The Snow White Blood of Mahsuri.

This legend is found on the island of Langkawi which is in a Malaysian archepelago. I have described the legend in the usual way. I will attempt a longer version from the perspective of each of the characters and maybe invent a new message, it seems this legend is worth it. Marble is the main product of Langkawi. The torch ginger (or Bunga Kantan) is a national flower of Malaysia. Gunung Raya is the highest point on Langkawi (which means Eagle Island). Makam Mahsuri is the tomb of Mahsuri which exists today in Langkawi. Also, the curse of Mahsuri was apparently for seven generations, and many in Langkawi today believe the present prosperity of their home (mainly tourism) has come after 7 generations of tragedy and poor harvests including the Thai (Siamese) invasion of 1821.

The Snow White Blood of Mahsuri

The beautiful Mahsuri shouldered iron buckets to the marble well,
met her husband Wan Darus under the palms
and the sun shone like an angel as they kissed.
Mahura the jealous crone watched, her eye-lids wrinkled in despair.

On her wedding day Mahsuri’s hair glittered.
Because the marble roads of Langkawi sparkled like her eyes
Mahura plucked from the apple tree
a fruit full of pain.

Mahsuri played in the ocean cupping the salty water
in her hands for signs of revelation
Will I be happy? What is my destiny?
How will Langkawi receive my progeny?

The foam followed the lines of her palm,
she knew her destiny would be strange.
Mahura coloured the apple blood red
and went to find Mahsuri.

She saw her by the well, alone, dancing for the beauty of love
the misery of worry, for Wan Darus was away at war.
Radiant child, life is hard. You dance now
but come the full moon you will know sorrow.

Mahsuri looked with pity on the hag
and knew sorrow slept in rags, felt no pity
and borrowed the owl’s eyes.
No matter, when Wan returns

we shall make love and the fields of Langkawi
shall twinkle like diamonds with torch ginger
and Mahura will find happiness too.
Laughter and anger stroked each other in a look

as the crone gave her apple to Mahsuri.
The night slipped its knife into Mahura’s grip,
she spied a traveller come to sell
Mahsuri the cloth to drape on her marriage table.

Who comes to the bride while her love is away?
Look people, she takes in her death wantonly.
Mahsuri grew plump with joy, a girl or boy,
she linked her hands with her sisters around the great palm.

The village rejoiced for Mahsuri was a greater pearl
than any found in the sea, more radiant than the sheen of moon.
Mahura’s rage found no friend in the spring
or in the open spaces of the wide ocean.

She called out to Langkawi, to its people, its ancestors,
screeching like the gull
Mahsuri wears the devil’s horns, her beauty
has ensnared her with adulterous seed, the seed of Deraman.

The winds bear our ancestors grief,
look how the Eagles grow black with their anger.
Mahsuri noses the sacrificial palm
bound with the ropes of Caliphate law. Mahura danced

around the tree, her madness joy, holding the knife.
Plant this blade between her shoulder blades,
our laws call for adulterer’s blood.
The people cried for pity, for Mahsuri must die.

People of Langkawi my blood will pool
red if I am guilty and feed the palm in
white if I am not, and if the blood of innocence falls
the rage of the ancient Eagles will strip your children poor.

Mahura screamed this beauty must die
and plunged the knife in to let the river flow.
Wan Darus and the people cried as
white blood pooled around Mahsuri’s weeping body.

For seven score years the curse of Mahsuri called the Siamese kings
to rape the land and cull the crops.
This beauty must die, this beauty must die,
Mahura cried as she flung herself from Gunung Raya into the sea.

Bunga kantan lie heaped on the Makam Mahsuri
Her curse now a memory of a terrible beauty
Wan woke Mahsuri with a kiss for the new world
and they dance there together, and riches come.

here's one for all the fanatics of letters. Dont try teach this to the kiddies. The title reads alphabe -debater, in case you're wondering.


AlphaBedaBater

Z the sleep at the end of the world
Y the question before the sleep
X the spot that marks the answer
W the double you upon the bed, writhing
V the angle of two lovers who see eye to eye
U the you that is always you
T the crossing of you and double you
S the winding river of analysis
R the you you are
Q the question before you
P the you you are on one leg, standing
O the illusion of the double you
N in terms of logic, invalid UPON application
M lovers bending low to kiss their toes
L surrendering to the crossing of you and double you
K holding the waist in hard for a kiss
J the hook of you
I the question of you
H you on end, double backed you
G circling round to get a good look at the hook of you
F the corporal appearance of you on one foot, standing
E which is a mirror of the divine essence
D that holds the question of you in its finger tips
C but does not close the circle of the eye to see
B what you may be
A and what is A but a...?

