Christmas Lights

To Jesus of Nazareth

In the frosty garden of the night the moonlight whitens rooftops, glittering silently with the silent Stars.

I am here with night thoughts listening to the cold motion of he night; listening to the city sleep, knowing down the road, here and there, on old Vancouver streets there are Christmas lights, because it’s Your birthday…

Christmas lights and children with a million Christmas dreams because tonight is Christmas eve, the little Saviour’s birth Night.

…the lovely fright’nd girl and her devoted man, the old wise Kings… the bleating sheep, the words he gave the world to keep:

Love ye One Another… let the little children come to me, be good neighbours… treasure friends… yes, there are Christmas lights glowing down the streets…


Christmas Lights December 24/95
©2006-Richard Carlton

…Cathedral bells and city traffic, frosty breaths and winter jackets,Christmas parcels and tired feet, and windows lit with Christmas trees; Carol songs, that Christmas glow, maybe turkey and some mistletoe, a fire’s cheer, a glass of ‘nog and treasure of the hearts of home.

So many Santas when Christmastime comes all sharing their loves to make dreams come true, yeah all round the world a trillion hearts shine all giving something to somebody’s lives; So hang up the holly! sing out a tune, have a great Merry Christmas! it’s all up to you…

Australian Kristmus Pudding

Put 1 ½ pints milk, 1 ½ sqrs. chocolate or 3 tablsp. Cocoa in saucepan and bring to boil, add 4 dessertsp. gelatin (.Davis) and stir till dissolved, add sml. cup sugar and stir. Remove from fire, and when thickened add essence vanilla, ½ cup prepared dated, ½ cup raisins, few figs (if liked) and shredded almonds, ½ cup muscatels. Turn into mold which has been rinsed in cold water. When set turn out and decorate with holly and serve with whipped cream or custard.

From: The CWA Calendar of Puddings, 1930

A String of Lights

Christmas Morning Dec25
snowy-cold, brilliant sunshine


It flickers there on the stage of memory… laughter gleams scraps and scenes, the music of someone else’s life… And one by precious one, friends leave the stage of life… flicker out like a candle in a lonesome window… like string of coloured lights and vanish into endless, nameless Time, taking with them each one a little bit of youth’s sweet golden glorys, old love story, the feeling of the times… leaving those who’re left to watch the Morning the faint gold lilac of the dawning and memories that fade out into time like a string of coloured lights. /

©2006-Richard Carlton

The Antipodean Pagan

Anonymous Posting on a Brisbane Notice-board

“Oh, Kristmus is for kiddies.” Thus he piously intones while laying in the beer and wine and grub and maybe cones. He smiles anticipation of the coming Kristmus treat of warbling ‘Winter Wonderland’ in summer searing heat and singing songs of sleigh bells where the snow was never seen.

And there’s no heathen custom that could be quite so obscene as guzzling pud and turkey while the temperature is soaring, collapsing then as from every pore the perspiration’s pouring!

I try to point out to him that learned scholars say Jesus wasn’t born in winter. There is not a way that shepherds fed their flocks at night in freezing cold December.


It was the time for taxing by the Romans, you remember and they weren’t quite so stupid as expecting folk to travel in winter’s bleak conditions and on roads of roughest gravel.

The scholars know what time of year each sundry course of priest their duties in the temple kept, so there is not the least small shred of doubt that Christ was born (your patience thus permitting), September – Feast of Trumpets Day – so faithful, apt and fitting.

But ev’ry Yuletide custom is as pagan as can be. I’d shock you if I told you all about the Kristmus tree.

I tried to tell him all of this. Alas he isn’t listening, he is living in a dream world
Thinking what he does is Christian.

Early Morning in Chengdu

©2006-Allen Suttefield

Ha, Daylight! So thick is the cloud even daylight is late this morning. The rain, however, falls as it will; Water drops tap each awning in dark or light.

The concrete floors of the rising building glisten wetly: At present open to the sky they will soon be ceilinged never again to receive the rain until the roofs are destroyed.

In ancient Chengdu floors of new buildings also felt the rain, and construction was delayed by the same gathered clouds.

There! The first clang of dropped metal, like a bell announcing: the work day begins. Voices quickly follow unseen below and Friday, wet Friday takes place in the work week.

