Barry Graham's Blog, page 16

moving walkway at supermarket —
teenage couple
kissing through smiles

Endings. Beginnings. Nothing ever beginning or ending. Continuity contains entropy, stasis contains movement. No matter how many times the knife chops, severs, slices, divides, nothing becomes separate.

Not this, but not that. Not one, not other.

I've never liked Dickens' books, though I've read them all. Mostly, it's his sentimentality and his clotted prose that puts me off, but there's also his essentially liberal, rather than radical, view; he regards poor people as inferior creatures to be taken care of by their wealthy superiors, but never seems to consider the eradication of poverty. Outstanding poor people are to be rescued by philanthropists.

That said, I agree passionately with this article by Pen Vogler.

Good, cruelty-free...

A new blog that's well worth a read is Person of No Rank by Tracy Taggart, itinerant trauma surgeon and Zen practitioner.

The title refers to her Dharma name, and to the koan "Who is the true person of no rank who comes and goes through the gates of your face?"

supermarket cafe
woman sits talking
to herself

Refuge in the Buddha
Refuge in the Dharma
Refuge in the Sangha
Refuge in the empty spaces
Spaces around
Spaces between
Spaces within
Spaces

Interesting to see that John Dowd hasn't changed since I witnessed, and wrote about, his bumbling defence of Fife Symington, corrupt then-Governor of Arizona, in 1997. The Guardian reports Dowd is claiming that he erroneously tweeted in the name of his boss, Donald Trump, and he's also arguing that, as President, Trump can't be guilty of obstructing justice.

In my book Why I Watch People Die , I wrote:

The show starts at 1:15. We all stand as the jury comes in. Symington, lacking the poised, ar...

What is the paper that came from the North?
What is a blanket? What is its worth?
What is the monkey that came from the sea?
What is the doorway that came from the key?

This photo shows something you don't see often: me reading off the page. When performing sections of my novels, I recite from memory, but I don't have much of my poetry memorised. Last Friday I did a poetry reading at Tell It Slant, Scotland's only bookshop devoted entirely to poetry, which now has my collections Traffic and Murder and Love and Rain.

I was one of a dozen poets on the bill, and I was impressed by the quality and diversity of what I heard. It was busy, with a warm ambiance...

Jack and Jill
went up the hill
to fetch a pail of water.

Jack raped Jill
but his lawyer said
it was her fault

for going up the hill
with him
and the jury agreed.