alchemy | poemimage

Tag: alchemy

Consider the Shadow-Rain of Guernica

In hanging gardens & multi-dimensional language,

in empathetic irrigation of the human-heart,

in roots shaped like geometrical echoes,

consider intention.

Consider a symmetrical sun, almond-yellow, radiating the sky

buoyant as a cloak reconfigured by the wind

& reconfiguring a composition: the human heart

unfolding like origami or a magician’s flower bouquet.

Roots drip amber-nectar-sundrops

disguising archeological diagrams of the human heart

with geometrical echoes.

Consider intentions.

Consider soil trailing tendrils as it climbs the clay wall.

Consider two-dimensional projections of Guernica (the painting)

hovering face down.

Consider negative space in the X-rays,

thin wires tightened floor to ceiling,

a cloud of static pressed flat.

Consider the shadow-rain of Guernica.

Consider the surface of mirrors.

Along the ruined street

a young Palestinian father in a backwards baseball cap

carries his child wrapped head to toe in white cloth

up to his waist in waters gushing from concrete pipes

smashed to rubble.

Two actors view Picasso’s Guernica convincingly & with one fork

share a sponge-like delicacy dribbled with chocolate on a gold-trimmed plate,

the edge of the tablecloth wet with dank water swirling, as they whisper

convincingly in dulcet tones & put a coin in the jukebox, suddenly aware

of the shadow-rain mirroring two worlds and one reality.

Yesterday, for the first time this summer, I saw

a grasshopper – perched on a drainpipe at a slight diagonal,

hyper-vigilant, his shadow deep green ash.

Consider a symmetrical sun, almond-yellow, radiating the sky

buoyant as a cloak reconfigured by the wind &

reconfiguring a composition: the human heart

unfolding like origami or a magician’s flower bouquet.

Roots drip amber-nectar-sundrops

disguising archeological diagrams of the human heart

with geometrical echoes.

Consider soil trailing tendrils as it climbs the clay wall.

Consider two-dimensional projections of Guernica (the painting)

hovering face down.

Consider negative space in the X-rays,

thin wires tightened floor to ceiling,

a cloud of static pressed flat.

Consider the shadow-rain of Guernica.

Consider the surface of mirrors.

Digital manipulations of linocut prints by S. McCabe

4 Comments

The blues in this painting by Matisse, converging as they do like a gymnast accomplishing the perfect flip, extend beyond the visual revelation into possibilities. To possibly become an aerial destination, seen from above, your jutting shoulder the ledge for a flock of birds. To hold in your writing hand a winning lottery ticket for a 1934 classic Buick convertible. To fall in love before three o’clock on this bucolic afternoon. To possibly, stupendously: stop a war. Dig out rot & corruption. Build an illumined shrine. Change the resonance of your voice, your wardrobe, & the way you dance. Personal failures, minor triumphs & dreams, converging as they do like a ball (spinning) made of clay, made of iron. A white star pulses in the human heart, an archetype as transformational as Sri Yantra. Possibly these shades of blue, pulsing cosmologically, as fulfilling as a yield of wheat, change everything at once. Do you see what you did Matisse?

Henri Matisse *Nude Painting, Plaster Torso and Bouquet of Flowers*, 1919, oil on canvas

January 22, 2023

Heart

The great ship going down

Heaving like a lost city,

No water anywhere

No voice like an echo calling,

Swim to the heart of symbols carved long ago,

You know you never will

(In your heart)

Never swim

To the heart of symbols carved long ago.

TV on a throne

The great ship going down

Heaving like a lost city,

No place to swim

No place to dream

No voice

Like an echo calling,

Swim to the heart of symbols carved long ago.

In your heart you echo

The heart carved long ago,

You kneel in disbelief

TV on a throne.

No place to dream

No echo, calling like a voice,

Swim to the heart of symbols carved long ago,

You kneel in disbelief

The great ship going down.

An echo like a voice,

echoes,

And you will not

You will never

In your heart, still and quiet,

Swim

To the heart of symbols carved long ago.

A place to swim

A place to dream

A place to reappear.

A place to cast aside demons

Far from the killing fields.

Voice like an echo

Echo like a voice

No water anywhere

The great ship going down

Heaving like a lost city

Heaving like a ziggurat on the plains beneath the flood.

A place to swim

A place to dream

A place to reappear.

Swim into the heart of symbols carved long ago

Breaststroke upon tidal waves, push barrels of cinnamon sheaves

Buoyant amulets crest a tidal wave

Pages of an unbound book

Unbind slow-motion,

The sigil of a sun-god

No water anywhere

No clocks no grasshoppers no sky

No echo like a voice

No echo like a spinal column

The great ship going down

Heaving like a lost city

On the plains beneath the flood.

A place to swim

A place to dream

A place to reappear,

Mirrored in reflection,

In your heart you reappear

On the plains beneath the flood

Breaststroke like a ziggurat

Curving like a spinal column

Sigil of a sun-god.

Voice like an echo

Echo like a voice.

Voice like an echo

Echo like a voice.

4 Comments

August 14, 2022

Alchemy Begins in the Rain

I stand in the rain

(alchemy begins)

curving like a river

(sparkling like radioactive particles)

loosening dried flecks of ink.

Swallow and

(flow through the manuscript factory)

curvilinear like a small and large intestine

sweeping & twisting

on television.

Experts prove it never happened

dance the paper airplane dance

launch-jab pantomime

surround a plaster statue

launch-jab pantomime.

Julius Caesar

spies a peacock bobbing his moon-of-Jupiter head

spitting ‘Vox clamantis in deserto –

the conspiracy unfolds.’

A small and large intestine swallows the light of the sun

I dance myself into a golden egg.

2 Comments

May 8, 2022

When the Abstract Expressionists

When the Abstract Expressionists

went to the moon

and discovered

the Expressionists

had left an egg

rolling to a standstill

for them to discover.

The egg comes from a painting of mine.

The bird imagery comes from digital experimentation.

The idea about the Abstract Expressionists

and Expressionists

and moon travel (involving an egg)

came in a humorous flash.

4 Comments

July 15, 2021

A Memory from July 10, 2013

I am working on a new GIF to accompany 5 lines from Lyon by Pierre L’Abbe. The stanza he sent me is so evocative I keep creating new images. So a few more days until I post that.

In the meantime, in a file folder, I found a poem & drawing from July 10, 2013. Close to eight years ago. My dryer was broken, though not the washing machine, so I went to the laundromat with bags of wet clothing. I brought a pen and paper.

The memory of writing a poem in the laundromat impacts me more than re-reading the poem. The poem touches on loss. It was a big deal at the time. As big as the universe. The drawing seems to be about the future. And loss as well.

He examines something, a memory, maybe it belonged to somebody, while his body transforms. He’s growing wings made of fossils or maybe a spiked spinal column has departed. Disappearing. His tears fall channeled into ancient patterns. Or maybe those channels teach him new patterns. Giving him fuel. Leaves, or flames, grow from his eyes. A drawing about vision.

A quickly sketched ink drawing might express many secrets. Something unknown always at work.

2 Comments