Sometimes the dance of words mirrors the dance of life and we call it Poetry, and sometimes it’s the other way round - events seeming to reflect things we have said to ourselves or others, or things we have written; not because we are prescient, but because there are patterns that repeat, and underlying truths we instinctively perceive and sometimes even articulate… and then the experience itself becomes the Poetry.
Oh yes it was this that shot me through the heart too - this image of innocence and naivety, of two lost kids. Thank you for your tender words Dave, and for painting this scene with such compassion and humanity.
Your reply, and Kiki's too, are a huge relief to me. I have wrestled with whether I should publish this or not. I portray them as I saw them - as I felt about the scene.
I feel guilt that I didn't try to talk with them - though it would probably have been fruitless, because by the time I realised what was happening, they would have been away on mental travels....
Like everyone, I had my own troubles at the time, but you can';t walk down a street without wondering about the faces you see, and what people are living with....
Writing on this topic can feel and be exploitative, or judgemental, or both.
I had an insight moment partway through, when you described the boys as they were preparing to make the choice to move away from togetherness and into the peculiar and seductive solitude of an altered state. I make no judgements of these choices. God knows I have made a few. Psychedelics are moving into a phase where they can clearly be therapeutic and if they could help and I was in confusion and fear, I probably would give it another go.
But for now, almost every choice I make favors connection, and I also lean into optimism irrespective of my probably naivete. I see these urban compositions of creature and nature...I don't know, David...is there a beauty to you there? Do they capture your eye because they are just peculiar and provocative, or is there embedded hope and beauty in the way that Nature patiently keeps trying to reclaim her own?
Hi Jed! I was concerned for them based on the choice of psychedlic they seemed to be taking, and the lifestyle and health problems that can slip into. I could write a happier poem about psilocybin though - if I could find the words for it.....
Like you, then, I am also inherently an optimist - more by nature than by conscious choice, I think. And yes! My urban photographs... I do see beauty there, and that is indeed what I am trying to capture in many of them.
I think I need to do a whole post on "Urbex" - if you know the term. I have loved exploring abandoned structures since I was a child - long before "Urbex" was "a thing." I definitely inherited this from my Dad - who was an irrepressible seeker outer of old factories, abandoned farmhouses, decayed works of engineering..... So I and my siblings got dragged along on some those escapades -
- an abandoned Catalina Flying Boat base;
- the obscure ruins of Australia's first steelworks;
- walking through pitch black derelict railway tunnels
- picking blackberries in a local coal mining ghost town.
- exploring eerie concrete bunkers and pillboxes from WWII
- reading old newspapers used as wallpaper in deserted farmhouses
And it was FUN!! (Well - mostly).
Dad's official excuse was an interest in industrial archaeology, but I'm sure he also shared the same delight that I have in seeing nature reclaim the constructed environment, reshaping it, softening it, making it less and less what it was, and more and more into something new. I do find great beauty in that, as well as strangeness. And yes - you are right - hope.
Urban art/street art/graffiti - that is a related interest. The motives of the creators vary. I've met a few, and talked with a few. For me, though, what I like about it is the attempt to humanise the constructed environment, to create new meanings and to assert existence and identity in places where they are absent - an underpass, a drain, a bridge.
Ultimately, nature will reclaim everything. One way or another. Even the continents are temporary, on a planetary time frame. The summit of Qomolangma is made of limestone, with fossils of sea creatures.....
You wrote the poem that presented itself. You seem to have a way of doing that.
I felt odd as I described the two guys in my comment, because it was quite obvious what their drug of choice was. I thought your comment in the poem or was it the preamble, about the isolating nature of the experience...that's what captured me. Sure, the smack they were doing is nothing but bad news...but the badness is the addictive quality, leading one to understand that its addiction to whatever that is trouble.
I have spent a lifetime trying to reconcile the behavior of god, and only recently did I just sort of switch from god to nature with very little if anything lost in translation. I am interested in the reality around me, regardless of the recipes. It all feels like a probabilistic experiment. When it produces the odd juxtapositions of form that the poem highlights, well...there we go again. More experiments.
