poemimage

Where text meets image. Where the visual intersects the literary. Often posting 1st drafts and editing in (almost) real time.

Tag: alchemy

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.

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.

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.

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.

Here Comes the Monk With His Begging Bowl

  

All I did was dump coffee in the sink

And he appeared. He must have wanted to go on a trip, a journey or a jaunt, I doubt he wanted to be washed down the drain.

Which wasn’t the plan anyway. Not when there is so much to see everywhere, day or night, here or there.

And kindred spirits to discover.

With golden suns disguised as room-temperature metal beginning the process of your transformation. No matter how you begin.

Too Late

1

I realized (too late)

We had left alchemy

Out of the equation

Configuring

Stars, pathways, and

Heartbeats.

 I hastened to manipulate

The voluminous footnotes to my

Apology.

Rounding and pulling

Like working with clay.

Evaporating

Like working with love.

My apologies began

To glisten.

It is never too late

To listen.

1 again23