poemimage

The visual & the poetic.

Category: Visual Art

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

Where You Are by Eileen Sheehan

solstice december copy

garden god

 You lie down in whatever bed

you lie down in, the pillow accepting

the weight of your head, the mattress

receiving your body like a longed-for guest.

You move in your sleep and the sheets

react to your turnings, the blankets adjust,

shaping themselves to your outline. The air

in the room keeps time with your breathing,

accepts being displaced while I circle the walls

of the city you dream. My papers

are worn, frayed at the edges; that picture

I have of myself, clouding-over and spotted

with rain: my face is dissolving before me. The night

holds you in sleep, you are stilled by its comforts;

by the fabrics absorbing the sweat you expel.

My cries go unheeded as I stand at the gate

pleading admittance. There is no one to turn to

as you shed a layer of your skin while you lie there,

dead to the world; my one reliable witness.

this green tree copy Read the rest of this entry »

Laundromat: July 10, 9:47 AM

laundromat 1

laundromat final

I’m in the

laundromat

because my dryer broke

and this radio is too loud

and every song sounds insincere –

finally Annie Lennox and

the Eurythmics are singing

Talk to Me.

laundromat 2

laundromat 8

I wonder when I’ll ever

get around to reading

Ulysses.

laundromat z

The radiator is painted

an almost indescribable

shade of turquoise.

Lively but dead serious –

mechanical.

laundromat 26

The top of each rib protrudes

thin, flat and sharp.

I can imagine these edges

pressing into my face

after they arrest me in the

grand sweep.

laundromat rinse

laundromat horizon

Harnesses and 19th century

contraptions hoisting the radiator

above prisoners strapped to beds.

Thirty full seconds for each

inmate.

What if they decide to heat them?

laundromat y

Loud sirens nearby.

A city wind blowing

through the open door.

laundromat new alchemy

A guy reading a

book asks me

if I smell

cigarette smoke.

laundromat 8

“No.”

laundromat final Read the rest of this entry »

6:9 by Luther Blissett

luther blisset 10

I make the mistake

luther blisses 8.7

Read the rest of this entry »

Library by Steven McCabe

book2

A skin of tree species

no longer

existing

My Eyes So Soft by Hafiz

poemimage now 1 Read the rest of this entry »

Angel by Eileen Sheehan

aa

wwww copy

He said, I am old and

everything has a bitter 

taint and besides

I have only these oddments

to offer; things broken, 

unfinished, unused and I’m not even 

sure why it is that I’ve 

kept them so long.

cc

ee

But she saw how his body

radiated light and he carried

not just a jumble of wheels,

coils, springs but the very

ones she’d been needing to

mend the faltering

mechanisms of her heart.

uuu

vwx

And his eyes were pure

as a child’s

and she knew

xyz

from that moment on

she was his

entirely

ii

bb

Eileen Sheehan is from Killarney, Ireland. Her collections are Song of the Midnight Fox and Down the Sunlit Hall (Doghouse Books). Angel was first published in THE SHOp: A Magazine of Poetry (ed John and Hilary Wakeman).

dd

I found this love poem very moving, beautiful and rooted in reality. I was intrigued by deeply felt emotions relating to the word ‘Angel.’ The air and thought around the word Angel called for earth and water, both surface and interior, to flesh out the wishes and realizations being expressed and conceptualized. To create several of these images I remixed a photo of waves crashing onto a beach in California uploaded by user Tewy on Wikipedia Commons: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/deed.en

Fragments…traces… of a mathematical formula by Nikolaos Manolopulos appear ever so faintly, unknowable, perhaps in three images, from my first gestures integrating Wikipedia Commons material with my ink drawing.