Life in the Bowl of this Forest, Consumed.

A Confounded letter about growing and not growing.

 

Through forests forever wet, always glorious green, standing first verdant. Sheets of mood. Dripping silent pauses, damp now for consideration. Colours, greenish, brownish, black, changing tense.

Do you see what I see?

Bird, plant, insect and animal punctuated with shaking wet. Expectant dripped reflections. Musical noted tea brown cascades over and under, through lines of standing for evergreen. Spaces textured and woven. Insects carry line and wet web across such coloured space.. 

Mathematical nature growing already framed. Warp of organic courses, weft of liquid mist. Rock sculpted miniatures covered in elven and misty fruiting forests.

Hearing this, pause. A bass line of rumbling softly, away. A percussive growing and giving to the creaks and poke spears of hunting trees. Written, treble melodies, windblown and whistled. Sung arias glossing into sunshine chords and shafted timelessness. Leafing choirs shouted about.

Light flares, coruscates into tertiary greys and diminishes. Madness is growing; poisoned in primary colours. Overnight organic erections sprout and spore, sparing the alighting fruits from scared but naked promiscuity.

Shafting light rests, revealing a tentative history. Overgrown and forgotten buildings contracted out but containing life, death, love, eating, growing familiar and sex. An all consuming forgotten crowning life. The changes in tense and tempo are deliberate. Fecund becomes hopeful in this meaning and that. Irritating heat and insects. The pricking of false memories captured in blushing red thought. Undergrowing glowing against constant darks.

Underline these smells. Capture the distilled essence of diverse growth with inevitable white consuming rot  For this is how poisons are made.

For this the fungus grows. Neither fish nor fowl but necrophilia into life and back again. Blood red and white spot. Bat eared and rippled. Slow contrast and fur. Deep ghosts and fly blown faded antler. Taste and not when deciding upon reasons.

The damned rest in the arms of brothers, bloated green and seen only through gaps. Roots are washing the feet of their neighbours. Shelter is in injury.

Flight through the negative spaces is drawn with black pen over and over in Escher layered lines. The loamed mattresses of the fallen are in hangers, on small hills. Shapes of landscape seem under painted over and falling down. Gravestones reveal ancient heroes turfed over and forgotten. Life is in the bowl of this forest, consumed.

Author's Note

The changes in tense and tempo are deliberate. The painting is mine and called Dead in Light. Watercolour on paper.

Reviews

[Tree]

You certainly brought this forrest alive, Ken. And I felt as if I did see what You saw ... through your words. I think as a visual artist you have trained yourself to not only notice the minute details in nature, but the relationships found within, too. We can all learn from this type of thoughtful observation.

Thank you for sharing.

[Ken Simm.]

The underlying dark mathematics of nature. I always found myself looking for words when confronted with pictures and visa versa. Thanks so much for reading Diego.

[Gerald Parker]

I gain a gaian sense of constant growth, death and renewal though a progression of closely observed details. There are many lines which are poems on their own. I feel your mind is hopping from one thought to another, which is fair enough, but I cannot fathom out the logic behind the development - but then you would say there doesn't need to be one. I am reminded of Stockhausen - different instruments chipping in every now and again. 'The pricking of false memories captured in blushing red thought': this is the oboe having its say, taking no notice of what the cellos or the brass were saying. I am puzzled about the plural 'forests' at the start, and a singular one at the end. A fascinating read. Thank you, Ken.

[Ken Simm.]

I don't agree this is abstract and atonal Gerald. Quite the opposite in fact. I strove for melody here. My mind was not hopping it was rather following a journey, I feel. Through both what I observed and what I felt as an artist. You are quite right in that it is musical but not Stockhausen. It is interesting that you mention this because I use the orchestral sounds made by the forest as a device. To seperate the line you quoted. This was about the false pricking feelings when you get too hot in a forest. As if you are being showered with pine needles. Hot, red and irritated about something that is not happening. Hence the false memories.
The logic is intentionally complex just as the layers of the forest are. So we go from the forests covering the bowl of the earth (the wildwood) to perhaps the more personal forest that I happen to walk through. The intentional difference between plural and singular.
WKK said it best these are all metaphors. I perhaps would not say that it is the cosmos in microcosm. But the intent was there.
That is why I ask, Do you see what I see? Arrogantly I say probably not. I look as a trained visual artist. As Diego said I look for detail and in a forest you get detail layered upon detail. Gaia yes, but death and rot as well as living and fecundity.
In short I was not hopping I was following a complex melody hoping the reader would listen enough to hear it. You note I also use mathematics to attempt to give an insight. The forest, forests are not simple. They follow rules, yes. But not rules set by others.
I'm glad you found it fascinating. I'm glad you read it. I'm sorry you didn't find it quite your cup of tea.

[Gerald Parker]

If you were following a complex melody, I trust you were writing this in one go. I'm not admitting to this type of writing not being my cup of tea, I'm merely not tuned in to be able to identify the connections between one image/thought and another.

[Coyote Poetry]

Great description. I wanted more. I like the detail and the location. Your powerful statements took me to a good place. Thank you for the outstanding poetry.
Coyote

[Ken Simm.]

I'm glad you like it, John? Many thanks for reading, much appreciated.

[Leslie Philibert]

An excellent piece of writing that deserves a close look up - here a few points. I really enjoyed the way, for example, the imagery is tied together with the musical imagery of percussion and bass line, or the alliteration of spout and spore, or the move into pictures evoking growth and fecundity. I could give loads of examples, every careful reader will find more examples. An excellent piece of prose.

[Ken Simm.]

Thank you for reading and liking Leslie. You certainly read carefully.

[...]

. i am tempted to take off on my own trip ... and start typing about what i see around me ... maybe i will (eventually) ... though i won't be able to touch the degree of detail that you naturally express ... your words are an aerial view ... that factors in all details ... and sees the big picture ... i cannot claim to possess your vision nor see all that you see ... when i zoom in ... i miss many details ... when i zoom out ... i am unable to draw a complete picture ... but i am learning ... i am learning from each post that you have written ... i am learning much more about life ... and how it consumes ... and ... how consuming it is ...

[Kerry O'Connor]

Ah, found it.. Here's the story. I read your title, and saw 'Life in a bowl of this...' in my mind I completed the last word: thistle, and thought neat title for a poem. Well, days went by, and eventually I wrote the poem, but had forgotten whose title I had stolen! Sorry and thank you for inspiring... Off to give credit where it's due.

[Ladysue]

magnificent...you take me away into a another world with your writing..you are a master writer. gifted. how you see things is extraordinary...truly enjoyed this...

[SM Davis]

Mr. White himself would be agreeable to this piece. deliberation not withstanding...overgrown perhaps...but with you, never forgotten. Forever immortalized in these not so metaphoric snipets of word art are moments that can now be lived and regailed for long moments to come.

[R J Askew]

Wonderful sensuous perception with metaphoric depth and texture. It is all fantastiaclly intense with said intensity increasing in drama towards the end. I enjoyed every word of it. I am sure there will be a moment at some point in the future in some drippy place where I will remember the question, 'Do you see what I see?' and will look anew at my surroundings. But I don't have your artists eye and so will never see so much. But I can see the more through your words.