It seems to be our job to make something of it. To write poems about it.
There is something just barely relaxing to me as I agree with you that nature will reclaim it all and is always in the process of doing just that. I know my view of things is extremely short. I will try to pay attention while it lasts.
Jed! I completely agree about the (new?) data that began its collection in the 50s, saying there was a place for psychedelics in mental health treatment. Ketamine has recently been studied and approved. Medical cannabis oil is cool under prescription for chronic pain … even so, the Nanny State lives on.
I also choose optimism and connection. I could’ve lost those traits forever after my son died, aged 20. Naturally, I’d have died in his place but parents all over would push their child away from oncoming freight trains! I had SO many nurses tell me of the influence my sick guy had on them - and their families.
Even said things like “I brought my kids to work today (school holidays) and now my kids are telling me they would dedicate to their education, because they really saw Sean couldn’t ever …”. It was pretty humbling.
I realised he’d taught many by example.
So I decided to honour that and live with an optimistic and joyful life.
Took me a while - Dave helped - I’m now so grateful to have parented an evolved soul who was simply struck down by oxygen deficiency.
It's all so random isn't it? I feel for you, Meg, because I am invested in you and Dave now, and you are my friends. But I have never lost a child. I cannot walk in your shoes at this point. I may have to still. I hope not. You never know.
Dave may have mentioned that I've been taking a modern philosophy class with Lisa recently. The readings are knocking my head around a bit. I had the thought today that everything is true. All of it. That whenever there is a hard problem like Faith vs. Doubt...an option is to fully embrace both.
All I can say is that you both feel quite beautiful to me, and I don't know what combinations of fate or field theory ran us together, but I am finding fellowship with you both to be savory to the extreme. Carry on. Jed
Hey Jed, that's a wonderful thing to say. We feel similarly close to you.
My undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, mostly, plus English literature, and I studied Philosophy intensely for 3 years. Everything from the Pre-Socratic ancient Greeks through to labouring over Kant and torturing myself with Sartre. At this distance, however, most of the detail has slipped away entirely - though I believe that the experience did improve my capacity for critical thinking and logical analysis.
That is of course unprovable! However the fact that I know it is unprovable may indicate the possible veracity of my belief? "I think (in circles) therefore I am (a Philosophy graduate)." Anyway.....
Philosophy is valuable, but I prefer to see myself as a Poet. Or maybe what I mean is - I'm better at Poetry than Philosophy.
I find that the mental states required for each are very different - and (for me) often in conflict.
Look - I can't walk in M's shoes either, but being a Poet requires empathy, and I sense that you have a lot. I think any loving parent has at least a strong sense of the chasm of potential grief. We all stand on the edge, hoping we don't ever have to fall in. We don't know exactly what that would be like, but we do know enough.... All we can do is hug the people who have been there, and come out again.
Dave, I love your heart. Your thousand acre heart. I love your eyes roaming round, pinning down the beauty in the ugly beauty of life. We are separate, as you say here, that terrible weight. Learning that the separation is a kind of illusion could heal us. The users know the search for oneness. Freud called it the "oceanic feeling." I don't need drugs to feel it. But I have often felt it more under the influence of drugs. Or God. Or just singing a round in the carved out space in an old copper mine, echoes endless around us. Thanks for this, Dave.
I had a night of restless dreams and I woke to an uncertain day - as indeed they all are, if we admit that to ourselves. However your sincere words do indeed help remind me that "the separation is a kind of illusion," and my day feels brighter in consequence.
I can’t just read your posts, Dave… I smile and frown and come back and re-read a stanza or a word, diving into wisdom and discovering poetry as you find it in the mundane and wonderful world. Thank you!
