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November 22, 2013

You Were Brave in that Holy War by Hafiz

You have done well In the contest of madness.

You were brave in that holy war.

You have all the honorable wounds Of one who has tried to find love Where the Beautiful Bird Does not drink.

May I speak to you Like we are close And locked away together? Once I found a stray kitten And I used to soak my fingers In warm milk;

It came to think I was five mothers On one hand.

Wayfarer, Why not rest your tired body? Lean back and close your eyes.

Come morning I will kneel by your side and feed you. I will so gently Spread open your mouth And let you taste something of my Sacred mind and life.

Surely There is something wrong With your ideas of God

O, surely there is something wrong With your ideas of God

If you think Our Beloved would not be so Tender.

– The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the great Sufi Master

translated by Daniel Ladinsky

The smiling image of Jacqueline Kennedy in Dallas contrasting with the shock and horror she soon experienced has haunted me since my youth. Is it enough to say this Hafiz poem is about coming to terms with grief in a metaphysical context? I do not claim to be an expert on such things but with this project I attempt to address grief. I created digital variations of a coloured – pencil drawing of Mrs. Kennedy in Dallas, November 22, 1963. I used seven of these drawings for a collage series, including drawing & painting, on handmade Japanese paper for a 2003 exhibition commemorating the 40th anniversary of JFK’s death. The poetry video My Story Is Not My Own (below) continues the theme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17LZ1XqubyU

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November 15, 2013

My Story Is Not My Own (a film poem concerning Nov. 22, 1963)

The same film with subtitles:

In 2009 I created My Story Is Not My Own, a metaphysical & surreal film poem concerning the Kennedy assassination. My statement concerning this project is beneath the video on the YouTube page.

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November 4, 2013

Doing the trick by Chris Pannell

There’s a breach

in the line, where the soldiers have fallen back

and my mother has fallen back on her bed too

her face out of sight, she can no longer speak.

This opening might do the trick if anyone could muster

the steps to walk through, but

we’re so exhausted, it would be a mercy

to die here and now, be done with palliative care —

Read the rest of this entry »

November 3, 2013

 Adamant on the Edge of Dreams by Lisa Marguerite Mora

I don’t know what God is doing.

He sears me with the palm of his hand,

hollows me out with light

so that I can’t feel my bones anymore.

And my grief—

not that gut wrenching stuff,

is just water that flows and flows, flows unimpeded now—

I am open,

undammed and not drowning,

not fighting for my life.

Why is it I can see your face so clearly?

I am floating (90% water, they say),

my ribcage, fluid, caging and releasing.

I have become amphibian.

I do not know whether to walk or swim.

I miss the bones

of the earth, dark stones, polished pain hard beneath my feet.

Gravel and grit I need. Dust. Dirt.

Black and pungent.

Please.

But there is just light split

over water

that spills

and your face

adamant on the edge of dreams.

And I wake

as if you were really here.

Lisa Marguerite Mora is a prize winning poet and a freelance editor. She conducts creative writing workshops, and this year has completed a poetry manuscript and a first novel.

She lives in Los Angeles, California.

I was influenced by the idea of an edge while depicting the figure – who fluctuates between pictorial and pictographic. The waking in the poem seems to be another edge, or a disappearing edge, delineating realms of water & light, idea & memory, as well as the all encompassing natural, visceral world.

Read the rest of this entry »

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October 22, 2013

The Chosen Ones by William Michaelian

If we cannot love everything and everyone,

can we, truly, love anything or anyone?

In choosing whom or what we love (if such choice were possible),

do we not proclaim that our judgment is larger than life itself?

Is not that choice an illusion?

If we love only what we think we love, are we not, then,

defining love and placing on it certain limitations?

Would it not be better to be defined by love,

than to try to define it?

Are we so small in our uncertainty and fear that we must love

only that which pleases us, or which we think reflects well on us,

or which loves us in return? If so, how can we call that love?

It is a grave error we make in thinking that anything exists

outside of love.

Can you, in your deepest thought and contemplation,

say which part of you loves and which does not?

If you say the mind loves, or the heart loves,

or that love is harbored in various glands and organs,

what, then, of the rest of you? Are parts of you worthy

or unworthy of love? Is love necessary to one part,

but not to another?

Is love a condition that changes with history,

time, and weather?

And what of the insane?

Are we love’s orphans, love’s abandoned step-children?

