Celtic Radio and the Fourth Dimension (manuscript: frontispiece and first image) Commenced July 14, 1997

Celtic Radio and the Fourth Dimension (frontispiece)

Celtic Radio: First Image

I.
Take me to the high hills
Where purple flowers sway
And bees hum.
Magic bird pounds her song in my ear---
When I look, there is no living creature there!
No bird, no dog, no man.

We are bathed in the river of time past
Flowing into time present:
Time present flowing into time past
in one waterflow.
The beginning ever renewing
in universal flashing.

Each man is an ‘adam’
First in his race.
Each finds the world to his liking;
The plenitude of mystery:
Red, green and yellow canyon walls,
Crystal caves and stones that light up in phosphorescence.
Each one surveys nature and says “It is good.”
This is Now---
Forever now.
One sacred eternal moment.
Now.

But then,
You pick up the radio, turn it on:
Like a twisted phrase, an alien object from space, it says,
“You are falling. Falling fast.”
My feet are running away to the edges of this day
No more to hold center,
Falling down the purple hillside,
The magic bird flies
Across the sky
Through the valley like a Winter stream.

I find distance
And have difficulty remembering my birth and my original home.
[Before or after is the same whether I find myself in the center of the day or at its edges running away
or whether I am with myself
or finding it difficult to recall my face.]
There is no difference between these worlds!
The world is always the same/ always changing.
[What is forever changing is forever the same*.]
*Heraclitus

Celtic Radio: Image 2

II.
(Canal du Midi: Azille)

Dull grey fish leaps into my mind
Horse hooves clatter
Bright green lizard pounces on a dusty stone.
Chipmunks chatter.

Brown boar scratches the scented forest floor.
Red fly mushroom beckons from the soil
Purple flowers sway in my eyes
Quartz crackles from the highest hills.
Bees buzz round my footstep
Wind rattles the broad sycamore’s leaves and branch

Sur le canal
God leaps into my mind.
Celtic Radio and the Fourth Dimension
Soft, slow
Like Sunday morning
Like water calm
Finding myself/
Love of God surrounds.
I am a radio playing his peace to all Things.

Celtic radio: Image 3

III.
(Le plage a Gruissan)

Monday, Bastille Day, 14 July.
From the high hill above the final village
I saw your steely green eyes.

All the warm beer and girl’s beauty
Like a quiz.

Pages standing,
Hands falling
In the sable sand
In the steel green sea.

Evening hums with motors and shimmering heat.
Little waves splash in constant rhythm.

Celtic Radio: Image 4

IV.
(Fort Bruno)

One with my poem
Sitting on moss
Silent camouflage in shades of green and brown.
Suddenly the wind blasts:
Mushrooms, berries, bits of rain,
The forest makes fun with
Bright childrens’ voices,
Bright children’s coats.
Berrypickers slump over like mosscovered limbs
Sagging through inability
To change
But content to accept the dictates of forest law.
Content as nature.

Content as the curving road
That is, not content.

No magic code to unravel the tangled root
A hidden thing, a maze
Silver night
Weight of gravity.
I do not speak of dialogue or misinformation,
Lack of communication,
or the One and its schism..

Celtic Radio: Images 5 and 6

V.
(Dans le bord du lac de Jouarres)
Fire crackles at the edge of Lac de Jouarres
Burning off old vines.

All is calm save the crickets and cicadas
As the sun sets in yellow
Over the purple mountains in the Montagne Noir.

Distant buoys rock in and out of view
As you are
In and out of view in my poem.

VI.
(Laure-Minervois)
Wind carries 1000 seeds
Giving to the barren land
Purple clover, dandelion,
Queen Anne’s Lace.

Beauty waves like a blanket in the wind
The scent of ancient dry pines blend
With the endless radio of cicadas.

I am searching for you in the center of this day.
Calm center
within my soul
beyond words of disputation,
dialectics or imagination.

Where Is God at home?
Isn’t it in my laughing eyes
Which see things from the origin as very real?

Harmony between my soul and all created things
Resonates this ragged valley.