It's a long long time since I had critical feedback on my writing. I have written in near isolation for the last 22 years, until August last year. Meg loves everything I write - but I can't claim her to be unbiased! :)
The fact that other writers - whose own work I admire - find value in what I write.... is wonderful! (I thought I was maybe beyond worrying what other people think, but the ego is more persistent than I realised...)
That is true, Jed. I had some uncomfortable experiences back when I was publishing work. It is lovely, though, to know that people really like something you have written. Your generous comments. Ronnie's. Many other good people.
Meg has always been my "Supporter # 1" and has encouraged me to share more widely again.
Hi Yasmin. Thankyou! Apologies for the delayed reply. It's only 8:00 am here and I've been asleep. I'm delighted that you liked this.
I am primarily a Poet - though I write short fiction and essays too - but since coming to Substack I have deeply enjoyed exploring the combination of text with my photography, and sometimes with my wonderful partner's artwork.
I so wanted these 2 boys to choose the "benevolence of sun" and yet when I realized, like you, what they were up to, I see you chose a photo of graffiti with the word "Delude" in bold print. Really powerful and sad and I wondered what brought them to their choice.
I have no way of knowing. It was a while ago now, but I still think of them, and wonder what happened. Maybe I could have intervened... but by the time I realised what was happening, they were beyond talking.
How do we know what is happening in someone else's life? There is so much beauty in the world, and then there are the other things....
Yes. Thankyou. I think "jarring" is what I was looking for. It was jarring at the time, and when I went back to take the photographs, the contrast of beauty and ugliness side by side is a striking feature of the place - an inner city park flanked by storm water drains, a major city road and a creek which is attempting rehabilitation, but has the industrial residue of a century of waste...
In the middle of that - blue sky, gorgeous trees and happy children with their parents - and then those less fortunate.... Much the same as in any city, but that day it was a very stark contrast.
That's what your words moved me to want to do but if I were there, I would not have done anything; I could not have stopped them. Not the time and place.
I see the bright, clean beauty of nature and children playing and then the shadow of the graffiti and the bicycle in the underpass - sometimes we have a choice, sometimes it is just what it is. Wonderfully reflective poem.
Hi friend Rajani. Thankyou for your kind comments. As I wrote this, I was reflecting on your wise words, a few weeks ago, that Poets should not just write about beautiful things. Through my own words, and my photographs, I was trying to show how the beautiful and the ugly live side by side, all around us. Sometimes we see the confluence of the two, where they are hard to disentangle....
That means a lot, David. We can appreciate and be grateful for all that is beautiful while still bearing witness and I only think it makes poetry stronger. Am so glad you wrote this. Thank you.
“They seemed companionable,
in their cargo pants and
matching blue checked shirts - almost
vulnerable,
sitting like that with outstretched legs
and a faint breeze ruffling their hair like
overgrown dolls,
or teddy bears.”
I feel for them. These words, “dolls” and “teddy bears,” make me see these two as lost boys—never to grow up, never lucky enough to grow old.
Oh, Kiki, yes and yes. They needed a Wendy, or a Tinkerbell. Someone, at least....
Oh yes it was this that shot me through the heart too - this image of innocence and naivety, of two lost kids. Thank you for your tender words Dave, and for painting this scene with such compassion and humanity.
Hi Rebecca
Your reply, and Kiki's too, are a huge relief to me. I have wrestled with whether I should publish this or not. I portray them as I saw them - as I felt about the scene.
I feel guilt that I didn't try to talk with them - though it would probably have been fruitless, because by the time I realised what was happening, they would have been away on mental travels....
Like everyone, I had my own troubles at the time, but you can';t walk down a street without wondering about the faces you see, and what people are living with....
Writing on this topic can feel and be exploitative, or judgemental, or both.
I deeply value your opinion, and Kiki's.
Very best wishes to you
Dave :)
I had an insight moment partway through, when you described the boys as they were preparing to make the choice to move away from togetherness and into the peculiar and seductive solitude of an altered state. I make no judgements of these choices. God knows I have made a few. Psychedelics are moving into a phase where they can clearly be therapeutic and if they could help and I was in confusion and fear, I probably would give it another go.
