Automatic Writing

[poliphilo]

Today I will get out and walk the walk and dislike the first thing I see as I pass through the door. There will be dandelions growing up through the asphalt and the little dogs will sniff and pass on. It is Wednesday in heaven and the free-falling flyers of the Euonymous club are making pinwheels in the air. Blue smoke trails from the heels of the biplanes. The zeppelins rove down the mountain valleys.

And I am young and together and I have a rose in the band of my hat. This is a good day. A very good day. Nothing will stop me from popping into the greengrocers and making a withdrawal. I will point my six gun and demand my money. Ha. You didn't expect that did you?

A strange morning, but not so strange as the sight of the marchers on the high street. There are elephants following the band. Fire eaters and fire walkers and strong men in leopard skin coats. the crowds cheer and the little children wave flags and rattles. Someday there will be a new Jerusalem. It will have pinnacles that break the clouds all scaly with golden tiles and tiles of lapis laxuli.

I have never understood the Queen. Why does she do it? Why do her hands wave like that, all white as lilies, all smooth as goldfish in a pool? Never have I seen so strange a thing as the coal-black members of the palace guard. They carry halbards and the halbards have ribbons tied beneath the iron-steel of the broad headed blades. They dance. They dance on the palace green and the crows and the ravens scatter and fly up and sit on the turrets of the bloody tower and make corvine conversation.

It is Wednesday still. Wednesday in heaven. Tall streams fall from the mountains. The smoke arises and goes. Nothing remains. The meadows are swept clean. The little starry daisies look at the great eye of the sun. Emerald fields and emerald eyes in the heads of the copper-skinned women of the vales.

Comments

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

The ribbons are to distract the enemy's eyes. The ravens scare me - they seem far too wise and yet far too malevolent. They know the wisdome, but they will not share it with you; no, they like to watch us stumble along, tripping over our preconceptions and prejudices and foolish notions about how the world should work.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The crows peer. They bark new orders. The clouds gather radiant in the south and the beheaded ones come tooping from the far reaches of the King's desmesnes. Alas and alack for those who give suck in those days. There will be no mercy shown. Only the whiffling of the scythes through the summer grass!

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Your automatic writing has glimmers of fine poetry inside:

smooth as goldfish in a pool? Never have I seen so strange a thing as the coal-black members of the palace guard.

Maybe you can give us a poem, now you're limbered up?

Here's the title: Wednesday in Heaven.

There you go!

Jackie

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Wednesday in Heaven

The sharpness of the coelocanth,
The murmurings of the hazy days,
Bring me at last to the lorn view
Of broken valves in radiant days.

I came and went by blessed roads
By lowering branches bravely groomed.
No-one I knew was there to point
Their fingers at the lost entombed.

I took a ship into the night
Of toilsome woes and piquant joys.
Wednesday in Heaven is all I know
Where children falter with gilded toys.

Let go, let go and let me roam
The deserts where no camels dwell.
Is this the site where builders toil
To build new palaces in hell?

Or do the wolves who plod the dawn
Come down the river to the mouth
Of fishes who engulph whole towns
Of earnest partners in the south?

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

When I playfully asked for a poem, I never expected one so moving.

This is wonderful. And you did it so quickly!

Of fishes who engulph whole towns

--What I like so very much about your poetry is your surprises:

children who falter...with gilded toys...

Thank you! I wish I had your facility and apparent ease of painting a picture of a thought.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The quickness was the whole point.

I cheated a little and changed one or two words of the first breathless draft, mainly for the sake of the metre.

Come on, you have a go now......

[ibid.livejournal.com]

That's oddly beautiful. thankyou.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I wonder where it all came from......

[ibid.livejournal.com]

And what do they know without having known things which saw the light? If they could see without hearing the friends and thery stumble perhaps if the film casing was well enough to forge the light handshake.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But will the purple hyacinths still bloom in the wastelands of Mammara after the looting of the ursine caves by the sea brigands?

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Whatever you're on, I want some.

Please.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Strong tea- that's all.

Anyone can play. Just shut down your conscious mind (as far as is possible) and write without pause for thought.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I guess it takes practice, I've never quite been able to do it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No practice at all. Or rather every run is a practice run. Just put down words as fast as they come. Don't worry about grammar or any of that stuff.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

And so ends Friday with my silly officemate back from her visit with her parents and even though she's better to work with than the last few, I do get angry with her probably because she's young and silly and she has a boyfriend she thinks we don't know he is a law student and that he comes in here but she exchanges no more than a few words with her then and he told her before she left to visit her parents in Florida and he told her just before she got on the plane last week that she was getting fat I would never take that from anyone, never mind someone who is supposed to care about me of course I don't have anyone who cares about me at night I lied in bed and try not to let myself think because I know I'm alone and it will not get any better only worse as my parents get older and are no longer in the house five blocks up the street so I smother my tears and thy to hurry off to sleep but my dreams are haunted by the way I feel I wander aimlessly and alone through field of flowers and the birds shout that I am all by myself and they don't even want to fly close to me like the butterfly at the conservation house in Niagara Falls that lingered for a moment then lit on Susie's jacket I was happy for her but jealous because I think I have better shoulders and I am a more understanding person but the butterfly didn't think so and that made me sad that even the butterflies thought I should be alone

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's rather wonderful.

Funny and sad. I particularly like the bit about the butterfly and the shoulders.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

After the dawn comes and the green whales sing without wailing the string irons.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Let them come. We have harpoons in readiness. No whale of might will blight the shortcomings of these days!

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Then when the cowlight fades only then am I to go with the light of the darkening wind.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Beware the cowlight! Gregarious beings lurk in it. There are no answers, no additives, only questions without end!

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Unto I comes the frightning puce delila cream chees artichokes.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Which must be resisted. No mice have ever eaten so much. The crowd unravels and will never be seen again.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

When the goat fades and the moon sings anselm to sleep without the wingbat to keep him company I shall go without the silmarillian.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A sad story indeed. I shall mourn by the waters of Erith amd make moan beneath the cedars of Lebanon until night comes and all is forgiven.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Good morning to the outer circle of the miraging mirror apple coloured womabts who greet the sounds of the city with gleeful pink geishas.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And let the trumpets sound, for who should come but the Great Cham. He wears undergarments of puple silk and the umbrella that shades his noble head is made of green taffeta.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Frech wings are coming on the pink ground dragos with their wngs of night andf their suits of grey silk on the apples of the daylight musings.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And this morning there are no raindrops of pearl or opal but a fresh sheath of unbeaten sunlight that falls across the landscape in waves of wheat.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Without the cold nightingale to sing me to the sea how till I know where the lapwings so with the trees outside?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You will know because the lapwings will tell you themselves. They will send postcards from beyond the veil. No-one will hear the glad tidings but you. And you will be declared a prophet and a truth singer and the wings of the evening will crown your head with laurels.