Abridged -- by File

 photo "Hopscotch to Oblivion"  by Andy Wright

 

Bridge Building for Beginners



How princesses and pirates were press-ganged from plastic
cutlery, paper cups, papier-mâché,
newspaper hats, patches, paint.
The headlines, the cover-ups! How we as kids
recycled wonder from waste.

How our kids still rattle packets, heckle boxes ‘n sniff
‘n sneak, happily peeking illegally
into wrappers under our trees.
The reach of our trees exceeds our long arms! Now our kids
whisper-up worlds in their sleep.

How our kids use books to build houses and bridges
with walls ‘n floors ‘n rooves ‘n all,
‘n angles ‘n arches ‘n eaves.
It’s what pulped wood’s good for! How our kids
build bridges with leaves.

Engineering wonders; how pirates evolve,
as recycled love via bridges, from nerds.
How our kids grow out of ourselves, off our shelves
and into our lives. How the internet lives! How our world
grows out of our words.



Bridging – The Gap


Life under a hard hat, the constant
cacophony of construction, percussive
tools ‘n tool belt, tool box, pick-up truck and
heavy callused hands try to touch softest skin, can’t
sand down thick skin enough
to allow contact.

Tries like a nail gun,

can’t, can’t, can’t.

Warnings! -- by File

The ever-inventive File has discovered this splendid site:

http://www.warningsigngenerator.com/

here are his first efforts:

you may like to make some of your own....

Young Son Looks On -- by File

   

[POV: forgotten omniscient]

[fade in] fragrant, folded boy stares out from linen basket

at man, intent on mirror, shaving, at an angle

[cut to] hidden, protected contemplation from inside wardrobe

of me, as I try to write a poem

[reveal] earnest, herb-flecked eyes from warmest kitchen corner

where I stir the Bolognese

[voiceover] The surveillance

of the ordinary by the oughtn’t be there really.

[man turns to squint through blinds]

[pan to flat horizon]

  

52 Words Wordle -- by File

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Tiny Planet? Freesia Vortex? You decide - (it's by File, anyway)

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Another Tiny Planet -- by File

"Well, if we can't park here, then where can we park?"





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Still Life with Sheba -- by File

A Coke can floats,
not yet full enough to sink

fat Vuitton chests are heaved onto
little skiffs
to be taken to her ship.

I listen closely to the Coke can
kissing the quay stone
tink, tink-tink

*

Her entourage exit the Marriott,
alight so quietly,
like sunrise

in a red dress
I’m surprised how tall she is
and how slender

the eloquence
of each soft step she takes
is in the waves, on the waves

today she articulates
her own fate,
her nation’s

we listen closely.

*

After they leave
I sit down with a Guinness
on the terrace, thinking

I light a Camel, inhale
exhale thoughts of Solomon
of gold stocks.

If she gets back
she’ll come back a rock star,
minimum, maybe a metaphor

A dancer on the water,
the morning light in song,
a moment in this harbour,
the hope of living on

Nuff Respec to Claude Lorrain - Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba

Underwater -- by File

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[running into the limitations of Blogger with this one, but if you click on the images the text will become much clearer]

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Winter Count -- File

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(File Tribe Year 2008)

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Among the Plains tribes of North American Indians there exists a custom of recording the year in a pictogram. These have come to be known as the Winter Count and they represent a significant event that happened in that year.

The Winter Count of one year was usually a single, simple symbol and was often incorporated into a series which carried the history of the tribe in a visual temporal map.

Tribal elders were responsible for remembering the stories that accompanied these Winter Counts and would pass them on verbally to the others in the tribe, who in turn did the same as the elders themselves passed on. This way the generations of each tribe kept a tangible record of their own history, they were usually marked on a single tanned buffalo hide, and also kept alive the custom of oral dissemination of history through stories.

More information can be found here:
http://www.trailtribes.org/greatfalls/since-time-immemorial.htm (scroll down to Reckoning Time)
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/mtoll/winter.htm
http://www.sdhistory.org/mus/ed/ed%20buff18.html
… but it should be noted that the practice of adding dates and/or text is usually recent and many old Winter Counts have been ‘updated’ in this way since their original creation.

Others may want to join me in creating and posting their Winter Count. Ours, chez file, was very easy to decide on as we relocated from Asia to North America but it could represent any significant happening for you or your ‘tribe’ in 2008. Artistic ability is really not important, see mine, only the wish to share with Others your tribal history.

(Blackfeet Year of Smallpox (1864))

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Residual Definitions -- by File

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Where I Am -- File

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Underwater IV -- by File

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..........................
underwater IV

waves
of washes
on mottled paper
shallows of
insurgent
sighs

lines
defiling
implicit horizons
oceans exploring
the shores of
forms

dreams
of the seas
at the tips of bristles
vision listens to
whispers of
brushes

wishes
and washes
waves overlapping
worlds, underwater
often spills
over

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The Road to Pai -- by File

Guardian.co.uk (remember them?) now have a poetry blog where you can post your own pomes on a different subject each week. Needless to say File and Zeph have been prowling about there, and File wrote this one for the 'scenic spots' topic:


The Road to Pai


“Follow that scent!” you say
To the tuk-tuk pilot
In the day-glo jacket.
He smiles, soi
Disperse wildly
In every direction.
It’s the perfume of his birth, of breakfast
Of klong and death
It’s inside his sun-washed,
Knocked-off Diesel t-shirt
The ink under his skin
And long days working
In traffic

You decide on
A private eye,
Renting a Yamaha 125
For yourself. You set off,
Out of the city, into the mountains, climbing
Spiral roads by spirit houses’
Painted eaves and gold leaf like gold teeth
In the dark mouths of jungles. Here
Lie homes for ghosts, secret
Agents of other worlds, instinctively you know
Interrogating saffron
Won’t help.

