Fallen Angel by Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1981
Music by David Chamberlain, Jr., poetry by Anna Chamberlain, and the lyric ‘all we ever wanted to say was chased erased and then blown away’ is from the Janelle Monae song, Many Moons. Hit play above, this is a spoken word piece.
Seraphina (Oil, mixed media 2013)
within this country of perpetual surprise
she inhabits the seven storied house
atop the mountain she writes our fates
illuminated pages in her golden notebook
stepping from the root of the cosmic tree
guiding souls into the world
she invested painting with the power
to circumscribe my time
a metronome marking the elaborate
science of observation, the creation
of self, phrasing, without pause,
these excruciating and ecstatic moments
in brushstrokes saturated with the
pathos of a portrait in blue
my transgression from tradition
metalanguage of spontaneity,
inspired inscriptions
perhaps the mother of cradles,
beside this lake of milk,
will open the portal of being
breathe life into another
fulfilling my desire to embody
Ajysyt, birth giver,
cup gently your warm hands,
form an offering bowl
she turns the emperor on his head
as the sun penetrates the forest canopy
I listen for the sounds
wild reparations offered for all the blood
scanning for (in situ) signs of life
a heartbeat pumping in searing words
brazenly on a hot pressed page
wood transmuted, only resurrected with her name
surface so smooth that everything slides
liquid nitrogen cooled tongues
slipping from cottonmouths
stained only by washes
of colorful trauma
mineral night rising, a phosphorescent outcry
burning chemical fire layer by layer
until our skin becomes as
ineffectual as the paper
she wrote the truth upon
hush imbued atmosphere descends,
a pernicious intent
poet tells me, ‘every angel is awful’
not mine, lord,
not mine
I saw her at the dawning
and in the glimmer of his oceanic love
her joy lighting candles
in the holy of holies
that day I stood in the temple
in the land of the sandsky
(where I never could have entered before)
murmuring supplications
with an apotropaic wand
against the inevitable dark
secret cinematic sounds delivered
in the tone of teenage apathy
Video Games plays in the acoustic hollow
of a phoenix’s breastbone
an echoic pleading
one skin to another
I held her in the birthing
and in the slow murder of life
in her incandescent light, her
dénouement, her breath infusing
my own, whispering paeans,
singing sighs
Notes: Every Angel is Awful is a book by the French poet, Martine Broda and Video Games is a song by Lana Del Rey.
wolverine
I dreamt the animals
brought forth each character
I sang the incantations
brought forth your stories
I tamed the mountain
brought forth every peak
I courted the moon
brought forth her light
solitary trickster
intelligent fool
my antics amuse
my ferocity quickens
my predator’s blood,
front facing eyes echo
your passions and appetites
I contain no remorse
but birth it
I show no mercy
but inspire it
I will nothing . . .
create and destroy
give and negate
in the hidden shrine
of the Taiga
tearing caribou flesh
hunting the weak
hunting the strong
I am the shaman
of the North
carrion feeder
I fight the bear
I fight the wolves
I traverse the cold
immense miles of cold
silent ice worlds
disturbed only by
the terrible cries
of this impulsive creature
Kuekuatsheu
kway-kwah-choo
Carcajou
koo-a-koo-ott-soo
say my name in
my presence
let your tongue
raise your voice to
the northern lights
within the shaking tent
we contact the spirits
my Innu atanukanas
sing songs of a people
sing songs of everything
I brought into being
Note: This poem was written in response to Victoria’s prompt at dVerse Poets Pub on anaphora poems and utilizes anaphora and epiphora. The title and poem refer to a very famous poem, The Tyger!, by William Blake.
It was relinked over a decade later for another dVerse Poets Pub prompt on forests. Please join us!
van Gogh paints stars on the interior of a hadron collider,
excitation modes divining the luminous day of the psyche,
ebullience of the creative moment as comets seed the earth
kaleidoscopic supersymmetry unveils strange loops,
circumscribed by the calm intelligibility of science
model agnosticism engulfs with purifying fire
in the ascetic refuge of an enchanted forest, imaginarium of enlightenment,
crystalline structures of specificity hide the occlusions of the unconscious,
chaotic clouds of information growing exponentially
Usha’s bifurcated tongue spreads duality across the canvas of the mind
sand shifting at the garden’s gate, encoding cryptic messages,
erosive ablutions upon the glittering souls of the dead
across the deep shaded valley starling calls and falcon cries unite
imploding singularity awash in Dionysian pleasure amidst an Apollonian
atmosphere, contrasting Wittgenstein’s necessary silence
Huysum’s flowers scry an ecstatic love, impulses flashing
like jewel inlaid symbols of eternity, cartography of virtuosic ambiguity,
as Richter explicates tragic materiality or sublime interiority
within this vale of soul-making, temporal and inescapable,
poetry’s fountain, a thousand headed hydra, reanimates and reclaims
Renoir’s river runs as the round world spins, days end and the end begins
in this elusive and fragile bubble replete with elaborate honeybee dances
Magritte’s surreal apple exists in its listening room
immortally intoxicated with the mystic universe
Flora (detail from Primavera) Botticelli
‘Yea, in the very moment of possessing,
Surges the heat of lovers to and fro,
Restive, uncertain; and they cannot fix
On what to first enjoy with eyes and hands.
