witches season, poetic reason

It’s October 21st, which means there’s only one month until mistYmuse (Most Ideal Sunrise Time – Midwinter Until Spring Equinox; mYm acronym!) 20/21. This week is False Dawn Week, with sunrises getting to their latest before clocks go back an hour on Sunday in the UK; ending British Summer Time (BST).

MYMORY PRELIMINARY

There was a nice sunrise over Leeds on Monday, just north of the Town Hall on the horizon.

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This morning I wrote this little poem. It started off spontaneously, then about half way down I thought its Earth’s north and south hemispheres subject matter made it ideal for a Folding Mirror Poem: the original inspiration for this blog site.

From Sun’s Face, Out Into Space

As planet’s north
points to space
no longer fronting
our star’s fiery face

we remember turn, circling as one

the heat will weaken
but light beacon
will remain alight
beyond winter night

Searching for my book again on Amazon and seeing its 2012 date made me think that some of the poems in there must have been written a decade ago now, and searching on this site’s October 2010 section took me back to that time; in this season of reminiscing.

One poem is about becoming middle-aged, for those who think I try to act too young! Others are more experimental, in a time I remember as very creatively exciting, with blogging and science converging to create lots of subject matter and a place to easily publish it.

The Cult and Piston Tour Joins Prestigious Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame

With Halloween and Bonfire Night finished and a month and a half of dodgy weather doldrums in the northern hemisphere until Christmas I’m sure you’re all delighted mistYmuse 2019 (#mYm2019) starts in a fortnight (not fortnite!).

To begin the countdown (not to the full moon, like in the old greenYgrey days!) here’s another essential on the greenYgrey calendar!

The Cult Sonic Temple Tour

The Cult’s show at the Leeds o2 Academy celebrating their classic Sonic Temple album’s 30th anniversary was chosen as this year’s gYg of the Year, supported by Piston.
So they have been added to the prestigious gYg rock n’ roll hall of fame, now in its second decade:

• 2009: Lynyrd Skynyrd
• 2010: Guns N’ Roses and Skid Row
• 2011: Motley Crue, Def Leppard and Steel Panther
• 2012: W.A.S.P.
• 2013: Alice in Chains, Ghost and Walking Papers
• 2014: The Pretty Reckless, Heaven’s Basement and Nothing More
• 2015: Motley Crue, Alice Cooper and The One Hundred
• 2016: Black Sabbath, Rammstein, Saxon, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, The Wildhearts, Halestorm, The Temperance Movement, Kadavar, the Gutterdammerung band and movie, The Electric Wizard, Rival Sons, Sixx A.M., The Amorettes, The Men That Will Be Blamed For Nothing, Avatar, Monster Truck, Whiskey Myers, Grand Magus, Scorpion Child, Inglorious, Royal Republic, Santa Cruz, Deftones, Strange Bones, Graveyard, Tremonti and Gojira.
• 2017: Guns N’ Roses, The Kills and Tyler Bryant and the Shakedown
• 2018: Rose Tattoo and Girlschool
•  2019: The Cult and Piston

Sonic Temple: Sun King and Wild Flower

Here’s a video I took of their opening two numbers. Sun King was my favourite track from Sonic Temple, but there are many great songs in that album and others.
I of course married the Sun last year, but don’t consider myself a king; more a consort!
The Cult were my favourite British band of the late ’80s, after Rainbow and Saxon in the early ’80s.
While Guns N’ Roses were my favourite band, I thought The Cult’s Electric and Sonic Temple would have been worthy successors to Guns’ Appetite for Destruction; and that was probably why Guns poached drummer Matt Sorum from The Cult when Adler had problems during Guns’ follow-up Illusion sessions.

If you liked any of the above, you may like my books, full of ’80s/’90s rock band references. I’ve joined the Woodland Trust to offset paper.

Poem Celebrating Halloween Horrors of Humanity

Marc Latham’s latest Folding Mirror poem celebrates Halloween, which is known as the Day of the Dead in some countries. Inspired by the weakening sun in the northern hemisphere, as our planet’s tilt switches to favouring the southern hemisphere, old traditions thought the boundaries between the living and spirit worlds were at their lowest.

Humanity is the Destroyer of Life

The Halloween tradition has evolved to portray fictional creatures such as vampires and werewolves as the monsters of the night time world. In reality it is humanity that causes nearly all the problems at all times on our planet; both for  humanity and other life.

While sometimes it is real life psychopaths, like the Halloween movie‘s Michael Myers, most of the world’s problems are caused by normal humanity, and its incessant desire to expand and control, killing and destroying everything in its wake.

The Banality of Evil

Individual humans are usually unconscious of their actions, simply living to the norms of their society. Sometimes the norms of society support some pretty gruesome behaviour; which looks like pretty similar to what the monsters do in horror films.

More humanity means more horror. As Francis Coppola and John Milius‘s Colonel Kurtz exclaimed in Apocalypse Now at the end of his lifetime in humanity: ‘The horror… the horror… the horror…’

ezimba-web- Shapes 3D Folded Mirror Pop Art (Photo credit: krossbow)

Defenders of Nature, Demonised as Witches

catch a falling star
transform it nuclear
capture the rainbow
mine every ounce glow
hunt sweet shaped cloud
sow together Earth’s shroud

humanity radiates acid rain, ancients interpreted to explain

fall of humanity continues
overseen by wise retinues
loving their lowest hour
protected by power
Big Bang reverse
one god no universe

dominion building (Photo credit: AЯMEN)

Marc Latham’s central site is the Greenygrey (http://www.greenygrey.co.uk), and he has books available on Smashwords and Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/author/marclatham).

