When Martin read this poem at London Open Mic (June 7th, 2017), it was intended as a tribute to me for founding the open mic and keeping it going these five seasons. But during that time Martin has come to know me so well--and is such a good poet--that listening to him read it was an astonishing experience for me, a bit like looking in a mirror, but much deeper, because what was being reflected wasn't the superficial me (which we introverts hardly notice anyway) but the inner me that I actually think of as myself. And it was so accurate! Here it is. --- Stan
STAN BURFIELD
Dreaming in science, he watches the brainwaves of REM sleep lining
the royal road to the subconscious, brighter with the logic filters off,
but from the eleventh floor balcony, he farms the nature of existence
in gardens of language, plowing through pages, his eyes lifting from
there to the sky, to gauge the rainfall, hoping for a harvest of poetry.
He shuffles through leaves, among the five pillars of wisdom reading
the trees, when his eyes stray to the discovery channel, where human
settlements line the tunnels of Mars, in computer-generated imagery.
Since his solitary pilgrimmages across Canada, exploring the foreign
parts of himself, since camping out rough in closed parks, wintering
in his own worst fear, and waiting for that wilderness inside to thaw,
still finding himself just shy of man, the dreaming scientist had found
instead the perrenial seeds of poetry, fielding memories into a prairie
with radiant horizons rushing out, taking him far from the farmhouse
his father built blind, to a tent and a book of poems read by flashlight.
And poetry became a kind of crop circle: he gathers people inside
the mystery of its existence, spiralling in its language, translating
the alien brought to earth, through poems tunneling, like black holes
filling with light: reasons here, for the readings on the event horizon,
and gradually shedding the husk of fear, he climbs storeys of stairs
to wonder again at the night sky, touching down in the dream state,
more accepting now of being, his apparent solidity, despite knowing
we're all just centres of gravity, where atoms constellate, with so much
space between, we could think ourselves alien, even unto ourselves
if we thought too obviously. Despite this, he hears what he listens to,
sees what he looks at, absorbs more of life now, keeping the ink wet
he once left drying in the distance, out of hearing of others who called
from so far away, he didn’t believe, and feared to believe, that they
were calling to him, until he circled back to claim his calling among us,
standing at the microphone, on the patio behind Mikonos, right here
the first Wednesday each month, for London Open Mic Poetry night:
his brainchild spoken for here. The farmer calls on the seasons of life
in generations of voices he announces by name, to a room in the world
his heart's made room for, marking his place in the leaves of grass.
No longer foreign on this mutual pilgrimmage to the podium, he reads
with humans he now stands among, paging the unknown, and moving
inward through prairies of poetry. Where we plant our feet can seem
a barren and solitary place of silence, but entering together, we bloom.
@@@
To read the summary of the event and see the slideshow.
To read the interview with Stan & three poems.
STAN BURFIELD
Dreaming in science, he watches the brainwaves of REM sleep lining
the royal road to the subconscious, brighter with the logic filters off,
but from the eleventh floor balcony, he farms the nature of existence
in gardens of language, plowing through pages, his eyes lifting from
there to the sky, to gauge the rainfall, hoping for a harvest of poetry.
He shuffles through leaves, among the five pillars of wisdom reading
the trees, when his eyes stray to the discovery channel, where human
settlements line the tunnels of Mars, in computer-generated imagery.
Since his solitary pilgrimmages across Canada, exploring the foreign
parts of himself, since camping out rough in closed parks, wintering
in his own worst fear, and waiting for that wilderness inside to thaw,
still finding himself just shy of man, the dreaming scientist had found
instead the perrenial seeds of poetry, fielding memories into a prairie
with radiant horizons rushing out, taking him far from the farmhouse
his father built blind, to a tent and a book of poems read by flashlight.
And poetry became a kind of crop circle: he gathers people inside
the mystery of its existence, spiralling in its language, translating
the alien brought to earth, through poems tunneling, like black holes
filling with light: reasons here, for the readings on the event horizon,
and gradually shedding the husk of fear, he climbs storeys of stairs
to wonder again at the night sky, touching down in the dream state,
more accepting now of being, his apparent solidity, despite knowing
we're all just centres of gravity, where atoms constellate, with so much
space between, we could think ourselves alien, even unto ourselves
if we thought too obviously. Despite this, he hears what he listens to,
sees what he looks at, absorbs more of life now, keeping the ink wet
he once left drying in the distance, out of hearing of others who called
from so far away, he didn’t believe, and feared to believe, that they
were calling to him, until he circled back to claim his calling among us,
standing at the microphone, on the patio behind Mikonos, right here
the first Wednesday each month, for London Open Mic Poetry night:
his brainchild spoken for here. The farmer calls on the seasons of life
in generations of voices he announces by name, to a room in the world
his heart's made room for, marking his place in the leaves of grass.
No longer foreign on this mutual pilgrimmage to the podium, he reads
with humans he now stands among, paging the unknown, and moving
inward through prairies of poetry. Where we plant our feet can seem
a barren and solitary place of silence, but entering together, we bloom.
@@@
To read the summary of the event and see the slideshow.
To read the interview with Stan & three poems.
Stan Burfield
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