Mindmaps by Dey

Open Space
A Poem for Food
12th October 2006
notes by Hilde Vandormael

This is what we did…
We gave each other gifts, poems we couldn’t have done without…


‘If you only want
what physical reality can give,
you are an employee

If you only seek the invisible
You are not living your truth

But you will be forgiven
For forgetting
What you really want is
Loves, confusing, joy…’

Rumi
(gift from Toke)



Actors waiting in the wings of Europe

Actors waiting in the wings of Europe
we already watch the lights on the stage
and listen to the colossal overture begin.
For us entering at the height of the din
it will be hard to hear our thoughts, hard to gauge
how much our conduct owes to fear or fury.

Everyone, I suppose, will use these minutes
what we were doing and saying that year
during our last few months as people, near
the sucking mouth of the day that swallowed us all
into the stomach of a war. Now we are in it

and no more people, just little pieces of food
swirling in an uncomfortable digestive journey,
what we said and did then has a slightly
Fairytale quality. There is an excitement
In  seeing our ghosts wandering

(Unfinished)
March 1944
Keith Douglas
(gift from Julian)


Visit to an artist
For David Jones

Window upon the wall, a balcony
With a light chair, the air and water so
Mingled you could not say which was the sun
And which the adamant yet tranquil spray.
But nothing was confused and nothing slow:
Each way you looked, always the sea, the sea.

And every shyness that we brought with us
Was drawn into the pictures on the walls.
It was so good to sit quite still and lose
Necessity of discourse, words to choose
And wonder which were honest and which false.

Then I remembered words that you had said
On art as gesture and as sacrament,
A mountain under the calm form of paint
Much like the Presence under wine and bread –
Art with its largesse and its restraint.

Elisabeth Jennings
(gift from Hilde)






A.A. milne, Winnie The Pooh, chapter 1, ‘In which we are introduced to Winnie – the Pooh and some bees and the stories begin’
Gift from Julian



Hafiz, The Gift, p92, ‘Stop calling me a pregnant woman’

Listening to the middle…

‘The power and gift of a heart felt poem
As a strange attractor in the art of inviting each other in?’


‘Sweet
this language
of soul

this poetry
that touches
our hearts
across time and space’
Toke

‘How can my language
Become poetry as food
That invites people in?

How can I listen this way to others?’



‘Poetry
in talking,
in listening…

Can you hear the poet between the lines?’

‘Listening to a language you don’t understand is like poetry…
The beauty of the sound becomes meaningful…’


‘Listen wider, harder, deeper…
The hosting of poets across time and space… Magic happens’

‘Poets are like warriors who touch our soul’


Listening to a song by Keb Mo
‘When I hear stuff like this
I’m inside him and he’s inside me
We see the same’


‘Blues and poetry honour the shadow and sorrow…
Sadness and joy…

In the middle of the path, giving yourself into it,
THE FEELING OF LIFE


- Hannelore - Julian - Toke – Hilde -

Daddy Day!

Standing here, my smile wide
I can’t hide
The joy it brings to me
To rhyme about my family
And my baby girl
Let the flags be unfurled
It’s the coming of a new world
‘Cause once a week I get to take a day
To stay home with my princess and play
I get to have a daddy day!

She babbles, I babble back
She smiles and the hardness around my heart comes under attack
The walls break down
Crumble to the ground
Without a sound
As they dissolve
I evolve
Into a human
With heart laid open
No more choking
On right and wrong
Just cranking out crazy baby songs
With no rhyme or reason
It takes me some believin’
In my own goodness
To let go
Drop the show
Arrive and play the day away
All those other things I should be doing get in the way
Meetings, Phonecalls, dirty washing gotta be done
Then I remember like the risin’ of the eastern sun
  It’s Daddy Day
All I gotta do is play!

The rest of the world melts away
As she struggles towards first words
In the coos and shirieks
I forget the roof leaks
While she batters the basonette’s hanging toys
And enjoys
The noise
As my wife and I cowboy hoot
Yeeeeehah!
Like we found the long lost loot
Celebrating Emma’s first time at getting the purple monkey to sing
She brings
A return to play
I fall more and more in love every day
Fueling a yearning
For unlearning
A lifetime of taking myself too seriously
Now me,
My wife and my baby
Waltz around the room
All singing out of tune
At the top of our voices
The family rejoices
It was hard to make the choices
Only working 4 days a week
Stopping writing this poem when I am in the flow
Because Emma wants to grab my nose
Now I would never turn away
The opportunity
For a Daddy day!

Sometimes I hear the news
Get the blues
Frustrated by our leaders excuses
For the abuses
Against planet and people
But the feeling of being powerless cannot linger
As I get lost in the amount of fingers
Emma has managed to cram in her mouth
Outstanding!
That’s eight fingers and a thumb
Where once I was numb
Overwhelmed and confused
I am converted by a gorgeously gargling
Champion spit bubble blowing darling
With flesh so tender you can barely tell
You’re touching it
As your finger goes
“Round and round the garden like a teddy bear
One step two step tickle you under there”
Aagh!
Shrieks of delight
Bring the sunlight
Into one my craziest years
Moving country, getting married, new job
And all the fears
Of having a baby
Disappear
On Daddy Day
When I drop
The worry
Stop
To hurry
I highly recommend
Shrugging the shoulders
Dropping the boulders
Of being grown up
Take a day
Where all else falls away
A day of Play
Take a Daddy Day.

Tim Merry
(gift from Toke)

 

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