Month: November 2025

A Conversation at Pisgah by Michael Bloor

(This week Michael Bloor returns to the Springs. We are always pleased to run stuff by Mick. This one shows his wonderful ear for language-LA)

As I crested the ridge, I saw the figure in the middle distance, staring out eastward. I thought at first he was watching the hang gliders: Hatterall Hill, on the eastern edge of the Black Mountains of South Wales, is a favourite weekend haunt for these enthusiasts, if the winds are favourable. And the hang gliders cater for two kinds of spectators – those who admire the graceful and those who love the comic. I’m afraid I used to belong in the latter category, happy to eat my lunch watching these masochistic individuals launch themselves and their wings off the ridge and into the wind, only for the iron law of gravity to assert itself, so that man and machine would tumble into the bracken and scrub on the lower slopes of the hill. I never witnessed any of these poor souls coming to serious harm. Instead, they would laboriously disentangle themselves from their machines and the scrub, drag themselves back up the slope, lurch momentarily into space again, and then plunge earthwards once more, for my further entertainment. I would find myself wishing that my old Dad could have seen the show: slapstick was his favourite form of comedy.

However, familiarity has lately dulled my own appreciation of the hang glider spectacle and so I pressed on, past the Iron Age ditch and rampart, towards the summit of the ridge and its solitary occupant. The nearer I approached him, the more attractive he became: a sturdy guy of medium height, with a longish grey beard and tousled grey hair, a great cloak, negligently worn – he reminded me of photos of that eminent Victorian poet, designer, and revolutionary, William Morris.

Quickly, I confirmed my impression that he wasn’t studying the varying fortunes of the hang gliders. He was looking way out to the eastward, taking in a view of a verdant landscape that familiarity can never dull: the mile-after-mile-after-mile of patchwork, rolling, Monmouthshire and Herefordshire countryside – fields and woods and wandering streams, all miniaturised for a Giant’s delight.

He turned at my approach. I nodded. ‘A fine day and a fine view.’

He nodded in turn. I asked if it was his first visit to Hatterall Hill. The ridge attracts quite a few holiday walkers, being on a well-known, long-distance footpath, The Offa’s Dyke Path.

‘No sir, I am not a visitor to the hill. I dwell in its shadow, though I call it “Pisgah”, not Hatterall.’

The slightly formal speech and his clear enunciation made me think that English was not his first language: he was a native Welsh-speaker, a minority in this part of South East Wales. I recognised his Biblical reference too, having been raised as a Chapel-going Methodist, and I responded: ‘I understand. We are standing at Pisgah, and like Moses, I take it that you’re privileged to gaze upon The Promised Land, but you’ll never have it for your own?’

‘Correct, my friend. But perhaps you think my claim would be extravagant. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Owain Glyndwr, the last native Prince of Wales. The English know me as Owen Glendower. At one time, with my battle-hardened archers and men-at-arms beside me, I thought I could win back all those fair lands – fields, orchards, and pastures – snatched from us by the hordes of Saxons, Danes and Normans that bore down on my ancestors like plagues.’

I imagine that you will find it pretty odd that I didn’t, for one minute, think I’d met a mad man. On the contrary, I was attracted: he had far more than a famous name, he had bearing of a great man.

I knew a fair amount of the six-hundred-yearold Glyndwr backstory: after some very considerable early success, in battles and sieges, Owain’s revolt against English overlordship had eventually petered out. Despite a large reward being offered, he was never betrayed and Owain’s death was never announced. He simply disappeared and he has no known grave. Some authorities, I understand, have suggested that Owain, in defeat, went to stay quietly in his daughter’s and son-in-law’s house, a successor of which is still visible from this very hill.

I also knew that Owain was widely believed by his enemies to be a Mage, with esoteric knowledge and strange powers. I’m afraid that all I can truthfully repeat is that I didn’t take him to be mad. From the very first, I found him utterly believable, albeit six hundred odd years old.

He did not ask me to pledge my silence. And I feel a duty now to set down what I can remember of our conversation…

Glyndwr: ‘There was a time when all the land you see below us seemed about to fall to my arms. We had driven King Henry’s invasion force from the field at Stalling Down, nearly all Wales was under my control. I was crowned Prince of Wales as a direct descendent of Llewelyn the Great. I convened a Parliament at Machynlleth: we re-established traditional Welsh Law, and declared an independent Welsh Church. We drew up the Tripartite Indenture with Henry Percy (‘Harry Hotspur’), Earl of Northumberland, and Edmund Mortimer, claimant to the English throne. Percy and Mortimer would divide England between them. And all these Welsh Marches at our feet, all the lands west of the River Severn and the River Mersey would revert to the Principality.

