poemimage

The visual & the poetic.

Category: Poetic & Visual Narrative

December 6, 2021

Monday Report

My posting last week (Bring Out the Trees in the Heart) went from jumble to rumble. From first draft to resonance of final draft in real time over two or three days online editing.

I decided to make chicken soup yesterday but found one potato only. Should I walk 20 minutes & save 1.00 on a bag of organic potatoes or 40 minutes & save 1.75 at a small store I like. Instead I went down to the lakeshore with my artist friends Charles and Marc. We walked around in biting wind & driving thin snow discussing, among other things, the artist Cecily Brown.

A young artist this past week told me about the new movie Trial of the Chicago Seven and wondered what I knew about the subject matter. One thing is connected to another. It brought back a flood of connections I shared with him.

I had an old doctors’ bag like this, although black, the summer I was seventeen and headed out for California. Instead I ended up in a traveling carnival, one of the many that no longer exist, working for an artist who had a psychedelic tent show and two other attractions. I met & dialogued with the (late) artist’s daughter on Facebook.

I remembered the doctors’ bag after watching a few clips of the movie Trial of the Chicago Seven on YouTube and instinctively compared now to then.

Mixed-media on cardboard 8.5″ X 11″ 2020

From jumbled mass

In biting wind & driving thin snow

intuitively

one of the many that no longer exist.

The reason I remembered.

Cha
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December 3, 2021

Bring Out the Trees in the Heart

The unseen has now been seen

Bring out the nets braided with theory

Theories made of thread

Threads made of air

Bring out the threads made of air

One filament of ornamental air encoded within a supposed entity

Transmitting thirst

Hail the laws of Cyrus!

A juror concealed within valves of light

Whistles alarm sound-song sharp as a needle

Revealed

In mound-like hills

A supposed entity carries forward the encoded cylindrical laws of Cyrus

The unseen has now been seen – running upon a wall

Place the ladder beside a wall

Bring out the trees in the heart 

Bring out the heart in the psyche

Forgotten in the garden light-years away

Bring out the ladders built of light-years

One filament of ornamental air encoded within a supposed entity

Transmitting hunger

Hail the laws of Cyrus!

Laws made of ladders reach into star-cycles

A juror concealed within valves of light

Whistles alarm sound-song sharp as a needle

Revealing

A supposed entity carries forward the encoded cylindrical laws of Cyrus

The unseen has now been seen – moving its lips

On TV – remember TV?

One filament of ornamental air encoded within a supposed entity

Transmitting

The unseen remember justice

Ten by ten the innocent fall

In a garden light-years away

A supposed entity

Chanting

Bring out the nets braided with theory

And theories built of ladders

Hail the laws of Cyrus!

A juror concealed within valves of light

Whistles alarm

Within a mound-like hill

Law encodes a star-cycle of justice

One by one the guilty await

A supposed entity

Carries forward the encoded cylindrical laws of Cyrus

Chanting

*

*

*

I juxtaposed stills from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) with stills from a televised theatrical production of Twelve Angry Men (1954). I used the copyrighted images under fair play provisions for educational or commentary (& non-profit) purposes.

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November 28, 2021

Automatic Transmission

Cromwell Road littered with omniscient stars made of whirling matchsticks

The car filled with rags soaked in the ocean.

I soak in the ocean.

Automatic transmission

World without end

Shift into paradise.

Flee without a sound –

Rags soaked in the ocean

Almost touch a thicket

Omniscient stars above Cromwell Road

Murmur your name.

I murmur your name.

Automatic transmission

World without end

Shift into paradise.

Rags soaked in the ocean

Salted beneath the omniscient flame

Who’s to blame?

The car reflects metallic blue 

Matchsticks burn like birthday candles –

Flee without a sound.

I flee without a sound.

Automatic transmission

World without end

Shift into paradise.

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November 22, 2021

GIF Experiments: 30 (Carnival of Shadows 1, 2 & 3)

I created these three GIFs before my Photoshop 5 program became unworkable. A face in Art History seems out of context yet provides commentary, a touchstone. I remind myself, in various ways, of this day when the carnival came to town. A long car driving through shadows into the sun of art history.

I walked past the row houses where I spent my childhood, stepping over syringes, watching for wild dogs, hearing hammering & avoiding ladders leaned against altars in late-afternoon shadow. The wind blew a torn page to my feet: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Without understanding why, I put the folded paper in my jacket pocket. A touchstone.

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November 19, 2021

GIF Experiments: 29 (Goodbye, a painting)

I said ‘goodbye’ to a painting this week. Sprayed it with four sweeps of archival varnish half an hour between on a warmish day and packaged it the next. I wanted to write the title on the back but couldn’t find it. So I just started calling the painting ‘Goodbye.’

The canvases with blues I’ve done the last couple years psyched me for using blues on the 5′ X 33′ roll (scroll) of Italian paper I began in late April. That work is now 70% complete. There is no chance of forgetting the title because I rework it often. One word is Druidica.

As for Photoshop 5 and troubles with ‘scratch discs’ – if I save a simple GIF to Web & Devices at the first warning the program won’t shut down on me. But no large files and nothing tricky! So it goes.

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November 5, 2021

The Fifth of November

I just listened to John Lennon sing

Remember, remember,

The fifth of November…

Boom!

The song ended with an explosion.

Pages ripped themselves out of my sketchbook

Paper filled the air

Now I smell gunpowder

I imagine smoke, can’t see where I’m going

Can’t see the gates in the dark.

Nothing in those spaces where

I thought

I would

Make some sort of mark.

Nothing needs to be this way.

I hear them in the cave

Missing space is a rung on the ladder

Vertical, horizontal, bendable

No matter what is or is not.

Guy Fawkes, November 5, 1605

Joan Miro, The Escape Ladder (From the Constellation Series) 1940

Neanderthal Cave Art, Spain, 64,000 years ago.

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November 2, 2021

Perfume

Over the last four days I put long hours into my (mostly done in blues) Druidica painting on the 33′ X 5′ roll of Fabriano mixed-media paper.

Too much dark coffee and not enough water. I unrolled and rolled the paper like a scroll on the floor – mostly in silence.

A fellow down the street wheels his wheelchair into an alcove to stay out of the wind. Today he was playing music from a French composer. It sounded like a film score from the sort of movie that no longer exists.

I found the following drawing & short poem as a draft and moved a few words around.

I follow the star

to a newborn

oak tree.

Sunlight arrives

beaming through

deep space

perfuming the grove.

 

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Image | October 27, 2021
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October 24, 2021

Heroes

Heroes in a time of heroes

Return Now to the wild.

I juxtaposed an image from The Book of Kells with a photo found online showing friends or neighbours (or actors) eating dinner on TV trays in front of a television ‘set.’

My father told me once our family had the first television ‘set’ on the block. Yet still my parents and the neighbours, in the new subdivision built on chewed-up farmland, socialized on the street, in lawn chairs, late on summer nights beneath the stars (no glare of streetlights yet). Ice cubes, shaken from metal trays cracked open with a handle, floated in iced coffee served in metal drinking glasses. Sometimes my mother would call me to empty the glass ashtray. Glass and metal and dark. They remembered something about then.

Then felt closer to in the beginning.

Originally this post contained an oblique rhyming poem I edited, in real time throughout the day, down to two lines (above). This is writing to go with the images. It’s not a ‘received’ poem.

Violaine my prism-eyed darling

Golden-robed & ink-wash thin

Walk me deep into that winding forest

Bind my heart as it shudders and spins.

True love, true love, I whisper

As eagles on stallions arrive

No need to rescue me fierce-creatures-of-fire 

Violaine heaving inhales – preparing to dive.

Moonlight on dark waters 

Blood surging in golden beehives

The winding forest blown over 

As eagles on stallions arrive.

Violaine your fingers crooked

One silver nail broken in clay

True love, true love, I whisper

Coffee cooling on my TV tray.

In Now rescue me fierce-creatures-of-fire

In Now touch that dial

Heroes in a time of heroes

Return Now to the wild.

Water flowing across me washes

This recalcitrant heart in my bones

Maybe we’ll meet in Heaven though I am a sinner

For another TV dinner.

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October 6, 2021

Double-Sided Images for ‘Book’ in Progress

The double-sided pages are numerous sheets of paper laced together. I soak the papers & they dry warped and crinkly. Eventually all the pages (more to come, some with text) will be attached and ‘foldable’ with a back and front cover. Sort of a very loose idea of an accordion book.

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