Clare On Stage

It's where you could have been
Speaking my written part
Linking together all the scenes
Learning every line by heart
You are such a darling
Luvvie by trade and instinct
Brought to life by your daring
Neat chains that grasp every link
Hold you step by step into lights
The breathe, seized by the wings comes true
No fierce stage could give you the frights
You are leader and commander of your crew
After a packet of roses by the door
As thanks for your presence perfectly performed.
                              

Clare In Myth

She was that goddess
Who turned the blaspheming poet
Into a spider undress
Didn't she let them know it?
She is a god of jealously
And divine creativity
Who would compose carefully
For all to see, open sensitively
That she would have no equals
The spider yelped for pain the created gift
Of this event there were no sequels
Opinions against her markedly shift
She is the God I think Clare be
Incarnate of passionate determination, obviously.    

Clare With Advice

The tough love approach is your take
Make up with family and friends
Pull yourself together, not to break
Be strong and there are ends
I hate to say it but you're right
However I am too stubborn and aching for sense
I cry myself at night
Wish for only your comfort to cleanse
I have trouble putting up with shit
The possibility of us seems dead
A smashed window broken by a brick
I never did want to wed
Forget me and my faults
Leave me to my pain and insults.

Clare Transformed

You are believed to be
A Phoenix flying high
Dipped in red royalty
With the freedom of the sky
You had the eternal flame
That kindles inspiration
A creature that can't be tame
Reaching your destination
You light up the night
In a halo of passion
You love your gift of flight
You are always in fashion
A rare beast indeed
One day, Clare, you'll be freed.

Clare In Hate

Typecast the flaming redhead
Brimming in anger's stew
You believe the world's inbred
What's supposed to be plenty is only a few
Asked why to feel this emotion
You say you want to be alive
Sure as your sharpened devotion
To the ideals by which you strive
You call upon the Gods to exact revenge
To crush every soul whose done you wrong
On what account of their crimes it depends
You just want to be risen in song
Though this injustice will soon pass
It won't be long before you empty your glass.

Clare In the Job

How much you hate
Those competitive dicks
It grates and it grates
Incompentent pricks
You much rather be teaching
Educating a class
All the time you are reaching
Not sat on your arse
You know you devour every book you read
You talk of ideas that compell
What you do doesn't satisfy indeed
What's hurtful is that you know this as well

Having to work on this cruel old earth

Still as passionate as when you were given birth.

Clare On the Go

For all her talents in loving
She really knows how to let go
She could give basic lessons covering
Emotional communication and also
Tips on enjecting fun
In the relationships slow dance
Where both partners merge seamlessly as one
Even the smallest spark has a chance
How I would love to dance with you
Playing and prancing free
How we would both step in and out of tune
A type of life I'd like to be
So don't rob me of my cage
Don't leave me alone, enraged.

Clare At Home

Expected fustrations with love and work,
You are deemed too passionate,
Think positive, don't go out with jerks,
Singe his pride with assonince,
You deserve better than what you're given,
Have me, I am better for you,
Then the whole zest of a lemon,
Have me for I am true,
Though it is better to bleed your heart,
Than have it frozen,
Let me play the romantic poet,
In this moment I have chosen,
Let you without a moment's pause,
Heart beat again, and know the cause.

An Unwelcomed Sun

Dilapitated in my eyes

The vulgar retch of the skies

Warmth of wit within the coal

Unsuitable standing utop a pole

Keeper of night with rejoicing bride

That has let in a sun as oncoming tide

Drowning in sight that unerves sense

It is only the duty of common law

That time uncovers the hidden sore

Same love of care divides our heart

In seeing the bodies and pulling the cart

A taste of death that comes with sight

That has the unease of knowing plight

Still the sickness dwells and resides

Kingdom of crystal changes and dies

Damn such knowledge uncommon

That jostles the reasonable worm

Into facing it's own turn

Glimpse of facade and petty floors

Untied of burdern and cause

Rope rises from the rock

Pulls the neck, takes stock.

