poemimage
The visual & the poetic.
Category: Visual Art & Poetry
March 5, 2014
Toast with Honey
You walk home from the dance
Thinking of the girl you met
Wearing an orange dress
You wonder
If she would love you
If you tied yourself
With rope
To the wing
Of a small plane
Photographing
A tree
Cars drive slowly crunching snow
You think of human pyramids
You see the tree on the horizon
& plan a filmic strategy
She spoke with an accent
Pronouncing the titles
Of paintings
By her favourite artist
Influenced by somebody
Following breakfast
A
Wooden spoon dripping honey
You foray out into the world:
Emergency investigation
At the library
Downtown.
Summoning the gods
of the Dewey Decimal System.
Last night the street was quiet with softly falling snow, not too cold, and it took me back to something that may or may not have happened.
I remembered being young & swirling ribbons of sticky, amber honey & trips to the library.
And walking home late at night considering both the terrible and the hopeful & being puzzled by the odd flash of invisible magic charging the air.
The NASA space photo used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.
The goldfish found online, no photographer credited.
The street scene I snapped with my phone.
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 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 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 10, 2014
50th Anniversary of The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show
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
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
*
C
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
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
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…
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
***
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 22, 2014
Titles of Five Poems by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) Who Introduced the Sonnet into English and was Imprisoned in the Tower of London for Alleged Adultery with Anne Boleyn.
The Lover Compareth His State to a Shippe
in Perilous Storme Tossed on the Sea
The Lover Sheweth How He Is Forsaken of Such
as He Sometime Enjoyed
Ys Yt Possible
What shulde I saye
The Lover Complayneth the Unkindness of His Love
Biography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wyatt_(poet)
poemimage 