But for now, almost every choice I make favors connection, and I also lean into optimism irrespective of my probably naivete. I see these urban compositions of creature and nature...I don't know, David...is there a beauty to you there? Do they capture your eye because they are just peculiar and provocative, or is there embedded hope and beauty in the way that Nature patiently keeps trying to reclaim her own?
Hi Jed! I was concerned for them based on the choice of psychedlic they seemed to be taking, and the lifestyle and health problems that can slip into. I could write a happier poem about psilocybin though - if I could find the words for it.....
Like you, then, I am also inherently an optimist - more by nature than by conscious choice, I think. And yes! My urban photographs... I do see beauty there, and that is indeed what I am trying to capture in many of them.
I think I need to do a whole post on "Urbex" - if you know the term. I have loved exploring abandoned structures since I was a child - long before "Urbex" was "a thing." I definitely inherited this from my Dad - who was an irrepressible seeker outer of old factories, abandoned farmhouses, decayed works of engineering..... So I and my siblings got dragged along on some those escapades -
- an abandoned Catalina Flying Boat base;
- the obscure ruins of Australia's first steelworks;
- walking through pitch black derelict railway tunnels
- picking blackberries in a local coal mining ghost town.
- exploring eerie concrete bunkers and pillboxes from WWII
- reading old newspapers used as wallpaper in deserted farmhouses
And it was FUN!! (Well - mostly).
Dad's official excuse was an interest in industrial archaeology, but I'm sure he also shared the same delight that I have in seeing nature reclaim the constructed environment, reshaping it, softening it, making it less and less what it was, and more and more into something new. I do find great beauty in that, as well as strangeness. And yes - you are right - hope.
Urban art/street art/graffiti - that is a related interest. The motives of the creators vary. I've met a few, and talked with a few. For me, though, what I like about it is the attempt to humanise the constructed environment, to create new meanings and to assert existence and identity in places where they are absent - an underpass, a drain, a bridge.
Ultimately, nature will reclaim everything. One way or another. Even the continents are temporary, on a planetary time frame. The summit of Qomolangma is made of limestone, with fossils of sea creatures.....
Summits of sea creatures. There you go.
You wrote the poem that presented itself. You seem to have a way of doing that.
I felt odd as I described the two guys in my comment, because it was quite obvious what their drug of choice was. I thought your comment in the poem or was it the preamble, about the isolating nature of the experience...that's what captured me. Sure, the smack they were doing is nothing but bad news...but the badness is the addictive quality, leading one to understand that its addiction to whatever that is trouble.
I have spent a lifetime trying to reconcile the behavior of god, and only recently did I just sort of switch from god to nature with very little if anything lost in translation. I am interested in the reality around me, regardless of the recipes. It all feels like a probabilistic experiment. When it produces the odd juxtapositions of form that the poem highlights, well...there we go again. More experiments.
It seems to be our job to make something of it. To write poems about it.
There is something just barely relaxing to me as I agree with you that nature will reclaim it all and is always in the process of doing just that. I know my view of things is extremely short. I will try to pay attention while it lasts.
Jed! I completely agree about the (new?) data that began its collection in the 50s, saying there was a place for psychedelics in mental health treatment. Ketamine has recently been studied and approved. Medical cannabis oil is cool under prescription for chronic pain … even so, the Nanny State lives on.
I also choose optimism and connection. I could’ve lost those traits forever after my son died, aged 20. Naturally, I’d have died in his place but parents all over would push their child away from oncoming freight trains! I had SO many nurses tell me of the influence my sick guy had on them - and their families.
Even said things like “I brought my kids to work today (school holidays) and now my kids are telling me they would dedicate to their education, because they really saw Sean couldn’t ever …”. It was pretty humbling.
I realised he’d taught many by example.
So I decided to honour that and live with an optimistic and joyful life.
