Welcome To Visuals and Verbals

Artwork & Writings of John William Brown
Painter, Poet, Dramatist and Performer


Sunday 26 September 2010

river

(Copyright Photograph & all Photograhic Collaged Imagery by John William Brown 2009)

simple yet prestigious river
sometimes melancholy always curious
receiving
deep unsurprising shadows
breaking shallow enhancing reflections

disposing as it dispossesses
all that settles on its surface
not being reflection shadow
or passing
it seems to seek another destiny

being the thing it is not being
it both becomes and loses itself
in this liquid world rising falling
dreaming itself a sea that it isn’t

this ever-turning-back-on-itself
this never-had-been-not-even-now
holding reflections releasing them back
up from within this iron-bridged shadow

(© digital-photmontage & poem jwb © john william brown 2009)

Friday 24 September 2010

we started looking...



we started looking we really believed for us it was so was a solitude of extended periods bloody times no ones wet fingers enjoyed yet somehow set the benchmark for beginnings of bliss for measured cruel kissing games that stunk of stairwell sex back street gropings one needed escape from and to blesséd overview vistas grazed by green parrots as common as sparrows like arrowheads fired through cool mists rising on warm waters’ broad sacred rivers swelling brooding shallowly embracing seeping sewage streams out of public view running off and away from the dead lands the deserts wastelands where nothing grew where no one went but madmen holies wanderering fools and entrepreneurs seeking hidden villages and unknown hills to flatten for fattened tourists’ expensive hotel views holy sites seen from cosseted rooms even we could not afford then further back in distance time back along a pitted dusty road passed the leper colony further on to the internationally condoned native arts centre that then did not exist there where we secreted ourselves away talked walked through your not yet built house as if a sacrosanct sacred place there where we shared each other the beginnings of bliss overviews solitude extended periods lost in time in rooms in fate in unmade spaces yet to be carved from those coveted native homelands our imaginary ideals our deepest needs shared only with all those empty wastelands defamed villages’ streets night smells mosquitoes’ evening’s milk-oxen moans with frangipani rathrani and peepl trees’ whispering slender silvered leaves brushing night air with memories of never having been planted all held now in our deep wanting sheltering our dreams lining the unmade gardens we would never enjoy but you would continually tend dampening grasses roses orange garland flowers our unborn children grandchildren could not wait to thread but also could not pick those unmade borders of long garden walks we only materialised as walking we lived out that dry patch nowhere land later sold off to the honest corrupt local tax collector for his ever expanding extended family draining him of success overcrowding his and unknowingly our sweet intentions while from a chin-high flat rooftop wall his four children stared down in awe with southern black faces and devouring big brown eyes as we listened for our former dreams’ to quiver only to hear our new ghost neighbour drag iron gates across our now concreted rich-poor dull earth and lock the lock but not lock out the stench of open sewers the denial of our defamed wants the thrashed street children’s wails the feral dog’s screaming broken back yet to come when our haring car turned off too fast down a half-forgot turning too sharp to stop bumping over a body sunning in late afternoon subcontinental winter sun we turning pained painful stares out the rear window no child a dog it dragged its screaming back across to shade to desert wastes the dirt track we too had once wandered but now the glory sheen of our new exotic novelty dimmed knowing as if we did not know we were back in a cruel country where no-one and nothing could be saved but then your face further back and we wandering nobly distracted by ancient embellished gates palaces tombs and other-land possibilities we could not revisit relive regain without dying dogs in-despite stench respite queen-of-the-night exhausting evening’s hopelessness all that possible probable earth we knew that world we found were finding caught-free as we were that then-now-when in which we started looking we really believed

© JWB10-13 April 2010 (words) and 13-15 April 2010 (image)
© JWB Composite computer generated collage April 2010.
© JWB Words and image:"we started looking we really believed" April 2010

Thursday 23 September 2010

chapel loke

  chapel loke

                              (CHAPEL LOKE: Composite Photographic Image by John William Brown 2009)

chapel loke ber street end cut between the houses georgian perhaps even older cross overhead tunnel short in between barely noticed passing by onto bracondale lakenham areas as different as some place no place side by side as different as surrey street ber street linking difference to differance linking cut out link in between the difference tunnel cut barely georgian perhaps linking older even and uneven unequal and different north as south down on up in by out declination for inclination interpretation as interpenetration time as space as ber street surrey street black white and down it is surrey street end thirty years to see ago years odd thirty to see gurdjieff in surrey house him no not in street to surrey teacher gurdjieff techniques to hear speak see overhead esoteric house cross room long techniques big hear notice numbers thirty nothing perhaps more even others seated straight backs one slouching this one different technicians not same as difference as differance decidedly not derridian later that much people back sat straight speak numbers not communicate knowing numbers outnumbered one slouched hardback chairs long room gone past large windows replicated two numbers spoken speaking taught shared keep out keep awareness into such things in time in that time was slouched into many things in the then now then past thirty odd in room space time they spoke in numbers years near place ago chapel loke absorbed held in time all not lost unclaimed interpenetrating moment space movement gone time into moment into movement south to north inclining to ber street under the safe as houses past norwich union names aviva identities unsafe meaning life fragments exchanges nothing changes in securities insecurities neither insured nor in sure assurances in nothing yet in time no moment lost held frozen in time melding melting into now in the autumn indian summer heat saint lukes summer going north like agra relax to punjab held in rain as left out in the rain monsoon washed away cleaned yet held clean as obscurity in a bright shadow of a tunnel cut in time through space through all paths our shadowed rooms houses south to north out breath out of it going up older now than earlier even sooner this year in warm rain perhaps older even ber street seat by galvanised wired old site bomb site luftwaffe she on seat older twenty years more even by the post box by the tanning shop no longer there already gone soon so going nowhere she older me younger she white hair ber street seat by post box opposite chapel loke where she went to school before even before the war meaning the second world war you call it ww2 she we call it the war all changes in time words are power words destroy the real make word realities that are not were not so it was the war before it she at school not catholic chapel loke first school bombed luftwaffe now car park was bombsite park bombsite playground after the war now aviva car park now john lewis car park was bonds before john lewis was bonds for country set for tea and cream cakes not now gone now fast shiny chrome noisy clatter cutlery clatter glass shatter bombs roof slate bombs clatter time clatter space clatter gone no more no place place gone to non place held in time in space in tunnel in between in life in mind in feeling in love in hate in difference in numbers in chapel loke they spoke in numbers in order in chaos in random held older even perhaps georgian houses the between cut end street ber loke chapel

© digital-photmontage & prose0poem jwb © john william brown 2009
Writing and photograph first published: 06 October 2009 on Andrew Spragg’s blog:
http://placetononplace.tumblr.com/post/206090896/chapel-loke-by-john-william-brown