see it's you again

I been drinking deep from a jar of pain

Ch -- i remember once i went home like this

i had my mother in tears as i felt her kiss

now my mother is heavenbound

and her body lies in unmarked ground

in every heart in every home

there's a dying man who lives alone

he close the door and he turn away

and the tide rushes in on a fatal shore

i can never get too close to coal

with a glass in my hand and the ember's crack

but the fire's gone out and the chimney's closed

and there's a round jeer sticking on my back

ch --

I took a train out of leeds in the smear and stain

i saw the city pass by in the shuffling rain

and with chimneys leaning to the sea

i got the salt of sunderland creasing me

i took a jar of pain to the soaking field

and to the lonely seawall inn south shields

if i was a man which i am not

standing in the last of the rotten snow

i'd fall on my knees and cry out loud

to the snowy river and the icy flow

i took a train out of leeds in the smear and stain

i saw the city pass by in the shuffling rain

--Jackie Leven

from his CD Shining Brother Shining Sister

Face Time: Wet Clay

Practice session. 

Byron: "My Soul Is Dark"

I

My soul is dark -- Oh! quickly string
          The harp I yet can brook to hear;
And let thy gentle fingers fling
          Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear.
If in this heart a hope be dear,
          That sound shall charm it forth again:
If in these eyes there luck a tear
          'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain.

II

But bid the strain be wild and deep,
          Nor let they notes of joy be first:
I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
          Or else this heavy heart will burst;
For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
          And ached in sleepless silence long;
And now 'tis doomed to know the worst,
          And break at once -- or yield to song.

--Lord Byron

Middle English Lyric: "Foweles in the Frith"

Foweles in the frith,
The fisses in the flod,
And I mon waxe wod.
Mulch sorw I walke with
For beste of bon and blod.

--anonymous

from Middle English Lyrics:
A Norton Critical Edition,
selected and edited by M.S. Luria and R. L. Hoffman,
W.W. Norton: New York,
1974.

"The Sea In The Head": Two More From Kennelly's "Islandman"

When will we permit the sea in the head

To flow as it will?

The moon has laws but no theories.

It sends out a cold, golden call

And hangs in suspense for the answer

We fear to give.

I would release the sea in the head.

I would let it live,

Pour through the brain's darkest caves,

Out through the eyes,

Touching the distant skin of other 

Minds and bodies.

Who will say which is more real --

My hands on the sea,

The strange flesh or the hurt roar

That is part of me?

Who will say which is more felt --

Loneliness

Or the desolation written on stones

When the sea withdraws?

I have learned to live both night and day

Uncertain of day and night.

This beautiful island is poised forever

In a dubious light.

--Brendan Kennelly,

Two poems from his "Islandman," a book or sequence of poems that  I've pointed to and quoted from before here and here.

Borrowed, with respect, from this volume:

Brendan Kennelly, Breathing Spaces: Early Poems, 
Bloodaxe Books: Newcastle upon Tyne, 1992.

Langston Hughes' "Island"

ISLAND

Wave of sorrow,
Do not drown me now:

I see the island
Still ahead somehow.

I see the island
And its sands are fair:

Wave of sorrow,
Take me there.

--Langston Hughes



(Thanks, Mi Robin)

Blue Drop

"Why can't you ever let anything just go?" Cora cried.  "Just let it go."

"You think I like remembering everything?" said Tom.  "There's this deep well--dark, dark blue with no edges that I can see--and I just keep dropping deeper and deeper."

"What are you talking about now?  Can't you just finish an argument, for once?"

"Finish it?  There's never an end, don't you get that?  That's what hollow, what empty, means.  It still hurts.  You blink, and I can roll out this anger at what happened before, at what you did or didn't do, at what I did and didn't do, like it happened yesterday.  And it's been years.  You know all that.  Of course, I still get mad.  Getting mad hurts less than being sad.  Sad's like this grip that squeezes and squeezes and never lets up.  The only way to breathe is to roar."

"Roar, roar, roar!  The past--let it go!  You need some help."

"Why do you think I'm still talking?  What do you think I'm doing here?  Throw me a goddamn rope."

"No!  No, you . . . coward!  Swim for it.  Swim out of your goddamn imaginary blue hole yourself!  Or drown.  Drown, drown, drown, drown."

Draft in motion, from "The Devil's Acre."

Dream-Return

Rudi's been dead now three and a half years, but last night he visited me in a dream, that big old happy self doing his same old tricks. Felt really good.

Rudi would have been seventeen on April Fool's Day.

I've dreamed recently of my father and my friend Keith, both deceased, and in the dreams they were very much alive, very much going about fairly mundane tasks. Those dreams felt good too. Waking has had its own sorrows, sure, but the dreams felt good.

I can't recall in which poem just now, but Carolyn Kizer wrote words that I find comforting and haunting, puzzling and promising:

I dream of the dead,

Kind, brilliant, and comforting.

The lost return to us

When we are lost.

A Handful of Clay

Clay Fetish: Gestural exercise: live model, limited time.

Sculpture mix; pit-fired on Ocean Beach: 2000 or 2001.

P.S. The model had arms, but I left them off on purpose. They didn't look right, at least in my hands. Instead, I wanted to focus on the curve of the back, on the way the model folded his body upon itself, and on the way the whole piece fit--sat, lay--in the palm of my hand.