‘If only Hotspur had brought his forces to join with mine outside Shrewsbury, instead of attempting (and failing) to defeat King Henry independently, then it might have all ended very differently.

‘So the chance, and the land, was lost. I was already long in years when the thieving and treachery of the occupying Norman overlords drove me at last, against my will, into revolt. So I was weary indeed, like Moses, when I came at last here to Pisgah.

‘But I am being discourteous, sir. I have seen you on Pisgah, more than once. Is your house nearby?’

I nodded: ‘I live down the valley in Abergavenny, Prince.’

Glyndwr: ‘Ah, Abergavenny. You will know that I seized Abergavenny castle and burnt the town to the ground. I burnt all the towns of the merchants that had grown up in the shadow of the castles of the Norman overlords. My own people counted their wealth in cattle, not in coin.’

‘I understand. You wished to return Wales to the world celebrated in the old songs of the bards. And you almost succeeded, Prince. Your skills as a commander were legendary. Your enemies called you a wizard, able to control the elements on the battlefield…’

He laughed deeply: ‘That was foolish talk of men who knew nothing of the weather lore in the Welsh mountains. But it is true that I had a fine library of many strange subjects before my enemies burnt it down. And the bards, like my old friend Iolo Goch, were welcome at my home with their tales of the old wisdom. In the old stories, did not the wizard, Gwydyon, fashion a living bride out of flowers for his nephew, Lleu? Summoning storms would have been a small matter to Gwydyon. The same old wisdom told that the greatest of the old heroes, Arthur among them, did not die. They are only sleeping. But, alas, much of that old wisdom was lost long before the Normans came to Wales.’

He was silent then, I hoped to draw him out a little further: ‘Much of it was lost, you say. But perhaps not all of it, Prince?’

Glyndwr: ‘Perhaps…’

He smiled, nodded, and turned to descend from the ridge. A sudden breeze ruffled his hair and beard. I knew better than to try to follow him.

Michael Bloor lives in Dunblane, Scotland, where he has discovered the exhilaration of short fiction, with more than a hundred pieces published in Literally Stories, Everyday Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Litro Online, Firewords, The Drabble, The Cabinet of Heed, Moonpark Review and elsewhere (see https://michaelbloor.com).

The Drifter

Beatific Dreams

For Leonard Cohen

“I sang in my chains like the sea.” – Dylan Thomas

(Images provided by The Drifter)

Hello!

“The Drifter” writes this with a wickedly bad, early November Chicago head and lung cold which he contracted from his kids’ friends and the sneezing baby in their care while he was driving them to Urgent Care.

I didn’t enforce a mask policy and now I’m paying the price.

Symptoms include the usual coughing, sniffling, loss of appetite, stomach issues, and body aches.

But the worst part of a cold for me is always, always the horrible MALAISE and FATIGUE (and brain fog) that always comes with it.

Thinking slows down. Therefore writing, too, slows down. If I don’t write on a regular basis, I start to lose touch with it all. On the other hand, after a few days of not writing, the writing energy usually returns with a (very satisfying) vengeance.

The reason why the malaise and fatigue are always so horrible for me is because I have an advanced case of Bipolar One Disorder.

“Disorder” is a wonderful word for this sometimes magical, sometimes terrifying brain disease, because it causes so much constant disorder in the life of the sufferer.

But “bipolar,” while I like the term well enough, is not as vivid and telling as the older term: MANIC DEPRESSION.

Manic Depression can mean many things in many ways. One thing it means that most people are not aware of is that, for many of us who have this, the depression itself is often manic (sometimes called a mixed state).

Manic depression, where the word manic is an adjective describing the depression, is the “worst” kind. This is the kind that leads to the most suicides.

Another thing about us bipolar people is that we CANNOT STAND TALKING ON THE PHONE.

This is a very, very, very, very common symptom of bipolar disorder, so common that almost everyone who has bipolar also has an intense phobia of the phone.

Those who don’t have bipolar disorder are almost always hard-pressed to understand WHY bipolar people are terrified of talking on the phone.

There are many and many more reasons.

One reason is because the mind of a bipolar person has much trouble confining itself to the requirements of a conventional phone call, for example when dealing with a medical or insurance issue. Listening to the other person, or robot; following instructions; answering immediately; speaking clearly; being immersed in and surrounded by a generic world; all can cause intense Kafkaesque anxiety, general uneasiness, mental and emotional disruption, and even panic and terror in the average bipolar person.

And sixty percent of bipolar people are alcoholics, alcohol abusers, heavy drinkers, or former alcoholics, alcohol abusers, or heavy drinkers.

