ITALIAN JAYA

i think of you then
much younger than i
and my heavy and aged twenty-nine


i think of you then
when i walked you to work
through your streets of worn camden town


i think of you then
of your walking away
from my solitary and cold street corner


i think of you then
the limp that you gained
from your failed suicide so well planned
       

i think of you then
overdosed on pills
with thoughts that no other would know


i think of you then
within your dark wood
underneath your chosen death tree


i think of you then
in you council-flat room
your seductive smile walking towards me
       

i think of you then
in your joyful despair
those seeds of my love you are taking
       

i think of you then
your mouth full of want
as your harvest my secret desires                                 



Poem "Italian Jaya" jwb 18 Sept-03 Oct 2010 (Revised 2022)
Pen & ink illustration "Nude - after Modigliani" 13 July 2012

BLACK DRAGONFLY

                                                    Illustration 'Black Dragonfly © JWB 2012 

black dragonfly

I saw a black dragonfly in flight yesterday 
today that dragon fly is probably dead

for consumer societies to effectively work
ideas of uniqueness must be corrupted

I saw a black dragonfly    its body dark blue
one grey-white patch on each fine black wing

each societal clone must believe itself special
whilst its creative expression is insidiously eroded

I saw a black dragonfly    completely alone
my awe and awareness    qualitative    pointless

each society member made to feel alienated
will believe it is free making quantitative choices

I saw a black dragonfly     I reached out my hand
I wanted to feel it land on my palm

no one must know that more progress will express
more fear    and defeat    and increased isolation

I reach out my words    want you to touch them
this poem is as dangerous as a black dragonfly

written  03-06 June 2009
Poem 'Black Dragonfly © JWB 2014

Video of jwb reading 'black dragonfly''© JWB 2012 
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BvdPY7Kch8

JAIPUR SUNSET

JAIPUR SUNSET

a bludgeoning reality

nothing more

dead dogs

divine temples

and

an estranged

attentiveness

in which

exotic memories

were

drawn away

amber fort

wind palace

vivid pollen green

a water palace view

all

brought to nothing

quickly disappearing

into

overcrowded frantic streets

an urban and

bucolic vibrancy

traffic

and colourful clothes

jaipur sunset

bad water

blood on the streets

yesterday

I thought

my heart was opening

today it closed

I made excuses

June 6-7 2005

"Jaipur Sunset" - Oil painting 2005 (c) jwb 2012

"Jaipur Sunset" - Poem (c) jwb 2012 

From the unpublished: “Exile Quartet” 

1972-2008 [Part 4: 'Return to Exile']

FRIDGE - FREEZER

(On reading the poem “Fridge” by Boris Slutsky after 
someone dumped a fridge-freezer outside my door)

A block of a thing, dumped at my front door,

Chipped, white and broken, you threaten the stairway.

Someone’s idea of a joke, you are chilling,

an estranged metaphor for my present deep-freeze.

Someone’s idea of a threat, strange warning:

to have carried you up here at dead of night.

Of all types of menace an old freezer must be

the most suggestive of something sinister:

the Big Chill, the morgue, derelict, kaput;

a sliver of ice down my spine, in the heart.

You stand there, a reminder of all that’s not known,

your mystery much broader than who? why? or when?

The unavoidable truth, you are icon, are symbol

for all that remains of unknowable mystery.

You’re the latest life-lesson, my new lucky charm.

I greet you fridge-freezer, most notable teacher,

and thank those who brought you upto my front door:

the acceptance of all my fears rest within you.

I cannot deny you, defunct and defiant,

You stand there to welcome me home in the evening.

Your mystery grows like an Easter Island idol

To remind me each morning, there’s much I don’t know.

22-23 January 2011

WHEN (REBEL REVOLT RESIST)

At the start of 20th century poet Rudyard Kipling wrote "IF” - probably with his son in mind:

“If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you …you will be a man my son”. 

In the late 20th century I found this poem inspirational.  I don’t have a son - I have a daughter - at the beginning of 21st century I dedicate this to her. 


WHEN    (REBEL REVOLT RESIST)
(For Amrita Tara)
 
When a woman in some foreign land
Is stoned to death by law,
Is buried to her neck in sand,
Her naked face smashed - raw,
When feminists get gaoled, then hung
When they fight for the right to exist,
Speak out - Sing out their silenced song!

Rebel - Revolt - Resist.

When our kids have turned to drugs and crime
When they find no future here,
When politicians flout the Law
When the few get the greater share,
When those who caused recession's loss,
Keep their profits - and then - insist:
The poor and weak can pay the cost!

Rebel - Revolt - Resist.

When we've kept our right to demonstrate
But only two by two -
When street-cameras & microphones
Catch all we say and do -
When they tap our phones - emails - our homes?
When nothing gets freely expressed -
It's time to Act - Give them a Show!

Rebel - Revolt - Resist.

When Evil comes we do not see it
Straight upon the screen -
When it creeps up slow - insidiously -
When it wears on down - unseen -
When we're put to sleep by slow despair,
That's the nature of Their Beast.
We can awake - It's not too late!

Rebel - Revolt - Resist.

When Law-enforcers play-for-time with rules
Written to suit only them -
When police walk from blatant crimes
Executed in our name -
When prosecutors cock the case -
It's time we must enlist 
To take up the Law - Take Them to Court!

Rebel - Revolt - Resists.

When armed police kill a foreigner
For - sitting on a train -
When a working man dies - when strolling home,
When our patience has taken full strain -
When it's time to turn and face our fears down,
Find some inner strength...persist...
Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down...

Rebel - Revolt - Resists.

jwb 9-10August 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)

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