7:30 A.M.

Allen's Text 22 - The Law of Seven -

copyright©2006 Allen Sutterfield

“If there were no Law of Seven, everything in the world would go to its final conclusion, but because of this law everything deviates. For instance, if rain began it would go on without stopping… if an earthquake began it would go on indefinitely. But they stop, because of the Law of Seven, because at every missing semi-tone things deviate, they do not go by straight lines.“At the same time, the Law of Seven explains that, if you know how, and at what moment to do it, you can give an additional shock to an actave and keep the line straight… We must learn how to keep these octaves from deviating, how to keep a straight line.”

Allens Text 2

cpyright2006-Allen Sutterfield

And so we started off then, right there, without a second thought, without a false step. There was only one way to go, and that was the way we were going!
Surely the world was trying to hang itself BY THE NECK UNTIL DEAD but what matter? We were OFF, and that was ALL!
Now a death lay by the roadside like a black creosote coffin, yes a railroad tie was width ways across, small green stems, it could have been no more than the second week of spring, were issuing from the earth all round it,and there were the ancient whistles of trains in the air, whistles not heard in years, not heard in lives. The sky was one of those you start off by IN YOUR DREAM, nothing less than perfect, and not a jot more. For we were step in step towards --our destination!
The journey was underway, and not even a death by the roadside, not that black box nor its creosote incense were cause for more than a glance. There was nothing in it anyway -- the trees held more! For there was a slight wind, just the warm sort of breeze you feel behind your shoulders when you SET OUT. Yes it must have been April in certain latitudes, we didn't notice, for once we didn't see a single calendar, not even in barbershops. It was spring and we were already several steps down the road, with a doff of the hat to clouds and a wrinkle of regret that passed over the surface of our hearts and off again into nothing and that was that. No we had no postage stamps, no envelopes, no pens, no writing pads. It was our beautiful REVOLT.
It was a Jacob's Ladder journey and we were ready.

Allen's "City of words" Text 23

© 2006 Allen Sutterfield

what if
in some secret sea
where no gull cries
and no shore lies near

what if
on such secluded sea
I call to you in angry truefear
and you do not choose to hear?


1 comments:

Brian Campbell said...
Interesting to see Allen's work up in your blog. I've told Allen that the blog format would be a good way to present his text/visual series.Allen, your texts are as lively and airy as ever, alacrity also begins with A and its NO COINCIDENCE, I send you this note as via long-distance boomerang all the way thru Australia and back. I hope you are well...

Buddhist Thought

Being vigilant of the three doors of karma is to remove the conditions for three poisons to grow, the three doors are - Speech, Action, Thought.

Heroe's Never Die

Heroes never die…
Their bodies loose that common texture known as life
while a thousand times enriched by death, their quintessence lingers on.
A hero’s fate is not to die in bed, conquered by old age,
a hero’s destiny is the battlefield, not diabetes or Alzimer’s disease.

Go, go brave man, warriors deserves a sudden death.
On a sharp bend, a Daytona coupe careened --slamming into a tree--
so was earthly existence snuffed for Aussie racing car driver
Peter Brock.
And Death kept watch each time Steve Irwin kissed a tiger,
toyed with scorpions, swam with sharks, or hunted crocs.

Though a hero fears it not, he’s aware of his companion’s presence,
invisible, mysterious, well-known yet unknowable, haunter, not hunted,
feral essence never tagged or captured for the zoo. That’s Death!
To a car-crash or the barb of a black stingray, unconquered heroes
freely yield, by Death immortalized, rejoicing in Elysian Fields

Steve Irwin - Thanks for the Memory -

Stevo “WOW what a little beauty” you were to this country and state,
The Sunshine Coast will miss hearing that Aussie larrikin say “Crikey Mate,”
Everyone loved you because you were a typical Aussie bloke,
Very willing to make people laugh with a typical Stevo joke,
Everywhere you went as a proud Aussie in your khakis,



Internationally you will be missed by all over seas.
Reptiles and conservation is what you will be remembered for,
Without doubt it’s that ocher Australian in you that made us proud and adore,
It won’t be the same Australia without you Stevo, you brought us so much joy and pleasure,
No doubt you will be remembered as our greatest national treasure.