A single wrong phone call can cause a bipolar person to suddenly feel SUICIDAL.

It can cause a bipolar person to suddenly fall off the wagon, too.

Or if they don’t fall off the wagon, it can cause them to FLEE. To disappear. To vamoose. To vanish. Again. Without warning.

People who have to deal with this sort of behavior up close and personal tend to get very annoyed by it. Even when they themselves are suffering from some sort of bipolar disorder.

It appears utterly irrational (that is to say, at least half insane, or “just plain nuts”) to the “average,” non-bipolar, well-adjusted person.

A bipolar person has a lot of trouble following society’s rules, especially things like all the coordinated schedules, highly structured group activities, and rigidly organized social situations, all the boxes they make you check and recheck and check again.

Oftentimes, bipolar folks have so much trouble following society’s rigid rules that it is utterly impossible for them to do so at all.

This can really irritate and annoy misunderstanding bosses, employers, family members, friends, romantic partners, the public in general, and the unlucky ones who have to deal with the bipolar person on the phone.

People who have bipolar disorder often suffer from headaches, digestive issues and the shakes; they frequently feel battered by life to the point of total burnout and exhaustion; they are frequently astonished; frequently amazed; and frequently quite lost in flights of fancy that mask as being lost in space.

The author of this column will now, before he loses energy today, supply a round half dozen further symptoms of most bipolar people, in honor of Leonard Cohen, who himself suffered from bipolar disorder and always acted as an advocate for the mentally ill in various ways, from writing songs and poetry about it, to speaking openly about it, to performing free shows in mental wards throughout his career.

These six do not say it all. They only begin to say some of it.

One: frequent, intense, out-of-control arguments with other people, followed by various forms of emotional, mental, and hormonal collapse.

Two: wicked, truly wicked, Irritability coupled with uncontrollable Impulses, such as walking off the job or burning other bridges with unpredictable dramatic flair, later hauntingly regretted.

Three: feeling so thin-skinned that the smallest brush-off from someone else can give you a minor nervous breakdown or make you want to break out into tears, fits of rage, or both. Morbid sensitivity coupled with an extremely tender heart.

Four: intense difficulty being around other people while also needing to sometimes be around other people.

Five: the feeling of being watched by people (or spirits) even when they’re not there. Paranoia about being watched in general.

Six: regular, lifelong Insomnia coupled with inexplicably intense dreams (day dreams and night dreams), sometimes horrific; SOMETIMES BEATIFIC.

“Drifter” Concluding Note: Happy Death Day to Dylan Thomas, one of the most inspiring Manic-depressive Alcoholic Writers of the twentieth century. I say “Happy Death Day” because I don’t believe he’s really dead.

Robert Browning said, “Never say of me that I am dead.” What he really meant by that remains to be explored by everyone, whether they know it or not.

(Do it now before it’s too late…)

Saragun Verse: The Power of Rabble Finis

i

The billigits flew a loopty loop around Heathcliff

“poor fellow, lucky in land yet poor in love

we know you long for sweetness’ fair lift

follow us to the wiccan meadow and you will soon praise the above”

ii

“‘Tis you wee bastards a-now and again,

Who fritter my feelings on strange dames

Love is nothing except heartbreak and pain;

Far as I care you can feed hell’s flames.”

iii

This was not the reply the billies were obliged to get

So that’s when snow fell on where it was sent

They ushered frozen Heathcliff to Eira’s abode

Some fellas are doomed to do as told

iv

Now we have reached the forever after

May it be marked by progeny and laughter

But as anyone who deals with people knows

We keep the lament and throw out the rose

(We hope that you have enjoyed the Springs first dabble in epic poetry; ‘tis for the rabble and in-the-know-etry)

Saragun Verse: The Power of Rabble Part Five

i

The wee billigits draw energy from an orgone cube

Housed inside an ancient phone booth

Three made jokes about superman

The fourth wee one didn’t understand

ii

“clark kent changed to superman in a phone booth

i cannot believe you are so obtuse”

to which the offended billie put up his little fists

and said “watch me change your face to a bruise”

iii

billigits three and four had seen enough

time is wasted by those who play rough

“have you fellas forgotten we were launched into the sky

by the witch with love in her eye”

iv

The four billigits got on the same page

And decided to find a good guy to sooth Eira’s rage

That’s when they saw hapless Heathcliff strolling across the moor

An idea appealed to the wee four

Saragun Verse: The Power of Rabble Part Four

i

“Make it rain to drown the pain”

