poemimage

The visual & the poetic.

Category: Digital art

Spherical

book of mirrors

Curving a slow corner

twin eyes

You pass through

your own

history

papery

Your mirror image

original spiral ink

Picking up speed

flattoo

Speaking in code

face 3

ghost crest

 Spirit animals

beneath the northern lights

drag what has fallen

meter bird spirits

Absorbed

and flung

simultaneously

metered

A spherical puzzle

delivered you

bd

Does the wind agree

sky pieced

new bird meter

***

I was reflecting on personal things with this post. Changes, new directions, letting the past go, that sort of thing. There was no poem to begin with simply ideas & words I’ve been thinking about.

***

My attraction to twinning these two images was in discovering similar design motifs. A centre circular repetition. The lines on the sides of the meter resembling folded wings. The art deco, industrial perfect for a prison design of the meter contrasted with the wild bird hemmed in by a border & religious orthodoxy.

Although I suspect the early illuminators of manuscripts had druidic sensibilities and conveyed within their images the beauty of pagan relationships with the earth I can’t find anything similar to say about the parking meter. Although it does have a certain Dracula’s Castle type charm.

The parking meter imposed order upon free space. We might even say ‘wild’ spaces occurring in a common setting if we want to draw an analogy with pagan spirituality being ‘tamed.’

***

The first parking meter in the United States was installed in 1935

(during the Great Depression & dust storms)

in Oklahoma City.

***

The Book of Dimma is an 8th century Irish illuminated manuscript now

housed in Trinity College, Dublin

featuring the symbol of an eagle

representing

John the Evangelist.

***

50th Anniversary of The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show

do this

The

black and white

television

flickers

reconfiguring

now

*

Flowers blooming

with

signs & symbols

reconfigure

a

flickering

*

My father

 on the sofa

refolding

the creased and worn

 shaking his head

new double

Step forward

sideways & back

in

physical education class

repeating the Fox Trot

with L

again Jingle Bell Rock

she quivers and laughs

flat feet she offers

we were rocking

no reason

to watch the clock

*

my friend

fingers aglow

 his urgent hand

Introducing The Beatles

I was torn

in steam the flowers were worn

*

C & L 

 exhaling

into the frosted black air

cloaking almost touching

one another

oceans of diamonds

rolling overhead

*

I couldn’t make out every word

the album cradled like an

illuminated manuscript

under his arm

*

My gloved finger

drawing in white snow

uncovering the dark metal

of a late model sedan

*

I Want to Hold Your Hand

roll on John

A dinner party ceremony for

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 

*

Cellophane flowers

dissolving

in crystal glasses

*

Comets curving

free fall

a sign

*

B, D & R asleep already

I walk beneath

into

awakening sparrow song

 tiny electric sitars flitter

through branches green & brown

*

Translucent animals bounding leap

*

The solstice pulsing in waves

a pushing tide

subsides

*

I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in

to stop my mind from wandering 

years later

Aluminum & ink folio

jukebox affixed to the counter

Strawberry Fields Forever

*

T dressed in black

opening a black umbrella

hitchhiking after dark

*

Living is easy with eyes closed…

cometo

What a trip to travel

through space & time emotionally and imagistically

enhanced

by these Liverpool musician/storyteller

icons of the cultural landscape

***

Introducing The Beatles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFWXBn2d1d8

***

Jingle Bell Rock (Bobby Helms)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itcMLwMEeMQ

***

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYRSgbDw7xA

***

Strawberry Fields Forever

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nehRB1FTeTo

***

I Want to Hold Your Hand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipADNlW7yBM

***

Photo credit: CBS photo archives – Comet:  Visoki Decani Monastery, Metohia, Yugoslavia, 1330 (approx)

I do not own the copyright to these works have simply reconfigured for non commercial purposes of commentary

***

 

Row Back by Michael Gallagher

burma new

Petulant sun quarrels with crabbed sky

sky lyre

It probes, prods, sneaks

Through gaps in broken cloud,

stele new

Catches the crests of waves that roll

In deep swells across the estuary.

anewnettingfire faceinkwith

Gales lash the craggy headland

Pummel long-stemmed grass into submission;

tension

Rain shards pierce weathered faces

While wrens search out the whin’s snug core.

new Egypty

It is midsummer’s day and Nature rages:

Brother Man, row back, row back,

Our world is not, is not, yours to destroy.

harbourfinnif

Mike Gallagher lives in splendid isolation in Lyreacrompane, County Kerry, Ireland. His collection ‘Stick on Stone’ is published by Revival Press.

peaking

One Stanza from the Poem Arcadia by Sir Philip Sydney (1554-1586)

sir three

For she, whose parts maintainde a perfect musique,

Whose beautie shin’de more then the blushing morning,

Who much did passe in state the stately mountaines,

in straightnes past the Cedars of the forrests,

Hath cast me wretch into eternall evening,

By taking her two Sunnes from these dark vallies.

sir sir

Or to approach this romantic doldrum from another angle:

Hath cast me into a perfect musique…

new or

Words Upon His Stone: Hoofbeats at Drumcliff Churchyard

fresco 1

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death,
Horseman, pass by!

Fresco 12Fresco 12 aFresco cfresco dfingerprinting

 Irish poet William Butler Yeats

June 13, 1865 – January 28, 1939

final

Horseman, pass by!

this ground

Horseman, pass by!

pale umbrella

abstracted painting blended

with arcane images

of ancient Egypt

suggesting influences

of the esoteric

and modernism

upon

Yeats

paler shade of

public domain Egyptology image: Internet Archive

painting  2003  S. McCabe

my painting

Your Love Should Never Be Offered… by Hafiz

final sketch two Hspacer 1spacer 1spacer 1

Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a stranger,

iced in H

Only to someone who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife

final sketch two Hspacer 1spacer 1spacer 1
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.

iced in H

Hafiz (or Hafez) a Persian poet: 1325 – 1390.

I find the vivid imagery in his poem, in a sense, circular.

Which explains my use of repeated images.

While addressing his echo across the centuries.

dimly copyspacer 1spacer 1spacer 1dimly copy

‘Three Pots for the Poorhouse’ Action by Joseph Beuys

f ball storynew whitelg new city orbm

Poetic testimony a’shifting 

mother barely

 threadbare stirring

peas & porridge nine days old in the pot

shadows

a’shifting

golden vibrations overflow

cauldrons

circling

three places

the oak  the stag

a’shifting

e ball

  Black and white images influenced by readings of Ferdinand the Bull as a child

Ferdinand’s delight inhaling perfumed flowers beneath a gnarly tree

papery Spanish ink ascribing metamorphosis to performance 

  in emanations of the ancient, kinetically flowing spine

in rainfall of visionary code addressing wounds

strenuous chalking of shamanic timelines

 body politic of dreamtime silence

battery pack wire testimony

pale butcher’s twine

binding frayed

poetics

mountain road

June 10, 1974

 Edinburgh, Scotland

three pots

Joseph Beuys:

Blackboards and drawings of pots from

Three Pots for the Poorhouse Action

Photo credit: Richard Demarco

Dowsing for Ley Lines: A Theatrical Production

van goghs lines

The beasts of the forest

Wishing us well

night  2focus

In poemimage May 2012 a Rilke poem using the image below. I happened upon it today & considered: Is this figure dancing or dowsing. The title came to me while manipulating layers in Photoshop. A wee ditty followed soon after.

r

Additional image:

van gogh yellow

Bukowski and Blake Investigate

cabaretlemon fieldsvolcanic icenewspaperto pass throughvolga riverrain2night onthick as bloodwingedsphericalbb

Speculation into the investigation:

An inked manuscript penned by sure hand,

billowing dark Satanic mills,

a winged and weightless choir,

shadow of a blooming oak

across the bowling alley,

7 – Eleven coffee to go,

shoes with blinking lights.

Bukowski’s Bluebird and Blake’s Tyger

in performance.

finality

 

Revolution 9 by The Beatles

9b

0:00 – 0:56

9g

0:56 – 1:12

9c

1:12 – 2:10

9a

2:10 – 3:06

9x copy

3:06 – 4:02

9r

4:02 – 4:58

9xy

4:58 – 5:54

9v

5:54 – 6:50

9u

6:50 – 7:46

violet

7:46 – 8:23

9detail 9

9detailc

9detaili

9detaili

9detaili

You can silently enjoy

the Beatle’s sound collage

Revolution 9

by  following the time code

between images

above

(a Dada/Fluxus action)

or

this link

to

the full

eight minutes +

of inspired mayhem

on their White Album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJeqOoc4HmI

Amazingly

within five years

The Beatles traveled artistically

and sonically

from I Want to Hold Your Hand

to

Dada / surreal poetry

and a psychedelia infused with literary and cinematic

overtones.

As 2014 begins

you may find yourself

beginning or ending

travel

into or out of

cyclical spheres.

Like

a comet.

Like

comet #9.

I don't know

opposite