Woman Making Mealie
after the painting of an African scene by Tony Hudson
Bent double -- Intensity of their focus.
Grind, wind, wist, pist, push.
And grind around again.
Such mechanical circularity.
With a delicate female touch.
Of life or of-the-day-to-day,
Unrelenting -- unending.
Their voice is within their labour.
Their children are taught.
Their whole life is tort.
The land gives.
The land takes away.
A blood red sacrifice
is made today.
As the Sunday supplement
thought passes
in to tonight's foreboding of
what may be, what we do not have.
Do we have to starve?
Who is by division
took that very first step?
From the water's edge.
To discover?
As the cattle hum the day away
They are going on, as jewels
Are invisible: lost as they
Are in their day: in their existence.
Making mealie all their day long.
The Forgotten Miracle Somewhere in America Sometime
The eternal wonder -- lost:
Distant -- while tangible
His world:
The heavily oily sludge in the gutter
His home:
The rat-run under an alien sun
No one notices:
The undefinable state of what was, and is to come
For everyone else:
Somehow indescribable,
Unknowable to him
As it's grown into reality.
One slight; one night; once among the neon
and the bar room noise
The chaos:
Seemed to be alien, vaguely relative, somehow familiar.
The action: something invisible, something unreal.
Although important for the need of mankind.
The need for when all else has drained
Down the gutter away . . . away . . . away . . .
All their eyes were distracted by
The neon, billboards, and garbage blowing about
Now forgotten in their busyness.
The unassuming guy, stopped, stopped a hunger.
Yesterday's wants now gone bellies empty
Unrequired yet to cut out as a cataract
Strangely it shuffled by
A stranger did something smoothing
The sculpture of another life from another world
This the act, now lost in time.
Some Street Scenes Seen Through the Eyes of Edward Hopper
The scene, the street; seen as life, a cross section of humanity.
Filled with myth and mystery among life's other scenes.
The guy just sweeping the street without question.
A fella just sits outside the store -- unaware of an external world --
Without him even being part of it. The dull blank empty windows
Stare carelessly away. He looks at his lifetime in trepidation & fear.
People, sat alone in rooms, dully staring out. Staring at solitary strangers,
Instantly, forgetting their faces. Waiting to sup from the Lethe, to forget their words,
The scene that passes by, before them each and every day.
Streets run along, always there. Silently meandering carrying the drunk home:
the lover to his want: someone to their destination: clandestine meetings.
Their lives pass, and come-and-go: alive in the eye, and come to life in the brush.
Jonathan Beale's work has appeared regularly in Decanto, Penwood Review, The Screech Owl, Danse Macabre, Danse Macabre du Jour, Poetic Diversity, and also Voices of Israel in English, MiracleEzine, Voices of Hellenism Literary Journal, The Journal, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Down in the Dirt, The English Chicago Review, Mad Swirl, Poetry Cornwall, Ariadne's Thread, Bijou Poetry Review, Calvary Cross and Deadsnakes Review. He was commended in Decanto's and Cafe's writers Poetry Competitions 2012. And is working on a collection for Hammer and Anvil. He studied philosophy at Birkbeck College London and lives in Surrey England.
Jonathan Beale’s work has appeared regularly in Decanto, Penwood Review, The Screech Owl, Danse Macabre, Danse Macabre du Jour, Poetic Diversity, and also; Voices of Israel in English, MiracleEzine, Voices of Hellenism Literary Journal, The Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears, Down in the Dirt, & (‘Drowning:’ Down in the Dirt July 13) The English Chicago Review, Mad Swirl, Poetry Cornwall, Ariadne’s Thread, Bijou Poetry Review, Calvary Cross and Deadsnakes Review. He was commended in Decanto’s and Café writers Poetry Competitions 2012. And is working on a collection for Hammer and Anvil. He studied philosophy at Birkbeck College London and lives in Surrey England.
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