Celtic Radio: Images 7, 8 and 9

VII.
(from Castelnaudary to Villeneuve to Azille)

On the road from the Black Mountains
Darkness oppresses.
Each village offers a surprise.
Which direction to go?

Stopping for water I see the silver moon so far away
As a flea sees a distant beam:
How far is the moon?
How long is the journey?
How wide is time?
Is it too late to change?
To dig deep to the profound?
To bring forth a better picture.

If I accept time and whatever falls
I accept blindly and in full vision
The way that lies before me.

Holding back no more
surrender to the path---
The source and end of my being.

On and on as the road winds like a ribbon
Where the moonlight paints oaks and pines in dull green
To the floor of the valley where Ricquet conceived his great canal.


VIII.
(Narbonne)

I find you among the white stones of the cathedral
Along ‘les promenades sur le canal’
Beneath the dark bridge
Along with bent women taking refuge from the full storm.

I heard you in the splashing waterfall
Beneath red and white flower petals
Near the dancing, swinging willow fingers.

Pierre Paul Ricquet’s canal bisects
The ancient Roman city of Narbonne
Forcing citydwellers higher and higher
Into colored porches and homes.

So many people wandering in the market
Along the emerald green canal.
Each face another beginning
Fresh light
hidden in the power of creation.

It is awake in perfect illumination
When I see you smiling once more.
Once again it is Romance.
Dark mother with her rolly-polly baby.

A young crippled girl’s clacking brace sending an uneven rhythm
Stops to say ‘Bonjour!’
Her smile is purity.
I am healed of schism, battle, division.
Tearing winds wash the pages clean.
This morning I see traces of you in every particle of this city.


IX.
(Bibliotheque- Narbonne)
In Narbonne’s central library
I found a book entitled, “Le quatrieme dimension.”

“Of all of the mysteries forgotten
which we once knew:
Space in its timelessness
Time in its spacelessness.
Aristotle’s Physics demonstrates that
Speed is defined as the measure of space traversed in time…and so on.”

Somehow sideways academic glances
fall short of these momentary poetic glimpses---
“The great distance of macrosystem,” or
“Infinitesimal space of microsystem”
such theories are thin smoke crawling to escape the most pressing fire.

The wind tears strongly, heavy sunlight burns on
As day after day marches past the village square
past the fountain
to the burgundy sign I spy
Great letters in white paste read:
CAVE COOPERATIVE
D’AZILLE MINERVOIS
As a monument to itself
6 years to the day I last read this sign
Identical to the last detail
It is I who have changed.

But what is the poetic “I”?
What after all is a poem?

Celtic Radio: Image Ten

X.
(Olonzac, Brasserie des Sports)
This poem is a song,
A dance,
Stone in the wall,
Church and theatre;
It is a picture with color, wind
and Rhythm,
A wild forest,
A film depicting the world as it falls into place
Crystallizing.

This poem stands like a rock in the river of time which bathes it.

Events line up
Since I first started sipping pastisse
Today at the Brasserie des Sports in Olonzac,
Or years before in the jazz catacombs of Paris,
Or in Fleetwood’s Jazz Club in Baltimore twenty years ago.

What is this ‘ago’?
What is this ‘now’?
What is this line?

How do words line up so that ‘road’
Speaks to all roads, but to none more than the very heart of this road?

“Celtic Radio” is an expression which captures this endless moving on.
The eternal winding-on!
Here we find ourselves in the eternal flashing.
Spinning like the kitten’s tail chasing.

Somewhere in this space
This time
This matter
We need to find a home, some anchor
But where, o where!

When I was a child I spoke like a child
“Life is so easy to see!”

From my window I search endlessly
For that child and the world he once knew.
Always growing, rising, falling.
Who is this child and where has he gone?

The light in the café has greater significance
Because we have been here before.
Is it “I”?
or should I say “he was here before”?
"In the sacred time" [or "in those crazy days" I leave you to choose]

Brasserie des Sports
With wind tearing seeds like feathers
From the Sycamore trees
Along Rue de la Poste.
Looking across the street
To tables the merry drinkers have left vacant.

