Author: Harry

ku

watching the paso
incense and body heat

I can´t work out how to do a hash sign on a Spanish keyboard. Ho-hum. In fact all the punctuation seems to be in the wrong place. I also notice that on IE version whatever this is, the site is displaying incorrectly. Fucking Microsoft. Why don´t they have Firefox anyway?

It doesn´t seem fair to do napowrimo this way, I shouldn´t have to read my poemy things a whole week after writing them. Here we go.

Who could ever hope to silla
finer city than Sevilla?
The architecture has no pilla.
So let us give three chillas
and have some billas
and Tilla Marillas
and watch the picadors thrust their spillas
into the quivering rillas of stillas.
Tired of Sevilla?
Never filla.
Cordoba is very nilla.

a short one:

The bath is short, so I lie
like a toppled buddha
to wash the sand from my hair.

another short one. Most of them are…

Sometimes kindly reality, to spare us thought,
behaves exactly as we think she ought;
a group of children with untidy clothes and hair
play untidy football in a sandy Spanish square.

A double dactyl:

Windhover Schmindhover
Falco tinnunculus
Angel of Death to the
mice on the hill;

whirring his wingtips so
mesmerhypnotically
scurrying critters are
bent to his will.

no title:

a leaf turns
in the breeze

a leaf turns
in the water

a leaf turns
in the mind

a sparrow bathing in the dust

Finally one *with* a title

The Andalusi Notebook

I know why the sky is blue / and why moths fly into flames.

These are not metaphors.

The caged bird sings for the same reason as the uncaged.
All insight is reductionist.

Whether I believe that is irrelevant.

I am writing this at night, outside a bar next to an olive tree that is claimed to be the oldest in Europe.
I am drinking red wine.
There are horse tethered nearby.

All that is also irrelevant.

Things that have died in my lifetime:
the typewriter;
the Pope;
Yugoslavia.

The death of the typewriter was the death of Modernism.

The death of Yugoslavia was the death of Modernism.

The death of the Pope was the death of Modernism.

Nearly there…

Pour on water, pour on water

St Paul´s is burning.
Slabs of stone fall inward
from the dome.
Swifts twist for moths
among the smoke.

A bronze sword lies in the thick silt.

No title, again.

It purifies:
the slow white heat of the south
that presses on the land
until by afternoon
only the bees are moving
in the thyme.
The soul is left dry and bleached
like the skull of a horse.

and a clerihew for luck:

Federico Garcia Lorca
was a prolific talker
who would frequently recite
long, long, long into the night.

I think there’s a good poem somewhere in the idea of a field-guide. This is not that poem; I would need to spend some more time working out what overall effect to go for. But that’s napowrimo for you; can’t afford to think things through.

Cloisonné Flycatcher Muscicapa umbraticola

L11-27cm Nests in dense clumps of burdock or chervil, under the eaves of hospices, or in the crevices of drystone walls of slate or limestone. A scarce autumnal visitor to Northern Europe; in Britain confined to Renfrewshire and the Welsh Marches. Sometimes seen on migration hunting for spiders along canal towpaths.

Identification Smallish flycatcher with upright stance and fretful manner. ♂ made unmistakable by tarblack head, lilac throat and poppyred primaries fringed with gold. The ♀, a muted greyish-brown, is sometimes mistaken for Concrete Starling, Dingy Swift or Broad-beaked Warbler, but distinguishable by ticcing head motion and skulking habit.

Voice Generally quiet. Alarm call a rasping frep-frep. Song, delivered from a thorn or chimney-top, a slow, tuneless ‘clü-clü.. cli ti titi-tu’ (‘Baker, Baker, tell me where I am’).