Crown Island by Catherine Graham
I am surrounded by Crown Island,
a weave of rock and sand; the waves
lap against me, sizzling white strings.
poemimage
The visual & the poetic.
Category: Drawing
March 31, 2014
February 27, 2014
The Loves of Sochi (2)
Cubist spires
Assembled in the clouds
The new Soviet man
Aligning his spine
Tumbling quickly
Into descent
A boneyard deliriousness
Bring me a glass of water
I fought during the siege
It’s true!
I was young
Stumbling
Into the rubble
Running for ammunition
My bones ached
We had no bread
Your heels resound
One foot is heavy
Are you with child
Your son glancing
Over his shoulder
Acutely
Internalizing
Shostakovich
I myself
Investigated
During the allegretto
Do you have a glass of water
Reciting
Accusations
Admitting
Actions
Quarrying impossibly
Stony stone
I was broken
It was late when I stepped off the train
Children bouncing candy-coloured balloons
Fathers and mothers soft as dough
The new Soviet man
a file
Inside crusted bread
Cubism condensed
To a slate grey
Now you pass this way again
What is that look you are wearing?
February 24, 2014
The Loves of Sochi
Lovers
Swept up by a spark
A kiss after dark
Beneath a bridge
Shadows
Whispering
Soon
The future cascading
Tarkovsky studies music and Arabic
Soon
He will create
Ivan’s Childhood
Winning top prize at the Venice Film Festival
“Tarkovsky…
captures life as a reflection,
life as a dream.”
– Ingmar Bergman
On the bridges of Sochi
Beneath starlight
Hand in hand
Lovers
Cascading
A scene from Tarkovsky’s film Stalker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNiVFCWMrqI
February 19, 2014
Deep Sea Diving
Blake’s ocean
A gas station
Black medicine
In a vial
You said I thought I was Jesus
You said I thought I was Jesus
In exile
We handled snakes
I was yours truly
I was yours truly
I swallowed a shot of ink
We faded
We faded
Vibrantly
In retrospect we were children
In retrospect we were children
At the carnival
Deep sea diving
February 15, 2014
Lao Tzu: On Love
Being deeply loved by someone
gives you strength
while loving someone deeply
gives you courage.
You left when I told you I was curious,
I never said that I was brave
So Long, Marianne, Leonard Cohen
February 13, 2014
Spherical
Curving a slow corner
You pass through
your own
history
Your mirror image
Picking up speed
Speaking in code
Spirit animals
beneath the northern lights
drag what has fallen
Absorbed
and flung
simultaneously
A spherical puzzle
delivered you
Does the wind agree
***
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.
***
February 3, 2014
Row Back by Michael Gallagher
Petulant sun quarrels with crabbed sky
It probes, prods, sneaks
Through gaps in broken cloud,
Catches the crests of waves that roll
In deep swells across the estuary.
Gales lash the craggy headland
Pummel long-stemmed grass into submission;
Rain shards pierce weathered faces
While wrens search out the whin’s snug core.
It is midsummer’s day and Nature rages:
Brother Man, row back, row back,
Our world is not, is not, yours to destroy.
Mike Gallagher lives in splendid isolation in Lyreacrompane, County Kerry, Ireland. His collection ‘Stick on Stone’ is published by Revival Press.
January 30, 2014
One Stanza from the Poem Arcadia by Sir Philip Sydney (1554-1586)
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.
Or to approach this romantic doldrum from another angle:
Hath cast me into a perfect musique…
January 26, 2014
Your Love Should Never Be Offered… by Hafiz
Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a stranger,
Only to someone who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.
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.
January 19, 2014
‘Three Pots for the Poorhouse’ Action by Joseph Beuys
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
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
June 10, 1974
Edinburgh, Scotland
Joseph Beuys:
Blackboards and drawings of pots from
Three Pots for the Poorhouse Action
Photo credit: Richard Demarco
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