Took me a while - Dave helped - I’m now so grateful to have parented an evolved soul who was simply struck down by oxygen deficiency.
It's all so random isn't it? I feel for you, Meg, because I am invested in you and Dave now, and you are my friends. But I have never lost a child. I cannot walk in your shoes at this point. I may have to still. I hope not. You never know.
Dave may have mentioned that I've been taking a modern philosophy class with Lisa recently. The readings are knocking my head around a bit. I had the thought today that everything is true. All of it. That whenever there is a hard problem like Faith vs. Doubt...an option is to fully embrace both.
All I can say is that you both feel quite beautiful to me, and I don't know what combinations of fate or field theory ran us together, but I am finding fellowship with you both to be savory to the extreme. Carry on. Jed
Hey Jed, that's a wonderful thing to say. We feel similarly close to you.
My undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, mostly, plus English literature, and I studied Philosophy intensely for 3 years. Everything from the Pre-Socratic ancient Greeks through to labouring over Kant and torturing myself with Sartre. At this distance, however, most of the detail has slipped away entirely - though I believe that the experience did improve my capacity for critical thinking and logical analysis.
That is of course unprovable! However the fact that I know it is unprovable may indicate the possible veracity of my belief? "I think (in circles) therefore I am (a Philosophy graduate)." Anyway.....
Philosophy is valuable, but I prefer to see myself as a Poet. Or maybe what I mean is - I'm better at Poetry than Philosophy.
I find that the mental states required for each are very different - and (for me) often in conflict.
Look - I can't walk in M's shoes either, but being a Poet requires empathy, and I sense that you have a lot. I think any loving parent has at least a strong sense of the chasm of potential grief. We all stand on the edge, hoping we don't ever have to fall in. We don't know exactly what that would be like, but we do know enough.... All we can do is hug the people who have been there, and come out again.
Dave, I love your heart. Your thousand acre heart. I love your eyes roaming round, pinning down the beauty in the ugly beauty of life. We are separate, as you say here, that terrible weight. Learning that the separation is a kind of illusion could heal us. The users know the search for oneness. Freud called it the "oceanic feeling." I don't need drugs to feel it. But I have often felt it more under the influence of drugs. Or God. Or just singing a round in the carved out space in an old copper mine, echoes endless around us. Thanks for this, Dave.
Oh Rebecca....
I had a night of restless dreams and I woke to an uncertain day - as indeed they all are, if we admit that to ourselves. However your sincere words do indeed help remind me that "the separation is a kind of illusion," and my day feels brighter in consequence.
Thankyou for the gift....
Best Wishes always! Dave :)
I can’t just read your posts, Dave… I smile and frown and come back and re-read a stanza or a word, diving into wisdom and discovering poetry as you find it in the mundane and wonderful world. Thank you!
Thankyou Ronnie!
It's a long long time since I had critical feedback on my writing. I have written in near isolation for the last 22 years, until August last year. Meg loves everything I write - but I can't claim her to be unbiased! :)
The fact that other writers - whose own work I admire - find value in what I write.... is wonderful! (I thought I was maybe beyond worrying what other people think, but the ego is more persistent than I realised...)
Best Wishes - Dave :)
Critique is overrated. Participation and sharing will generally get the job done with very little honesty lost.
That is true, Jed. I had some uncomfortable experiences back when I was publishing work. It is lovely, though, to know that people really like something you have written. Your generous comments. Ronnie's. Many other good people.
Meg has always been my "Supporter # 1" and has encouraged me to share more widely again.
What a beautiful, shattering poem, David. 💜
Thankyou, Nazish.
The world holds beauty and ugliness, joy and sorrow. Sometimes they all join together....
Poets should not turn away.
Best Wishes - Dave
I absolutely loved this! And it was mesmerising to go back and forth between prose, poetry and your photography!
Hi Yasmin. Thankyou! Apologies for the delayed reply. It's only 8:00 am here and I've been asleep. I'm delighted that you liked this.