The junior Witch said again and again

The billigits are churlishly mellow

They whisper what you want to bellow

ii

“madam fair yet so au contraire how will you employ us

to find you a lad not a cad beyond the surface

but you can make it rain to fill every cracked surface

we wonder are you seeking love or something to plug the orafice”

iii

Eira was enraged by the little orange knights’ audacity

She placed the four billies into a catapult

“Across the moors with you tiny bores

You should know the score by the time you hit Cincinnati”

iv

But Eira had forgotten that billigits fly

And upon reaching the highest sky

They orgone rayed the clouds

And the rains came hard and proud

Saragun Verse: The Power of Rabble Part Three

i

The orgone phone booth was planted in 1982

It eventually bid Earth a strange adieu

On a Century 21 night the cut line did ring

Ever since it has been in Saragun Springs

ii

Nothing remains the same upon queer transfer

Therefore this derelict obsolescence won grandeur

It became a conduit of orgone energy

A luminiferous aether cradle is something to be

iii

Yet within its massless aura its birth number remains

Yes for all one song shall always be the same

And although coincidences are seldom divine

You can call the booth 867-5309

vi

Eira’s fey spirit often listens to its shell

Seeking soothing love but finding itchy hell

So she has turned to the splendid billies for help

Four orgone knights are key to the spell

Saragun Verse: The Power of Rabble Part Two

i

A vainglorious voice called from above

“Tell me boys, what’s so good about love?

It agonizes defames and neutralizes

The best it can do is tell little white lies-us”

ii

The billigits knew the voice and origin

‘t was of the Witch apprentice Eira Borgia

Who’d recently split with a sorry young man

Whom she turned into a Toad named Stan

iii

“our dearest eira your voice like a lyre

there is no one as gentle as you are-uh”

said the third billigit from the left

“and yet your sorrow tis a feather when put against your ire’s heft.”

iv

“Flatter me not words ungainly

For I have called upon you boys plainly.

Cull the wisdom from your orgone booth

And use it to find me a charming rube!”

(end part two)

Saragun Verse: The Power of Rabble Part One

The Learned Introduction

This Week the Springs presents a six part epic poem featuring the billigits as the knights of orgone (for persons unfamiliar with the orange flying fellows about a foot and a half tall, they eschew capital letters and most punctuation marks).

Orgone energy is called a pseudo science that often involves rain making. The great Kate Bush wrote a song about it and starred in a video with the equally great Donald Sutherland about, amazingly, forty years ago.

In the poem our Apprentice Witch to the Great HeXopatha Eira Lysbyrd performs as Eira Borgia (she chose the name for reasons she hasn’t shared). Still a Witch in the poem, Eira (perhaps a bit of a pill) has been let down by love and summons the four knights of orgone (the billigits) to find her a trustworthy soulmate. 

On earth Orgone boxes attract and store Orgone energy fields. In Saragun Springs a telephone booth (pictured above) holds the Orgone of the realm in which, along with occasional rainmaking, is under the short but effective arms of the billigits.

Eira believes the billies and the magic phone booth will find her love or at least get her a date with someone she won’t change into a Toad, as was the case with the guy who jilted her in the poem.

For those of you already confused, please relax and remember that most epic poem writers do not try to explain the content of their masterpieces. Moreover, poetry does not have to make sense. It gives smart people a riddle to solve.

Leila

Now we begin the journey…..

i

Silence your lips and snarls begone

Hear this tale of heroes orgone

Energy booth warriors foretold in myth

Who stand no insult sprayed by lisp

ii

Four billigit soldiers in orgone armor

Flew forth in antique square honor

“i say four dynamic red mars are we

i, myself, and of course you three”

iii

They knew not the cause of the tussle

Except inside every castle is the same cold hustle

But no one lone billigit can be called upon

You get them all and they stand as one

iv

And so here we are at the start of the journey

Under a fawn sky like a Cow of Guernsey

But after a while the question poses

Why are meek billies in war clotheses

(end part one)

My Heart Laid Bare by The Drifter

(Images provided by the Drifter)

“Tenderness of heart started the Buddha on his journey to awakening.”

– an anonymous sage from his mountain cave

Benevolent-hearted Reader,

(Parenthetical opening salvo: Beware. A column has a right to be an essay and an essay has a right to be a meandering thing (like the mind of the writer), going from point to point for 1,100 words seemingly almost without direct connections. In this case, the Reader can assume that this essay has a destination like a river reaching the sea; and all the parts along the way needed to be there even if for sometimes mysterious (or veiled, hidden) reasons.)

For three decades, ever since I first heard it, one of my favorite quotations about writing, and life, comes from the US writer Harry Crews: “Walking the wire is everything. The rest is just waiting.”