Celtic Radio: Image 11

XI.
(Lac de Jouarres)

{A.Antimirror}
My poem is an antimirror,
Chamber with too many doors going in
But no door going out.

My words are a cage which you look upon
You feel the clatter and scrape your fingers on this rusty shell---
Within silence recedes with my thought
Waves over rocks receding.

This poem is a lonely tower
And a boat passing to tranquility-bliss.
Death to the world that brings you hither.

No tourism.
Only blocks to build the inward cathedral:
Blocks of olive trees,
Blocks of blue sky where clouds race by
wind blowing round and round
in shouts and whispers through old pines
turning with my mind again;
blocks of emerald green lakes and ‘le promenade sur le canal’
blocks of white crystal from high hills and dark mountains
blocks of flowers,
tombstones…
blocks of morning teas---
boulders of theories
ideas of space-time
and Pasternak.
I am looking at you in an antimirror.


{B. Living Stone}
My word is living stone
My poem is window of life---
Heart of crystal
Water of life
Voice calling “Grow!”

Vision of unfolding nature
Suspended still in her cloudy water
Mist of mist
Man of man
Woman of woman
Before they fall into this momentary condensation of now.
How do you describe what precedes word?
The red that gives red its red?
Flame that burns my flesh.

Theatre of true life
Even if the fourth dimension is a hoax,
Another abstract intangible shadow.

Celtic Radio brings poetry to transmission
I am listening and listening hard

This poem is a gate into reality---
Not the reality of argumentation, doubt or disputation [which is not really real]
Reality answers only to “Yes”
Wakens only to praise.

A younger poet wrote:
When I look she is not there /
never really there
This poem is untrue
For that which makes present is as always was
And is as always will.

This poem sings of permanent beauty---
She remains!
The words of this poet are living stones.

Celtic Radio: Image 12

XII.
(Antibes: Le plage)
Pebbles on the beach never sparkle so brilliant
As they do in the Summer Sun.
Slim red stones with white fingers---
Souvenirs
Whose shine will never mesmerize as now.

A jet roars over the Alps of the High Provence,
Fishers pull their lines,
Children tousle and play.
Nice and Monaco are white slabs in the mist
Dark mountain yonder is Italy.

An African vends his colorful wares on the beach,
Fire is set and grill made ready for supper,
Little boy reels madly
He has a big one hooked.
Like a figure in a painting
Amidst the surf splattered rock
Raising his fishing pole
Twice his height,
Lifting well above his head
Letting loose the line into the blue blue sea.
As the sun sets over Antibes.

Celtic Radio: Images 13 and 14

XIII.
(Antibes-Picasso Museum)

Surfmusic:wet stones,
Grimacing boulders,
Writhing beasts drunk in sea froth.
My head is spinning
From Picasso’s paintings:
Ferocity and outward calm
So wild, so pure
Like the mad love I feel for the blue sea
From the window of Chateau Grimaldi.

To stay drunk on beauty half
The first night and double the following day.
Sickness that follows beauty too palpable
Gazing long into her eyes.

Vertigo of deepness within your soul
The everchanging light on your face.
The only sound I hear is a heartbeat---

Black Cubist sculpture slashing open the land and water.
His works are wide worlds falling at the edges of the wall.
They call me into the muddled blue darkness
of a world created fresh and free.
Rudimental,
Percussive steps in a city of freemen.

Art of art,
Mirror of this poem
Gazing hard into the sea
Wave splattered
Velvet green revealing
Tiny crabs
Sideways soldiers marching heroically on pin fingers.

The Surfmusic is within me
I am healing
I am praying for every living thing to rise.

XIV.
{A. Antibes-Cathedral}
Listening to the priest’s soothing sermon,
I cannot get the sense his French sentences
Though his voice is calm and pure.

I want to be a living stone
Or perhaps a little candle before the tabernacle.
Joy rises up within my heart
Joy passing all understanding---
‘Le priere universelle.’

