Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Jonathan Beale- Three Poems


A possible Bowie cut up lyric

  1. From Viaticum  by John Pack

My mind was racing
It was some years from now.
                                                James Fenton

Ravines shoaling were as we waited
Temple’s rhythm calling
For wishbones caught in
Through lichen’s guide
They will last within this
Termless threshold.
Then – beyond… beyond
Towards the waiting faces
Through the rivers interior drum
Dust runs after the cloud
Still beyond the threshold
Yes, still bey-ond that
Thres- hold
That… thr - thr - threshold…
Until the deer prints
This…. his mountain….



The last Lear before the stage door

We throw flowers on the casket to make death smell better….’ Rollo May 

After Robert Stephens’ King Lear 1993

That footpath which leads
us all to King Lear’s door.
Angers torrent
grows ever colder
Becoming a spent landscape.

His final performance
Left him long alone –
Long before the end of the run.
The Green Room
missed his presence.  

Becoming something
He’d never been….
The ‘off stage character
Lear had become something else:
The creaking, creaking gate.

The flowers and applause
grabbed the moment.
Fading into the night
The night was full of
young Edmunds’ in their

mystery – in their skulduggery.
He’d lost his way to Lear’s
own door & somehow he
stumbled through the
garden gate.  After the final curtain.



16 Years after….

A visit with Christopher & Don, Santa Monica Canyon 1984

After David Hockney’s painting

The artist in the east - writer in the west
They have boxed the compass.

(in their own private way, their own style).
Why is the sphere so economic?

The scientist questions as the artist accepts
The globe is spinning still on its spindle. 

In the unengaging world – where the industriousness
Of the world of the brush and pen find.

And can be unacknowledged – still they beaver
On and on, in the world of words untangling

the tread of clarity and redefining the world
In another shape and form and style. 

As they look circumnavigating the globe
They’re eyes pass forming…

a perfect circle and a perfect world.
Orwell’s prediction, just around the corner.

How the world’s taxonomy falls into boxes
& cubes this perfectly Post Cubist manor.


No comments:

Post a Comment