Monday, February 06, 2006

Here is the first poem and thus the first part of the first "room" of Eyelight:


Eyelight

How, at this light of time
Can I, a being bright yet dark, unblind
this aspect under the eye, and, breeding:
breed thus a truth? Not
a general, transcendent truth that sparkles
like a light on a gay green Christmas tree, but
some signal interchanged: some moment:
this, all this....

It began somehow, and I
and you also, got caught up in it all:
you know, the usual thing, the he/she/it and the
terrible lovely, and and

the Begin: the big big single bang bang boom!

the singular begin. it hangs here

Our task is: never to waver, to neither look right nor left:
and indeed as I know you are thinking, there are certain uncertainties
whose monstrous beauty is almost nearly tiresome:
Why couldnt the matter: the deep stuff in the dark spring of things:
why couldnt it get in control? Why wernt we informed immediately?
There has to be an inquiry of course. What was the matter with
the matter? Could I tell you? That it kept throwing molds, kept
re-shaping – kept touching the clay and rebreeding life and so on:
but nothing is ever perfect as you’ve probably noticed. Matter
and fire for example are surely forever at war.

The special thing that burns in the eye: they are in conflict.
Eternal. The usual thing: Dog has set up a conflict, a complex:
a complex conflict like a five volume analysis of Finnegans Wake.
The Joycean, the Miltonic thing: which ever turns you on or out.

nothing is connected – somehow.

An enormous luminosity grew between her eyes and we were dumfounded: forgetting what was origin, orange, apple, or
where the serpent had parked the sedan beside the spreading sneer of the evening’s trees who were lush and unapproachable in the growing and licentious gloom whose possibilities mean so much, especially to the few in the know. So I stand outside in derided non-decision, forever
a pastel perhaps: struggling to at least reach the status of a syllable, or even a new word. Or had you noticed. Lets go inside...I have things to discuss...

10 comments:

muzzlehatch said...

Hi Richard,

well I just posted on my blog about your poem, in the hope it may spark some sort of discussion...

Richard said...

Thanks - can you send my Blog address to Scott etc ? - I must send it myself - regards Richard

Richard said...

The phrase "it hangs here" should be to the extreme RHS by itself so it appears literally to hang over the edge of the poems's wall of text, so to speak. Richard.

muzzlehatch said...

Hi Richard,

I've been trying to find out a way to put format into the blog entries, and if you use microsoft word, you can download a plugin which lets you upload your document direct from word onto your blog, it retains the set-out and font you've used in word, it's at

http://buzz.blogger.com/bloggerforword.html

Richard said...

Muzzle

Thanks - I transferred my poem from Word and indeed it didn't retain the layout as I wrote it originally So I'll look at that link.

When I started or restarted writing poetry in about 1988 and from then until perhaps more recently - layout wasn't important as no one (or very few people) saw my poems - they heard them - so I was "published" - so to speak -each week. This I miss (somewhat) -I like 'being published'in the conventional sense - but there is an immeediacy about reading one's work that is - for me - a powerful form of "publishing"...That, however, doesn't obviate the need for "layout" - my decisions on this aspect were usually made very quickly - I went through a period in which I wrote a number of poems -influenced by the 'justification' facilty on my Amiga computer - and was fascinated by that - thus the beginning of the "square" or "rectangular" prose poems I did.

Ca said...

Absolutely wonderful.

Richard said...

Thank you cherilyn - I just got copier scanner etc snd am tyying to get some images uploaded - that's why nothing else has been done as I want images ect with Eyelight. But I may put some poems I am collating up on Eyelight shortly.

Your site and photgraphy etc looks fascinating - I will look at it more later - I saved it to Favourites. Cheers, Richard

maps said...

This I think is (in contrast with the piece posted above) in danger of becoming too abstractly verbose. Some revision in order?

Richard said...

The concept of revision is really alien to what I am doing - the work includes all errors - as life does - the idea of separate - or perfect poems is illusory. A dated concept for me.

Similarly there is no place where this project beins or ends - these comments are a part of Eyelight for example.

Richard said...

Good.Again.