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Abu GradavidWe are all just prisoners here of our own device
September 28 Talking about YouTube - Fail Japanese AssignmentDecember 05 Adventure China BeginsOfficially, my teaching days at Malek Fahd have come to an end. The paint is barely laid and already I miss students and colleagues. A sentimental old fool such as I, openly admits to recklessness. Despite the occasional past disasters I am confident that I have made the right decision this time around. The only way is forward! I can't wait to start my Master's degree in March 2009.
Importantly, my present needs a kick start. In particular this website has been ignored and stagnant too long. It needs energy. Perhaps you may be interested to follow the travels of Mangomop and the monsters 1,2, & 3. Please make comments, and I promise to keep in touch.
The new adventure begins or has begun. Tomorrow my family and I board a plane for China, destination unknown. I have tried to keep all the itinerary details a mystery to me, basically, because I want everything to be amazing. I have left all the planning to Mei. She has loved organising it. So Middle Kingdom, here we come.
 November 27 To my Malek Fahd friendsTo five dear students, Zaynab, Eman, Alina, Marwa, and Tanvir, I dedicate the following poem. Thank you for your lovely thoughts and well wishes. I am honoured to know you.
Book Marks
Tis said a life is like a book
Chapters, leaves - the seasons brook
Beginnings, ends, journeys, signs,
Textures of the language mime.
Books mark
***
Contiguous time and pages scribed are
Footprints, residue, a paste of tense
Attached fibrously on barbed wire,
Anxiously written, so quickly forgotten
almost pointless - although.
***
Coming back is optional like
Hansel and Gretel's orientation
Disaster, a plan in need
Of an edible
Book mark.
- Mangomop (2008) October 03 A New LeafTurning the pages,
I have discovered
silence.
White pages?
Black?
Coloured?
You can't read them
but you can
it takes something to read
pages
that are camouflaged
I try not to brag
about my disguise
I am somewhere here
If you look
hard enough
I will sing.
October 31 Late Late October OfferingGift of Rain
1
Cloudburst and steady downpour now
for days.
Still mammal,
straw-footed on the mud,
he begins to sense weather
by his skin.
A nimble snout of flood
licks over stepping stones
and goes uprooting.
He fords
his life by sounding.
Soundings.
II
A man wading lost fields
breaks the pane of flood:
a flower of mud-
water blooms up to his reflection
like a cut swaying
its spoors through a basin.
His hands grub
where the spade has uncastled
sunken drills, an atlantis
he depends on. So
he is hooped to where he planted
and sky and ground
are running naturally among his arms
that grope the cropping land.
III
When rains were gathering
there would be an all-night
roaring off the ford.
Their world-schooled ear
could monitor the usual
confabulations, the race
slabbering past the gable,
the Moyola harping on
its gravel beds:
all spouts by daylight
brimmed with their own airs
and overflowed each barrel
in long tresses.
I cock my ear
at an absense -
in the shared calling of blood
arrives my need
for antediluvian lore.
Soft voices of the dead
are whispering by the shore
that I would question
(and for my children's sake)
about crops rotted, river mud
glazing the baked clay floor.
IV
The tawny guttural water
spells itself: Moyola
is its own score and consort,
bedding the locale
in the uttereance,
reed music, an old chanter
breathing its mists
through vowels and history.
A swollen river,
a mating call of sound
rises to pleasure me, Dives,
hoarder of common ground.
- Seamus Heaney
New Selected Poems 1966-1987 August 14 August arrived bringing the migrantsNight Ride
Along the black
leather strap
of the night
deserted road
swiftly rolls
the freighted bus
Huddled together
two lovers doze
their hands linkt
across their laps
their bodies loosely
interlockt
their heads resting
two heavy fruits
on the plaited
basket of their limbs
Slowly the bus
slides into the light
Here are hills
detached from dark
the road, uncoils
a white ribbon
the lovers with
the hills unfold
wake cold
to face the fate
of those who love
despite the world.
- Herbert Read July 19 July Penance - 2 for the Price of OneThe Meaning of Existence
Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence
trees, plants, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe
Even this fool of a body
lives in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talkative mind
- Les Murray
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnanounced
this was
Icarus drowning.
- William Carlos Williams
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