At the gates

Dream Motion

Observing Time: Intervention

Observing Time: Thames Walk

Observing Time: Walking Through The Trees

Observing Time: Tea and Carrot Cake

Observing Time: Florence go-round

Part of a new series of photo-collages I'm working on called Observing Time

Via Marconi, Polverigi

Wouldn't It Be

Star

"I love the piece of earth that you are,
because of all the planetary fields,
I have no other star"

- Cien Sonnetos de Amor
de Neruda

Writing Letters -II

Cloudy

Not

Writing letters - 1

O.K.

Water Lilies

shot on 120mm film with my Diana

As fragile as a paper memory

Knowing

I know where to find you
even before you know you're going to hide.

It's one of those things I have a sense for
but I wish that I didn't.

It's so hard after all,
to see your outlines crumble
as you stand at the edge of a cliff,
waiting for the wind to sweep you away,
waiting for the water to grind you into the ocean
you fear so much
even though you've taught yourself how to swim
many years ago

Did yesterday know

Did yesterday know that today was going to be like this?
Did it read the forecast, cast the dice
or calculate the angle at which the projection of your shadow was going to fall on my face?
Did it count the steps to the staircase that would lead it blind into memory,
up a hill, behind a mountain and into a cave
of dankness and cold sleep;
away from morning, noon
and afternoon light
filled with amber wood
and Sunday delights?

Cartography

Illustrating a map
is an exercise in diplomacy.
After neatly following black flowing lines of political propriety,
my hand begins to itch after a while
and I ask myself
where, for example, does India end
and Pakistan begin,
and what do I do about China's persistent butting in?

Is Antarctica ever anything but white,
I wonder,
and how do the Chechnyans sleep at night?
Does the isle of Taiwan get its own colour
and will Israel eventually manage to get it right?

In an act of absolute anarchy
I pick up my eraser-ing tool
and wipe away all those border conflicts
that have angered you and worried me so.

The continents are now just islands -
large, intricate masses of white
surrounded by deep blue mysterious oceans
reflecting clouds, the stars
and generous astronomical light.

It's a sunny kind of day today,
and I'm in a benevolent mood
if I could go back to Babel
and leave alone the sky-reaching tower,
I'd wipe out the languages too.

After the rain (after Ezekiel)

I've been away so long
I've forgotten how to put words together:
how to say what I mean,
without saying it directly;
without chiselling it out in stone,
and going over the outlines in bold.
I used to know how to blur the edges of things
and let colours melt into gold,
but ever since the wind swept the rain away
and the sun came out from the clouds,
things have become sharper
and brighter
and the edges of ideas stand out once more

Ezekial once wondered if after a rain the air was clearer.
Now I agree:
It is just so,
just so

Sunset

Squeeze a drop of lime into an ultramarine sky
layered over strawberry cream clouds:
the scent of freshly washed leaves flowing in the air
as a grey, wet and windy day folds to a close,
in an uneventful sigh
mixed with orange rinds,
conversations
and chocolate hazelnut smiles

24 hours in Firenze

Enter Easter
rain

driving through
a landscape of marble churches,
cobblestone filth
and triumphant Madonnas
hoisted on walls and altars
following crosses through streets,
into processions of devout,
divine, divided hoards
of people and tourists
- all strangers from foreign lands,
travellers through time,
periods and histories
of a world painted in brush strokes
sculpted in stone,
installed on corners
in piazzas and palazzos
that invade the orthography of a sterile mind

Birthdays

I thought it was your birthday today
but then I realised it wasn't.

It was yours.

Annoyed,
I needled my brain
for remembering such a considerate detail
when you've never returned the favour,
never bothered to acknowledge the fact that I left,
or that you left
me
the city
and the sun

City Window

Bird of Paradise

Found Flowers

Window City

A Line From An Old Poem

Pregunta

1968

Night of Stars

14 minutes past the hour

Why

Speak of Time

Look

Post-It Poem: Waiting

(*) click on the image to see a larger version. Alternatively, you can download it and zoom into the details

Of course, this piece can be read in any order you like, although there is a general narrative idea to it. The last slip is silver in colour but well what can I say, it just looks better live than as a photograph

Post-it Poems: Siempre

These are part of an exercise I'm doing for a writing workshop at college.

They're visual poems that can be installed anywhere, on any surface.

This is a small one that came out of today's feedback session. The larger, original one that started my new preoccupation will be posted tomorrow

Stamp Colour Gold

I wish the computer screen could show the gold wash on these...

Thought - I

it's so foggy
that the tower where you sit
has only just emerged
for the day

but the day is
done:

half past noon and a morning
cloudied by half dreams
and old mists
and lost sleep
caught between weeks
and words
in the sun

One Afternoon. July, 2006

A digital flourish,
clickety click beep and
tapping grids in two-by-two frames
stretched by fourteen hours of strain at a desk in a loft,
sandwiched between a wall, another desk
and bricks
and sky
and falling drops of afternoon rain
haunted by a stranger's eyes,
an apology
and a winding column of humanity making its way into every direction
except for the one I'm headed in:
alone under an umbrella
in search of the perfect fountain pen
to write love letters with
on yellow paper
in green ink
on a grey day

सूफी गाने के कुछ लब्ज़

Drawings from Khandala

Dark Implosion

Sometimes I feel as if I'll implode into you -

into all the dates and names and songs,
rhymes, places and spaces you talk of all the time
because at some point, I've been there before:
inside the same cryptic words and texts
you hint, mention and throw into
the volley of ideas that I launch around myself:
thoughts like a suit of tentacles
that reach out into the darkness
of unknown possibilities
and odd prodigous events

From a book I received many years ago:

"You are searching the world for treasure
but the real treasure is yourself.
If you are tempted by bread
you will only find bread.
What you seek for
you become."

- Jalal-ud-din Rumi