Ode to Consciousness

There is a meeting place of mind and eyes
where images compete for conscious view
and where perception banishes surprise
at what is beaten down, and what wins through.
With or without our influence or ken
it's here our individual selves begin;
for some are dulled and others walk in sleep
never to wake again,
though quiet voices whisper in the din
of time for laughter and a time to weep.

That part of us that is no rushing thing
awaits our quietness, or our fatigue
if nothing less can calm the eddying
onrush of our futilities. Intrigue,
infatuation, habit and despair
crowd to the fore, impatient - yet it waits
forever and beyond. Is it so weak
that it cannot declare
an interest in our battle with the fates,
or does it hide because we fail to seek?

What flows below the words may yet awake
remembrance of an earlier array
of promises fulfilled. Each new mistake
derails the latent urge, with each new day,
to change before the changeless. We can hear
the choral syntheses of soil and soul
proclaim the unity of earth and mind
in answer to the fear
of gradual dissolution of the whole
of consciousness, as molecules unbind.

The Weft

For less than the price of a pint, and free if you are a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, The Weft is a selection from my poetry files. For those not familiar with my material, I am a New Formalist, meaning that I use classical verse forms but modern standard English, not 'poetic diction'. This collection contains sonnets, roundels, sestinas, terzanelles, ballades and more, with plenty light verse interspersed with the more serious offerings. Please take a look.

kindle version

paperback version

 

Feet, breet & Matthew Gloag

Paraplexed trundles along happily, netting typically 150 page views per day and making no waves. Except for February 12th when, for no obvious reason we clocked up more than 10,000 views. These were fairly equally distributed over only three posts, one very old one about washing feet in the old Sofitel Club, one about the noise made by track pants worn outside-in (breet-breet) and one about railway platform signage in the (English) West Midlands (This Station is a No Smoking Station). Equally strange was that all 10,000 views were apparently from Israel. I have no idea why they happened. No comments were left. Possibly no human was involved, except indirectly, in programming a robot to behave totally irrationally. One of life's small mysteries, I suppose.

While My Renaissance Lute Gently Weeps

While My Renaissance Lute Gently Weeps. The title is shamelessly stolen from George Harrison and the lyrics are cobbled together by borrowing from no fewer than eight Renaisance songs, by Dowland and his peers. But the melody and lute accompaniment are my own. The lute is an unforgiving beast to play, not least because it keeps trying to escape when you're playing it.