“I believe in the resurrection of the dead
and in the life of the world to come.”

Within I am lit up as gold and blue moonlight on the onyx sea.
My sickness is crushed
The walls of my heart shatter
In an orange furnace
In a golden womb
The sun is within me.
A master glassblower turns his pipe blending
Marble pigments into crystal wonder.

Sunsets upon the water in her emerald eyes
White fish dive near the boulders in the milky green mist
Prayer is my joy.
I pray for all of the things I cannot say.

{B. On the Street}
Beneath the old pines
Black dogs rest with drunk travelers
Another two bottles arrive as the evening starts to glow.

Shady pink haze falls over Antibes’ pale white horizon of condominium towers,
The motor starts to slow.
Cigarettes are lit one after the other
Tourists mill by
In fuschias, red, and cadmium yellow.

There is jazz in the air in this happy town.
It is another type of joy
Another town created for human joy
Another paradise.

The cathedral is a stone’s throw beyond the rampart.
Home is very near and very far away. Busses come and go
The road winds on and on through the night.

Celtic Radio: Image 17

XVII.
{A.}
(Minerve)
“And have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him.” (St. Paul Colossians 3:10)

Poetry---after swimming in cool waters
Past channels of marble boulders,
Through fishwater like a frog.

Dry wind blows the scent of boxwoods through the valley
Cicadas chant like summer monks
And a dry lizard slides so high above the canyon wall.

My method of picture taking is simple ‘reportage’---
Simply describing what I see and hear.
I have no pretensions of rare things or exotic birds,
My perspective is not exalted like the young poet.
I am simply in the middle of the day
And this is what I speak
This I broadcast.
Perhaps you prefer a distant dialect.
I have no sleight of hand
Evenso, when I see the red willow roots
along the edge of the canal dangling in the green stream
I want to sing like a child.

I am not a slender root but have my root within.
I am alive in the root that enlivens me. I am a branch.

To look back on the photos of my youth and realize
It is not me.
I am being recreated from the ground up.
Pure joy follows as I climb my Self step by step
And stone by stone.
My wall is renewing with stones of life.

I have found wings to fly
But the melancholy troubador sings a weary tune
In the ancient tower below.

Passing on to a new day.
Who will I find there?

The young girl’s round breasts delight me
But there is another breast
Another milk for me.
There is another food for another life.
Not a belly
But a temple filled with knowledge.


Little boy sits at a restaurant table smiling, singing and painting pictures.
The parents are too busy talking to notice his art.
The boy is forgotten.
This is not his father but his mother’s new lover.
He is a young artist
Who sings and creates without pause
But they cannot hear
Or know what these pictures mean.
I see and hear him
I am the poet of hidden meanings
Like the boy who realizes that words don’t work
Because the new word he is trying to say
Has no home in this old world.

I know not what else to say,
I have been that child.
This poem is just, pure and honest.

{B.}
Clacking red rocks against green rocks
Rock bridges and rock walls
Clear water over marble channels
In an orange canyon.

I am not really interested in the knowledge or science of nature
Everywhere I find life is its root.
Life is inexplicable.
Life hidden within its source astounds.
I see the face of life
It is the house I seek. ‘

Water plunges along the valley floor
beneath the ancient bridge
endlessly asking:
“Why am I here?”
“For nothing, save the joy you bring to my ear,” I whisper.

“Where am I going?”
“The river bends and disappears into rock. After your long sojourn you simply blend in,” I answer.

Last evening two guitars played flamenco
While gypsies danced near the lake.
Beneath the full Andalusian moon.
Hands clap in syncopated time,
While the old poet rolls out another crying verse.
This dancer is a powerful mystery.
Throws up her arms,
And turns stomping her feet defiantly---
Her face a challenge to the night.

She asks, “Why do I dance, what is the meaning of my song?”
I answer: “You are a flash full of color and personality.
Living stones cannot stop from dancing.
You are a living stone.”