It’s been so long since I first heard the quote that I don’t even know if I have it exactly any more. I do feel that I know the spirit of it.

For pondering purposes, life can be broken down into two aspects, or halves.

One is where we feel “on;” where we’re “in the zone;” where we feel life intensely, and beautifully; where all the connections are understood and there is relevance and meaning aplenty, even an overflowing of this for some of us. This is the higher side of life.

The other side of life is the low side. This is where the meaning and faith disappear. It’s where the doubts come in, and the serious questioning starts to happen. This is when the drudgery returns. Call it a test of faith. Think of the ancient Jews wandering in the desert for forty years – and never giving in – although they were driven to despair and various kinds of starvation many times.

The first half of life is Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount, where he couldn’t make a mistake even if he tried to.

The second half is him in the Garden of Gethsemane. As all his friends sleep comfortably, he knows very clearly what will happen tomorrow. “Let this cup be taken from my lips.” But the cup of blood was not taken from his lips. He had to drink it all the way, and then some. Even him – the one and only son of God.

Edgar Allan Poe said that he wanted to write a very short book that would say it all. The title would be MY HEART LAID BARE. He never wrote the book because he didn’t have it in him while he yet lived, and he was dead after. Charles Baudelaire, the Frenchman who became Edgar Allan Poe’s most brilliant and universal disciple, said he wished to write the same book with the same title. He did write it and left it unfinished (because he died, in his mother’s arms).

Nietzsche, the German philosopher, wrote, “Of all writing, I love only that which is written in blood.”

Nietzsche also said that the true artist needs to combine both Dionysus and Apollo within her or himself. This is the part that Jim Morrison knew best about Nietzsche (he surely would have learned more had he lived longer).

Dionysus stands for nature, wildness, energy, anarchy, the wind, the waves, pushing the boundaries, breaking the limits, being wild and free, having agency and vast willingness to break the rules.

Apollo stands for Reason (that term has many meanings, including a-reason-for-being, motive), order, focus, unity of purpose, control, form, shaping, sculpting, selecting, leaving out, knowing what to bring in.

If an artist can’t channel the Dionysus aspect of their personality, their work will be dry, boring, tame, cheerless, conventional.

And if they can’t channel the spirit of Apollo at the same time, the work will not be Art; it will be a formless mess, a pile of something lying lifelessly on the floor of the hapless would-be artist.

It’s like the tightrope walker of Harry Crews, doing something utterly wild that calls for the utmost in self-discipline.

And the poem appended to the end of this essay is my example of all this.

The term “troubadour” in this poem both does and does not mean that which it usually means in the literal sense. Since both of the main characters in this poem are and think of themselves as troubadours the definition/s of the term throw light over the whole work.

The first eight words of this poem summarize a period of years, as does the entire poem.

The phrase “ragged at the unemployment office” in the poem stands for a single moment and an entire way of being that is both chosen and forced upon one at the same time, as does the action “frowned and fled fast.” It’s this kind of reach and doubleness in the speech of this poem which give this poem whatever value it has.

The phrase “she, she, she” means her continuous changing.

Her monologue, in this poem, is the single most important thing she ever said. This verse/stanza changes its meaning every single time one reads it, as it should.

This poem, “Oklahoma Homeless 2015,” is the entire story of a relationship, beginning, middle, and end.

The casual nature of the narration in the poem (if it is casual) arises from its after-the-fact nature (which is called here: distance, or an escape from an overload of desperate-hearted emotion).

This kind of poem is best read aloud (even if that means silently in the mind) very, very, very, very SLOWLY. (Ideally many times, over years, after the first few readings, and thinkings.)

A writer, an artist, a poet, can say whatever they want to about their own work. They are entitled to at least that much in this world of painfully little rewards.

There have been famous cases where a writer belittled their own masterpiece and readers believed them for decades, only to discover later that the writer had been wrong about their own work all along (or had been being too humble probably in the aftermath of another high).

I say that this poem is my “Tangled Up in Blue.”

It is written in blood; it is my heart laid bare; and it is a place where Dionysus and Apollo come to a beautiful truce, holding hands and complimenting each other.

…

Oklahoma Homeless 2015

We were two troubadours for quite some

Time and i, i was ragged at the unemploy-

Ment office again when i

Frowned and fled fast

And she, she, she was a piano player in

Kansas fading on the line, a cowgirl

We rise, she said, if at all, only slowly,

And lonely, and only

One at a time…

Later we were cruise ship stowaways.

And always two troubadours,

Night and Day.

…

END NOTE: The Drifter wishes to here thank Irene Leila Allison for rescuing this ten-year-old poem by the writer who called himself Dale Williams Barrigar from dusty obscurity.