EDENBRAY ~ RETROSPECTIVE – 50

Posted on January 17, 2020 by edenbray

STATING THE OBVIOUS ~ Ⅰ, Ⅱ, Ⅲ, Ⅳ + APPENDIX

Originally written 22.12.1988 and posted ~ June 3rd, 2012 ~ and re-posted ~ 17 January, 2020 as the final piece of an Edenbray Retrospective #1 – #50

… … …

…

STATING THE OBVIOUS ~ Ⅰ, Ⅱ, Ⅲ, Ⅳ + APPENDIX

1

I am eternal

I am light

I am beginning 

and no ending

I am living

heat __________

My endless joy

My raging passion

My all

My everything

Outside, inside , in

2

Existing, never dull

Floating on a tidal wave

of experience

Matter parts, separates, forms

divides, thrives

dead matter dies

3

Childhood friends

childhood sweethearts

Loving buddies

Boys, girls

Men – women

Opposites attract

Distance separates

Put no distance between us

Separate us not

– Living energy are we

The beginning

and never the end

!   ?   !   ?   !   ?   !   ?   !

4

Lifes torrid pageant

Steamy sense and passion

Muscle, power, nerve

and graceful curve

Form, pattern, power

and grace

Beyond experience

Floating uncertainty

Sum of hopes fulfilment

This is a parody

A tale of struggle

sweat and joy

⃞   ᴐ   ◅   ⏥   ᴑ   ᴞ   ᴧ   ⎖

  ᐉ    ᐍ    ᐊ

Stating  the  obvious

ᴀ  .  ᴘ  .  ᴘ  .  ᴇ  .  ᴎ  .  ᴅ  .  ᴉ  .  ᵪ

I am a scientist

marine biologist

Discoverer of planets

stretching to the horizons

Breaking the mould that

grips me with octopus grasp

ONE THING for certain

I am no poet

no visionary

no rhymer of rhymes

As I play with words

like a child with Lego

Forming and fitting bits

together

Hard fact

Grand supposition

and Mellow illusion

These all twist and embrace

Copulate like lusting insects

I watch animated

involved, unafraid

unashamed as these

angular forms

patterns, grow

divesting, releasing

exciting

Imagination is my first

primeval gift

My right to use and enjoy

…

writtenbyedenbray22.12.1988

…

Why play on the edge of

experience and temptation

When one may wallow,

indulge in the centre

of delights?

writtenbyedenbray22.12.1988

..

#Authors Note – A spiritually awakened piece I feel – full of positive energy and resolve! I actually wrote this while in my early 20’s. I love that it doesn’t take any prisoners! edenbraytoday

Authors 2nd Note ~ This marks the last piece I am posting in this current Edenbray Retrospective for now. I started re-posting this Retrospective in November, 2019 and it has taken me around 2 months to edit, re-write a few and post 50 pieces in total that I wrote between the years 1990 until 2012 although some of my work including a few in this Retrospective, were originally written and published in the late 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. It has been a true labour of love but it has taught me a lot about myself and my writing which I am sure will help me as I move on.

I have posted this Edenbray Retrospective here on my newer Edenbray 8 Blog as I have mentioned – for a new generation – who may or m ay not be interested in my work. The pieces I have chosen for the Retrospective were not selected pieces – I have re-posted them pretty much in the order they were originally posted with the exception of the penultimate Poem #49

I could continue to Re-post my work and may return to the project later in the year but for now I feel I have some new pieces to complete, post and publish. I am hoping an Anthology of some selected pieces will be published later in the year and obviously I would be grateful for any interest this printed project might receive. Please leave a note as a comment on this site or email me at stepheneede689@btinternet.com – if you would like a copy of my Edenbray Anthology of works – A Life in the Writing or if you would like to discuss or comment on my work in any way. I would be interested in your thoughts.

Thank you for your interest – edenbraytoday

#PROG-PROSE ~ Progressive Poetry – part of an #Edenbray retrospective – Re-posted today for a new generation!

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EDENBRAY ~ RETROSPECTIVE – 49

Posted on January 16, 2020 by edenbray

OUT OF CONTROL IN TEXAS – THE GREAT AND NERVOUS DREAM FULFILLED

Originally written and posted ~ 19, June 2013 – Re-posted  ~ 16th. January, 2020 as part of an Edenbray Retrospective 

… … …

ite

OUT OF CONTROL IN TEXAS – THE GREAT AND NERVOUS DREAM FULFILLED

れ

Monster broke from the track

Carly’s man not coming back

The grey line of the sky meets 

The narrow smear of pale blood

ぬ

The blushing rush of winged life

Upon the virtue of blue hills and

Radiant mornings and the like

But abandon me with disgrace

ぬ

For now, for ever the heart weary

Folded within itself, a golden sparrow

It plays on margins with bright hope

Fleck n’flutter and arrows long and true

れ

I not so certain walking on eggshells

Out of control in Texas and nervous where?

Wanting more and then wanting less

The simple girl in a pale blue dress

れ

More than ever dreamed or schemed

Its late and dark and wet and cold

Imagination’s red and bold, Marie,

A gold-star coach, a pocket of notes 

れ

Sometimes we step off a plane

Wander down streets we never seen

Floating over reality’s silver sheen

In Texas, Arizona, Bakersfield, Carp

れ

Those places we never even been

And the orange sun shouting! 