Happy Halloween… Fun Animal Photos

Hi, it’s Baron Wolfman, head honcho of Greenygrey Creation in the absence of the legendary Andy Wolfhol, who is perhaps most fondly remembered in the Greenygrey world for his favourite slogan catchphrase ‘Wolf not War’.

Halloween Week Animal Photos

It’s Halloween week this week, with the main night in of celebration on Thursday 31st October. Halloween and similar traditions, such as the Day of the Dead deriving from Mexico, were inspired by old pagan festivals honouring the dead as they experienced the sun ‘dying’ in the northern hemisphere at this time of year.

Here’s some fun and greenygrey photos to celebrate Halloween, with links to their original sharers on google+ within the images, and all the good people and animals that have left the living world:

Four-way greenygrey trowl (tree and owl) photo, which could also be described as poetry in owl tree:

Bearable greenygrey:

Something fishy going on: cat amongst the greenygrey:

Howlingly healthy Halloween:

No werewolves, just a Halloween-loving wolf:

Halloween Horrors of Humanity Poem

Marc Latham’s latest Folding Mirror poem celebrates Halloween, while hoping its topicality will bring more visitors and readers. Sorry if you were looking for something more supernatural or scary in line with the Halloween spirit, but this poem tries to provide a reasoned and rational account of humanity and natural spirits.

While there are horrors of non-human nature, such as hurricanes, earthquakes and droughts, which may or may not be exacerbated by human activity; or rare animal attacks, which are often because of human expansion into the remaining wilderness areas; the most common horrors in human society are human on human.

And while a belief in workable witchcraft and innocent people being persecuted and burned as witches has generally died out in ‘Western’ society, they are still prevalent in some parts of the world.

So enjoy the Halloween fun, which is derived from pagan end-of-summer festivals such as Samhain, before human societies had the technology we now have, and the knowledge astronomers such as Copernicus, Galileo and Isaac Newton provided, but watch out for those humans! Here’s the poem:

Solar wind. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Halloween Howls, Samhain Sighs 

nature knows no religion
devil, witch or werewolf
it just lives and breathes
everywhere we settle
providing us with homes
food, drink and beauty

law unto itself, beyond our control

ritual, pray and sacrifice
try talking to spirit
cultures have collapsed
under signs falling from sky
god, angel and unicorn
all created by mankind

Persecution of witches (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marc Latham’s central site is the Greenygrey (http://www.greenygrey.co.uk), and he has several books available on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/author/marclatham).

 

Halloween Poem about October Midpoint

Marc Latham’s latest Folding Mirror poem was inspired by taking time out to look around his room and think after watching the Howl film on the BBC. Howl is about Allen Ginsberg of the 1950s Beat movement, and his trial for obscenity for his Howl poem. Marc looked at his calendar, and the days on it, noticing there were two halves of the October month either side of the 16th, which was tomorrow (now today). So he thought he’d write a Folding Mirror poem about October, and here it is:

Birthday II (Photo credit: MR_TMRW)

October 16th, 2012

Fifteen days, first half
my birthday’s shadow
hides the fact
my age says I’m
one year older
than the month before
first to fifteenth gone
Monday to Monday

midpoint time, midday Tuesday

Wednesday to Wednesday
sixteenth to thirty-first ahead
the second half begins
on same day
the clock ticks on
to cold dark
Halloween Samhain night
two weeks, one day

No a halloween (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marc Latham’s central site is the Greenygrey (http://www.greenygrey.co.uk), and he has several books available on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/author/marclatham).

Samhaim to Halloween Poem

The Alice Cooper poem got Halloween week off to a rocking start, but then the dreaded lurgy did strike, and knocked poor Marc Latham out until Halloween itself. So, not much of a Halloween week, but it did inspire this poem to finish off the festivities.  It comments on the way the pagan festival celebrating the dead has been demonised and cheapened by modern religious culture, but it’s all good fun!

Samhaim to Halloween

Samhain ideas were flying around my mind
but then the spirits decided to play
with the meanest mischief
they could display

burn and bite, twist the fright

lay down mortal
tis our annual festival
time to fall upon Earth once more
Halloween is code for evil and devil

New Halloween Week Poem Interprets Rock Music’s Alice Cooper Cover

Image via Wikipedia

To begin Halloween week, Marc Latham’s latest Folding Mirror poem interprets rock music legend Alice Cooper‘s Alice Does Alice 2010 record cover, which is featured below, and seems to have a mirror format.

The mirror theme seems to be common and recurrent in Alice creator, Vincent Furnier’s work, and the album cover to your right also seems very much in line with a folding mirror.

 

The poem:

 
 

 All Cooper

Alice, meet Cooper
under the moonlight
Furnier’s alter ego
could just become your hero
if you’ll get to know him
in amongst all that din

Getting to grips with the relationship

having a heart to heart
two hands in one play part
palm and neck closely embrace
snarling Vincent’s face
beside the firelight
Cooper, meet Alice

Edited after expert advice from Annie Sisk. Thanks Annie.