poemimage

The visual & the poetic.

Tag: Orphee

Eyes (& Orphee by Cocteau)

I have been approaching an idea I am still approaching

I circle the idea again and again

for some reason I made this comparison of eyes.

Eyes are truly the window to the soul

The soul is truly a window to the eyes

The window is truly eyes upon the soul. 

I think of the glazier in Cocteau’s poetry-film Orphee wandering in the underworld. 

I have the VHS tape rewound & worn, rewound & worn.

I may watch Orphee again one day. It reminds me of somebody.

My very own figure of death no longer mine.

In this comparison:

Burl Ives: Actor ~ musician ~ crouching fire-starter, lonely hero, feet of clay, masculine subject-object, middle name Ivanhoe, dancing round the Maypole, related to composer Charles Ives. In the heart is the first principle.

Mona Lisa: Mystery-school perception, the sun-drenched alchemical Renaissance, feminine subject-object, diagram the ancient golden number, echoing feet, touch linen ~ hazelnut paste, envision the Milky Way. In the heart is the first principle.

President: The conceptual zero imagined in three-dimensions, museums collapse beneath clouds funnelling stones, candy cigarettes, a camoflauged animal-skin eye-patch, mythological gods stir in vengeful coughing slumber. Envision the absent first principle.

I may watch Orphee again one day.

Distance Swimming

circle

In her mirror

detail with green ball

She feels illumined by an accelerating process

blur all

Initiated by the 20th Century.

watery

A darkening fog.

the heroic ball and glove

Klee-song,

hand

Cocteau,

newly

de Chirico,

love

Arise from her in swirling, serpentine eddies. A ventriloquist.

angles

She unties a boat on the shore. The underground river.

final circle

Languages of illumining clarity speed into each other like blood in water,

watery

As vast and translucent as the Northern Lights.

final circle

 & For reasons both utilitarian and mythopoeic

watery

The face in the mirror anticipates leaping.

final circle

& Distance swimming through shadow-lands,

watery

Beneath the precipice of shallow, atomic time,

final circle

Within and without darkened chambers & coincidentally

watery

 Light reflecting upon ancient vials.

final circle

 & Our spines an unbroken chain of receptor cauldrons.

watery

& Her gift. The mirror.

zoom

Paul Klee catalogue (1951), Giorgio de Chirico painting ‘Song of Love’ (1914), photographic still from Jean Cocteau’s ‘Orphee’ (1950), pictured: Jean Marais  and Maria Casarès