The parts they sought for or those they squeeze so tight’*
Gentle western wind enamored of her purity
Caught swirling in a fury of passion
Overtaking the nymph of Elysian fields
Perianths cascading from her lips
Dew of heaven, conceived in the womb of earth
Meadows bloom with myriad colors where there was but one
Ephemeral four petal blue flower of alchemy, mystic rose
Eros embraced in the mandala of calyx and corolla
Only her scent remains
Insufflation of Spring’s promise
Bounty, beauty and union abound
Gifts of the goddess framing our pleasure
Notes: *From Of The Nature of Things, by [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius (written in the 1st Century BC) Translator: William Ellery Leonard
snow sends fathomless missives to the ocean
frozen kisses that kindle love
and we become one
storms thunder and unleash rain
born from a mountain glacial lake
in the watery center of my being
across the distance I traverse to you
naturally responding to the power
of your gravitational pull
ebb and flow I travel and remain still
upon a rocky shoreline,
deep current and unending whole
Nine Dragons by Chen Rong, 12th Century
for Dave
In a time when words were like magic,
scintilla, igniting the soul’s spark,
when a person could become an animal
and an animal could shape shift into a man
the Self was an ever changing avatar,
evanescent, unfolding in the storm clouds
hidden in the firestick, a manifested paradox,
alchemical fantasy, a secret backbone,
I ruled the underworld, black as void
my blue flamed breath singeing flesh from skulls
ashen harbinger of death, bearer of detritus,
my treasures of regeneration well-guarded
my dragon form forged star glittering,
damp fiery, cold spirit in the heart
of a supermassive black hole, abyssal afrit,
my wisdom grew over millennia until
one drop of my blood
could transmute fragile flesh
into invincible skin
Notes: This piece is now linked to Meeting the Bar: Atmosphere at dVerse Poets Pub. When writing this poem I wanted to create a feeling of awe, fear, psychological tension, and transformation. To accomplish this I used diction that emphasizes these qualities as well as words that may not be as familiar to readers. My intent was for this exotic language to allow the reader to experience the unknown in the process of engaging the poem. In addition, the setting is darker and spans a great deal of time. Obviously, the environment is influenced by myth and displays a fantastical world. Using a first person persona and an authoritative voice adds to the incantatory feeling of the work which I felt would contribute to a sense of awe. Please let me know your thoughts and feelings about atmosphere and the tools that contribute or detract from it within this work.
Dave Yust Chromaxiologic Inclusion 27-6 1/1 2006
difficult unity of inclusion
contrasts the easy unity
of exclusion, a priori
philosophical stance
equiluminous color
makes visible the unseen,
unobservable phenomena
between something & nothing
broken catenary curves,
inextensible cable
suspended from two points,
a disbelief, a distraction
interplay of geometric
& biomorphic imagery:
complexity & contradiction
spontaneity & continuity
a process of inclusion
chromaxiologic exploration
quick shift in spacetime
to truncate thought
printmaking exemplification
fruitful liberation gained in
finding purpose through chromaphilia,
establishing relationships
Thought Experiment: begin with a cryptographic key life cycle where you function as the key
Key Life Cycle (in developmental phases)
Generation
give birth, bring forth ideas illuminated
in liquidity’s nourishing infrastructure
embody the symbols, imprint the genetic code
Distribution
produce without possession
envision freedom from rationality
educe a contradistinction
Storage
gather the cipher and the subtext
data amassed for encoding
integrate a secret sharing scheme
Usage
excel but do not lead your thoughts
breathe, decrypt the psychological schemas
act without premeditated expectation
Change
assimilate the workings of the universe
puzzle out an esemplastic solution
to unlock strategies of liberation
Destruction
allow entropy to overpower existence
witness the denaturing of mysterious virtue,
for all states are possible in the end
* This poem was influenced by the 10th Chapter (Pacifying the agitated, material soul) of Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu and is a companion piece to Feasting on Shadows. Chromatopia, LLC has just released its first two books of poetry: These Little Episodes and Signal from Static available in e-book and paperback.
I’m an Executive Director with a doctorate in education, a consultant, painter, photographer, composer, poet, and vocalist.
