Signal Violet: An Anthology Spanning 12 Millennia

By Martin Peter Kielty

In 2017 Martin Peter Kielty decided to abandon his life in Glasgow, Scotland, and move onto a narrowboat on the canals of England and Wales. It took two years to escape the shackles of a media career and city life. Those years were followed by a long period of building a new relationship with the world around him.

This anthology of poems and short stories were written during that period, and reflect the flashpast ideas, recurring suspicions and offset observations that led to the creation of The Boozer Cruiser, his current art project. The title Signal Violet is inspired by his narrowboat home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781470909369

Book preview

cover-image, Signal Violet: An Anthology Spanning 12 Millennia

Signal Violet is for my bestie, Carol Ann.

It began to take shape after Robert Fripp offered me a kind piece of advice.  It was inspired and supported by Andy Glass, Chrissy Mostyn, Hal Sinden, Scott Rowley, Jerry Ewing, That Joe Payne, Pete Wass and Kate Earl, Kelly Phillips, Frank Morgan, David McCallum and many, many many others.

The staff of the Olde Sun, Nether Heyford, the Boat Inn, Stoke Bruerne  and the Craufurd Arms, Wolverton kept the social lubricant moving as I fought with the work.

I wouldn’t have believed in it without the wonderful experience of collaborating with Jacob Holm Lupo on the musical versions of some of the poems.

www.theboozercruiser.com

© Martin Peter Kielty 2023. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Ebook ISBN 978-1-4709-0936-9

WHERE FOOTSTEPS SLOW

We always stopped when winter took the colour from the world;

and then we made our own colours of shapes and sounds to remind us of our motion,

until the time came again to move in truth and life.

We always moved at the speed of the slowest. It was a rule of kindness,

to keep as many of us alive as we could. Because it was not easy living

and it could not be lived without kindness.

There was a time to take from the world, and then, eventually, a time to give back.

It was kind and it was fair, and it was colourful, and we understood.

But now the slowest of us  who always wanted to stop ~ have made the rest of stop too,

in what feels like a flaw of kindness.

In place of motion we will have images drawn on stone.

Instead of the colours of the world we will have the shadowed stains of dust.

Instead of the sounds of the tribes of trees, of seas, of animals, birds and

our own brothers and sisters, we will have songs that lament a past that never had to pass.

Instead of taking from and giving to the world in fairness,

we will take more and give less, with less kindness.

The words of the slowest change as they try to explain.

I listen, but I do not understand.

They will not answer the question we ask.

Why did we stop?

SIGNAL VIOLET

I could have just stopped there, you know.

I could have just remained,

Satisfied in stasis where the lights would never change:

A frozen pose I’d landed in,

A pose I’d come to know

Protected from my future in a red and slowing glow.

I tried to do it fast, you know,

The tunnel’s end in sight;

But inertia of a lifetime is a brutal force to fight.

I had to wait for chains to shear,

Clear doubts that blocked my way,

Frustrated like a fossil in the amber of delay.

It’s an emotion that you need, you know:

When motion cuts you clear ~

An emotion I’d been missing for around 12,000 years:

Bright horizons, lustrous landscapes,

Green and pleasant minds,

Colour calls ~ and I must go where the signal violet shines.

THE DEAD WINTERS I: THE WINTER OF OAK

Burned into my broken bones is the tale of the four desolate winters, when the snow swayed and swirled onto the Clan Fraser with flakes so harsh and heavy that there was more darkness than light in the world. It was as if the Cailleach Bheur, the Dying Hag herself, lived amongst us –– and as her frost fingers settled over our land and under our feet, there were to come many footsteps we would dread to hear crunching through the cold.

In the closing months of 1692 she danced alone, and, as the frozen world shines like silver in full moonlight, there were moments of brightness: the first cry of baby Mairi as my wife Kirsty held her in tears; and even the joy and relief of a good oat