Celtic Radio: Images 15 and 16

XV.
(Moustieres Sainte Marie)

Misty green lake in the high alps
Adolescence again---
Diving from the bridge and cliff
As multicolored boats drift by.
Recollections of home and Raystown Lake
Though the steep canyon walls towering before me are new.

The green lake is in my poet’s eye
As the high hills fill my vision.
Fishwatermusick is everlasting rhythm
The voice of the final human being/the inward man.

Families recreate in the summer sun
Life from life
Undying and eternal
A word that speaks in so many tongues
Wafting across the lake with the echoing drum.

Today, all of these little things---
Pink caps and paddles,
Towels on the pebble beach
Paul smiling
Ode joyous
Thick clouds so tall above the pale mountains
Like Pennsylvania.

All of this exuberance is being lifted up into eternity.
All of these brown dogs,
Black swimming suits,
Red canoes,
And chalk white dusty walks
Are rising up into immortality.

The poet sings this
His eyes reveal it
And it is so.
Wonder of it all that all is well.
Everywhere flesh and shining eyes,
Laughing voices in the human pasttime.
Every body rises and wakes anew
Every tear is a tear of joy.


XVI.
(Rousillon-Le Canyon des Ocres)
Canyon of yellow ochre---
Canyon of gold---
Canyon of red bulging towers of dull ribbons,
Dwarf evergreen oaks,
Dry scent of lofty pines crowns this work
While cicadas incessantly hum.

God has given me another vision today
In the high alps of Provence
beyond Grasse
with lavender blankets
and fields of sunflowers
where sunlight traverses 93 million miles to bathe the humble earth.

Heat wafts up from pine needles with a charming perfume.
The true light awakes to His creation---
Alive to all places and times,
Eternally alive.

The Son of Man is continuously waking
As the poet peers ever deeper into the great blue sky;
When there is great distance in one time
There is eternal life;
Where there is all of time in one place there is eternal life.

To find more of God in every little thing and in every face.
Reflecting upon this canyon at sunset whose dusty pigment
The earth has prepared mostly for our enjoyment.*
We are in the workshop of a beautiful artist
Whose unfinished, living painting
I am the brush.

* (Chandogya Upanishad).

Celtic Radio: 18th Image

XVIII.
{A. Jouarres l’Etang}
The surface of Lac de Jouarres is ruffled---
Perturbed emerald green turns to brown
While heavy clouds roll off of the shoulders of the Montagne Noir.
Windsurfer spins in fluorescence
Olive hills fall into deeper blue
But I am rooted like a stone.

There are so many types of stones!
Stones of heaven and battered stones of earth---
White boulders that cradle the lake,
Stones invisible.
Stones in the great sky by gravity held in orbit---moon stones.
Dusty pebbles shining like jewels in seasurf;
Stones in the fiery furnace.

Mighty stones and mountains,
Earth’s magnetic crust.
Crystal caves,
Celtic tombs, transistors, megaliths!

The earth---Gaia!---the earth!

Swift little wrens dart and loop
Chirping with a song deeper than the crickets’ steady screeching
As the wind blasts in ancient pine boughs
Rages like a small ocean.

{B. Laure-Minervois}
I am climbing upon a dry waterfall thick with yellow calk
Molded by its watercourse.
Muddled and milky cascade,
Where is your sweet gurgling song?

“I am hollow, my mouth is stopped with dust.
I am a whited sepulcher.”

The poet wonders, “Why was I led to this uneven road
To stand facing this dusty slope?”
The wind is heavy with pungent sage
From the brush underfoot.

Clattered white stones lie in a heap bearing witness to April’s torrent stream.
The stone bank on which I rest is a composite
of pink quartz,
Pebbles,
Shells,
Chunks of white marble,
Black mold capped with orange lichen
one often finds on gravestones,
Celtic monuments and alignments.

Tapping upon the sedimentary floor
Reveals a hollow cavity
Beneath which lies a layer of supple earth,
And then a chamber of orange marble
Like the quarry at Caunes
20 to 40 foot deep or more
walls of sheer peachflower marble.