William Michaelian is an American writer, artist, and poet. His newest book is the Tenth Anniversary Authorized Print Edition of his first novel, A Listening Thing. His Author’s Press Series now contains three volumes: The Painting of You, No Time to Cut My Hair, and One Hand Clapping. Two poetry collections, Winter Poems and Another Song I Know, were published in 2007 by Cosmopsis Books. He lives in Salem, Oregon.

http://recently-banned-literature.blogspot.com/

I thought my most recent painting, Royal Song (the first image), might work with the pulsing ebb and flow of William Michaelian’s poem. Love and gold work together on some mysterious level. There is a lot of air (and thought) in this poem and the painting depicts a scroll and throne (in the open air) beneath a sun. The idea of light informing the conscious mind influenced my variations on the original image.

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October 21, 2013

The Sorrow of a Brown Hat by Steven McCabe

Crumpled fading newsprint

As yesterday’s armies march

Into tomorrow

A future we predicted

We accepted sleep standing upright

Sleep never understood;

A chapter of blank pages: my darling, your wrist hanging

Over the bed

Your blood a confusion

Your heartbeat the black window

Swallowing my hands

Fingers forming a circle

Bottom of a fleet casting shadows across the seabed

I toss my hat overboard

from my book Hierarchy of Loss (2007) Ekstasis Editions

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October 11, 2013

An erasure poem created from ‘The Last of the Knights Templar. A Poem, With historical notes.’ by Thomas Billington (1866)

Memory scorns the hand

In sweet response to heaven

6.Amber Curtains

Fame outlives

Mighty hearts

Earth and sea obey

The blood of many a son

Tarnished in liberty

An offended sky

Hoarsely sung,

Shadows wear the crowns

The conquering sons of

Neptune’s vaunted eye,

His dinted blade

The echoes sing,

Your faith of obedience

Like snow flakes

11. Moon Over Knight

Comets of heaven

March on to glory,

No tongue shall number

A calm blue ocean

The glorious dead

Came upon the sea

Omen’d

The tide of that deep abyss

Struck by the Templars’ sword

Each vaunted knight

An inspiring heaven

One vast clay sun

Now morning emerald

Enchantment’s radiant form

In desolation’s train –

Her last revenge

The cherished isle of steel

A soldier’s bed –

Paradise

Goes terribly forth

17. Your Arrival Changes Everything

The black herald of sorrow

Reeking in dying cadence

Linger on the carnival

Look on the headless brothers

Your work of hate

Maddening

A whirlwind’s Autumn on helmets clashing

Deaden the pangs of a soldier’s doom

15. Taken Aback

Onward Templars press

A frenzied rite

On condor’s wing a cold embrace

Thunder blackening the lament

A winding sheet

Like seafroth

His swollen veins darkening

Hail our Queen!

The edge upon our lips

Mockeries

Wading in a fiery grave

Each convent bell

Joy

No seabird to warn the boatman

A fairy thing –

The whiteness of her sail

Raptures your lonely shore

Whispery the void

Nature a weary scene

Not a sigh escaped

Laugh of vacancy

Babylon’s lustful day

The night grown weary

All was still

The chains savage

The (original) 56 page poem is a retelling of history & loaded with glorification of battle & cultural/religious point of view, details of woe and foe, and the ecstasy of triumphs. It’s really quite the technicolour blockbuster epic. Followed by almost 30 pages of historical text. I found it when I was looking for a connection between the Knights Templar and limestone (believe it or not). Two things happened simultaneously: I was skimming an old Canadian educational book called ‘Pioneer Arts and Crafts’ written by Edwin G. Guillet, M.A. (dedicated to Marguerite Guillet Brooks – Designer, Thread Workers Guild of America) and reading a fascinating section about ‘Lime – Burning.’ At the same time I had a digital image, rather ‘knight-ish,’ which I wanted to use with a poem. I began to imagine Marguerite sewing silk tassels for a knight’s helmet. And somehow, well, it all came together. My ‘erasing’ was done fairly quickly, like snapshots, grabbing a few impressions.

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October 4, 2013

Winter by Linda Woolven

Bruises

smudge the countryside

in winter blue and purple.

As shadows steal

the winter white.

Read the rest of this entry »

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September 26, 2013

OPEN STUDIO AT THE ARTISTS COLONY by Nancy Kline

VCCA, February 14, 2009

The visual artist in the studio next door is knitting stainless steel and silk. She’s disabused now, she makes prints of clothes unraveling. A dark skein stained. She’s knitting up the sleeve of care.

Electric ukelele down the hall! A white piano plays itself (we all do, here). It has no hands. The trombone-player has composed a piece starring an interstellar Po’ Boy. He slides us along. He sings us a valentine.