Just wanted to run – be someone else

Run – be somewhere else than hell

れ

writtenbyedenbray19.0.2013

..

#Authors Note ~ Up to this point my Retrospective has run almost straight through chronologically but with this little gem I have decided to break rank and introduce OUT OF CONTROL IN TEXAS – THE GREAT AND NERVOUS DREAM FULFILLED, a piece which I wrote a year or more after SHE SHONE SILVER LIKE A STAR. I chose to do this mainly because I love where its at, whereas the previous entry I was kind of uncertain over.

This piece marks a return to my interest in Jazz Poetry. It drags you in and suggests something is going on that’s not quite right. If it were a full-red out of a bottle I would say ~ Dark and mysterious but playful – hope you enjoy it!   –  edenbraytoday

#PROG-PROSE ~ Progressive Poetry – part of an #Edenbray retrospective – Re-posted today for a new generation!

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EDENBRAY ~ RETROSPECTIVE – 48

Posted on January 16, 2020 by edenbray

SHE SHONE SILVER LIKE A STAR ✯

Originally written and posted 1st, May, 2012 – Re-posted 16th January, 2020 as part of an Edenbray Retrospective

… … …

.

…

SHE SHONE SILVER LIKE A STAR

✯

By the ferris wheel and then I danced by the painted galloping horses

Four-teen and twenty I saw my darling sweep by me wearing yellow on this day

Her cheeks flushed peaches pink with a smile bloody, full and charming

❄

The pall, the pang of a wounded soldier caught and dangling from a wire tree

Caught like a baited bird, sore and swinging but with eyes wet and longing

The passion of the grey dawn is still fighting despite the night so blue behind me

❋

Have I spent so much time writing songs to lose you to a word chipped or broken?

Or does the honest tale I copied from my night-time memory now betray me?

Be the sweet honest table upon which I lay my cotton shirt and my glass bullets cold

✹

I could step out with you my sweetness and my crazy, I could walk tall beside thee

and taking your softest hand I hold your fingers warm and fragrant like petals orange

I also hold the day when for all the arrows falling, life had lost its meaning

✰

We had talked of romance and laughter and flirted long the mystery of men and women

Mended nets, collected glowworms, sent skyrockets, danced with friends on a Tuesday

and made up tales where valiant vagabonds met warm breasted whores they ever trusted

✶

Or spoke of falcons and embroidered waistcoats, lace bodices, the plumpest cooing doves

Then broke the frightened doe, she springing from a gnarled old thick-skin oak so callous

Sporting daisies, white convolvulus ever a lying stem and the poachers nettled sister

✻

All these the summer sun greet meekly and hide in clenched fist with a mailed hand

When Rose-Marie, she walks the tightrope dressed from toe to top in bronzed curly gilt

saying so sweetly ‘These were only stories she could ever muster upon that loyal Wheel’

✰

I could have been so many people for thee silver lady, we sure shone together for a day

and drew the poisons from the ransacked villagers ideas and scheming  opinion

A day washed in ginger and lemon, when prince’s fathers come to arrange dowry,

✲

Ponies wear flowered garlands and the urban streets even seem dressed in gold light

But for now it is well that this painted cabinet has been decked, daubed and decorated

Garments of fragrant and true broderie anglaise, washed and folded, tidied away

❁

A book of watercolour, a notebook of honesty and the silver threads of the stallions mane

Who flies the sky, the drenched darkened night where Orion sits and counts his bounty?

His honesty knows above all others that once she had shone silver more like a true star

✲

writtenbyedenbray01.05.2012

…

But for now

…

..

#Authors Note – This is another piece I hardly recognise. Upon reflection, I’m sure ‘The Heroine’ would have been a good title for it. I think it was personal to me when I wrote it. Of course it was personal. Everything I write is personal. For how else is one supposed to write. I think I love it and I also hate it. No, not like marmite. Its almost perfect and perfect things always have a habit of disappointing you finally. The object of this piece has disappointed the writer. It is very ‘past’ tense. I write very melancholic prose  anyway because nothing really worth saying is not tinged with sadness or nostalgia. All the best thoughts are memories – thank God for our memories! – Yes, ‘the Heroine’ might have been a better title – It’s certainly a lot easier to say.      – edenbraytoday 

..

#PROG-PROSE ~ Progressive Poetry – part of an #Edenbray retrospective – Re-posted today for a new generation!

<   .   >

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EDENBRAY ~ RETROSPECTIVE – 47

Posted on January 15, 2020 by edenbray

THE WRITERS GUILD OR A COLLECTION OF FAILED BOLSHEVIKS’ COMMUNITY – AN ESSAY

Originally written and posted ~ 3rd. March, 2012 – Edited and re-posted 15th. January, 2020 as part of an Edenbray Retrospective

…

The Writers Guild or A Collection of Failed Bolsheviks Community ~ AN ESSAY

…

– a personal opinion

Writing, painting, sculpting, the performing arts, whether as singers, actors, dancers, footballers, poets or magicians, indeed any kind of creativity in any way – even f—–g or needlepoint, knitting or cooking,  concerning anybody creative … but maybe not stamp-collecting ?!

