Choka - Interpretation

Melons eaten
I remember my children
Chestnuts eaten
I remember my pain
Invisible - I see them
In my mind's eye
I cannot help them
Night without end
No rest or quiet sleep

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Uri hameba
Kodomo Omohoyu
Kuri hameba
Mashite Omowayu
Izuko yori
Kitarishi monoso
Manakai ni
Motona kakarite
Yasui shi nesanu


My interpretation of a choka by Yamanoue no Okura circa 730 AD.
I tried to honor the poetic aesthetic of this beautiful poem (particularly the repetition and rhythm) - Mine is not a literal translation of the text nor of its scansion... I would love to see other people's interpretations.

You were Spain

You were Spain
You were the switch back curves
From the mountain to the sea
Hairpins holding back the olive groves

You were Spain
And we flew through you
Noise some witches
Riding our motorbikes
Riding our broomstick Vespas
Like virgins - Knees pressed firmly to hold our place

You were Spain
And your words made sense
Ananas y Naranjas
Fruits made real by closeness to their roots
And your villages
Clung to the mountain by their high mountain names
Binaraitx, Andratx, Fornalutx
Or lapped low and lovely to the sea of Soller - Puerto de Soller

You were Spain
And we rode the San Franciscan tram
Along the beachfront - And everyone smoked
The black tabac
The cheap filterless Fundadors
More foul than French
Burning our nostrils with their gunpowder stench

And someone young - Played guitar
And someone young clapped
And someone young clapped
And someone young clapped
And we knew that this was perfect
And we knew that every other flamenco
Would be spoiled forever
We knew that every other flamenco would always be somehow wrong
Painted on velvet

Y sonrió
Todos sonrió salvajemente
And we smiled
We all smiled wildly - And we saw their
Tears streaming down cheeks that were clenched with joy
And we smiled at their simple sentimentality

And then we tasted the surprising salt on our own lips
And we smiled again in our community
And we
Were Spain

Nichola Ward - Villanelle Bio

A Writer and Performance Poet of the hood
Although her neighbours are all decorators
Nichola Ward - Oh yeah - She's good

Not one to self applaud - But if she could
She'd call herself a wicked - Rhyminator
A Writer and Performance Poet of the hood

Inspired by voices from fair Thomas's Milkwood
And by the likes of Arnold's "Terminator"
Nichola Ward - Oh yeah - She's good

Fearless - She'll milk any sacred cow - from the Bible to the Talmud
Preaching to the public - She's a peerless Mass Debater
A Writer and Performance Poet of the hood

She lays no claim to Sainthood
But she's a lover not a hater … and (like most of us) is scared of coming off as some asshole second-rater… So when you see her tell her later…
Nichola Ward - Oh yeah - She's good

Because when you take away the bullshit - She's been standing where you stood
And sharing some humanity… well, that's the reason why she's placed here
A Writer and Performance Poet of the hood
Nichola Ward - Oh yeah - She's good

A Venue

What future comes from
A void
What place
What pathway

Wholly empty
Completely at a loss
In my loss
As to where I should start
Caught in all that chaos

Where can I begin
To sort the wheat
From chafe
The sheep
From goats
The boys
From men
The truth
From lies
The
What was
From the
What is

They say that art
Seeks
What is and what is not
Which makes it a fair companion for the lost
Like me

They say that art
Like love
Is but discovery

But I have been recovered
Like an old couch
Re-upholstered
So many times
I wonder
What lost
Is left

So I protest:
I cannot start with art
I do not even know
What is

And in the denseness of my argument
I sense the arteries of creation
Narrowing
Constricting flow

And I hear the barest whisper
Of a voice I know
Offering
Not guidance
No that would be too too gauche

But just a thought
An idea
A …perhaps

Perhaps you should just push the boat out and write
Perhaps this is the thing you should do

Perhaps this is the thing to do

To write

Envoi

Never complain
Never explain

As fathers have it

Or as Fitzgerald said it well
Advising literary folks
Don't use some
Mark of punctuation to exclaim
It's like laughing at your own jokes

And though I don't wish to state another person's truth

...

Damn even that's a lie
More truthfully I
Do not care to close the door on my own truth

I want to leave the door wide open
Open to new strangers

Yet strangely
I feel compelled to craft this envoi

Not to punctuate
Nor parenthesize
Nor foolishly
To try and set some compass path

But selfishly
To try and synthesize
My present sight

Poppies …poppies have to find their height
Search for light

And when a tree dies and falls
It feeds their roots of course

But long before…
Above the forest floor
Above the shoulders that you used to ride
Above the bearded birds nests
Above the silvern hair

Where ancient arms held back the world
The canopy exposed
There is a hole

And light
Before unseen
Light previous and unwitnessed
Light which blessed
The former father

Now unfiltered
Feeds the child

Almost to the point of poison
Sun poisoning
And the son
Is father to…

…Some computational obsession
Circular confusion
An endlessly reworded confession
That only ends
But is never finished

Thoughts wrung out
Exhausted of meaning
No conclusion

Just clues

Geographically
I examine where I was

Geographically
I examine
Where I am

Geographically
I examine where I am not

And graphically
I examine
What I have done with nothing

And I try to think my way
To feeling
Logically

Psychologically

Pharmacologically

But all science fails

Lost in faith
To face

All those shifting sands
And then
Colliding with a barely
Incidental
Accident

And something breaks

And I leap from a diving board into nothing
From a diving board made of nothing
From a platform that I know to be unreal
Even as I lean on it

And knowing this
I use the non-existent recoil
To launch myself
Ignoring the so-called rules of conservation
Self propelled

Into

This devastating insight
How little I know
How little I am

I have to start again

…again

…Yet again

I pass from
Madly quiet

To

Quietly mad

I laugh
Cry at insane legacies

I laugh
Cry at the mad march of science

I laugh
Cry at my deception

Laughing at my
Lies

Laughing at performance
Anxiety

Laughing at sex

Laughing at absurdity

Laughing at the ordinary

And coming to realize that
The gods adore the ordinary

And that living

And growing

And godliness is…

Emptiness

And that art
Is proper suffering

Singing is eternal

And so I sing to you

Imperfect
Unresolved
Trite
Beautiful and temporarily
Complete

I write