{C. Carcassonne}
I am building up the fortress of my heart
Stone by stone stacked against gravity.
My tower opens to the sun and stars,
From stone windows I look down upon the terracotta rooftops below---
City of stone houses
And pale churches.

My furnace is sunburst and glowing
Cooled by white mist that drives up the green slope to the black slate tower.

Stone upon stone
Stone under foot,
Vertical and horizontal herringbone patterns on stone walls.
Stone aqueducts of effluence,
Stone well, so dark and deep,
my watersource, What is your musty song?

Cathedral within my walls---
Stone arched,
Hooded with gargoyles spewing
Buttressed in gray stone.
Silent stone sanctuary,
Altar of peachflower marble in a chapel
Where yellow candlelight flickers
Upon Saint Anthony’s
Sculpted, polished and tranquil face
Caressed by an old grandmother
With her wooden beads tapping.
Worn tomb of an ancient Patrician bears the scraping marks of time.
Triceles, circle within circles in stone like lace---
The rose window of Saint Nazaire,
My beautiful flower!

There are shops in my stone walled city;
Souvenirs, candy, coffee, cigarettes and books.

I see a little girl smiling to me from the bottom of a stone stairwell.
To her I say:
”This path lies before you. In it you shall prosper and grow.
You will become strong.
Nonetheless you shall arrive to where I stand---
It is only a matter of days
Strung one after the other.”

Ice Storm of '03

Rock in Ice

Winter Ferns

Rock and Ice

Crunchkin Music (circa 1998)

Click on 'Crunchkin Music' above to hear free downloads of Crunchkin 1998.

At last, this Christmas 2005, I am producing the second Crunchkin CD-2005 "Celtic Radio and the Fourth Dimension" in my home studio to be distributed via downloads at StoneRuins thanks to Fritz.

Piper at the Gates

Mexico City

Mexico City B&W

Leaf and Snow

Leaf and Light

Windlash'd Oak

If Emus Could Fly!

D Constructural

Face the Face

Blue Door

Green Doorway

Mount Zion (close-up)

Fire on Mount Zion

Glomerular Expulsion

"Until I've seen this trashcan dream come true..."

Zero

Zero plus zero plus zeropluszero plus zero equals zero.


Zero hero
waterflow
crystal grove.
Zero.
Zero beauty.
Zero truth.
0+0=0


Zero is more than zero, a definite plus!
"Train, they ride...
the train,
not the bus."

"Bus,
not us man,
I mean you.
What you starin' at my shoe?"

Stop
and stare
her magic hair,
Zero's eyes hynotize.
In fine lines
Zero speaks her mind.
Fine lines, treasure you can't measure.

Tres chic.
You can't measure beginnings.

Hilda McCauley

"Yes, tranquil, such a tranquil hour...like this."

Communion with ancients
white linen,
dust suspends before the curtain.
Crusted chairs
purchased the early part of last century.
Yellow ochre wallpaper
tarnished brass.

Mrs. McCauley stands
in the center of this room
her face
the power of the ages.

"He used to sit ther' in the winda
by the chair
watching the white bird in the gilded cage.
Warm bed, he fed upon
fish and vittles.
Such a joy!

At the foot of the yard
next ta' Mrs. Price's piece.
I buried him, Father.
Such a lovely cat."

Voice fading to whisper
Gaze suspending an empty room.

Crow's 'ca-cawing'
dividing the sky
St. Mary's bell pealing
bringing this moment to nigh.

Passersby stream from the church
in the bright Winter air.

"Blind Melon Bugz..."

"They call me Bugz."

Crunchkin "Phase Lock" 12/12/05.

Tribute to a Young Writer: Luke Pfister

Salute to young Lucas!

Composer, writer, poet, musician.
The unfinished manuscript: "The Temptation of Saint Marcus" is written like the light of stars spent
in a long journey to earth.
We stand with our mitts open
for the catch!

Reminiscence

First Fire

Rare Glimpse of Plato's Forms

Beale Avenue, Altoona

Crunchkin Galaxy (B Good)

La meme.

O snowy night!

Madonna of the Mount

Menagerie II