… … …

The creative pursuits all have an addictive intensity to them. Whether we may assume that being artistically creative is harmfully addictive or not, there is no doubting that the creative pursuits build up a certain head of steam – a passion, a consuming fire in the belly that if married to any kind of personal obsession or substance dependency, whether benign, active or acute, can produce a detrimental ‘trojan horse’ within the mind or soul of the creative personality. This veritable molotov cocktail may internally combust and consume the individual from the inside out. A raging forest fire, that once alight can eat out the very soul of an individual … or do I exaggerate? … but hey, let’s not run ahead!

‘the creative personality’

The creative mind has always been susceptible to excess. The truly ‘artistic’ are inclined to frequent those unoccupied zones between the acceptable ‘norm’ and the unknown. They explore the very boundaries of freedom. The writer and the artist can easily become voyeurs, either through their own imagination or as daring inquirers seeking informed, first-hand reference.

They may originally travel to places they would not necessarily have visited in their regular lives, to push and press against the borders of the established order or at very least the current and accepted status quo in any particular field of experience or expertise. They may easily become explorers, pioneers and social scientists in pursuit of personal, artistic professionalism or to fulfil their writers journalistic credibility. Traversing this realm of uncertainty they become vulnerable to excess in their private lives through the ‘open’ window of opportunity that affords the open or creative mind. In other words, they may discover temptation more easily and once discovered and the threshold crossed, may participate more frequently and with greater relish and abandonment.

This pursuit of creative excellence has produced many casualties throughout history and it is relatively easy to index and identify many popularised, tragic identities within our own 20th and 21st century arena among those working in the teeming delta of the performing arts and creative disciplines. Artists, painters, writers, poets and performers have often fallen prey to personal weakness while attempting to answer the call of their more curious, artistic, creative and in consequence – vulnerable side.

The wonderfully creative personality that was Amy Winehouse

Does Anyone Actually Value Experience Anymore?

Amy Winehouse, you might say is a more recent victim of her own creativity to mention only one recent example but many creative casualties litter the streets, boardwalks, viae and boulevards of the growing Global Artists Village from Tin Pan Alley to Tinseltown, the Montmartre to Greenwich Village, from the Fiumicino Commune in Rome to the Veles in Macedonia.
For example characters as diverse as Vincent Van Gogh, Marilyn Monroe, Amadeus Mozart, Jim Morrison, Aubrey Beardsley, Michelangelo Caravaggio and of course even Elvis Presley have become virtually clichéd by the nature of their early demise and those are few, besides the many other less famous creative casualties that litter history’s artists garrisons and billets where creative excess has contributed to disastrous and premature breakdown and fatalities.

The sad loss of Amy, paradoxically threw into contrast the fairly lean period of such ‘pop’ celebrity disaster that we have observed in more recent years, compared to that rock-star binge of the sixties, seventies and even eighties that we may revisit and collect creative names from like Panini stickers. Names such as Brian Jones, Keith Moon, Phil Lynnot, Sid Vicious, George Best, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Freddie Mercury, Marvin Gaye … , … , and so on and so on and so on who all met untimely deaths and all tell a similar tale of ‘burn-out’ or while being as kind as one can be – at least of those who lived life to ‘it’s fullest’.
Performers and artists of more recent years had seemed to avoid the pitfalls and ship-wreck boulders of the past to live and die in more normal circumstances but then along came Jacko’, Amy and later George Michael and we are again left to wondering, why does the creative artist need to sail so close to the wind?

‘The Personal Life ~ Is It Over?’

There is a very quotable line in the David Lean epic movie ‘Dr Zhivago’ where Tom Courtney’s character, Pavel Pavlovich or ‘Pasha’, who is by now a leading light in the Bolshevik party when he announces to Zhivago, himself a poet and writer, that ‘the personal life is over’.

I often wonder on hearing that particular Bolshevik mantra, whether that is the reason that the communist ideal mistrusts individual creative freedom per se. On the grounds, that it can lead to such personal indiscipline, breakdown and subsequent self annihilation. Can the creative mind cope alone with those inspired, power surges of creativity or is it simply that few have the necessary ‘bottle’ to handle ‘popular’ popularity and what has been tagged somehow euphemistically ‘the price of fame’.
Artistic and creative minds, unfettered by the usual lines of control, can career on, rudderless, without navigation and almost inevitably they appear to drift so often into an excessive lifestyle that can only lead to tragic conclusions.

The Bolsheviks hoped to organise us all

Writers themselves must tread a solitary path to construct their particular art or craft which is at least as daring a route as any actor who by imagination or ‘method’ usurps the will and persona of another to portray a part either on-screen or on stage. Arguably the actors course is less fraught, due to the obvious attention they receive from fellow actors and production directors. People are generally confirmed in their professional labour by those they work with and the social exchange that simple communication and rapport with others brings.

Is it not surprising that there are not more casualties in the unofficial Writers Guild – that strange unseen world of reporters, journalists and novelists, those silent travellers who must journey with stealth and discipline through often imaginary landscapes and human-scapes, often unaccompanied, un-counselled and even more worryingly, unpaid? They wrestle foes and encounter trauma and problems from without and within and the widest sources imaginable as they construct schizophrenic multiple novel personalities or delve deep into history’s darkest facts, fiction and biographic detail to investigate both societies heroes and villains. After all this, they must still continue to build ordered, interesting and engaging literature or possibly prose with virtually no feed-back or exchange.

For the writer, assaulted by the demon ‘block’ and possibly a pile of bills on the mat or unopened in their e-mail folder, there is not even the opportunity to piggyback on the creative skills of fellow performers as the only sounds they get as they go about their task, is the rhythmic tip–tack of their laptop keyboard?

