*** | Lublin, Polska August 2016: photo by Tomasz Watras, 28 December 2016

Petrified wood in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona: photo by Jonathan Zander, 2006

The Petrified Forest

years dead chunks of wood

scattered along the road

traversing desert

intent on making it to Indio
did

at last chance desert stop

kid eat bad barbeque

in hundred degree heat and throw

up in back seat all

the way down into Needles yes

        while out window
in middle distance heat
mirage shimmer
actual dull and old
stript of all mystery
th'ancient tan and umber

chunks
     rolled past

#Iran A woman looks out over Tehran on Sizdeh Bedar, an annual public picnic day on the 13th day of the Iranian new year By @EbrahimNoroozi1: image via Photojournalism @photojournalink, 12 April 2017

#Spain A man wears the traditional ‘Tora’ outfit used during a medieval carnival of masks and characters in Casavieja By @dochoadeolza AP: image via Photojouournalism @photojournalink, 13 April 2017

A cave bear head in the Alcove of the Lions at Chauvet. This wonderful image was created about 30,000 years ago #IceAgeArt: image via Jamie Woodward @Jamie_Woodward_, 13 April 2017

Haruspex (Out there)

The voices of children

outside the cave

in the post-dusk half-light

pretending to be dogs

crying out in the half-light

so that the grownups

will let them get a look

at the mother of all bombs

and this is not normal

2017

GAZA CITY - Palestinian children play amidst the ruins of a building destroyed during the 50-day war in 2014. @mohmdabed #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 13 April 2017

Dhaka, Bangladesh.: photo by Md. Enamul Kabir, 20 February 2015

Ethiopian Orthodox Christian woman prays during washing of the feet ceremony at Deir El Sultan monastery on top of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, traditionally believed by many to be the site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus Christ, in Jerusalem, Thursday, April 13, 2017: photo by Dan Balilty/AP, 13 April 2017

The Domestic Life of Ghosts

Whoso list to haunt could do worse than to
Obtain the license, get the picture.
Spook finders must find spooks to put the face,
Name and space coordinates together.
What is kept in the mind perimeter
Retains a wild autonomy through fate.

I will retreat to the precorporate.
Let fate have what is fate's and allow
This spirit to slip through time's difficult
Nets with the devious fingers of
A wild wind, while I run along behind.

TC: The Domestic Life of Ghosts, from Sleepwalker's Fate (1995)

Covered in prayer shawls, Jewish men of the Cohanim priestly caste participate in a blessing during the Passover holiday, in front of the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray in Jerusalem's Old City, Thursday, April 13, 2017. The Cohanim, believed to be descendants of priests who served God in the Jewish Temple before it was destroyed, perform a blessing ceremony of the Jewish people three times a year during the festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot.: photo by Ariel Schalit/AP, 13 April 2017

Eifellandschaft zwischen den Jahreszeiten | by glasseyes view

Eifellandschaft zwischen den Jahreszeiten | Schlangenberg/Breiniger Berg [Schlangenburg Nature Reserve]: photo by glasseyes view, 4 March 2018

Eifellandschaft zwischen den Jahreszeiten | Schlangenberg/Breiniger Berg [Schlangenburg Nature Reserve]: photo by glasseyes view, 4 March 2018

Danger | rumble in the jungle [Oecher Bend fairground ride, Kermis, Aachen]: photo by glasseyes view, 1 April 2018

Eternity

The god of war assured King Arsounas, "Do not be fooled by words. No life is taken. Know that no one was ever born, nor does anyone die." In the violent mini-eternity of the warrior, combat is conducted according to a ritual formal as song: no one is ever born, no one can ever die. The left-handed rockabilly guitarist whose left arm was severed by an RPG round at Dak To has come back to life in a part of my body that died long before we started to patrol this part of the river of eternal woe. His life is mine though I never lived it. The violent backwash of the rotors is crimsoned by a fine aerosol spray of blood while a loudspeaker amplifies the goddess' excited laughter.

TC: Eternity, from Sleepwalker's Fate (1995)

1978_4698 | South China Sea, Philippines, 1978: photo by Pierre Wayser, sometime in 1978

Blown Away

ephemeral as tinkerbell
unmoored yet not unmoved
tossed cloudward, flipped
sans volition
into the flow

going but not wanting to go
without the other flotsam

2014

L1000659 | Hong Kong 2009: photo by Pierre Wayser, 2 November 2012

Motherly Love [Roma]: photo by mr.reverend, 14 October 2016

Untitled: photo by Martín Molinero, 11 January 2018

Needles, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 17 October 2017

Central City South | Phoenix, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 6 January 2018

Central City South | Phoenix, Arizona: photo by Dean Terasaki, 6 January 2018

Untitled | by el zopilote

Rio Rancho, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 18 March 2018

Untitled | by el zopilote

Rio Rancho, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, 18 March 2018

#Trump now calls the WH, "tippy top shape.” He's not just a moron, Trump is completely insane!: image via John Moffitt @JohnRMoffit, 2 April 2018

3 comments:

kent4 April 2018 at 00:30
TC: This Woodman is petrified. k
Mose234 April 2018 at 11:42
The different moments of each poem, all the work of a life reading life sharply and fearlessly.

vast/ Arizona republics of more - save us from the dead horizons.

The kid's face before a table of kittens is a poem in itself.
TC4 April 2018 at 12:38
Thank you friends

Every kid's face before the table of life - hey World what am I getting into!?

The Thirties radio play of The Petrified Forest imprinted deeply one freezing night under a blanket in the back seat of a car speeding through the large prairie darkness... kid of course had no idea what a petrified forest was or is... making it all the more terrifying... but the beautiful rule back then was always Don't ask... thus one could loiter in the penetralium of the mystery more or less indefinitely... a vagrancy w/o intent... the loveliest thing about a universe one can't comprehend is its incomprehensibility... every explanation of any/everything only making matters worse & c as we all know... unless we don't

Whereas in case it matters (really it doesn't), the bit of anecdote in the poem (Indio) was born in another, later back seat... A De Soto...

To sip from the Fountain of Life yet then push oneself away from the table of life and say, I'm good... how strange!

TOM CLARK

Tuesday, 3 April 2018

The Petrified Forest (Six Poems)

Eifellandschaft zwischen den Jahreszeiten | Schlangenberg/Breiniger Berg [Schlangenburg Nature Reserve]: photo by glasseyes view, 4 March 2018

Eifellandschaft zwischen den Jahreszeiten | Schlangenberg/Breiniger Berg [Schlangenburg Nature Reserve]: photo by glasseyes view, 4 March 2018

Blown Away

TC: Human Life, from Light and Shade (2005)

3 comments: