See also my drawings of Khao Sok with the eyes shut.
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Photographs of Khao Sok
Posted in Thailand, Uncategorized
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Drawing Khao Sok with the eyes shut.
See also my post ‘Photographs of Khao Sok’.
Khao Sok National Park, South Thailand.
Another image of the lake
Drawing with the eyes closed.
Posted in art, history and Geography, Key Links, Thailand
Tagged drawing with eyes shut, Khao Sok National Park, Thailand.
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Sitting in Very Large Trees
This gentleman sitting within the folds of a giant Tualang tree reminds me of my very own throne in a Beech in Epping forest.
Here is a closer view:
Posted in Performance Art, Thailand, Uncategorized
Tagged Anthony Howell, Epping Forest, Thailand, Tualang tree
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THE CAVERN
x
Mere slips of girls behind masks are hardly what I am after.
But am I that keen on entering this regal, sleeping vagina?
Look what became of the wild boars, swallowed by an unforgiving
Mountain who’d endured a love surrounded by darkness,
Pregnant and alone, somewhere in the depths of Tham Luang.
x
With her loyal stable hand the princess lost all sense of time.
We smelt the kids before we saw or heard them, said a diver in the party.
Her father had the boy killed. She stabbed herself in the heart
With her hair pin. Dead leaves from above get trapped in newly
Sprouted ones. The bush so threatens modern man it has to be
x
Shaved, infantilised, not for the hill tribe villages to utilise as thatch.
Light trickles in from the entrance at her labia. A myriad cicadas
Intensify my own alarm. And the heir to the throne, the bright, strong
Princess in a coma? Calm. Remain calm. We must conserve our oxygen.
Parasitic ferns fix their antlers to the trees. I have lost all sense
x
Of open space, for here time is trapped in a cauldron of stone.
Deep inside, the walls go moist and warm. Tham Luang Nang Non,
“The headwaters of the Sleeping Lady,” happens to be the inner lake
Created from her tears, this wide-hipped princess of a mountain
Pregnant with the ghosts of the ones who have succumbed,
x
Drowned in her blood which has become what so fluently now
Flows through her, rising in monsoons, quick to deepen, dangerous,
As their junior football team discovered. Pleased with her mist,
Proud to be forested. Beneath stalactite skirts, the secretive route
They took has many recesses, dead ends, limited passages
x
And tunnels winding under limestone strata. Free to grow unkempt
The wilderness will reassert itself, a fresh havoc will reign
Where there is now some orderly tea plantation. Offerings of fruit,
Incense and candles may be left. But this is a haunted, not a holy cleft.
Genuflect to her image, yes. Do not remove your sandals.Xx
x
Posted in history and Geography, Poetry, Thailand
Tagged cave rescue, Chiang Rai District, legends, Princesses, Thailand, Tham Luang
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Does it say ‘Gawow’ or ‘For Real’?
CHIT CHAT
x
For real, for real, for real.
x
For real, for real, for real, for real.
Who who who who who who who who
Snipped pips, snipped pips, snipped
x
For real, for real, for real?
Who who who who who who who who
Snipped pips, snipped pips, snipped pips?
What? What
Did your poodle do? Did your poodle do
x
For real, for real, for real, for real?
Who who who who who who who who
Snipped pips, snipped pips, snipped
What? What? What
Did your poodle do? Did your poodle do?
We are or were, we are or were
Busy fizzing busy fizzing busy fiz
x
For real, for real, for real.
Who who who who who who who who
Snipped pips, snipped pips, snipped
What? What
Did your poodle do? Did your poodle do?
We are or were, we are or were
Busy fizzing busy fizzing busy fizzing biz –
Quarrel a lot then, quarrel a lot.
x
Ketchup.
Pour it down the bra.
Thank you. Toodle loo
x
For real, for real, for real, for real.
Who who who who who who who?
x
(Translated from the Thai)
Big debate with my Thai friend as to what the birds are saying. Of course, they are speaking in Thai, and Thai speakers (with their five tones) “hear” quite differently to the way an English person “hears” – so this poem is more accurately perhaps a transliteration. It’s a dog that keeps saying “What”.
Posted in Poetry, Thailand, Video
Tagged Birdsong, Common Asian Koel, Thailand, what birds say
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ACCORDING TO PLINY
The dragon, ever at war with the elephant,
Is itself of so enormous a size,
As easily to overwhelm the elephant,
Seize it in its clutches and encircle
Its legs in its coils.
x
The contest is equally
Fatal to both. The elephant,
Vanquished, falls to the earth,
And by its weight, crushes the dragon
Doggedly knotted around it.
x
For this poem I am indebted to a brilliant post by Annone the Elephant on wordpress
Posted in art, Poetry, Politics, Thailand, war
Tagged Annonetheelephant, dragons and elephants, Pliny, superpower warfare
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THE GOOD RAT
x
One Buddha’s seven-headed cobra parasol
Also offers coils for his throne. The Princess and the Pea
Came to mind for somebody, one dry afternoon
x
When the long, refreshingly cool trunk of a python
Got wrapped around my shoulders as it tried to nose away,
As probably did the black snake of which I have no memory,
x
The snake my mum brought back, draped around me
When I was less than a year. Protestant faiths
Only have people to emulate while Shiva balances
x
On the Demon of Ignorance. Vishnu has his bull.
Out of Parvati, possibly sired by her lesser half, let’s say,
Ganesh’s super-stable howdah rides upon a rat.
x
Imagine plump Ganesha seated on his rat sideways
Like those nifty girls in tight skirts hitching a ride to Bangkok,
Except that he sits open wide, cementing together
x
The soles of his feet, fluid in his hips for all his weight.
Here though in the Land of Gold it’s rare to see him riding,
For Ganesh wears the Buddha’s cap, but do I want to direct my trek
x
To the rat temple that Andrea went to in Rajasthan?
The one you have to enter barefoot – as is the form for wats –
But rat-shit everywhere. What pests they are. The Western mind
x
Celebrates its terriers, and shudders at – for all that, the good rat
Can boast its swag-bag share of beady attributes.
Once, on the roof of one of Notre-Dame’s engargoyled towers,
x
There was a girl leant out, her pet rat peering from a shoulder.
In our village many rats in miniature are scattered near
Ganesh’s feet. From a poet’s point-of-view, you get a lot of rhymes.
x
Posted in Thailand, Uncategorized
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HOMAGE TO THE DOUANIER ROUSSEAU
x
Steep tracts of dry earth occasionally perplexed by roots
Proceed up the aisles of perpendicular cathedrals.
Bundled pillars of bamboo admit onto chapels of
The unkempt wild banana, larger than a mammoth by
Comparison to its pip-less and domesticated
Cousins. Blanched husks, both Saxon and Norman,
Vie with massive leaves for light’s attention.
Greenly broken leaves get repaired here
With a maze of golden seams as you get in Fittonia.
x
Lancet poison dart plants, bambino arrows and
A foliage plant named Bogner spring up under
Fronds raped by liana – which is spiralled by
Its own far younger strings. The rectilinear kapok
Soars up from its buttresses for vertiginous feet,
Breaking into orange powder right at the summit
Underneath the summit just above it: orange
As the domesticated cur seen near roadside stalls
Coloured the same as the feral dohle that terrorise
x
The hinds and their fawns at the wallow. It’s tricky for
Plantations here, when wild originals contaminate
The heifer versions of themselves with their rampant
Savagery. Monkeys, birds and insects can’t be taught that
Trespass is an offence. They smuggle in the holy
Spirits of the ancient breeds, just as the powerful cult
Of the child who will do one’s bidding generates
Rows kept without official sanction in the abbot’s audience room.
It’s thus that your banana eunuchs suddenly begin
x
To procreate. Crops castrated for the market
Unpeel auspiciously, only to be found with those unpalatable pips
Even the monkeys spit out and elephants shit.
Not quite as bad as the custard apple though
Enough to deter the Western appetite. You have to go
Back to the Bone Age, when there were wolves but
No Alsatians, when the poison arrow plant
Was still distilled for its point, the time of antler tines,
To worship at the waterfall’s chasm-haunted wat.
x
Khun Korn
When Nature Moults
The interrupted fall
Of each broad leaf
Is an event on the sun-deck
Where the skin drinks in the gel.
x
The season’s a sort of dry autumn.
It’s the heat that knocks off the leaves
Big as faces, warped,
And weathered brown.
x
The evergreen bushes
Store what the dew provides
In rind protecting bitter, sweet
Or peppery insides.
x
Jackfruit and tamarind
Compete against the lime.
The mango gets tested
By jade-breasted, jet-black tits.
x
Elsewhere everything is husks,
Shells of former selves:
A few dark pods
Clinging to the tree-tops.
x
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxChiang Rai, February, 2023
Posted in Poetry, Thailand, Uncategorized
Tagged Falling leaves, February in Thailand
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