Well indeed, the Bolsheviks spoke, when they proposed, that ‘the personal life is over’, whichever way you ‘cut’ it. For the mute members of the unofficial Writers Guild every shared observation, every witty or frank remark, every revealing or sensual phrase announces to the whole potential world outside their own private, if not lonely, then ‘alone’ status that yes, indeed for the writer ‘the personal life’ is indeed ‘kind of over’.

writtenbyedenbray03.03.2012

edited&re-posted15.01.2020

… … …

Other reading :

‘CREATING BRAINS’ Blog with Joana Johnson

The AMAZING … BRILLIANT and WONDERFULLY CREATIVE ~ AMY WINEHOUSE … WARNING : GENIUS AT WORK !!!

– how we miss her and her like – who died too soon!

the wonderful Jessica Renea comments – 07.03.2012
.

Makes me want to weep. We are a band of minds and hearts who sees and feels what everyone else knows is there but just can’t say. The intensity and frustration take too many. My Dad says every creative is burdened by the need to create something completely new which rarely happens and builds an intensity and anxiety so great that it can lead to madness.

..

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EDENBRAY ~ RETROSPECTIVE – 46

Posted on January 13, 2020 by edenbray

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR ~ An Essay

Written and posted ~ 3rd. March, 1999 – Re-posted ~ 3rd. January, 2020 as part of an Edenebray retrospective

… … …


A  LETTER  TO  THE  EDITOR

.  .  .

Who was the guy who sat in front of

his canvas for three days and on

the third day, took a knife and

ripped the canvas saying,

‘I cannot paint’ …’ ?         

Of course today, we’re taught to

understand the other guy’s point of

view. It’s not cool to be reactionary

but did he not miss the point as he

sat waiting for inspiration with

his brush-in-hand?

Was not the point, that for three days

~ the effort, the wait was worthwhile.

So why, on the third day did he take

the knife?

Why not the fourth, or the fifth

or the seventy fifth?

~ He was not a professional.

A professional never gives up,

A professional never gives in

and they hung his poor, torn canvas

as an exhibit ~ a work of art ~

This was not art, it was destruction ~

this said life is meaningless,

there is no point ~ nihilism.

God is dead!

If he had waited beyond the third day

God would have come.

If he was earnest, a professional!

~ Maybe if he had considered that

it took Jesus 3 days to get to Lazarus

~ 3 days for the Son of God to resurrect!

~ he didn’t wait!

.  .  .

writtenbyedenbray03.03.99

edited&re-posted13.01.2020

.  .  .

Spatial Concept ~ ‘Waiting’ – 1960

…  By slashing the centre of his canvases, Fontana allowed three–dimensional space to intrude into an otherwise two–dimensional surface. Fontana first introduced perforations within his works in 1949 and referred to these as “spatial concepts.” He then began slashing his canvases in the early 1950s and added the term “Expectations” to the title. While these works immediately conjure acts of violence and iconoclasm, Fontana claimed “I have constructed, not destroyed.”

…

Authors Comment – Conversely and perhaps a little surprisingly I have much more empathy with and sympathy for Lucio Fontana’s work than this ‘essay’ might suggest.

These ‘essays’ that I write are not really essays at all, much more like poetry or poetic pieces. My poems are not really poems, they are like essays. They reflect a view, hopefully they pose questions? The lines are blurred. All classifications are misleading anyway. Was Fontana an artist? Was Fontana a painter? Was he a nihilist? Was he a christian?

I have enormous respect for anyone who can find fame and fortune with their ‘art’ or even earn a living, crust of bread.

Fontana was born in Argentina in 1899 and died in 1968. He was my age when he died! These works have earned there own classification – ‘Spatialism’ – Bravo!

edenbraytoday

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#PROG-PROSE ~ Progressive Poetry – part of an #Edenbray retrospective – Re-posted today for a new generation!

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EDENBRAY ~ RETROSPECTIVE – 45

Posted on January 10, 2020 by edenbray

THE GHOST OF BALADIN FLIES …

Originally written and posted ~ 06.04.2012 – Re-posted 10th January, 2020 as part of an Edenbray Retrospective

… … …

The Ghost of Baladin Flies …

 ✙ ✙ ✙ ✙ ✙ ✙ ✙

..

✙

..

… They say the ghost of Bal-a-din flies over the moors of Mull since the days they laid his bones to rest!

That he has appeared in the jagged rush of a snow leopard in the wasteland of Siberia’s northern hills …

They have heard his cry in the moan of an ice whale who remembered his silhouette against the flickering northern lights …

… and a white bear, they say, was heard to sing the tune to Baladin’s Song by two starving hunters one evening in the west of Alaska …  

Yet the strangest tale concerns a blue marlin that a fisherman heard laugh like the great man when breaking his line and escaping off the Florida keys …

… and at least once he brought terror to sailors who say they saw Baladin’s smile in the face of a wandering albatross … but at least I do know the truth of DemBala, the wolf master ….

He died a happy old man in his sleep after supper with three younger women by his bed side and a warm log fire crackling in the hearth for this is indeed Ba-La-Din.

