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
There’s a new rattle in the wind, a new texture to what blows
around the continents. Spinifex bushes dot the outback’s
blowing sand, its slopes and hollows. Mixed in with red
sandstorm dust: gum wrappers, foil bags, plastic water bottles,
empty tinnies. In the old days, says the Uluru guide, the desert
and its people were self-sufficient – what they discarded
enriched the land. A second Gonwanda is emerging, the mid-
Pacific Gyre’s garbage patch, mirror to the four thousand pieces
of space flotsam hurtling through the stars. Daily I trouble myself
with the household’s petty excess, jam jars and junk mail,
a bag from every airport I’ve visited. I carry twenty unmatched
lids and eight containers to the bin, the half-life of glass
nearing that of plutonium. Why not create something of value
with all this carboniferous energy? Yesterday a thick grey
cloudbank was towed across the evening sky by a thousand
invisible strongmen hauling in the snowstorm, obscuring
the sunset. I have finally decided that my preference is cremation.
Maureen Hynes is a past winner of the Gerald Lampert Award and the Petra Kenney Poetry Award (England). She has published three books of poetry, Harm’s Way, Rough Skin, and the most recent, Marrow, Willow from Pedlar Press. Maureen is poetry editor for Our Times magazine. http://www.maureenhynes.com
I modified a photograph from Wikipedia Commons (in images 3, 4, and 6) of descending stone stairs in the ruins of Vlotho castle, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, posted by Wiki user Tubs, GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.
“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)
Remember
that time you were young
and you saw something
you almost forgot
and the faster you ran
the slower you arrived
Van Gogh
was a bit like that
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
I taste the light
coming through the window.
(from “Odysseus and Circe,” Anne Simpson)
Pouring, like you,
into my heart,
washing over my skin
falling
through glass
lightly
flowing waves and circling particles
currents of surprise, delight.
I am water, and I am a gull, flying …
a gulf wide and deep as Mexico
replenishing after spills and spoils
You fish me, for stars
for pearls
lost boys and missing girls
fallen into the hole of our fears
O is an open mouth,
one closed eye,
and one open
a black hole where light cannot flow
out
now light from the window of opportunity
swallows us whole
and we shine
we
shine.
Ellen S. Jaffe’s most recent book of poetry, Skinny-Dipping with the Muse (Guernica Editions, 2014) has recently been launched. Tasting the Light is a new poem, not yet published. Ellen lives in Hamilton, writes poetry and prose, and teaches writing in schools and community centres.
Like a certain famous red wheel barrow
so much depends
upon the red
wagon.
My brothers decided to light up a tree. Not sure how much damage the (few) matches did to the knobby crevice where the unfortunate had, seemingly, been struck once upon a time by lightning. Nevertheless, our father, with an abundance of caution ordered buckets of water to make sure the riverbank didn’t burn. Perhaps to teach a lesson, perhaps out of a respect for fire, he kept the buckets coming. Eventually my brothers tired and remembered the wheel had been invented. Wheels and fire. And for whatever reason, like the wheel barrow for William Carlos Williams, much depends upon the red wagon.
Photo of the wagon from the internet, copyright unknown, used non commercially to refashion a new work for purposes of commentary.
Along my flanks edges of me are cool
in the shadows of the trees. The rest of me
is out in the sun, brightly green. I’m green
everywhere, except when I’m not; but even in
the withering of me there’s a memory
of green.
My name is synonymous with green
and like that colour I’m innocence itself.
Everything comes to me for everything comes
to the floor, and I’m the floor of everywhere.
Even beneath the sea you’ll find a version
of me. But most of the time you’ll find me here,
wherever you happen to be. I’ll be waiting. I remain
here for everyone. It is said I cover the dead, and actually
I do. But I much prefer the living.
And the living I live
for most is my darling love. She steps barefoot onto me,
walks my length. I feel myself cooling under each step.
Then she undresses and begins to lie down.
First I feel the shadow of her shape, and then
her shape. I could grow into this. Usually I do.
Previously published in Census 2 – From the collection The Offspring of the Moon, Salmon Poetry
John W. Sexton’s mind was poured into his body in 1958; since then his life has been dedicated to poetry.
The photo of the grass I wove into some of my digital compositions is from Wikipedia Commons. Credit Marcus Obal, 2007. I am manipulating this image under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
I wrote a line about beauty being the beginning of silence
a pyramid of soundlessness above a white bed
An intuitive synchronicity guided me
as I arranged unrelated
photographs of Joseph Beuys with a book from the 50s
The idea of Greek drapery
flowed into
an action/performance:
Titus Andronicus/Iphigenie
It was Earth Day
I imagined clicking ‘like’ on a picture of a cat
and the cat saying
Oh
spare me
Seriously
spare me…
And
Joseph Beuys
calming the
creature
With an
explanation
of sound
How
the simple act
of
perceiving vibrations
Creates
a white bed
&
revolution anew
Casting
obsolete paradigms
aside.
One of Joseph Beuys’ most powerful performances was Titus Andronicus/Iphigenie, performed May-June, 1969 in the Theater am Turm in Frankfurt, Germany for Experimenta 3: http://ropac.net/exhibition/iphigenie
Iphigenia is a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in Greek mythology.
Photographs of Joseph Beuys performance: Joseph Beuys foundation. Personal Beauty and Charm published by The Homemaker’s Encyclopedia Inc. 1952. I do not own the copyright any of these photographs. I have refashioned them under fair use provisions to create a new work for non-commercial purposes of parody or commentary.
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