Text- ©2006-Clayton and Beck

649 ( The Lottery Ticket )

When I heard the news that my friend got a win for 649 I went out of the room without thinking.

Where Can I go? I wondered, and walked down the street. I stopped in front of the lottery ticket vendor.

“Please buy me. I sell the happiness.”

The numbers were trembling. The numbers were dancing--- Temptation!

I chose 6 numbers with intensity: 9,16, 23, 27, 41, 44 They looked like a treasure island.

That night I had a dream. The shining sun and the full moon were hanging in the clear sky.

Next day I checked for the winning number. Not one of mine was right.

I went out to the lake to hide my embarrassment. I had expected to win.

The sun and the moon which I saw in the dream hanging together in the dark sky---
I could not see them.

©1995-Jong nan

Rainy Afternoon

©1999-Richard Carlton

All the debris that’s left of love’s attraction
old happy photographs, a happy song
a ring perhaps,
thoughts that won’t be gone…
the ghosts of our old satisfaction.

And in the dawning of a bright new day,
sometimes it’s good to sweep the past away,
not unremember’d but
still treasured with our old sweet laughter
in a special place set apart.

On some rainy afternoon
every now and then,
we’ll look through our box of souvenirs…
The old dancecard,
the smile we loved the camera kept for us,
no one can blame us if we shed some sudden tears
we all know however brave,
underneath there beats the longing heart.

Allen's "The Bookburner"

( Text 172)

The Bookburner: "I'll tell you a secret: that book is no longer here. I burned it."
"But you loved it!"
'”I burn one each month."
"Is it always the one you love most?"
"No, not always."
"Why though? Why? It was beautiful--"
"I burned it carefully ...page by page."
"Did it hurt?"
"Not while it was burning."
"Does it now?"
"That book is a beautiful memory, it's a part of everything I do now. To burn a book was hard, the first time, I cried, and I didn't even like the book, in fact disliked it. The second time I chose one I did like, not one of my favorites of course. It hurt. But gradually, after that, book by book, I did it more simply, ritually. Without thinking or feeling very much. Then: I burned the beautiful book. Only yesterday. We merged bloods in the burn­ing, 'fires of purification' if you wanta get gooey about it. Whoops--loss of voice there, come back. So. Yes. I burn books. But no one else knows. My brother preferred live things and burned ants in the sun, with a magnifying glass, large, large in my keeping...."

©2006-Allen Sutterfield

Allen's Text 3899

means is a a pocket of past
even this is cheating
but to sit down and
COMPOSE
your real, that’s something
think about it if you can

you are a little hunk
hung in a dark web
where certain lines intersect
one of your functions
(is that the unpoetic word?)
to do this, sit down and compose
your real

like a cat on piano keys
romping giant floors of dark

here you sit
while the comets whiz
not far away

jostling the web’s great lines
as the millennia go like seconds
my age come upon me like the hooves of long ago
pounding on a door someone had locked

so the sparkling electron
one could say this moment was
takes the page/with the wording
and it’s going on that does it/when you least suspect

it’s an easy mind
can follow no trail

©2006-Allen Sutterfield

Allen's Text 518

I hear a distant bell and children singing. Below the carpenters handle delicately a mammoth pane of glass, so clear it seems they carry a piece of the Invisible. The radio squawks and gabbles, tuned on an outlandish frequency. In an outer corridor a woman walks down stairs, confusing the walls into a white silence. Magenta and blue plaster, the city on the hillside sits patiently in the rain, rife with a stolidity learned of centuries (the sun will come again). It is the moon's day, incipient and wet. In the small black-bordered room (No. 37-A) at the back of brain I play solitaire with a deck of live cards, faces contorting in mockery, the vain reflections of a thousand mirrors. The skin is rubbery and unreal, the numbers and symbols in black and red profusion weave and cross - now there are thirteen where there were three, now two where once ten. The hour glass, brought from Arabia by camel, pours an endless stream of moments in a golden string. Suddenly an alarm sounds, the cards, are abandoned to their private vices, I rush from the table to the windows - the parade has begun. Slowly in spectacular file the myriads inhabiting the assorted rooms pass by. The day will end in a bloody sunset, despite the heavy promise of the clouds. Always a spectator! Always!