He had made his peace with the Almighty a long time previous and now travels the universe at the Master’s bidding often stopping to gaze at the cerulean and the viridian of the earth so far below

                                                                               … awaiting the meek’s inheritance …

✙ ✙ ✙ ✙ ✙ ✙ ✙

writtenbyedenbray06.04.2012

… … …

 … and the meek shall inherit the earth …

…

… ‘a white tailed sea-eagle flies over the Island of Mull’ …

… … …

… He had made his peace with the Almighty a long time previous and now travels the universe at the Master’s bidding often stopping to gaze at the cerulean and the viridian of the earth so far below …

..

Baladin – goodnight!

Baladin take your rest ~ the storyteller has earned this beaker of the Barleycorn for tonight he meets the reaper and they exchange their wizard’s craft – The collateral of the wise and none ere’ walked wiser than DemBala the Wolfmaster sleeping now with a pack of wolves laid around his feet and the dreamers pipes embers glistening faintly in the breeze of the palest moonlight for this last time as a herd of caribou graze peacefully tonight where Baladin has been laid. A life more ordinary might have had more that is morose but my soundest friend it has been my pleasure to know thee and write the hint of Baladin’s full Tales – a much welcome Memoir that I will always treasure. ~           

                                                                                                                                      edenbraytoday

#PROG-PROSE ~ Progressive Poetry – part of an #Edenbray retrospective – Re-posted today for a new generation!

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EDENBRAY ~ RETROSPECTIVE – 44

Posted on January 9, 2020 by edenbray

BALADIN’S DREAM ~ PART IX – REMEMBERIN’ LUCY

Originally written and posted 4th, March, 2012 – Re-posted 8th January, 2020 as part of an Edenbray Retrospective

…

BALADIN’S DREAM

PART IX

REMEMBERIN’ … LUCY … !

… … …

 p

The plane pain is in the moment passing

and the joyful laughter which grates

Even sunlight can carry an annoyance factor

and my father, a grey resistance worker

p

I tumbled the ‘Redskin Falls’ ashamed

of what ‘we’ had done with a blockade

And a night to remember at ‘Bighorn’

So many were lying reeking in the hot sun

p

By the sweet Pelleneous smiling in the dark night

Which lit fires and helped men of war to dream

So much won would trickle through their hands

Return to deserts of trial in the morning

p

O’ Pelleneous sweet peace distilling

O’ caravan and round the hawk who flies

The morning skies and the grey craggy mountain

Sights clear around the sound of a crying wind

p

Mother bear is laid out in the sun

While down in the raw valley, hairs skip

A green lizard cool on the bleached stones

Yet the trample of hoof is the iron fist

p

Darius had two white horses

Was always one for the moment

He’d fly if that was the choice of dragons

Caught with two shots to the chest

p

O’ Darius life is past its best

With fourteen thousand renegades

Arrows marked so cold and bloody

Eagles visit the moon on the red river

p

The bleeding heart is won

Two naked lovers who swam together

O’ Pelleneous never met the boy

Or taught the man enough to care

p

At home in Brighorn County

Two plump geese grazing corn

White children of both the lost and lonely

The jack nipped at the younger’s finger

p

The rivers swell now washing umber

Indian maids tear-stained gaze

O’ Pelleneous your beauty scarred

You met the masters thunder.

p

… … …

 writtenbyedenbray06.04.2012

…

Today at the site of the Battle of The Little Bighorn

#Authors Note ~ This ninth and final part of the Dream of Baladin is possibly more strange, mythical and hard to follow than any. I admit, in parts it almost needs a translator which was in part my intention. Baladin has wandered in and out of much of America’s modern history and of course he had to be around at the time of the Battle of the Bighorn to witness the final frontier of the white mans humiliation of America’s proud and native peoples who fought but failed to save their dignity at that horrific battle.

Pelleneous, I understand was an Indian squaw who changed her name to Lucy! ~ loved by both her people and adored by white men for her beauty and she was married to Captain Darius by whom she had children who we understand may have died at the hands of her natural kin.

How much of this is true or is myth or legend we may only guess and surmise and the jumble of this tale is only confused further due to Baladins aged and emotionally saddened memory as he recounts the most torrid part of his Dream – this most tortured tale of love and hate and history is recounted on his very death bed. It is placed as Part III of the Dream purely to reflect its chronological order in the wholeness of the tale and his long life. It may also in part owe much to my regard for Arthur Pens excellent epic film – The Little Big Man or to the wonderful, romantic tale of Pocahontas and John Smith, to General Custer and Chief Sitting Bull and their vitriolic feud, or to Davy Crocket and John Wayne, to another epic western, John Ford’s classic ‘the Searchers’, to Chief Dan George or possibly just the best proportion of a most excellent bottle of American Sazerac straight Rye Whisky – I’m not really certain – although I think it does make for a most fascinating read and a good final part to my ‘Dream of Baladin’. – Hoping you agree! – Baladin passed on shortly afterwards on his way to that great reservation in the sky!     ~ edenbraytoday

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#PROG-PROSE ~ Progressive Poetry – part of an #Edenbray retrospective – Re-posted today for a new generation!

