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Reflections 31-35 from Folding Mirror Poetry Book
Over thirty-five reflections from 242 Mirror Poems and Reflections are on the Writing and Poetry blog now, so following on from reflections 1-5, reflections 6-10, reflections 11-15, reflections 16-20, reflections 21-25, and reflections 26-30 here’s reflections 31-35.
Reflection 31 mirrored As each second of the present passes:
Living the life extraordinary
is of course not as easy
as surviving the life ordinary
in mind as in body
to accomplish
tremendous feats
you must overcome
temptation to weaken
tire or tweet.
You must raise your game
in body, mind and spirit
and tame those thoughts
which would lead you astray
and one day you will make
it to a brighter day.
Reflection 32 mirrored Blue Skies, Delta Blues:
The poem was inspired by research finding that the human desire for love and drugs are both linked to the striatum part of the brain.
Like many Folding Mirrors, it combines the personal, social and wordplay. The words in the first half of the middle line; try, stray and from; derive from the main word of the second half of the line and poem: striatum.
It was thought that the poem was more psychological than social or literary, so it was included in this chapter.
Reflection 33 mirrored Hope for Humanity or Full Speed to Calamity?
Bipolar highs take you out of your shell, but increase your chances of getting shot at.
Reflection 34 mirrored Inside Out:
People and societies vary in levels of individuality. Some people pride themselves on being independent, while others want to be in the middle of everything social. Whatever the levels of individuality, if people have been born into any kind of society, they are likely to have been shaped by it to a certain extent, and will be expected to abide by the rules of that society. People might rebel, or consider themselves more independent than others, but usually they do it within the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, and follow previous examples from within that society.
Reflection 35 mirrored Railway Line Division Vision:
Ballad of a Young and Old Hobo
The young hobo
all full of myths and dreams
setting out on the highway
with nowhere to go
Where would the road lead him
what route would he follow
to a destiny of riches
or realisation of world hollow
The end of the long road
led to attempts at rooting
but the horizon always called
with new places for scooting
So the road has not ended
nor ever shall it likely
it was just suspended
reality upended
As ambitions tended
bended by society
a life in jeopardy
with no escape ahead of me
The old hobo moving along
myths and dreams no longer the fuel
new places on the old trail
sights and movement keep travelling cool.
Mirror Poem about Summer Photos in Winter
Marc Latham’s latest Folding Mirror poem was inspired by posting Portugal summer photos on the travel25years website this morning during stormy winter weather in the U.K. It is also winter in Portugal now of course, but the photos are still summer.
Loved Moments Caught in Time, Helps to Loosen Winter Grip
golden warmth captured on film
feeling the heat, refreshing the swim
walking with short shadow
sun’s cool you on sizzling floor
remembering sights that inspired photos
sheer cliff faces falling to sandy shores
photos more than pictures, memories stored in mind
travelling back in time helps look ahead
navigating winter hazards like mapsA-Z
human season cycles never stop spinning
like moon’s sideways grinning
savour the cold, only passing through
clouds under sky always blue
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).
Mirror Poem Travels Norway’s Bergen – Oslo Railway
Marc Latham’s latest Folding Mirror poem was inspired by an article he just wrote about Bergen for the TravelThruHistory website (not published yet). It brought back memories of his journeys between Haugesund, Bergen, Voss and Oslo alongside fjords and over mountains on the Hardangervidda plateau. Here it is:
Highest Railway Line, A Beautiful Time
Riding fjord mountain roads
ferry keeps afloat
travelling Haugesund
to Bergen
by bus and boat.
Ruby Sunday snaking
east with Osteroy
across water
to north
Dale, Voss and Naeroy
lead to Flam – Myrdal, metres 1222 ascent at Finse
Orteren, Ustevatn and Rodungen
looking south
over snow
swallowed wide open
Hardangervidda plateau mouth
Forest and lake scenery
to Oslo
through Honefoss
waterfalls accompany descent
completing la vida loco.
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).
Mount Ulriken, Bergen, Norway Photos and Poem
Hi, it’s Jack Wolfpac, legendary independent travel correspondent at the Greenygrey, and poet. Marc Latham this morning posted a blog and poem about returning to civilisation from the wilderness so it was right up my street… or mountain path.
Returning to Bergen from Mount Ulriken
Marc posted a blog with several snowy mountains and waterfalls photos about returning from Mount Ulriken to Bergen on travel25years.wordpress.com.
Marc unexpectedly returned not to the path he’d ascended the mountain on, but to one he’d nearly visited a few days previously, when a tunnel ended his random ramble.
Poem about Returning to Humanity from Wilderness
Writing up that blog reminded Marc of a poem he’d recently written about the joys of returning to human civilisation from the wilderness, so he published it on fmpoetry.wordpress.com.
The poem contrasts with the previous poem published on the website, which had a theme of the joys of isolation within wilderness. There’s lots more explanation over on fmpoetry, but here’s the poem:
Lights of Life, Homes to Humanity
waterfalls, willows, wheels
fireworks outshine city neon
enlightened valley
signs of humanity
on New Year’s Eve
through canyons weave
weary travellers emerge tunnel
poured from natural funnel
enjoyed time’s contemplation, downhill to destination
memories of my species
hive aura buzz oozes
entering concrete civilisation
time of peak imagination
dogs of wolves
wildcat shadows
skyscrapers mirror mountain memories
avenues, alleys, abodes
Mirror Poem about Civilisation and Wilderness
Marc Latham was writing up his return to civilisation from Bergen’s Mount Ulriken on the travel25years.wordpress.com blog when it reminded him of a Folding Mirror poem he’d written previously but not published. So he thought this was an ideal time to publish the poem and have a simultaneous blogcast.
The Joys of Leaving and Returning
It is also timely as a contrasting partner to the previous poem published on this site. That poem had a being independent with nature theme, while this one has a joys of returning to humanity theme.
Neither emotion and experience is independent of each other, and Marc hasn’t decided to opt for one or the other before or since writing them, or moved in preference for one or the other. Ideally, he’d like to spend six months in the wild and six months writing it up.
What Goes Up, Must Come Down
To Marc and many humans they are two sides of the same coin; fitting in with the folding mirror theme of this site, and the greenygrey theme of Marc’s main site. Some people don’t want to live much with humanity; some can’t live without humanity; but most balance times of independence and company pretty evenly. Sometimes it’s nice to escape human civilisaton, and sometimes it’s nice to return.
As well as telling of the joys of returning to humanity the poem also mirrors the city with nature in the two halves.
Lights of Life, Homes to Humanity
waterfalls, willows, wheels
fireworks outshine city neon
enlightened valley
signs of humanity
on New Year’s Eve
through canyons weave
weary travellers emerge tunnel
poured from natural funnel
enjoyed time’s contemplation, downhill to destination
memories of my species
hive aura buzz oozes
entering concrete civilisation
time of peak imagination
dogs of wolves
wildcat shadows
skyscrapers mirror mountain memories
avenues, alleys, abodes
Blog about return from Mount Ulriken, Bergen, Norway.
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).
Poem On the Road to the Epic of Gilgamesh
Marc Latham’s latest Folding Mirror poem was inspired by reading David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce’s Inside the Neolithic Mind and the British cinema release of Walter Salles‘s On The Road. On The Road is of course Jack Keroac‘s classic 1950s Beat novel, that inspired Marc Latham to travel and write.
It has taken over fifty years to bring a film version of On The Road to the screen, and it has received mixed reviews so far, although the acting is supposed to be great. Most critics think it is hard to capture that time now, with the Beats having helped liberate Western culture to such an extent. Marc doesn’t think the book is really that exciting anyway; it was just the idea and philosophy it contained: to live for the moment, seek truth and meaning, and really savour life. It can mean being quite selfish and nihilistic, and Kerouac was disappointed in what the Beat inspiration turned into in the anarchic and messy hippy culture of the sixties.
It is released a fortnight after Marc Latham turned 47, Kerouac’s last age, and Marc is now the sceptical grump that Kerouac was at that age, rather than the free and inquisitive twenty-one-year old he was when he took to the road in search of Kerouac’s life. Marc is writing this fuelled by strong coffee the Kerouac way, and hopes to watch and enjoy the film soon.
In Inside the Neolithic Mind Lewis-Williams and Pearce write that The Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest Near-Eastern myth known, and one of the oldest pieces of literature in existence. It tells the journey of Gilgamesh, the semi-divine king of Uruk, and a wild creature created by the gods called Enkidu. Together, they travel through the tiered Sumerian cosmology, and following Levi-Strauss’s theory of society being formed around binary oppositions (which is not considered entirely accurate now), Lewis-Williams and Pearce consider ‘their personalities constitute a set of parallel oppositions that can … be read horizontally and vertically’ :
- Enkidu : Gilagmesh
- nature : culture
- wild : civilisation
About 4,000 years after the Epic of Gilgamesh was formed, Kerouac and Neal Cassady travelled the American highways together, immortalised in On The Road as Sal Paradise and Dean Moriaty, and have widely been considered to be a modern version of the culture and nature binary opposition.
So Marc thought he’d combine them into a Folding Mirror poem, and here it is:
Travelling Humanity’s Existential Contrasts
On the Road
classic of fifties free thinking
into the twenty-first-century
Sal Paradise and Moriaty
travelling America’s California dream
searching for life’s answers
risking all to escape
modernity’s false reality
captured in book and film
cultural representative, nature’s perspective
etched on tablet of stone
antiquity’s oldest mythical record
leaving palace and divinity
seeking sun god solicitation
journeying Forest of Cedar
Uruk King and Enkidu
written in third-century-BC
insight into early civilisation mind
Epic of Gilgamesh
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).
New Folding Mirror Book Cover and Contents
Hi, exciting news on the book publishing front, with 242 Folding Mirror Poems and Reflections nearing completion for Amazon Kindle. Here’s the cover and contents:
Table of Contents
mistYmuse 