poemimage

Where text meets image. Where the visual intersects the literary. Often posting 1st drafts and editing in (almost) real time.

Month: October, 2014

October 27, 2014

Accidental Surprise

Many years ago I did a printmaking project in an underprivileged school.

One of the students made a print of (what I thought was) a Central or South American religious deity.

I was intrigued with the clay pots or were those drums?

1 god

Then I realized I had been looking at it all wrong. Wrong as in ‘upside down.’

How surprising that a cute, cartoon dog (or mouse), when reversed, depicted such an altogether different creature.

Nothing about the ‘accidental’ image reflected the student’s cultural environment.

two views

October 24, 2014

An ideology that took root

31. An ideology that took root

A film about Fascism,

In a garden with shadowy eagles,

Reflecting on the ancient definition of Flowers.

2. An ideology that took root 6. An ideology that took root

A shadowy figure

Behind a windowbox of plants or flowers,

Reminding me of the mysterious, ornate windows I’d seen

Walking about Rome.

16. An ideology that took root

And the Political-noir

Of an ideology that took root,

Thrown in sharp relief by flickering street lamps,

Mussolini’s definition of Fascism,

The Imperial Eagle of Ancient Rome,

& Flowers at a memorial.

10. An ideology that took root

My uncle

Convalescing,

When he was young & wounded,

Laughing on the telephone about

A flower pot tossed

From an upper story,

Barely missing.

21. An ideology that took root 23. An ideology that took root
And concerning the decision I made,

I would have told my son to do the same.

28. An ideology that took root 30. An ideology that took root copy 16. An ideology that took root

October 22, 2014

Rays of an Ancient Light Driving You Home

birdlandia

Did you possibly imagine (you couldn’t have)

On that youthful, sun-dappled afternoon,

The rays of an ancient light caressing your skin & inspiration, when you were

A skipping stone striking at the perfect angles & gaining your balance,

Amusedly & perfectly crossing a warm stream at the edge of town,

The water fresh and the fences down,

ochre

Driving home after closing time…

The years marking your skin in ways the Great Depression & the

Enemy marked your psyche, past an abandoned brewery,

Seeing the quiet streets coming up fast like a flood, silent as a submarine,

Balancing on wet stones, laughing as you splashed & driving home

After closing time, to a lonely house, impervious to depth charges,

Past the dislodged bricks of the abandoned brewery,

Imagining that sun-splashed afternoon & shallow, sparkling water,

truly

Your children crossing streams within darkened rooms,

Finding their balance, in ways the enemy

faintly

Marked your psyche & warm afternoons caressed your inspiration,

An ancient star illuminating quiet streets, starlight splashing,

Streaming into and beyond abandoned spaces,

Rays of an ancient light driving you home.

birdlandia

October 5, 2014

For Whom the Tiger Lilies Toll

Tiger Lily,

Jumping at the sun,

Singing to my mother,

Your jitterbugging effervescence

Revisited:

Seen in the rear-view mirror,

In the light of

Swimwear fashion-history

&

The tragic reversal of

Original alchemical

Fortune.

Consider:

The destruction of the Bikini Atoll

By American nuclear testing for war preparedness

(1946),

And the subsequent starvation of relocated islanders,

As well as the irradiation & poisoning of the native, original environment.

black and tan

Events

Intersected, by the frolic of

Bikini,

Designed & sewn by a Parisian –

Shall I editorialize,

Paraphrasing Yeats: Rag & bone shop

Of the physical,

Or simply,

Fashion design house

Emulating

The blast psychology of the atomic bomb

Within & upon

Contemporary, popular culture,

Mirroring the undoing:

Alchemical atomic nothingness unleashed

Upon

Fauna and flora, coral & the seabed…

Only one year earlier

Undressing & disintegrating

Cities:

Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Bikini

Introduced to the public

Five days after the blast

On the Atoll.

My mother adored Tiger Lilies.

My brother delivered her ashes

Into a forest,

Spreading them across the roots and moss –

Shaking her into the wind –

Planting again her Tiger Lily bulbs,

Jitterbugging,

On the West Coast.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Original photograph by Grahame Garner (1964) of women with a Ban the Bomb banner in Brisbane, Australia.

Source: http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:114192

I do not own copyright to this image and have altered it for purposes of non-commercial commentary under fair use provisions.

October 2, 2014

An Asymmetrical Drawing Lightly & Beyond

You might think the birds would fly three dimensionally

Into this their second body of branches and leaves,

Tuning a vibrational revelation at mechanisms

Attuned eons ago to invisible knowledge,

Whispering upon silent migration,

Twigs and victorious feather,

Summery din of magic,

Sunlight swooping,

Midnight vine

Asleep in

Dreams

Made

Of

I glean pathways, spiralling gyres, thin vivacious lines

Echoing in silvery twigs & prehistorical symbolism,

Glimmering beyond this garden of fallen souls,

A volcanic woman nesting like a blue bird,

Her bed an ancient sea of knowledge,

Flowering & blooming oceanic sky

Harmonizing & hammering,

Hypnotizing shadows arc

Perceiving caravans,

Intuiting stone,

Entrancing

Watery

Eyes

Of

bookism

Those nights and days, mostly nights, shaded and cool,

Illuminated by the slow voyaging of distant starlight,

Songs of star-birds meandering far from magnetic

Fields with soft grasses imprinted upon wings,

Upon all motion, this hand with pen, now

A decision as if Original Idea, golden

Original Thought, in purposeful

Cascading winds, lighting

Archways & beyond,

Whose feathers

And twigs

Speak

Of

with circle new tomorrowpsd

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