The Beauty in Catastrophe

There's too much world to see
A vast collage of deserts, plains,
 forests, mountains, and sea
A gallery cannot hang a tsunami
 or a hurricane quite properly
Nor does National Geographic adequately
Capture the roar and fear soaking
 feeling of a lion's natural royalty
The world is too much to see
A shower of volcanic love is not
 an experience for you or me
A fault line dance shakes
the mood with rock too precariously
Never can we truly be
 as deep as the depths of the sea
There's too much pressure to see
 the beauty in catastrophe.

Constellation

A dream of amusement

in the terrace on top of the world.

Behold the giant ape King

climbing lady Liberty

riding a windmill of emotion

to the height of constellation.

A dream of amusement

in the Big Dipper round her finger.

Celestials as beautiful statues

with preference for frozen star light,

Heaven brought down to Earth

lo’ the mad man’s moon tonight.

Prompt and Paint Collaboration: Julia Boothroyd & Daniel Biggin

To Think and Feel 

ponder and probe

puzzle and place

we da 

we do 

we die

we die

and ooo

and aww

the thought and touch

our forethought feelings

imagined and real

our careless caress

(DB's first prompt)

"To Think And Feel" watercolour by Julia Boothroyd

(JB's response to D.B's poem To Think and Feel) 

"Flourish of Fall" watercolour by Julia Boothroyd

(JB's first prompt)

Flourish of Fall

You’re 20 autumn’s of beauty.

You’ve changed 20 different ways.

Your flourish will never finish

     and go on and on and on for days 

-and I’d cut down

the entire canopy of fading leaves,

while those colors of autumn cry,

-and leave the earth bare

as your canvas there,

where the beauty 

of fall flourished fair.

Just to give you mountains

     of paper to paint

     its fallen beauty 

     back to me.

Just to see

     you bring the trees back 

     to life again,

and watch,

     your flourish fill 

     a forest once again.

(DB's response to JB's watercolour "Flourish of Fall")


Buddha Nature

See here, what’s hidden in the forest groves,

Obscured with mossy beard, and timber bones.

Unrooted from the earthy floor it grows, 

Floating cross-legged on a throne of stones. 

Look upon the three jewels, brightly a light

Around the one, three monks with blazing eyes

Sit, trying to find refuge beneath his sight.

Yet, under the statue’s gaze fire plays and dies. 

Burning men reaching out for the flowers, 

The petals burn, that grow between his toes. 

They do not suffer in their final hours,

Yet the Buddha’s tears fall on their death throes. 

As immolation, each their own personal pyre, 
As reincarnation cries for the extinction of fire. 

(DB's second prompt)

Woodsview

I spent days without spending

in a cell full of elephants

and two brothers who meowed

      at themselves.

We shared a home not our own,

of our own choosing,

only escaping

to suck in the smoke of the streets

I had the English key

at my disposal,

and what did I dispose?

Life is waiting for periods

a structure to hide in,

a circle drawn around us,

an obsession with things larger

      than us,

the elephants, circle of time, 

unending returning hunger,

an expanding universe

trapped within the mind.

Cosmic Perspective

The entire universe 

can fit into our skulls.

We see through light and time.

We are 13 billion years old, 

      I’m told.

We’re as old as the star dust

in our bones.

We’re small-

smaller than the invisible things

that crawl upon our skin.

We don’t see them, 

they matter not.

Does the universe see 

the little things?

      Oh! but they must!

            They do!

the little things,

the kind acts

of miniature beings.

Do we matter not,

are we not matter?

Primordial Traveller

Life started with the leaving footprint

of a man treading across the stars.

He jumped from planet to planet

leaving life in his footsteps,

the mud on his boot from his

primordial world. 

He leaps from planet to planet

and life echoes in his wake, 

and death too,

death was his gift, 

the crushing force of his foot pressed,

so we do not have to wander

and leap forever through eternity,

but merely exist, 

and know that we live 

because of those primordial footsteps

and will one day follow

onward, into the cosmic abyss. 

Parrots of Men

I speak because I was spoken to

An echo of an original thought

Like the endless asking 

of a child “Why?” 

A pattern of sounds,

woven pictures,

and guiding scriptures.

The squelch of mud men

shuffling our feet in the Earth

to spell out an S.O.S in the sand.

The squawking parrots' speech

to the sky.

“Language is a bird,” 

floating on air.

Silence is truth, 

and every word a lie.

Talking to hear ourselves, 

talking to find our way, 

talking our way into existence.

The parrot is a “parrot” 

because we said so, 

but it would be so 

by any other name. 

Language,

the ultimate act of plagiarism.

Talking to fill space

shouting from mountain tops

the voice creating chasms 

an echo on the precipice

of difference and dissidents. 

The Good Ol' Devil Made Me Say

If you say that “Man is good,” 

the Devil’s Advocate would have me

say that “Man is evil.”

I need only speak of our 

nightmares,

our dreams in the dark, those

fears and demons

behind our sleeping eyes.

I need only read the headlines,

words printed in a black ink

tattoo, perpetually changing

upon the page.

I need only remember 

words branded in our history books

(that we are the sons and heirs to)

“War, murder, bombings, 

shootings, massacres and mutilations.

Those evil words,
those words we live with.

A Look Inside Life

There’s a fire in my soul,

if there’s a thing inside I know.

Sweet internal strife,

well that’s just fucking life.

There’s something that I stole,

in every breathe I owe.

My wheezing whistling fife, 

well that’s just fucking life.

There’s a feeling in this hole,

it was empty, I let it grow.

Black roses inside so rife, 

well that’s just fucking life.

