Jack by-the-Hedge is a nomadic creative servitor and mind/media interface. It is mostly under the control of a person, dog-on-a-rope-like.
Jack is interested in place, space, and grace, but not rhyme. Jack comes and goes as they please.
Jack is just like you.
Statement of intent
Sometimes,
in the woods
when high-density polyethylene, say,
offends
by being the only unbeauty;
by unbalancing, in cubic white, a gentle, subtle brindle;
by causing disbelief amongst future archaeologists -
I pick it up.
And sometimes not.
oh draw it once from
life bitch
show me your mangirli3 energy
in hardsoft text and hope hunnai
Start with rocks,
rocks on the beach
in piles or groups of five, say -
square and one left over;
three and two, quite separate;
two on top of three;
and leave them there,
not endless,
against the tide.
Silver-haloed moon a given,
it holds you in its mist
and sings of lost loved ones
tonight, your careworn city,
your hollowed town is weeping,
overflowing gutters, awash
pavements, shadow-streaked, alive
beneath its ruin, alive
to your caring touch, deft
in dark shopfront mirroring
your body, its blind alleys
now and always say your name.
Find, if it can be found,
a beam, a shaft of light
shining somewhere unexpected
where it seems no light should be
- maybe through a broken window
onto dust inside a building
or by its luck or fate
creeping slow through densest trees -
and aim to represent it
by word or paint or pixel
and keep that place as holy
and know that place to be.
November's grey and yellow winds
blow in blue, bruise peach and scarlet
easily, then turn black, transparent,
inking gusts between the stars;
perhaps they can be read by some,
or could be once, these colours;
auguring by amber leaffall
knowings of the strength of frosts
quite distant to the eyes of most,
our agent (here there can be one)
sighs complicit - telling easily
of shades now lost or yet to come.
Triptych
Not today
I ought to be at the dayjob
giving bombs another name
felling trees to clear the view
giving flowers to the hungry
bringing food to the obese
giving value to our customers
moving boxes, moving them back
explaining, smiling, patiently, to the woman with M.E.
that she must take a dayjob
spreading the hateful words of our glorious leader.
The frost-held forest stands aloof,
unhindered by those hardwired needs
of heat and hope and heart.
The redeyed sun, meanwhile,
squints tired at the horizon
so I shiver lost/not lost
through seas
of web-rigged bracken ghostships,
searching.
Working № 24
Speak to me tonight
you mindless winds -
I hear you;
show your native nuance
and speak to me in tongues
of your spiking brackish art
of divination, branching fractious,
unknown above the moon, masked,
maybe imagined, inkling foresights
guessed at gently from the dark
blown in leeward, unintended
to my ready head and heart;
telling quiet/waxing forceful
of now the flame and now the spark.
Advice for Young Children
You can
on the right kind of day
look towards the sun
and make
with just the right
blinks, and twitches of your head
a pretty good map
of any set of stars
that you have seen at night
then, with eyes shut tight
turn another way
and watch them all just slowly fade
one by one
first to last.
It takes a bit of practice though
and I've never found a use for it.
There is something in the wind
which changes us - you feel it,
a leopard sunspot warmth, a way
communicates itself, on trust.
To cast out fear, empathic
forces must be realised;
distances respected, say,
attention paid to motes of dust.
* * *
For each, it may come differently -
by speed of sound, by trumpet,
ny instant revelation
falling, sudden to your knees
in a humdrum public place,
or slyly, sunk in soudly -
a certain hardfelt knowing
we matter, we energy.
