Timezones: RHI

is an award-winning poet, the current Young People’s Laureate Wales and an ambassador for Welsh Women’s Aid. Her work has been published widely including in Poetry Wales, Dark Mountain and The Lonely Crowd. Her new poetry collection Rebel Sun was out with Parthian Books, in 2017.  

(the road not taken)

nnnnnnnggggnnnnn For she was beautiful – her beauty made
mmmmmmmmmmmmmThe bright world dim, and everything beside
mmmmmmmmmmm.Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade

…………………………………….| &time’s | ocean |
……………………. …….(not grainsofsand)
……………<<urrriver//runsrapid2her>>
{ o r s t a g n a t e s e l e g a n t l y } …………………………&&flow&&

…….in the ubiquity of time this is what allows for narrative

That was the first verse. When he had finished it, Eeyore didn’t exactly say that he didn’t like it, so Pooh very kindly sang the second verse to him

……………………………………………..

He then asked me if I wasn’t interested in changing my life. I replied you could never change your life, that in any case, one life was as good as another and that I wasn’t at all dissatisfied with mine here.*
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm(He looked upset)

My muse is not a horse,
……. g….and I am in no horse race
………………………and if indeed she was,
………………………….still I would not harness her to this tumbrel –
………………………….this bloody cart of
………………………….severed heads and
………………………….glittering prizes.*

I realised that I’d destroyed the balance of the day and the perfect silence of this beach where I’d been happy. And I fired four more times at a lifeless body and the bullets sank in without leaving a mark. And it was like giving four sharp knocks at the door of unhappiness.*

………………The Ocean-Nymphs and Hamadryades,
…………………Orreads and Naiads with long weedy locks,
…………….. Offered to do her bidding through the seas,
…………………Under the earth and in the hollow rocks

mmmmmmmmmmmmm…I don’t know who I’m supposed to be
…………………………………………..hg.. ….she whispered
…………………………………………..gh.bb……that’s okay
………………………………………..gg..bbbb……..I replied
………………………………………….neither do I…

Then Pooh climbed a little further… and a little further… and then just a little further. By that time he had thought of another song…

*He then asked me/ I realised that: Camus, The Outsider
*My muse is not a horse: Nick Cave

Timezones: Rhi is a section from the long poem Coflyfr: experimentations with time.

Coflyfr is an experiment with the instinctive – a paddle up the collective river of inspiration whose source eludes. By stepping away from conscious research Coflyfr seeks to represent the fluid nature of time, language and memory. The waters of time are mercurial, malleable and interchangeable, existing everywhere and nowhere at once. Coflyfr’s words are an artificial construct, a dam built to contain, an attempt to hold, and perhaps briefly, understand.
Coflyfr [kov-liv-r]: record, register, chronicle.
Cof [kov]: memory.
Llyfr [ll-iv-r]: book.
Read the entire piece here.

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