Madness of Making

It starts at the fountain of white liquid gold.

Brick walls the closest thing to sky blue you’ll ever see.

Orange brick floor a shade off the flicker of flame- 

      a wet death trap, the ground that gives way

      to the fall to hell.

It is a wheel of innumerable locks with dates.

An electric sensorium, stretched over the line-

      wheels turning, jaws snapping and grinding teeth.

      A plastic river that breaks and stops and goes.

Men in white uniforms like orderlies- 

      keep the crazy process moving,
      we are explorers
      into the madness of making.

A Lie in the Sky

     We flew up into the sky.

There was a thunder storm that night, dark clouds like anvils while thunder boomed all around and the lighting came down in fierce sheets across the sky.

And we flew up, past dancing lightning strikes and the roar of thunder into the black billowing roof over the world. 

It was wet and cold and the air was electric with the loudest sound pounding your ears, but the taste, the taste and smell now that was something more peculiar. 

The mind is a storm, my neurons franticly flashed in my brain like the lighting strikes in the clouds, the words to understand it all came like the sound of thunder in my skull, words so loud in the mind they terrified and amazed me to my very core. 

     We flew faster, and plunged head first into the clouds.

We hurtled through the misty darkness with light flashing everywhere. 

I felt the mist in my eyes, I truly felt what I saw. 

Up and up we went, until the clouds themselves began to glow, like a fire beginning to grow in the sky above. 

Still there was the thunder pounding but as we broke the surface of the cloud cold and wet we were no more.

     There was still the sound of thunder pounding, and the peculiar smell there in the air. 

I thought I saw angels, I thought my flying escort an angel here in disguise, for there were many people with golden sun kissed skin dancing and music was in the very air. 

Those heavenly bodies they moved just like angels I tell you, I swear. 

My Own God, the Sun

I want the Sun

           the life that it grows

           the star living deep in our bones.

I want the Sun

           the world that it shows

           the world’s warmth shining in our homes.

I want the Sun

           the explosion of cosmic flows

           the stars exploding out of our souls.

Naturally

There’s something about this greenery,

this ever-changing scenery,

that caught me sitting serenely,

then thinking about the Sun’s energy,

though feeling apart completely.

Global Glob

Somewhere there is a million people

kissing all at once, 

somewhere there is a million people 

spitting simultaneously, 

this mass exchange of saliva, 

this mass collection on the ground.

      I know this because 

there is an aged couple, 

a foot away from me, 

in tender embrace exchanging a kiss,

as I spit to the ground, 

trying not to corrupt their kiss. 

     I’ve made this number, 

a million times in my head, 

from a fanciful equation, 

from the prediction 

of the eternal exchange 

of water, 

of the source we all come from, 

of the contradicting ways

which our waters are used. 

One makes a million, 

a pool of numberless droplets 

of unthinkable shape and size. 

A kiss can lead to a million seeds 

either captured, or released 

onto the ground. 

                                 Seeds, 

grown from spitting skies, 

mingling beside the 

couple where my spit lies.

Kiss goodbye, leaving spit. 

Black lung death kiss, yet, 

Flowers lips opening to Apollo’s shaft.

Eskimo brothers, all spitting and 

kissing into the same flowerpot.

Drooling, who are we fooling, 

it’s stimulated saliva, 

drooling, who are we fooling,

it’s the marriage of kiss and spit.

An Argument for Love

I met the Warrior of love

the other night,

he challenged my cynicism 

to a fight.

Fearless French lessons,

of “rape and atomic bombs”, 

in love’s language,

“touching spiders

just to get close to them”-

to love them.

Finding meaning in the meaningless

“circles that bring us closer”,

and further away.

I met the Lecturer of love

dressed in armour,

(wine, a weapon)

harassed in amour. 

The drunk philosopher

teaching drunk pupils 

about the “ripples 

of the water,

circles of wisdom” 

coming to teach 

you about love.

I met the Lover of love, 

I said “love” is just a “word”

He said “No! 

You must have misheard;

it’s a feeling,

it’s spiritual, 

it’s the excited chemicals

within that make you scream

EYYAAHHH”!

Immortalitree

We are the Earth.

From dust to dust, 

As we must.

Still earth is alive with you.

Wooden coffin holds a tree,

With seeds above, dying to be free.

Bones buried, will rise again.

We grow with our demise,

With the leaves up to the skies.

Soul of the Sol

Set with a moving

     painting in the sky,

     white canvas with

     endless borders blue.

     Apollo’s Picasso in the cloud.

          Atlas smoking

          pomegranate puffs.

-don’t mention the lighter

that ends the world,

     He may take it

     as his paintbrush

     for his final master piece.

Same old Sun set, 

yet lights anew for few

-don’t fear the dying sun

Look to fire in the sky,

Kindling for the Artist’s eye.

A Poem for Chester

A new aged man,

     touching ancient mossy stone,

walking alone, but not as one,

with ghosts of Romans. 

     Our conquerors and conquests,

     are our own. 

Walls, bridges, and fortifications

     of old. 

What are we trying to keep out-

What we are trying to connect to.

One Walks

To be one in a crowd, 

the solitude, the shroud. 

The mind begging

to scream out loud.

Hello, hello, echo, 

smile and echo away.

To move and not be moved.

I’m still here, I’m here still. 

The One I Don't Want to Name (Untitled)

Pulling water from my eyes,

I grew a thirst for the

Rain of English skies.

She put a spanish seed in my brain,

The desire grew and I flew to Spain.

She started a dance

That kept me in trance,

Then sent me spinning to France.

Slip away into the night,

Slip away into the garden,

Slip away into the flight.