Posted on by Glenn Mower

dust rich Flesh

 

May I live so:

‘if on my dust a tuft of grass were to grow, every blade would tremble with my devotion for thee.’ (from Invocations by Ansari of Herat)

 

Teacher

Teach.

Come towards to hush this

tightly

taught

dissecting

I

this mind of ‘my’

I

mine alone

this owner’s

ship of listing skin

this un-

contained husk of

lack and lust for

being seen as different and

distinct, these

sentient addictive flaws

I

darkly sow

now

deep within this sentimental hold, these

envious skeins, these half-

digested and indulged

unwatched

unwashed

infatuations of the

I

sores that pray to be

left alone to

infect

mindscapes over grown, to

freshly pull at scaffoldings of

braking bone

overwrought, this

 iron will of  ego intent can only glimpse

waverings

of such and such discontent,  for

I

have heard but seldom feel

the real and awesome unsaid

Word

that roots

and shoots

green leaves anew

to sway with ease

while anchored true to

dust

richly fed

deep within

the sacrificial flesh of

You.

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Strengthened in Life (version two)

 

Breathe-out

and

stand

the Weh

is at hand

 

 

Breathe-in

rejoice

let

Yah guide

the voice

 

 

for when

 

joy fills

the lungs

 

when

 

breath-full-ness

comes

 

anxieties fall

 

as

 

Love Be-stills all.

 

On the pure:

meditate

 

For the just:

Supplicate

 

Praise both:

 Noble and True

 

Give thanks for:

Virtue

 

With the Loveless:

Consort

 

and with all good report

 

‘Rejoice’

I say twice

 

and Be strengthened in

Life.

 

After Philippians V4: 4-13

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

Thinking about Museums

I have excavated this from one of my old journals:

Feb 2007:

Today I spotted a National Portrait Gallery painting of Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin aged 75.  This Nobel prize winner for chemistry and ex University of Bristol big wig was pictured furiously, nay, many handedly writing important stuff on scraps of paper while surrounded by brightly assorted gob-stoppers stuck on a miniature roller coaster of stickle brick type proportions. This chemical Meccano type construction was placed untidily before her on what looked like a kitchen table and I thought now that’s a lady I need to question more deeply:

Questions to D.M. Crowfoot-Hodgkin (1910-1994)

Where did you get your drive and your single-minded abandon
your freedom from fashion, your joy for refraction,
your brilliant electrical brain?
And how did keep your spark alive,
did you delve the B12 and magnify the question
did you ruminate while rheumatoid ruined circulation
and how on earth did you understand simultaneous equations
and the balls and sticks and mathematics of your chemical creations?

Did your emerald gown graze the floor when you got Nobelled in ’64
did you dance and laugh and belch and glide,
on the music and the bubbly and the sheer self pride
and between ‘71 and ’88, Ms Dorothy Chancellor Crowfoot. H
did your passion overflow in the science class
were your lectures loved to bits, did your students pass
or as a Bristol University figure head
did you bury yourself in research instead?

But back to that oil at 75, it says:
you really lived while being alive,
says despite, hair sight short white knuckle-twist and bend,
you groped and gripped and grappled truth until your very end.

(This poem was written in response to Maggi Hambling’s oil on canvass, 1985, which was part of the ‘Work Rest and Play exhibition’ at Bristol’s Museum and Art Gallery, Jan-April 2007)

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Exploitation, death and decay

In the week where Prince Charles became

‘humbled and surprised,’ to be shoed-in as the next head of The Commonwealth, I have been mulling over my recent visit to Bristol’s own museum of exploitation, domination and white man’s stolen play things.

Ostensibly my visit to The City Museum was to witness a gathering of arty folk chew over how to bring light and modern day context to the now hidden collection of 500,000 Empire and Commonwealth artefacts (which had once been displayed in the now defunct Empire and Commonwealth museum, and which now are stored away in the gunnels of the Bristol Records Office).

I admit I usually avoid entering this dusty world of neatly annotated, well organised death and decay, and so even before the meeting my hackles were slightly on attack mode.

So when the  speaker from the Bristol Records Office talked about an  African collection of steel locks, unique and ‘of no use to Bristol,’ and followed that by saying  that ‘in fact, there is so much other people’s stuff stuffed away in dark closets that new storage space is needed.. My internal and usually well wrapped rage became ignited.

‘No, no no Bristol,’ I screamed (admittedly only internally), ‘instead of employing two full time archivists to list and categorise colonial stolen lives, instead of making quasi educational lists of historical plunder, find ways to open up the vaults and let the goodness flow back to its source.’

God how I wish I had said that.

Instead, as my stomach juices ate my own lining, I waited for my chance to blurt out

‘Why don’t you just let that encased and delicately shrivelled Egyptian queen downstairs make her journey back home, yes let her go home so she can die again within the splendour of her rightful resting place. And while we are at it, reunite that shrunken African head so he can stand strong in the solid unity of home. And please please please consider letting go of all those alarmed and stuffed animals, give them the dignity of death and decay so they too may each close their glassy eyes and return to the dust of mother earth……

Bristol: open your mucky clutches and release yourself, release us from witnessing your continued superior claims to be even handed custodians of other people’s stolen creativity and priceless heritage.’