©2006-Allen Sutterfield

Ferryboat and Traveler

A Korean Poem

I am the ferryboat
You are the traveler.

You tread on me with muddy feet,
I embrace you
and cross over the water.
When I embrace you,
Deeps or shallows
or fast shooting rapids,
I can cross over.

When you don’t come I wait from dark to dawn,
in the chill wind, the wet of snow and rain;
Once over the water you go on without a glance back.

No matter, I know that sooner or later you will come,
While I wait for you, day after day I go on growing older.

I am the ferryboat, you the traveler.

©Han Yong-un

Catching a Bug

A Korean Poem
When I catch a bug in the room
All of a sudden
I realize that the bug is myself,
I open the window and
look into the distance.

A bird flies across the blue sky.
It flies to the branch of a tree.
sitting there it begins to sing,


Singing
In which I hear the ancient sound of crying.

When I catch a bug in the room
What do I grasp?
What do I miss?

©2006-Bong Bong

Allen's Text 128

Writing was on wall for Pompeii's citizens

POMPEII, Italy--Our cities may be overrun with graffiti, but they are barely scratch hitters compared with the ruins of Pompeii. The Pompeiian’s were past masters of the small talk that makes walls talk.

Pompeii's light-hearted scrawls, and even the many nasty ones, are now cherished leftovers from 79 A.D., when the Roman resort town died in a volcanic eruption.

Graffiti - literally meaning "scratches" - go far back into history. In Pompeii, they were the town news and gossip, in Latin or Greek, long before the days of newspapers or books.

Love, money and politics were the basic themes, and nobody hid their thoughts. "Salve lucrum" ("Hurrah for profit"), proclaimed a joyful inscription in a trader's house. And a lover wrote on a public wall, with Pompeiian zest: "You have never seen Venus? No need: look on my fair one, she is as exquisite."

There was so much electioneering on any available flat expanse--"Proculus, support Sabinus, and he'll support you"--that a householder worked his own plaintive message onto his whitewashed wall: "Painter, I beg you not to write anything here. If you inscribe a candidate's name, may he fail in the elec­tions."

When angry Pompeiians scrawled, "Let the wrath of Venus fall on any one who does damage here," it had nothing to do with love. That was a warning to passersby who might forget themselves and mistake the street or wall for a lavatory.

Thousands of these markings remain, giving us a keyhole view of Roman life. It almost seems as though any Pompeiian who had a passing thought felt compelled to add it to the groaning walls of houses or alleyways. Cartoonists burlesqued gods and gladiators, and there was no shortage of indecent sketches.

There was so much of this sort of thing that it inspired a favorite Pompeiian couplet found in a number of places: "I wonder, wall, that you do not go smash, who have to bear the weight of all this trash!"

The walls did go smash. Mt. Vesuvius wrote the last message.

--Field News Service --

©2006-Allen Sutterfield

Allen's Text 900

Well, then, the end of something, a station reached, the ticket is no longer valid. Discards litter all emergences, going from the train that carries us so quickly along the psyche’s rails. The green and red winking signals along the tracks are left in the nearer distance behind, beyond lies only an infinite plain, the unmarked countryside of the future, flat and smooth from this isolate platform. Yet already the lattices are being laid, the engines begin their slow mounting hum, over there a ticket agent, issuing the single billet printed for such travel. The swinging lanterns of the brakemen, orange eyes in the death dance of the present, thrust lines of glow, hook, catch, in their blatant rhythm, the moments fall and die like torn stubs, tossed beneath the roaring impatient wheels of l’Express! Boarding, one takes with him only a suitcase of memories, a small bag of alpaca visions, the dust gathered in the corners of 10.000 days and nights, stretching behind like so many pieces of rail, so many abandoned ties. Soon will come the day crew, the firemen, the torch, and the cinders will blow a grey fragmented storm against the sky. But you will not know or notice, always the future travels faster than the past, it is its business to do so. You will not know riding through the interminable honeycomb of days and hours, moments and years, in the amber coach of dream, for all those miles and hours, those forests of minutes, vast tundras of time are so much magic now, standing in the present, a moment unburdened, having finished whatever the something-now and ready to depart.

©2006-Allen Sutterfield