… … …

sitting-bull-9485326-1-402
R.I.P. – Chief Sitting Bull – Born South Dakota – 1831 ~ Died – 15 December 1890, Standing Rock Indian Reservation, United States – 59 years of age
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EDENBRAY ~ RETROSPECTIVE – 43

Posted on January 7, 2020 by edenbray

BALADIN’S DREAM – PART V 

Originally written and posted ~ 08.02.2012 _ Re-posted 07.01.2020 as part of an Edenbray Retrospective

… … …

BALADIN’S DREAM

PART V

…

The Watchman

☤    ☤    ☤

A few and then many

The quiet night speaks

Peace to many plans

The watchman abroad at night

Serves his many chores

Revels in his patient duty

To trim the wick that light flickers

Burns to glow and beckon

☤   ☤   ☤

Can we prevail upon him so?

Who watches for our souls

Who prays and holds the night winds at bay

and faults the eastern snows not enter

Or speaks to birds of prey

While they converge to plunder?

☤   ☤   ☤

He wrestles the man of pain

and tests the spirits of the torn

and the tortured who leer

☤   ☤   ☤

In the hearth the embers amber

Are fanned and spawned

To love they are born and weaned

In hope they conceived innocent

Do crackle and breathe deeply

Of heavens richest, rarest air

This nightly scene shared with

The favoured and chosen

Whose journey is worn of care

Whose habit not course

Is yet taught by trial

Of dedication and purpose

☤    ☤    ☤

Oh watchman who sits by

Ever heartened by companions

Whose thoughts heard are words

Wolden and tinged crimson

With a heat and a light

So pure and blessed

The watchman of the night so sure

He is a worthy special sight!

☤    ☤    ☤

Writtenbyedenbray08.02.92

 ☤    ☤    ☤

…

Jessica Renea comments 07.03.2012 : ‘Feels so warm even in the cold of night. I always think of angels when I think of watchmen. Another epic!’

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#PROG-PROSE ~ Progressive Poetry – part of an #Edenbray retrospective – Re-posted today for a new generation!

Posted in Baladin's Dream, edenbray POMES, edenbray RETROSPECTIVE, PROG-PROSE | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

EDENBRAY ~ RETROSPECTIVE – 42

Posted on January 7, 2020 by edenbray

BALADIN’S DREAM PART VI ~ HAPOELLE

Originally written and posted ~ 9th. March, 2012 – Re-posted ~ 7th. January, 2020 as part of an Edenbray Retrospective

… … …

BALADIN’S DREAM

PART VI

HAPOELLE

☼   ☼   ☼ 

She was the youngest daughter of a Polynesian chieftain

Her soft flesh wore the colour of sun-blushed, dried cinnamon 

She could sway her hips like Guava trees in a high wind

Or pandanus which she loved and whose fruit she carried  

home to her father, those hairy, hard shells so heavy

☼   ☼   ☼

Hapoelle’s breasts hung like two mountain apples

All these island girls, capricious, still went semi-naked in 1845

The year Baladins boat came to rest on the coral sand dunes

and the ships crew put up, to take comfort in the local nation

Whose manners chipper – wore a plaited & flowered welcome garland!

☼   ☼   ☼

And Bellannea, Hapoelle’s friend with bosoms he likened to lilikoi

For they were round, ripe and generous, she slept with John Dray

For all the long while they encamped upon that sunny island

Dray drew pictures of her every day, with a stick of sketchers’ sanguine

He had bought for a penny in an artist’s shop near Kennington Oval in  London

☼   ☼   ☼

Baladins’ fondness for the chieftains maiden served only

To leave him melancholic for a woman he had promised to, back home

She of fairer skin and lighter sympathy would not have dallied so

Or made almond eyes at an honest gentleman, half betroth to wife

He was caught now in a honey trap and only drank the hummingbirds sap

☼   ☼   ☼

He rolled with Hapoelle, his native lover and learned to speak of intimacy with her

While his deeper heart settled on a corner of Albion, where oak-lined villages wait

A gamble of ‘little lambs’ standing on the wide horizon in the heat of a July sun 

Children, watching masted, trawler boats return to this Britains shore to make her great

Baladin’s eyes heavy, his jaw firm set at the memory of the pinkest salmon in Britains rivers

☼   ☼   ☼

The masters of regret, caught this one failed mission in an ocean ranger’s eye

Those purple mists of time – ragged, bloody and faded, cannot rob the man that moment

Nor his sight, long in the maze of memory which causes him to smile and mimic sense

He, recalling the freshness of her breath, the lightness of her girth and quiver

The many gentle moments and pleasure she loaned him in that strangest summer

☼   ☼   ☼ 

If summer she be, when settled on a Polynesian Island in the years when the whale,

Both giant and gentle, was still birthing a nation at the heart of the Western Isles

Those morbid midwives who sing wistful tales, arctic and northern narwhals

Not sperm or humpback that the soulful Baladin, his captain and his crew knew

Courted, chased and lauded with folk songs of wistful reason and lament

☼   ☼   ☼

Baladin has been riding these waves of histories choices for the years of one hundred and three

His dream has lived through longer than the pale afternoon of those sunnier days

When those sweetest companions of lust and beauty, soft sirens in warm, tropic seas

Were moist moments adorned with the heat of young and ardent pleasure

Yet still worn of a season of pride where captains of the past salute future’s ambassadors

☼   ☼   ☼

..

writtenbyedenbray09.03.2012

… …

…

#Authors Note ~ I think I have to acknowledge that this piece, owes much to fifties filmmaking which I grew up with and great literature like Gulliver’s Travels. It appears to reference especially epics like Moby Dick and Mutiny On The Bounty and other less well-known works of that time, many shown in black and white on our earliest tiny screens, where we are transported to a different culture from our own by tales of circumstance, adventure and derring-do.