Still pursuing hues
Looking down now on rice paddies,
The shade of verdant that is liquid emerald
Eddies in the shimmering late afternoon
Stream. Freewheeling
Past warnings of landmines
And signs to hot springs, sources
And waterfalls, informants
Furtive whisperings
At the hidden ends of dirt tracks
Off the main road that
Traces the valley to Pai.

The Shan fingerprint below
Twists into focus
The wooden ridges, shaded whorls
That once sheltered horses
Now keeps vinyl seats of trail bikes
Out of the heat of the day.

Finding chicken curry and noodles,
Cold Beer Chang and harsh menthol cigarettes
Called Falling Rain or
‘Saifon’ in the local sing-song
Which dips and soars; smoke kites on
Fickle thermals over the two-stroke
Spiked beats of mopeds
Laden with durian or jackfruit or corn
Or laughing children
On their way home from school
Looking right back at you

They say: “We’re all detective,
We are all clues”

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Summer Haikus 4

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by File

The Malevolence of Swans -- by File

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[Remembering]

Malevolent swans
on the still lake
and later grease stained
Newspapers

in quiet moments I can still hear
Rippling, still feel
Crimped edges

[scraped wafers on Billboards
reposted so often that all they promote
Now is mess]

Sibilant dragons embroidered in
Silk on Silk
thousands of red paper lanterns
leaving, levitated
by scented candles

Mah-jong tiles in the rain

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Another Filling Another Failure -- by File

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we were both bleeding from the gums
when we met
malnourished neglected amateur experts
solitary technicians with bad reputations
unsanitary practices and stuffed filing cabinets
inflamed with infected
bloody case histories
of traumatized ex-patients

anaesthetized and ethereal
we did what we knew
what we thought we had to do
the internal probing of each others tissue
for live nerves in latex gloves
with sharp metal instruments
extracting wisdom detritus
and drilling for goodness
sake in crimson caves

we wore headlamps
on our foreheads
because we cared
we shared our padded vinyl reclining chairs
that fit snug stuck
to our clammy forms
for oral audit both aware
of all the tense fingers that had
clutched clinched there
before us in fear the others like us
that had clamped shut their eyes
and opened wide
and hoped in aching desperation for relief inside

sigh
another filling another failure
dental records never lie
we worked hard on our smiles
with laughing gas by rank canals
and bridges in decay
but our ether embrace
hid the grace
less
ness of our pain
we lost the whiteness that defined us
in the unwinnable
war against stains

deniable accountability
in luminous braces
time and patience past
trust
started missing appointments
hope stopped payments
our rosy dreams lay caked
at the bottom of our glasses

we took to meeting
in the waiting room
between Hello! and Home and Garden
gnashing grinding
second-hand false teeth
felt crammed in didn’t fit
malocclusion wince
rinse
spit



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10 or Less: Life Story -- by File

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Knocking on the Hull -- by File

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Father here I am,
            the woken. Stolen
By nocturnal tides, the taken from
The undertow of your troubled soul,
Your drinking, drowning
Me, I had to go

Father here I am,
            the frozen child
The freezing man forsaken. Lost
Sailor incarcerated, son nailed on
A sunken cross; the Kursk and
Memories of you
And home

Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be this abysmal nave
On earth as inertia and insistence in oceans
Don’t leave us with our sins as we left those who sinned against us
Which led us into conscription and delivered us not from war games
Give us this day viaticum
For their state is their kingdom,
And their power is their glory,
For ever and ever

Father here I am,
            echolocation, the spoken,
The waves, vibrations,
These verses. The hull between us
Is iconostasis; leaking,
Rusty,
Broken.

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Life Sentences -- by File

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‘slike you was on the box Ken, I’d already run but
Looking back in from the outside,
One lit window framed by the night
You there, your heavy hands in the air, your charmlessness
And your sweaty armpits, police everywhere

I left the country and Yes I took the cash
Went somewhere warm and somewhere warmer
Got heat rash, passports, a dicky belly and sunglasses
Missed the Arsenal at home, Heinz soup and Daddies sauce
And not much else, straight up; I was glad you took the rap

At first, but it went on and on, we’d been a team
I was a man with a phantom limb, haunting him
Couldn’t meet a steady gaze, wore a cap to hide my face
Handcuffed to myself, I was chafed by regret, loneliness
Is like tinnitus innit? It grates

You a big man in a tiny cell, me I got smaller in the vastness of the world,
Even so there’s been girls mate, I’ve been lucky with them
Snap happy tourists bussed in no end, cash to spend
Leaving, in the morning like winter was coming,
Litter, emptied jetties and bars and lipstuck graffiti scars

“Wherever you go, there you are” said one
There was me wondering when, how and if I’d be released
And her words caught me like a disease, I realized
I’d never been anywhere; only ever just Not There
There’s no hiding inside as you know Ken

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Rules and Instructions 4: Rules for Gnus -- by File

The recent discovery of Ancient Gnustic tablets has thrown light on hitherto unsuspected Ancient Gnustic Gnowledge: