These are the Clouds

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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby liminalOyster » Tue Sep 26, 2017 6:35 pm

Utopia Preppers
Caitlin Johnstone (2017)

We hide in clockwork palaces
where the squawking screens can’t find us
and plant flowers in shoes
that we found in the gutter
by the light of a jealous moon.

We do not sing about the end of days.
The end of days is for the dead.
While they bore the bone puppets
with their funeral dirges,
we have unprotected sex on top of skyscrapers
and get pregnant with woodwind virtuosos.
We paint dinosaur murals on the castles of the Bastards.
We drink blackberry wine from flamingo skulls
and lie to God.

The sea has gone still
and the birds are all watching.
We are the utopia preppers,
and we are ready for the golden age.
Tell those giant crystal elephants in the womb of time
with their mirror minds and mushroom voices
that we are hungry for our feast.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/utop ... 438880008a
"It's not rocket surgery." - Elvis
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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Mon Oct 23, 2017 7:17 am

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

~ Pablo Neruda ~

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Pablo Neruda, Matilde Urrutia
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Sun Nov 05, 2017 10:50 am

The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Fri Nov 10, 2017 7:38 am

Image

Changing at York

A directory that runs from B to V,
the Yellow Page’s entries for HOTELS
and TAXIS torn out, the smell of dossers’ pee,
saliva in the mouthpiece, whisky smells.

I remember, now I have to phone
squashing a Daily Mail half full of chips,
to tell the son I left at home alone
my train’s delayed, and get cut off by the pips,
how, phoning his mother, late, a little pissed,
changing at York, from some place where I’d read,

I used 2p to lie about the train I missed
and ten more to talk to some girl’s bed
and, in this same kiosk with the stale, sour breath
of queuing callers, drunk, cajoling, lying,
consoling his grampa for his granny’s death,
how I heard him, for the first time ever, crying.

~ Tony Harrison~

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The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Mon Nov 13, 2017 11:00 am

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Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

~ John Masefield ~


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The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Burnt Hill » Sat Dec 23, 2017 1:54 am

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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Tue Jan 23, 2018 12:31 pm

Image

POMEGRANATE

You tell me I am wrong.
Who are you, who is anybody to tell me I am wrong?
I am not wrong.

In Syracuse, rock left bare by the viciousness of Greek
women.
No doubt you have forgotten the pomegranate-trees in
flower,
Oh so red, and such a lot of them.

Whereas at Venice
Abhorrent, green, slippery city
Whose Doges were old, and had ancient eyes.
In the dense foliage of the inner garden
Pomegranates like bright green stone,
And barbed, barbed with a crown.
Oh, crown of spiked green metal
Actually growing!

Now in Tuscany,
Pomegranates to warm, your hands at;
And crowns, kingly, generous, tilting crowns
Over the left eyebrow.

And, if you dare, the fissure!

Do you mean to tell me you will see no fissure?
Do you prefer to look on the plain side?

For all that, the setting suns are open.
The end cracks open with the beginning:
Rosy, tender, glittering within the fissure.

Do you mean to tell me there should be no fissure?
No glittering, compact drops of dawn?
Do you mean it is wrong, the gold-filmed skin, integument,
shown ruptured?

For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken.
It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.

~ D.H. Lawrence ~

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The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
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^ nice!

Postby Burnt Hill » Tue Jan 23, 2018 7:25 pm

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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Thu Jan 25, 2018 11:31 am

Image

Lapis Lazuli

(for Harry Clifton)

A whole night-sky that serves as a paperweight,
this azure block blown in from the universe
sits on my desk here, a still shimmering piece
of planet rock speckled with gold and white,
coarse-grained and knobbly as a meteorite
though recognized as a ‘gem’ in its own right.
The willow-pattern wisdom is still unknown,
the twinkling sages and the branchy house;
for this is the real thing in its natural state,
the raw material from which art is born.

Growth night-formed in sun-struck Afghanistan,
this complex chunk of sulphurous silicates
— a royal blue loved since the earth began
because, like the swirling sea, it never dates –
blinks authenticity through mysterious days
of slowly moving cloud and watery haze,
days of silence, watching as paint dries
while Buddha and a Yeat-head supervise.
Dim in the half-light of conventional rain,
we start at the squeal of Berkeley’s telephone.

Slow fires still glowing in our cindery grates
even while the white, meridional sun vibrates
on sandy shelves where life first crept ashore,
we need the glitter of those secret depths
like the loved women of our private myths.
On dark dawns that look for that subtle gleam
and blinking noons obtuse to its dark dream
when slow thought replaces the money-shower,
we want the key to that impervious heart:
with ultramarine what need have we of art?

Heat lightning photographs the astonished sea.
Am I in Bermuda or in cold Sakhalin? Either
this new century with its bewildering weather
will work wonders for the sea-angling industry
or bring wolves dancing down the mooring ropes
of vast tankers and patronizing warships
to spill the bins and skate on the ice floes.
Do we die laughing or are we among those
for whom a spectre, some discredited ghost
still haunts the misty windows of old hopes?

While planes that consume deserts of gasoline
darken the sun in another rapacious war
a young woman reads alone in a lighted train,
scratches her scalp and shoves specs in her hair,
skipping the obvious for the rich and rare.
Hope lies with her as it always does really
and the twinkling sages in the Deux Magots
first glimpsed by a student forty years ago
on a continent like a plain of lapis lazuli;
and the Eurostar glides into the Gare du Nord.

~ Derek Mahon ~

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The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Cordelia » Mon Jan 29, 2018 8:14 am

The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby dada » Mon Jan 29, 2018 1:32 pm

wave hands like clouds

Image

Image



Consciousness precedes the brush. The effective work is outside the brush.

Image
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby dada » Tue Jan 30, 2018 2:12 am

Master Wilson, you are to understand,
had been at his uncle's,where he had staid rather too late,
and therefore his uncle ordered the Footman to light him home;
but Tom being a very courageous fellow, and a little obstinate, would walk home alone,
and in the dark; but just as he came into the marshy meadow, who should he almost overtake
but Jack with the Lanthorn, who he mistook for Goody Curtis, the chare-woman,
and thought she was lighting her way home from work.

Tom ran to overtake Dame Curtis, but Mr. Jack with his Lanthorn still kept out of reach,
and led my friend Tom out of the path, which he did not perceive till he had lost himself;
on which Tom ran, and Jack ran; Tom halloo'd, and Jack would not answer;
at last (splash) came Tom into Duckweed Pond, where he might have lain till this time,
if Mr Goodall had not heard him call out as he was riding by, and ran to his assistance.

This put all the company in good humour,
and Tom had good nature and good sense enough to join them in the laugh,
which being subsided, our Philosopher thus proceeded in his Lecture.

The Ignis Fatuus, Jack with a Lanthorn, or Will with the Wisp, as it is frequently called, says he,
is supposed to be only a fat, unctuous, and sulphureous vapour,
which in the night appears lucid, and being driven about by the air near the earth's surface,
is often mistaken for a light in a lanthorn, as my friend Master Wilson can testify.
Vapours of this kind are in the night frequently kindled in the air,
and some of them appear like falling stars, and are by ignorant people so called.

It may be here necessary to mention that beautiful phenomenon the Rainbow,
since it has the appearance of a meteor, though, in reality, it is none;
for the Rainbow is occasioned by the refraction or reflection of the sun's beams
from the very small drops of a cloud or mist seen in a certain angle made by two lines,
the one drawn from the sun, and the other from the eye of the spectator,
to those small drops in the cloud which reflect the sun's beams:
so that two persons looking on a Rainbow at the same time,
do not, in reality, see the same Rainbow.

There are other appearances in the atmosphere which ought to be taken notice of,
and these are the halo's, or circles, which sometimes seem to encompass the sun and moon,
and are often of different colours. These always appear in a rimy or frosty season,
and are therefore, we may suppose, occasioned by the refraction of light,
in the frozen particles in the air.

Here the Lecture would have ended, but a sudden clap of thunder
brought on fresh matter for meditation;
some of the company, and particularly the Ladies, endeavoured to avoid the lightning;
but Master Telescope, after the second clap, threw up the sash,
and assured the Ladies and Gentlemen there was no danger,
for that the clouds were very high in the air.

The danger in a thunder-storm, says he,
is in proportion to the violence of the tempest and the distance of the clouds;
but this tempest is not violent, and that the cloud is at a great distance,
or high in the air, you may know by the length of time there is
between your seeing the flash of lightning, and hearing the clap of thunder.
Look, see how the sky opens, to emit the fire,
presently you will hear the thunder;
for you know we see the fire from a gun
long before we hear the report!

There it is! and how tremendous!
These tempests always put me in mind of that beautiful passage in Shakespear's King Lear;
where when the good old King is out in a storm, and obliged to fly from his unnatural children,
he says,

----------Let the great gods,
That keep this dreadful thund'ring o'er our heads,
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch
That hast within thee undivulged crimes
Unwhipt of justice! Hide thee, thou bloody hand;
Thou perjur'd, and thou similar of virtue,
That art incestuous! Caitiff, shake to pieces,
That under covert and convenient seeming
Has practis'd on man's life! Close pent-up guilt,
Rive your concealing continents, and ask
These dreadful summoners grace!--

This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
On things would hurt me more----
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,

That hide the pelting of this pitiless storm!
How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?--O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this: Take physic, pomp!
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou may'st shake the superflux to them,
And shew the Heav'ns more just

Image

(selected from The Newtonian System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of young Gentlemen and Ladies, and familiarized and made entertaining by Objects with which they are intimately acquainted, by Tom Telescope. Lecture III. Of the Air, Atmosphere, and Meteors)
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby Blue » Tue Jan 30, 2018 8:38 am

Fantastic, dada

Water in the Cloudforest | Intag, Ecuador

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Re: These are the Clouds

Postby dada » Fri Feb 02, 2018 10:44 pm

Clouds and Power

gather round the buddy lembic
cloud the issue, cloud the mind
clouds are coming up the plumbing
poor luigi's in a bind

to racialist atari clouds
lord fascist avatar
in a cloud of monkey money
strums a cloud guitar

clouds over miami
the weathersark reports
jan braces up her windsock
in triangle 'muda shorts

synaesthete dystopians
crystal meth a load
hungry eye an automat
next exit spider road

gauntlet ghost machine
precision diesel puffs
reclining trucker idles
his custom pillow fluffs

in a hot venusian cloud
with a laugh like vincent price
nimoy grinds his vulcan teeth
farming clouds for chips and spice

with an esemplastic hand
tho might seem strange to r and d
we'll saturate the market
in a billboard cemetary

cloud curtain lift
scene is the same
miserable actors
play a clicky game

low clouds bumpersticker preach
saving for the grave
turning clouds for skying miles
high clouds need a shave

spotlights break on sand drift
moon clouds glowing white as chalk
tell me they keep silent
because these clouds can talk

language clouds the clouds
fine art clouds the soul
time clouds sentimental
all clouds here to go

on licorice whips of wire
a cloud of crows alight awhile
watching cast from fandoms tower
cotton threads of candy fire
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Undulatus asperatus clouds

Postby Burnt Hill » Sat Feb 03, 2018 5:17 pm

Image

Macbeth Act IV Scene I

William Shakespeare

Witch 1: Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd

Witch 2: Thrice and once the hedge-pig whin'd

Witch 3: Harper cries: 'Tis time, 'tis time.



Witch 1: Round about the cauldron go;

In the poison'd entrails throw.

Toad, that under cold stone

Days and nights hast thirty-one

Swelter'd venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.



All: Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.



Witch 2: Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.



All: Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.



Witch 3: Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,

Witches' mummy, maw and gulf

Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,

Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,

Liver of blaspheming Jew,

Gall of goat, and slips of yew

Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse,

Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips,

Finger of birth-strangled babe

Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,

Make the gruel thick and slab:

Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,

For the ingredients of our cauldron.



All: Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.



Witch 2: Cool it with a baboon's blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.



Hectate: O! well done! I commend your pains,

And every one shall share i' the gains.

And now about the cauldron sing,

Like elves and fairies in a ring,

Enchanting all that you put in.



Witch 2: By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.



Image


https://www.indiatimes.com/news/world/here-s-what-you-need-to-know-about-undulatus-asperatus-mother-earth-s-latest-bunch-of-clouds-274191.html
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