Baladin is once again the central character at yet another stage of his enormous life and who now memoirs the time he worked as a whaler, who found himself briefly and a bit like Fletcher Christian, catapulted into a world of tropical delights in a warm, welcoming, acceptance-culture where anything goes as long as it’s love-based. John Lennon would surely have approved.

The freedom of this imaginary setting allows for a mildly erotic, wistful and sensuous story to unfold in a Utopia where once again our moral compass and human values may be explored and challenged.

Baladin, like an earlier, more cultured Forest Gump steps through the pages of modern history and in this piece reminds us of the origins of much of America’s earliest wealth and more poetic times before global-warming and the excesses of our past have made it today our only central focus.

Despite both its ‘kiss-and-tell’ and ‘tale-to-tell’ notes – I think in today’s stressed-out maelstrom society – Hapoelle is basically a slice of harmless novelette, it’s a cracking tale, based on hard-edged facts and its also a bit of fun – hope you think so too!          ~ edenbraytoday

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#PROG-PROSE ~ Progressive Poetry – part of an #Edenbray retrospective – Re-posted today for a new generation!

Posted in Baladin's Dream, edenbray POMES, edenbray RETROSPECTIVE, edenbray travelogue, PROG-PROSE | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

EDENBRAY ~ RETROSPECTIVE – 41

Posted on January 7, 2020 by edenbray

DEREGULATION ~ DON”T GET ME STARTED

An Essay

Originally written and posted ~ 3rd, February, 2012 – Re-posted  7th January, 2020 as part of an Edenbray Retrospective

… … …

DEREGULATION ~ DON’T GET ME STARTED

An Essay

… … …

I dunno if I am whistling in the damn wind, getting too old, barking up the wrong tree or just taking life too seriously but I am seeing something insidious wherever I go.

I used that word ‘insidious’ of a workmate in jest, not long ago. I use words like that occasionally. Words you have to spellcheck. Well she didn’t know what it meant and hey ‘insidious’ – that is a hard word to describe, especially when you are trying to make a funny gibe at someone. I’m still not sure she got the humour intended even after I had explained. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea? Maybe I didn’t explain the word too well? Anyway, she doesn’t talk to me as much as before but well it was just a joke and yes it sure is a good word!

There are some things that say it for me and you can’t tell it another way. It’s like a joke you have to explain can never really be funny, a cartoon that leaves you confused, just didn’t do it for you or whoever really loved a picture they were told was good.

As the guy in the cinema queue in Annie Hall the movie says, ‘Its gotta hit you on a gut level’ and like Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer, rejoins later ‘Boy what I could do with a sock full of manure right now.’ This is because the guy in the queue keeps speaking his dogma and personal opinions within Alvy’s hearing.

‘Some things are better felt than telt’ … is a saying.

I love sayings, colloquialisms (boy, only one letter out on my spellcheck on that one!) and I love learning new colloquial expressions too … because even though I can only barely speak English, Scottish and Irish, plus a little Glaswegian and maybe a few other rare and special British dialects (#note: yes, there is a joke or ‘three’ in there .. see, being told the joke doesn’t work does it?!) I really do love language … Language is communication! .. Language is dynamite!

Listen to this for example …

…

♪♫♬

Two weeks in a Virginia jail

For my lover, for my lover

Twenty thousand dollar bail

For my lover, for my lover

And everybody thinks

That I’m the fool

But they don’t get Any love from you

The things we won’t do for love

I’d climb a mountain if I had to

Risk my life so I could have you You, you, you…

Everyday I’m psychoanalysed

For my lover, for my lover

They dope me up and I tell them lies

For my lover, for my lover

And everybody thinks

That I’m the fool

But they don’t get Any love from you

The things we won’t do for love

I’d climb a mountain if I had to

Risk my life so I could have you You, you, you…

I follow my heart

And leave my head to ponder

Deep in this love No man can shake

I follow my heart And leave my mind to wonder

Is this love worth The sacrifices I make?

Two weeks in a Virginia jail

For my lover, for my lover

Twenty thousand dollar bail

For my lover, for my lover

Everyday I’m psychoanalysed

For my lover, for my lover

They dope me up and I tell them lies

For my lover, for my lover

And everybody thinks That I’m the fool

But they don’t get Any love from you

The things we won’t do for love

I’d climb a mountain if I had to

Risk my life so I could have you You, you, you..

… … …

Lyrics to the song ‘For My Lover’

by Tracy Chapman

♬♬♫♪

beautiful ! …

…

There are other things you shouldn’t touch but do not mess with language … or take words out … or re-write words come to that! … Are you listening America?… Yes, you can add words and maybe some words might be simplified but only if there is good and valid reason.

…

‘Just because you can, doesn’t mean you oughta …’

Well this insidious deregulation is affecting everything now. Even the sacred cow is suddenly fair game, even though she has always lived out on the street in open view. Who knew that eventually visitors to countries where there is a custom, might challenge her right to even be there, should that particular sacred cow be a country’s flag on a pole, a long-standing, local or ethnic practice, habitude or the chosen national religion. It doesn’t matter that some care less for their own customs than they should. Even true ‘sacred cows’ wander the streets of India uncared for, unloved, and feed on local refuse which you might say is not what a sacred cow should have to do.

