RECOLLECTIONS – SOME SEIZINGS TOWARDS THE SENSE OF IT ALL
(notes on Plague of Years) by Martyn Bates

THE PLAGUE OF YEARS
How you live in yr. own head – you, the fulcrum of life, the pivot; ultimately, you controlling…..surely, surely….ways to live.

KNIVES REPLACE AIR
How self-abnegation expresses itself via solipsistic self – denigration / humiliation …

WHITEWASH
How rampant hypocrisy surfaces, as it must…; such conflicting contradictions cannot thrive within…

FIXATION
How self-love, self- hate is expressed as sexuality….

A KEEPSAKE
Yr. hate rebounded….

IN YOUR PAINTING
How to criss-cross the cross; sick and tired, like the picture of Dorian …

STILL AIR
Yr. inertia, ennui, loneliness…

INVISIBILITY
Yr. a stifled, frustrated passivity…..a cancelling out.

EVERPRESENT
Yr. paranoia –…… unhappy eye sees the world ……betrayals …… too-high expectations; inevitable discovery that no one person is infallible – that this notion is ( in sadness ) an impossibility….

VOICE FROM THE TRACKS
How Peter Bosworth went; a vile-eye view of what happened to him; horrifying….

FRACTURE TRACK
Yr. Physic Impotence.

HUNGER SONG
Yr. call for repose / retreat…

EVERYWHICHWAY
Cried intensity of a moment….

PASSING AND DISTANT VIEW
How everyone is always at a distance…

PHANTOM MUSIC
How the ghosts in yr. life can fill yr. life

ILL WIND BLOWS
How frightening premonitions highlight distance between Human Beings…

ANSWER SONG AND DANCE
All the sadness of estrangement…

LINES OF FLAME
Yr. empathy / sympathy …… and yearning desire to shoulder another’s burden…

ONE BY ONE
Yr. claustrophobia.

LILT OF MUSIC
And yr. moment of transcendence…

PICTURE THE DAY
Yr. mourning a death / and yr. mourning transience….

DRUMMING THE BEATING HEART
Numinous…

TRANSIENCE BLUES
Yr. ecstasy / heightened moment of the everyday….

LIGHT, SLIDING
Yr. mesmerising beauty, yr. intransigence, yr. invisibility…

PENCIL SKETCH
Yr. joy / sheer delight…

STREET LAMPS AND SNOW
You in a numinous moment, crystallised in a snowflake, in the split-second beautiful unreality….

WIND IN DEAD TREES
Yr. plea…

OLD HOURS, SLOW DAYBREAK
A most fervent wish…to live life keenly; to not be the sleepwalker….

THROW A SHADOW
Emancipation…

PRAYER BOOK TO THE QUIET
In an expression of desire. In dislocation. In alacrity. In the need for the soul….

LIGHTS OF APRIL
In an idyll described, in a scene of languid repose…

TWO
Yr. fear, yr. apprehension, yr. distance, and yr. sorrow

ONE LIGHT, THEN
How to sing loss….

ACROSS THE PULSE OF THE RAIN
The voice of timelessness scrawled on a page, across the years…

LEAVES ARE DANCING
God, in an innocent moment…

CORNER OF DUSK
In desolation. The nourishment of the spirit. The touch of the non-physical…

DOGS BARK
The transcendent world at the door of the everyday…

GUIDE THIS NIGHT
Light / dark. Being overwhelmed by the twin polarities of human psyche. Revelling in it…

PEARL AND PALE
Kisses. The directness, the rare communication of Love

SEPTEMBER HILLS
Yr. affirmation, you …. Nature and essence /confirmation of yr. sweetest hopes….

STEALING AUTUMN
How yr. broken almost, forsaken, low…

SUN BURSTS IN
Promethean / glorious this day….

LUSTRE
Ecstatic celebration / wondering at the mysteries, and not caring why…joyous – to be alive…

NEW RISEN
Love is here – senses are heightened, the world unfolds before us, unravels…and it is beauty.

ALL YR. PAGES
Yr. prayer for re-generation…

BETWEEN THESE DREAMS
How yr. striving for a recollection….

SHE TRIES ON THE JEWELS
Greek tragedy / a simple fable

REMINDING PICTURES
Divination / connection / new strengths drawn from yr. beautiful example…

STREETS I RAN
Talking to ghosts…

BITTER APPLES
Yr. impasse, yr. hurdle; yr. blind alley to blight …

TO CRY MERCY
A fable – a tale of greed and ugliness; how to cancel yrself out…

TWILIGHT WALKING
Yr. wonder. Fear. Tantamount to a hymn in thanks…

DEAR LIGHT
To be alive, when loved ones are not… to vibrate in universal celebratory empathy, to kiss the ground you walk upon in thanks, like endless appreciation.

WINTER SANG
Yr. all the spirits that fill every atom of existence with benign love – yr. there all the long everyday, if you can connect / find then / let them near you.

RETURNING OVER
Yr. a howl to the skies /envy – a loss, something is missing, something is stolen – and yr. left here, carrying this resounding sense of bleak injustice…

MONSTROUS JOY
How to thrill of joy; felt when yr. heart brakes / the terrible affirmation that fills you when someone precious dies – the way that this is too much to countenance … why /how can I / dare I be so glad to be alive this day?…

SORROW LOVES YOUR LAUGHTER
It’s yr. personal vampire, the self-negating void that will devour – and, you know that you must break it, kill it. Because it surely will kill you.

SONG-LIKE IN THE DEAD NIGHT
Phoenix-like, this perfume will energise, will bring yr. eyes to grateful tears, will let you breath and begin….

DEAR SONG OF THEN
Yr. to be now; to be, this poignant and pregnant and preparing moment, yr. to let the past be a different world.

AMONG THE BLUE FLOWERS AND THE YELLOW
Yr. holding the coin up to the light – and the light fills both faces….