I went to bed with one sock on.
Walt Whitman decided to bury the sparrow.
A suggestion of Janus, before & forever following
the ignition of neural pathways.
A suggestion of Raven dipping her beak
in the soldered inkwell
casting a spell, perhaps.
Been drinking coffee like a chain smoker
this moment crashes into the next.
flightpath is a cinematic video-poem featuring the art of Tehran artist Shirin Pilehvari in contrast with pristine, old-growth forest in Limehouse, Ontario. My function was writer (poet) & director. Please note full credits in the video and on my YouTube channel for a list of creative collaborators in visual art, music, poetry, narration, translation and editing.
Our core team included Eric Gerrard (camera) and Konrad Skreta (audio and video editing). We created seven video poems between 2009-2013.
In 2020 Konrad Skreta and I collaborated on a 32 minute video poem featuring his experimental animation of my digital collages (and poetry).
9″ X 12″ works on watercolour paper from 2021. I’m not sure why the whales (in groupings of three) are looking at the iconographic images (on a shroud?) within eggs or stones. I discovered about thirty blueish smaller paintings on paper I did during the second lockdown.
I meet an old friend for coffee and cake
we discuss the symmetry of
consequence, the coincidence of
symmetry.
After we stand on the corner
I visit two bookstores
near one another in The Annex,
mostly second-hand
books I will thumb through
a hundred times (knock on wood)
finding inspiration
sifting subconscious & mythological elements
a chapter here, chapter there
traipsing the curvilinear imagination.
Birds fly low magnetized by subterranean quartz
wings whoosh, swooshing
miraculously, above the roar of wind,
I hear their soft instruction.
A young person, in motion a river,
photographs the books
over my shoulder.
Humming a tune
I contemplate pages
on the subway train.
Or so it seems, the way she steadies her phone
visible out the corner of my eye –
my station approaches.
I said this image is four, maybe, or five-thousand years old
she said I saw the books.
She said something, maybe, what
she read or might be reading.
Maybe she mentioned Byzantium.
I understood barely anything almost nothing,
with her speaking through a mask,
the subterranean ambient noise,
additional my normal hearing trouble.
She repeats a word, I tilt my head
like a bird
darting
the door embellished with golden mosaic tiles,
sliding closes in my face.
A vast dimension
composed of light-years
descends upon me.
The sound of her mystery words
accentuates her aura
like a river in motion.
I repeat rhyming words
the consequence of symmetry
the symmetry of coincidence.
Thank you, she said.
I dart for the door again
climbing tiled stairs
beneath vast archways
tasting cake.
Birds swoop above & below a quartz-river
flowing from the sun.
The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages: Language Theory, Mythology and Fiction by
Jesse M. Gellrich –
Sun, Moon and Standing Stones by John Edwin Wood –
Inside the Neolithic Mind by David Lewis-Williams & David Pearce –
A Search for Cave and Canyon Art: Voices From the Stone Age by Douglas Mazonowicz – (signed by the author)
I was tempted to leave this as a rougher, more expressive work.
Started this painting in 2020.
It has quietly ‘stayed put’ on the easel while I work on my big roll of paper.
I see it every day. I really do need a phone with a ‘good’ camera.
Size: 40″ X 40.” Acrylic on canvas. Title: Annunciation.
After working in mostly blues for three or four years it feels good to
work with colour again.
poemimage 