Autumn, late
I remember when she said,
I’m sorry to interrupt your relationship
With Bob Dylan.
poemimage
The visual & the poetic.
Tag: love
November 28, 2014
October 22, 2014
Rays of an Ancient Light Driving You Home
Did you possibly imagine (you couldn’t have)
On that youthful, sun-dappled afternoon,
The rays of an ancient light caressing your skin & inspiration, when you were
A skipping stone striking at the perfect angles & gaining your balance,
Amusedly & perfectly crossing a warm stream at the edge of town,
The water fresh and the fences down,
Driving home after closing time…
The years marking your skin in ways the Great Depression & the
Enemy marked your psyche, past an abandoned brewery,
Seeing the quiet streets coming up fast like a flood, silent as a submarine,
Balancing on wet stones, laughing as you splashed & driving home
After closing time, to a lonely house, impervious to depth charges,
Past the dislodged bricks of the abandoned brewery,
Imagining that sun-splashed afternoon & shallow, sparkling water,
Your children crossing streams within darkened rooms,
Finding their balance, in ways the enemy
Marked your psyche & warm afternoons caressed your inspiration,
An ancient star illuminating quiet streets, starlight splashing,
Streaming into and beyond abandoned spaces,
Rays of an ancient light driving you home.
September 8, 2014
I Know The Way You Can Get by Hafiz
I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:
Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.
Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.
Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one’s self.
O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:
You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.
You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.
You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.
I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love’s
Hands.
That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.
That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!
All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!
From: I Heard God Laughing – Renderings of Hafiz
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
April 19, 2014
Pilots Nobody Believes (in homage to Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Thinning my studio
I discover your unlined face looking into the future,
sketched with charcoal on lightweight paper.
My memory of you
a weak pulse
sealed away like a forgotten dimension.
I drop clear, blue, plastic bags to the sidewalk
like fallen
sections of sky,
reported by pilots
nobody believes.
“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
A (forgotten) charcoal drawing digitally contemplated.
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 24, 2014
The Loves of Sochi
Lovers
Swept up by a spark
A kiss after dark
Beneath a bridge
Shadows
Whispering
Soon
The future cascading
Tarkovsky studies music and Arabic
Soon
He will create
Ivan’s Childhood
Winning top prize at the Venice Film Festival
“Tarkovsky…
captures life as a reflection,
life as a dream.”
– Ingmar Bergman
On the bridges of Sochi
Beneath starlight
Hand in hand
Lovers
Cascading
A scene from Tarkovsky’s film Stalker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNiVFCWMrqI
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 15, 2014
Lao Tzu: On Love
Being deeply loved by someone
gives you strength
while loving someone deeply
gives you courage.
You left when I told you I was curious,
I never said that I was brave
So Long, Marianne, Leonard Cohen
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.
December 27, 2013
‘Fading in, Fading out, Dissolving’
Images juxtaposing a needle or vaccine with the idea of film credits rolling at the end of a love affair.
A list of ingredients on a label on a jar. The love affair revisited as a series of scenes.
The body memory supercharged with moments of elation or conversely defeat, possibly reacting to the cure. Striving to achieve harmony.
Film As Art written by Rudolf Arnheim. Film als Kunst first published in 1932. A book of standards, a theory of film.
In the chapter ‘Other Capacities of Film Technique’ a section: Fading in, Fading out, Dissolving.
Sometimes in order to avoid sudden appearance a picture is allowed to grow slowly out of the darkness, or to disappear in the same way.
Fading in and fading out can be used to show people’s subjective perception; for instance, when a person is waking up or falling asleep.
for instance,
when a person is waking up
or falling asleep.
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