On the subject of what is good poetry there are many opinions, many held very strongly. The following is one person's view of the craft of writing. I will post it here because it may save some budding poets a little time and agony. Remember the critic always bows to the poet, one creates, the other simply reacts.

"10 golden rules:
· Show, don't tell
· Do more with less
· Exploit the senses
· Be specific
· Use memory
· Create vivid imagery
· Match sound with meaning
· Start with basics - not rhyme
· Use rhythm & line breaks
· Compare with similes and metaphors

On coming on the Internet a few years ago the first Site I joined was an academic-type one very highbrow. A cliché, or fragmented verse was treated almost as a sin. In the process they would tear peoples poetry apart until one was left with a wasteland of mere words without imagery. Its common sense to try to avoid clichés if possible. In a love poem it’s really ideal to avoid the word “love” find Your imagery to convey the love, this is important [though Personally one or even two references to the word “love” In my opinion is fine especially in longer poems. Again watch out for overuse of these classic cliché words “Soul, love, spirit, heart, sky, “ and repetition is to be Avoided we use words to link others very frequently in poetry “ I, it, and, and, or,” they can make a poem boring To the reader and predictable, to many “ and” can spoil a good poem. imagery lies at the heart of a poem. Much of any language is built of dead metaphors, and metaphors in poetry are more sleeping than dead. To put the matter concisely: imagery is the content of thought where attention is directed to sensory qualities: mental images, figures of speech and embodiments of non-discursive truth. Suggestions Consider using imagery to:
1. Externalize thought.
2. Create mood and atmosphere.
3. Give continuity by recurring leitmotifs.
4. Develop plot or increase dramatic effect by abrupt changes in imagery.
5. Exploit the etymology of words to subtly revive their original meanings. "

Four year old spelling bee

My son S (4) just spelled out his sister's name. He has known how to spell his own since he was 3, but this was his first correct attempt at someone else's name. What a marvellous thing the human mind is, and how hard-wired we are for language. Of course, being a writer, my first reaction was "He's going to be a writer!!" My wife's C's reaction was typical "Oh, so you've got his life all worked out huh?". Well, one can only dream.

Too mindful of you.

Should I ever destroy my wiles?
If need be, look in the broken closet nearest the classroom door where the subject of my strangest work is busy escaping from his bruises by hypnotically prattling out his name. I'm Robes Pierre, I'm Robes Pierre, I'm...
Crying until his tears wash him into hypothermic shivering.

"Some revenge is better than others, you councel others, you should know", Brumhilda retorted after I swerved over a road bump in her will.
She was chloric, cathartic in her spits and spats. "He was never there", "he was a right pimp",
and choking for the death of him.
If only it were that easy.

Turn the wheel, I intoned again and again,
recognize what is insufficient and excessive, deliberate.
Turn, cram the cranium with credulities, the wheel, turn.
She must have caught me looking in at pure Samadhi,
"I have a baby y'know; its his", her gaze falling like ice into water.

"I am not able to be surprised so this, my candour, is not indifference
but detachment for...", I shuffle forward thinking...otherwise, she
might be less imformative.
Brumhilda blanches, remembers how she is, so slapping desired destiny
wasting pot shots on a crack-pot, bearing the runt.
"I wish I was back on the Spirit of Tasmania, the shifts were hard,
but the travel was excellent". Her round pocked face now pallid
but then the colour of stress,. Her eyes, spectacle shadows.

"Turn the wheel toward the mind", I implored. "You face a closet
broken and bruised and your mantra is mumbled and jumbled
into incoherence.
Nothing for restoration.
Your attackers lie in the ditch you dug for trust, you but stike a dagger
into mirror".

Sensible mind, how I wrote you out.
The wheels of the bus go round and round, round and round...
Facts falcified, gnostic notions nullified, child's jargon jettisoned.
The wheels of the bus go round and round, all the living day

Opting for a good night's sleep

Could I abandon my craft, ever? In the event of my dissemination
please refer to my previous itinerary. The setting of my latest work
is an abandoned building, the Narrator despairing for a good meal
a soft hand, a lonely bed, slips into a crack in the pavement,
and the whole open sky fits into the eddy he creates as he spins into

non-existence. Relax, I would say, hold on to breath at the top of your breath
then hold again as you breathe
out,
do not attempt to breathe just breathe, I would say.