I am primarily a Poet - though I write short fiction and essays too - but since coming to Substack I have deeply enjoyed exploring the combination of text with my photography, and sometimes with my wonderful partner's artwork.
This was a city piece, and the text is from some time ago. A very recent work - and one that is deeply personal to me, is Splash Zone: https://davidkirkby.substack.com/p/splash-zone?r=471m47
Wow! That’s really awesome - I’m glad you are able to explore all kinds of things on Substack.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful piece. I look forward to reading more of your work in the future!
Wowed by this! Brilliant work, David 💙
Sincere thanks, Caroline
I deeply admire your work, and therefore greatly treasure your praise!
Dave :)
Remarkably observed, captured and expressed. This is humane and captivating poetry, thank you David for sharing it here.
Thankyou thank you thankyou!....
D :)
Excellent, Dave! Really fine.
Thankyou!
D :)
Thank you for the nice musical walk. :)
I so wanted these 2 boys to choose the "benevolence of sun" and yet when I realized, like you, what they were up to, I see you chose a photo of graffiti with the word "Delude" in bold print. Really powerful and sad and I wondered what brought them to their choice.
Oh Holly,
I have no way of knowing. It was a while ago now, but I still think of them, and wonder what happened. Maybe I could have intervened... but by the time I realised what was happening, they were beyond talking.
How do we know what is happening in someone else's life? There is so much beauty in the world, and then there are the other things....
Best Wishes - Dave
Love the contrast of the photos and the subjects of the poem. I found it somewhat jarring....or something.
Hi Lori
Yes. Thankyou. I think "jarring" is what I was looking for. It was jarring at the time, and when I went back to take the photographs, the contrast of beauty and ugliness side by side is a striking feature of the place - an inner city park flanked by storm water drains, a major city road and a creek which is attempting rehabilitation, but has the industrial residue of a century of waste...
In the middle of that - blue sky, gorgeous trees and happy children with their parents - and then those less fortunate.... Much the same as in any city, but that day it was a very stark contrast.
Dave
Observational beauty of something heartbreaking, deeply poignant, I want to reach out - thanks Dave
Yes. Thankyou. And maybe I could have said something, or done something, at the time... I still wonder about that.
D
That's what your words moved me to want to do but if I were there, I would not have done anything; I could not have stopped them. Not the time and place.
Yep. I hope they come through okay. They really were just kids, you know. Like - maybe 19 or 20?
Sigh.....
Warmed my heart, David
Thankyou, friend Mahdi.
The world is a strange and complex place, is it not?
It is a gift to be able to read and exchange ideas with good people far away, such as yourself.
Best wishes
Dave :)
I see the bright, clean beauty of nature and children playing and then the shadow of the graffiti and the bicycle in the underpass - sometimes we have a choice, sometimes it is just what it is. Wonderfully reflective poem.
Hi friend Rajani. Thankyou for your kind comments. As I wrote this, I was reflecting on your wise words, a few weeks ago, that Poets should not just write about beautiful things. Through my own words, and my photographs, I was trying to show how the beautiful and the ugly live side by side, all around us. Sometimes we see the confluence of the two, where they are hard to disentangle....
Hi David. Yes, I loved what you did in your poem. Beauty and ugliness living side by side. I guess they always need to exist together somehow.
Hi Damian. Thankyou! It can seem so clear in my head, then the words become elusive, like little fish…
But I’m getting better with practice. Reading other wonderful work - your own included - helps.
Best Wishes - Dave
That means a lot, David. We can appreciate and be grateful for all that is beautiful while still bearing witness and I only think it makes poetry stronger. Am so glad you wrote this. Thank you.
It was nice taking a walk with you in the park and getting to see so many colourful scenes :)
Thankyou Haram. I'm so glad you liked my words and images. Have a wonderful day!
Best Wishes from Australia - Dave :)
Thanks for your wishes, Dave! You too have an amazing day! <3