during our holiday I lost my iphone after taking that shot of us together among the ruins
Image: Pompeii 13 April 2019, 1.18pm. I was going to use something more lyrical as a photo but this snap from my lost iphone makes me smile.
And for music today, here’s some northern hemisphere birds accompanying ‘quirky’ London-based multi-instrumentalist Cosmo Sheldrake with Wake Up Calls (Youtubers) (if you have a cat, probably put them in the other room while this is playing).
i dreamt i was a bureaucrat again: same tan desks photocopiers papers like egrets stalking long charcoal corridors
Image: Benjamin Child bchild311, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
And for music, here’s Haruomi Honsono with some 1980s ambient shopping music Hana ni Mizu (trs: Watering a Flower) which he wrote for Japanese retailer MUJI (YouTubers here’s the original cassette version). For those interested, here’s a radio documentary on avant garde ambient music in 1980s Japan.
trying to clean away the mess the fingerprints of yesterday I gently wipe my glasses with a small lintfree cloth
Image: Tableau-vivant, New South Wales, Australian and American Photographic Company, ca. 1872, State Library of NSW on Flickr.
A tanka after Machi Tawara
And today’s musical offering, here’s Colorado born, now Stockholm-based organiste Kali Malone with their 2019 album Sacrificial Code. (YouTubers) I have posted this album before but I just love writing to its slow evolving progressions, so I thought you might enjoy it again.
this icy blast polar provocation snow bunny flurries — but wait...a sunny bench too late to tan? just killin it
Image: Lake Illawarra this morning (The eagle-eyed will notice my old collie in the background still photo-bombing the art.)
Day 6 of European Settler winter here in Australia; the First Nations season on Dharawal land is Burrugin. This is the time when the male Burrugin (echidnas) form lines of up to ten as they follow the female through the woodlands in an effort to wear her down and mate with her. It is also the time when the Burringoa (Forest Red Gum – Eucalyptus tereticornis) starts to produce flowers.
And here’s some sunny music from 1951 from Ahmad Jamal with Poinciana (start with the title track). (YouTubers – sorry, could only find title track – but this is lovely too)
seedless mandarin how DELICIOUS is this? my mouth floods, fingers sticky segments ... like my life kids laughing down the alley
After Malaysian-Australian poet Zhi Cham’s poem MANGOES AHEAD, among many fresh offerings at Cordite Poetry Review.
Today’s music: here’s something from 1977 – David Bowie with Low (so many faves like Sound & Vision)(YouTubers)
Sorry tanka fans, there’ll be no poem on 5 June. I’m off at South Coast Writers Festival – enjoying nourishing offerings and reading a few poems from Shorely, my first chapbook.
the daily strew bottlecaps, cartons, plastic forks on the face of the beach like siddartha (frowning) i realise time’s an illusion
Images: I was looking at dates on my phone and realised these range over more than six years of daily beach walks. Time is indeed an illusion (!)
And for music today, something to keep our eyes on eternity (while reforms to the plastics industry proceed over geological timescales): here’s Hildegard von Bingen vespers sung by the Benedictine Nuns of her Abbey. (Youtubers).
the haul net beached at last sea mullet hundreds arch their backs drowning in sunlight, in air fishers’ delight
Image: Netting Mullet by Indigenous artist Steven Russell, c/- Wollongong Art Gallery.
Some commercial fishers on the beach this morning: rowboats, Toyota Land Cruisers and gumboots and much yelling.
And today’s musical offering, here’s some joy from Hindustani artist Anandi Bhattacharya with Joys Abound (youtubers). Start anywhere, maybe Maya’s Dream.
this gale scudding euphony in drink tin timpani fallen fruit donging palm frond door slamming yes yes hurry yes — dissonant air(s)
Image: Katsushika Hokusai, A sudden gust of wind from the 36 views of Mt Fuji series (it’s actually called View 18, Ejiri in Suruga Province) c. 1830.
A single big-breath tanka for you. And linked to Dverse, the poets pub – where Bjorn is hosting some dissonance.
And for music this morning, Sufi Afghani music from the Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawwali Group. (YouTubers) – Maybe start with Oh Desolate Flame
“The group have been performing for more than thirty years and is one of the most highly regarded qawwali groups in Afghanistan. Featuring an array of instruments rarely heard outside their homeland, the Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawwali Group are part of a vibrant musical tradition that stretches back more than 700 years. Banned from performing under the Taliban reign, these musicians now publicly reunite to present the healing and spiritual power of qawwali music to Afghanistan and the world.”
(This album from 2013, I don’t know the status of the group since the Taliban regime was reinstated in Afghanistan in 2021)
during lockdown I made marmalade from windfall mandarins the tree is laden again how relentless this flight
It’s the first winter storm as I write, and this is playing in the background (album link) (something similar from YouTube). May Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden ease your weather wherever you are this morning…
Peter Frankis writes 