The sessions as instructor are complete. At least now I can hang out with the silence
listening to John Lennon’s wheels, strumming at the internal drum machine
always on the make-out for a song.
What have you got to offer me? Jude asked at the beginning.
I could only offer the seat next to tomorrow

Tomorrow came and the questions came but I was writing
and the flow of elocution was adverse to conversation.
Jude mouthed out the same story as yesterday, his woman
loved him and wanted him exclusively but was marrying another
because Jude didn’t know if he wanted her.

There he goes throwing his hands back
slapping his balding head.
What was there to be sure of? I asked
noting the cast-away expression he used
to denote his nuptial umbilical.

For weeks I would say "relax" and he would run
panicking into tomorrow, finding ways
but never settling on the top of his breath
always attempting to breathe

Fiddling with the pen lid, sweat ribald on his lip
anger mounting, "but she loves me"
"Jude" I would say, "you are in an abandoned building
despairing for sustenance, a soft lip to caress, a bed
you are slipping through a crack in your bereavement"

As instructor I thought, "What of myself? How many cracks
does it take to fill the Albert Hall?"

She married.
Jude would not take her at the altar preferring
the might-be babe fate would concoct for him
out of pity for all the slighted lovers of fair-play.
"I blamed you" he ventured cheekily once the truth had hit
"you knew, you said, I would run, but now all I want is her"

I saw eddies spiraling inward as he talked
becoming smaller like an ink spill drying
until I soaked up the rest in my quill
for I could never abandon my craft.

What is Post-Modernism?

What is postmodernism? Well, apart from the library of material you might encounter on a search to answer this question, one thing is for certain. No one really knows. Literally it means after-modernism, which means one has to know what modernism is before you can answer the former. So its better to get to know what modernism is first, but I want to skip this. Presume modernism has gone forever and has been replaced by another form of thinking. Just say that modernism at its last was, in the poetic world, an experiment that exploded the classical forms of poetry and ushered in a free-for all of form. Post-modernism attempts to fence in the 'voice' of poetic elocution because free-form has destroyed the boundary between prose and poetry. As one critic recently stated, "...poetry is not a different language to prose, rather, it is a use of the same language in a different way. There is no reason why one should use a "hightened" or mysterious vocabulary, or to aim for an emotional register that is different from the one you would use in commenting on someone else's poem in a crit". This is post modern understanding of poetry in a nutshell. The central aim is for the voice of the writer to be present without any rhetorical corruptions or abstract rendition. "Go for meaning first, and the music of rich sounds." he also stated.
The self consciousness of modernism turned abruptly (60's to 00's) toward un-selfconsciousness, and the prose revolution was complete. What Dicken's started back in post-medieval England with the Novel, is now as powerful an expressive force as anything the human species has constructed. The poetry that most associate with, what they were taught in school, are now museum pieces worthy only of a glass box. Most good poets will attempt to formalise, or use traditional forms (ie:sonnets or rounds) for the sake of crafting their voice and testing out their ability to word-craft. Yet the traditional forms are a curiosity, born of a long history of spiritual upheaval. Dicken's revolution has not yet revolved fully, and the flurry of new forms are still in the making. What is expected now is that if you have a voice, it better come from your experience and any wordplay must find a significance within the linearity of the text. Imagination is now no longer looking into the mystery of language but at its aesthetics. Un-selfconscious prose is at one extreme journalism, and at the other poetry. How far one walks the tightrope between defines the difference between being read and being remembered. If you speak plainly and yet condense your meanings, you will have found your post-modern style. Maybe it sounds a little easy? Probably, but who is to stop you trying!

I was no Evacuee.(Revised)

This is a revision of I was no Evacuee. There are a few little details that have been changed, have fun finding them.

Grafting my bones to the antipodes I
could not leave that little country
The pulse from Her bosom beating me back
to my first open skies, Her cold misty moonlight

She was no mother but a place I could not venture from.
So She came to me, a river surmounting its banks,
and I had but enough sand on my edges for forgetfulness,
all but soon washed away as I saw your tears,

my mother,
for the lazy cobbles, the half-pinched puppet face crier,
slinging his bell, singing Milkoo, milkoo,
as he blew warm air into his writhing hands

The daft playing places left from the air strikes
the last tears of regret because Father was never coming home,
his body washed up full of the demon fire;
you were with the stolen generation of England

Not refugees, nor locked away on some tragic island
but worse, for you would return to the great city
that was no longer London,
but a river swept waif.