I think maybe respect is what I am alluring to here, although even that particular word might need some redefinement from the deregulators curse. Respect does not mean a feigned honour, just because it is old, but an appropriation, an appreciation and a recognition of a things true merits, based not only on its current status but also its particular historical relevance and I may add ‘reverence’ at the risk of any implied alliteration. Now that is a whole bunch of look-up words for some people and I don’t mean to sound patronising one bit.

I see that hand at the back and yes I knew someone would make that comment. What happened to the ‘it’s got to hit me on a gut level’ remark?’ I hear you say and ‘I thought you were against people telling us what ‘is good’ and therefore worthy of our respect?’….

No, what I am saying is this – We do not have to enjoy something ourself to recognise its value or its place in history. This is, after all, why we have National Exhibitions, Art Galleries, Opera Houses and National Theatres, to preserve and honour our National identity, history and culture.

The deregulation I object to, that insidious thing this piece came in on, is the one that is affecting not only a few abbreviated words and Americanisms that may have crept in on the back of our Microsoft and Apple Software ~ Why does my spellchecker continue to give me a dotted line under words like ~ honour?!  

No, this insidious thing I am talking of is moving into the realm of our popular culture and can affect things that aren’t 50, 40, 30 or even 20 years old. These things have it seems, not even earned a mundane – ‘O well it is pretty old’ kind of respect. They are unfancied bull calves, game for slaughter, processing, recycling, even vivisection of the vulgarest order

If its not brok’ why fix it?…

Why do advertisers process ‘favourite tunes’ for their advertisements and re-record classic pop tunes with bland vocals and homogenized, even soulless soundtracks? Why do they even take just the melodies from memorable chart songs and make different versions, that are vaguely recognisable for background themes. Why do tv programme planners take classic or historic novels, even recent successful drama series  and fit them with modern sub-plots, current speech, terminology and up-dated story lines. Is nothing sacred? No, it seems it is not and this for me is the insidious heart of the problem, for history is being aborted at birth, like unwanted leverets or kittens were once bagged and drowned. The culture of today suffers no pretence of leaving a legacy for tomorrow. It is an existential nightmare which suggests a lack of value for the way we live and the art we produce and unless I am the only one dreaming, it speaks of a soulless mentality that  says that we who are alive today have nothing more to bring to the table of culture and artistic accomplishment, nothing of any real value that is

. ♨ .

Hey hey Woody Guthrie I wrote you a song

About a funny old world that’s coming along

Seems sick and it’s hungry, it’s tired and it’s torn

It looks like it’s dying and it’s hardly been born.

lyrics ~ Bob Dylan – 1962 .                                       

. ♨ .

‘Don’t re-write what I have written’

While writers, screenwriters, film directors and ghost-writers turn into revisionists and have fun ‘deregulating’ by rewriting the greatest of books and movies, not just changing a few words but whole characters, situations and basic story-lines to suit a new generation I sit back and wail, thinking that one day people will be denied a history of anything at all. It is hard and sad enough that the revisionists of today like a swarm of locusts or computer worms are set to eat out any politically sensitive material they can find, are conversely quite comfortable to introduce amoral, often hedonistic and if not atheistic then certainly religiously agnostic standpoints into stories which originally reflected morality as it was perceived at the time it was written and not as it is today.

In the generally underrated film ‘Reds’, directed by and starring Warren Beatty as John Reed the American and Communist sympathiser and activist, there is an awesome scene where Reid protests to the Bolshevik leaders who have been censoring his material and using selective editing, ‘Don’t re-write what I have written !’

Communist and Marxist politics have always supported the idea of changing a Countries ideological and cultural history by rewriting swathes of history and literature. Consider the Cultural Revolution which took place at the behest of Chairman Mau in China. Yet, we in the west are seeing only a similar Governmental initiative and trend perpetuated before our very eyes or perhaps a little beneath our very eyes, as if we cannot think for ourselves, censor what we read and use the good and evil of the past to formulate a proud history of our own.

The Watergate scandal of the 70’s spawned a million Conspiracy theories and helped develop a general mistrust of governments either east or west, while today we have inherited a pervading sense that things today do not need to be even so hush-hush as those cloke and dagger, dark days of cold-war spies and propaganda were.

Governments today seem to achieve similar results far more openly and all under the necessary ‘banner of freedom of information’. There seems no need to hide what the ‘spin doctors’ create and the ‘tail that wags the dog’ has become just another colloquialism that although born of deceit is now accepted as the very collateral of political machinations in this 21st century? Of course there will always be another million conspiracy stories circulating and a lot should be filed under ‘Hoax’ but if I’ve called this right ‘my gut feeling’ tells me that all that this current cultural malaise reveals is that Governmental weakness has spread far and wide to the common people, an epidemic with a ‘trojan horse’ that carries a certain lack of respect for our own national identity and popular culture itself.

Of course one would require greater evidence than a few low-grade telly ads and a couple of shallow tv series to support my thesis but the failings of the many lie in the details of the few and we may only read the symptoms as best as we can.

The fact remains that art and culture, rank as low as I have known them in my time and that is a worrying symptom enough.

wag-the-dog-trailer-title

Posted in edenbray COMMENT, edenbray ESSAYS, edenbray OPINION, edenbray RETROSPECTIVE, Lyrics, PROG-PROSE | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment