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The photograph of the Palestinian girl climbing over the rubble collecting her books was uncredited. The photographer of Martin Luther King is unknown to me. I do not own the rights to the original images. I have created new works for purposes of juxtaposition and commentary under fair use provisions.
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Today you forget again
You stay with forgetting
(again)
Today you forget again
You stay with forgetting
(again)
You taste forgetting
Again
You taste
Forgetting
You taste forgetting
(again)
You stay with forgetting
(again)
You forget forgetting
You taste forgetting
(again)
(again)
You taste forgetting
You forget forgetting
You taste forgetting
(again)
Today
you
forget
(again)
In 1981
The Phantom of Liberation
Paid me a visit
Commanding
A sketch
I obliged
Thinking that was all
That was all
There was to it
Hello and goodbye
To the Phantom of Liberation
But the Phantom
Must have said
Eat my body
I complied
Thinking that was all
That was all
There was to it
Hello and goodbye
To the Phantom of Liberation
They found a foreign body
In my heart
And said it’s spread
To your brain
And your wings
I said I don’t have
Any wings
They said I was covered with wings
Beating ferociously
Refusing to stop
And bothering the neighbours
I asked if I should move
To a cemetery
They wanted to know
If I was trying to escape
Liberation
Or the conditions that require
Liberation
I listened to their question
Thinking that was all
That was all
There was to it.
The lovesick man
although looking inward
is watching modern warplanes roar past.
Perhaps aiming for the cities and civilians
of Gaza,
Guernica,
Wounded Knee,
Nagasaki…
Nobody
can sing the blues
like
Blind Willie McTell
Nobody
can sing the blues
like
Blind Willie McTell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1ewJYxT0ZQ
Digital collage: Details from Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ have been superimposed over photographs of rubble in Guernica and Gaza. The face of radical pacifist Martin Luther King Jr. is layered within a painting by antiwar artist George Grosz titled ‘The Lovesick Man’ (1916). Battlefield terrain from World War One frames the George Grosz painting.
“Nobody can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell...” from the Bob Dylan song Blind Willie McTell.
The copyright of original images remains with the holders of same. Under fair use provisions I have composed new work for non-commercial purposes and commentary.
First a bit of background: I’ve been wearing a cast on my leg and foot for over 40 days. Xrays tomorrow. I’ll find out how well the 7 screws (and my body’s healing processes) have done their job.
Had surgery on May 31st. Pushed through and had my book launch on June 12th with Never More Together. My friend William Beauvais played classical guitar. Mother Nature cooperated during a week of rain & gave us a glorious evening on the ‘Tango Palace Coffee Company’ patio. I was exhausted yet enjoyed it all.
During the last 44 days regular life has come to a standstill. Getting from point A to B is laborious. Summer plans changed. One notable illusion dissipated, a couple of very hopeful (creative) ideas germinated, names and faces came (via telephone and in person) out of the past, I met many kind people and had interactions I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I’ve come to the simple conclusion that (living in) the universe gives us experiences and it’s up to us to make of them what we will.
And yet I’m also puzzled by synchronicity. The why of what, the what of when, the when of why. This seems to exist of its own volition. Unless the self has the power to mysteriously will coincidental events into existence. Paging Dr. Jung…
The first four drawings from my sketchbook are from a planned series showing facial profiles as well as a spiral motif. Again I return to Jung’s quote that in times of crisis humanity returns to primal symbols. The final page is post-accident and shows the symbol but not a profile. It has a different feel to it. The drawings from ‘before’ seem to be describing an immersion, or perception of reality. The most recent drawing seems to be aiming. Has ‘experiencing perception’ been replaced by a direct line of reception? Is this what pain does?
Freckled with sparrows
Thrushes for tresses
The hedge-girl turns
The dial of the moon
Marie Noight A’Shunning
Through the rushes running
Call her name
When the night is long
Then she’ll shout
the stars down
John W. Sexton’s mind was poured into his body in 1958; since then his life has been dedicated to poetry.
How Marie Noight A’Shunning came to be is a transatlantic astral event (Canada, dreamtime, Ireland). I heard this name in my sleep and in my half-sleep wrote it down. I posted on Facebook about being puzzled; who she was, what she represented. When John W. saw her name he felt an immediate response. Translating these feelings into poetry. My images create a parallel narrative exploring Marie’s identity.
The transistor radio beneath my pillow
Like a Rolling Stone
Bob Dylan making something new
ancient again.
A Study, No.1
1901
Rudolph Eickemeyer (American, 1862-1932)
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Accession Number: 1972.644.2
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Toronto street, March, 2014
all was still
“When it is gone,
passion leaves behind a dark longing for itself,
and in disappearing
throws us one last
seductive glance.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
Thinning my studio
I discover your unlined face looking into the future,
sketched with charcoal on lightweight paper.
My memory of you
a weak pulse
sealed away like a forgotten dimension.
I drop clear, blue, plastic bags to the sidewalk
like fallen
sections of sky,
reported by pilots
nobody believes.
“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
A (forgotten) charcoal drawing digitally contemplated.
The poem you see
is not the poem
I see,
intones
a merchant
(of some privilege)
in Upper Canada.
His ruffled sleeves
stained
with grease and
gravy.
Your poem
has been singed
by musket powder,
or perhaps
a mishandled lantern,
he mutters,
eating and drinking.
Pausing to smoke from a packed horn pipe.
And more eating
and drinking and
striking the flint
again.
My poem,
on the other
hand,
(jabbing with the fork)
buckles and heaves,
labouring
beneath the fruits of commerce.
Utilitarian in its task.
How opposite to your
verse:
Stanzas fallen,
motionless
on the floor of an electric carriage.
A volley of
projectiles silencing
the pocket-knife
you gestured with.
A strange brew
of calamity
brought upon
yourself.
My eyes are closed
upon your plight,
I do not love thee
or thy sacrifice.
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One late summer night last July, 18 year old Sammy Yakim commandeered and emptied a streetcar in Toronto while waving around a small knife and holding his genitals. He was surrounded by a bevy of police officers and shot dead. One of the nine bullets might have missed. Then they tasered him.
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I created a Sammy Yakim – Mayor Rob Ford (as merchant of Upper Canada) visual dialogue depicting ‘the chain of office’ as representative of corporate social values having little or no compassion.
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Upper Canada (b.1791, the predecessor of modern Ontario) was considered by Reformers (see Upper Canada Rebellion) as a rigged game with ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’ To contextualize this social dynamic: Sammy Yakim would not have been accorded the privilege afforded those with position or connections to the establishment of that time.
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Could his life have been valued any less, anywhere, any time?
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The idea for titling this post Like burning coals nine bullets glide came from poetic verse in ‘The U.E.; A Tale of Upper Canada’ by William Kirby:
Like burning coals two rifle bullets glide!
Page 170
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The Colton Map of Upper Canada (1855)
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poemimage 