Now it's audience participation time! If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways: - by being my patron on Patreon.com -give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee -Buy one of my literary books -Share this blog on your social media -Leave a comment, you can even recommend me book -Follow me I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog. Live long and prosper.

A Cross

The cross was broken.  This made the man upset.  It wasn't broken before and now somehow mysteriously it was.  But how could this be?  Thought the man: I always keep my things looked after.  He would have to get it fixed but for now he was transfixed by the broken parts.  It was a wooden cross, a very simple design.  It meant a lot to the man- it was given to him when he was baptised.  The baptism was his life given back to  him.  He was blessed by it, by those healing waters, a re-birth of some certain fire.
  By this he himself felt broken.  Looking in the mirror didn't help.  All he could see were those still hurting cuts that came from last week.  The unhealed scars made him feel dejected.  He put the bits of the broken cross into a bag and cycled across town into the green and brown woods.  As he was cycling he thought how fortunate he has been and how that fortune wasn't that inexhaustible resource he could always rely on.
  Seasons come and go just as luck, so it seemed.
  He wanted to bury the pieces of the cross as another symbolic act to end a symbol.  He was hoping that a great tree may grow from it a great cross tree to overshadow all other trees with it's big plate leaves and strong bark.
  His brother gave him the cross and the man imagined him being a little sad at this burial.
  The man dug up a hole with his hands and placed the cross inside.  Then he cried.
  The man went home lost and sad inside, he wondered out loud as to the purpose of his loss, his direction.
"No-more, no-more..."
  Collapsed into bed.
  That night he dreamt that he was dancing an infinite dance cascading through rooms long and endless.  Flames were at his heels but smoke didn't clog up his nose and throat.
  He woke up at a loss to his dream.  He couldn't make it out and promptly forgot about it.  The sun was rearing it's head and the man put on his clothes- all fingers and thumbs.  As he made his way outside he noticed something that should not be there- a package on the wall.  He couldn't explain it- it was a thing that should not be a thing, not on that ordinary wall it shouldn't have.
  He picked it up and to even further unreason he opened it.  His heaviness lifted when he opened it- it was a cross.
  He was baptised all again.

Jo Nash

Marbled microscopic
Worlds are placed here
The splats of paint
The burn of black
It is growing
In its dynamic
Flow while being
As static as a statue.

Jenny Nicholson

Religious fantasy
Lucid visions of
An earth and strange
World that echoes
The old paintings
It is the colourful
Grasp of the bizarre.

Emma Sedgwick

These are the beginning
Of universes
In another version
Of reality
Dark encrusted light
A worm of illumination
In the soil of space.

Thomas Moore

Illustrations
For an unwritten book
Extolling human freedom
Beethoven stands
Amidst the chaos
Jonah is alone
In his living cage
Who will write this book?

Featured on the 'Start Somewhere' blog today, a website about emerging artists and beginning creatives.  It's chock full of good advice from a whole range of artists from writers like myself to chefs cooking food.  An excellent place to help you get started and to help you keep going.

https://startsomewhereweb.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/i-wouldnt-understand-not-writing

Johnny Hogland

Cracked in glass
An eternal yawn
That speaks of pain
Coldly frozen
In the prism of art.

Megan Rose

Nature's emotion
Bleeds
On this canvas
Seeing the essence
Of the form
Being born.

The Story

He began the story without knowing how it was going to end.  That was not his main problem.  No, not at all, in fact his main problem probably would not reach an ending;  he was having trouble with the bridge between the beginning and the end.
  The beginning was easy, syrup in the mouth, all that was needed was a few opening words.  Words to greet the reader into the comfy climaxes of the story, to lower down the reader's mind onto a page.  That was all it took.  A few gentle words to coo the reader in.  After that came the increasingly difficult follow up, to take a reader's hand and to walk them through a journey of delight and amazement.
  This could have been achieved in several different ways.  First, he could introduced a hero, the main character of the story whom the reader could follow the misadventures of the plucky fellow.
  Second, he could have introduced a minor character who ends up as a significant symbol of human goodness.  In some sense the writer has already put into practice the first suggestion as the hero of this story is none other than the writer himself.  His particular adventure is, at the moment, to finish this story as it is delaying his drinking time down at the Calf & Hooves.  So far it isn't much of a story but the writer is optimistic that this story shall turn out well, and not ill, as in his previous attempts.
  The writer would like to clarify that this is not a tortuous procedure for him, but a stimulating one.  It is a task that he very much takes a lot of pride in, just as any craftsman takes pride in his work.  His pleasure comes from carefully selecting words that does service in sentence, both in sound and meaning.  

Deceived Wisdom

We all could be wise

If we prised into the

Knowledge that books hold

Or the experience

We've made mistakes form

Cultivating wisdom

Is an art that's

Never done

Never knowing

What's accomplished

I see dead sparrows

To the way of work

I learn nothing

That is not evident

No piercing mystic

Insights

To form a framework

Of my life

Just the days

Lined up like drinks

To be drunk

With a fondness

For bees

Who stand for

Good metaphor

Storing sweet honey

For better days. 

Laughing At Monsters: Interview with Handspring puppeteer, Gabriel Marchand

Known for the phenomenal success of War Horse, the Handspring Company returns to it's South African roots by reviving a play they first put on twenty years ago: Ubu and the Truth Commission.  Inspired by the French play by Alfred Jarry, and by the Truth Commissions occurring at the time, this incarnation of the man see him as a leader of a death squad.  Following him is  his three headed dog, each head representing a different aspect of the government, that carries out his orders.  It is a ninety minute extravaganza of violence.

One of the puppeteers involved in the show, Gabriel Marchand, talks about South Africa's history and how the statues of tyrants and their pride of place was being questioned by the younger generation.  This invokes a larger question of erasing history to ease tensions.  

"Of course one should remember the people involved but they should not be in front of a prominent university,"

Two of the original members of original Ubu production, who do remember the actions of such tyrants, took on their roles again in this year.  Busi Zokufa, playing the jealous Ma, and Dawid Minner, who plays Pa Ubu.  They are joined by three younger puppeteers, Mongi Mthombei, Mandiseli Maseti, and also Gabriel, who have all grown up with the stories of the apartheid regime.  In a way the baton of experience is passed down.  I asked Gabriel if by doing the show has helped him understand what the older generations had been through.  

"You can never truly understand but having to listen to the testimonies from those who testified at those TRCs you understood that utterly awful things had happened,"  

The company has been touring this show for two years by now but the rawness of those testimonies still have their affect on those like Gabriel portraying it.

"Even thinking about it now still brings up tears.  On stage you have to live it, but back stage you have to forget,"

Ubu was one of the most challenging piece of theatre I have seen as it is almost an entirely grim affair, despite it's farcical elements, the overwhelming horror of it's source material and because of it's deeply troubling conclusion.  Sometimes the bastards do get away. 

Gabriel was taught the art of puppetry by the associate director of Ubu, Jenni Younge, and he finds that puppets are a good medium for tough messages due to their ability to be still.  Stillness is important because the audience can then read into them a wide range of interpretations.  The puppets range from the bunraku type who are used to give testimonies, to objects turned into animals (such as the surreptitious crocodile whose body is a suitcase), to a wooden vulture that is operated by a manual mechanism giving it movement.

The crafting of these puppets becomes very important in giving animation to their design.  Gabriel explains.   

"The deep gouges that these puppets have, given by the maker Adrian Kohler, on their faces and the asymmetrical nature of their looks means that with a little movement they can be seen to have life and thoughts,"

Anyone who is expecting War Horse: Part Two will be very disappointed, but anyone wishing to learn the roots of the Handspring Company pre-National Theatre will have plenty to digest.