Please use headphones and turn up the volume, both on your computer and YouTube to hear the audio, this is a spoken word poem. It is an erasure poem based on the 3rd chapter of The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana. I am hosting Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft today at dVerse Poets Pub where we will be exploring Erasure Poetry. There are tons of ways to approach the prompt so for further examples see here and here or visit others who’ve already posted their erasure poems today. Please don’t be intimidated by the visual aspects of this prompt, you may simply chose words from an existing text and post them (attributed) on your blog as you would any poem or you can incorporate white out, marker, paint or multimedia to create a visual aspect. I would love for you to join us later.
Category: Tribute
To join in Kelly’s birthday cyber-celebration of life I’ve posted a kaleidoscopic music video at Chromamisc. Also, I’ll be hosted Meeting the Bar at dVerse on Thursday; I would love to see you there.
Click on the picture to zoom
This is my poem for Open Link Night (up early) at dVerse Poets Pub.
Joe asked us this week to share where the inspiration for our poem came from so here goes: I was reading Keith Waldrop’s translation of Anne-Marie Albiach’s work yesterday morning and found an excellent review of Figured Image. I was drawn to doing something new with the inspiration I found in The Line The Loss. I admire her work a lot despite the fact that I can’t seem to embrace the flattening of language the underlying philosophy advocates. This poem was born out of those sources, The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse, my desire to paint and use Photoshop for this week’s offering, the fun of experimentation, remembering some artistic tools I’d used in a previous poem Apophenia & Creativity: A Kind of Self-Possession (the Train Wreck Rewrite), my dry wit, the inanity of transhumanism, and a deep and abiding love of language. Thank you, Joe, for asking!
Brief, brutal act
reenacted
ransacked pages
wrote love’s stages
their rages inked
taut cages wrought
here she first taught
what he sought out
she caught his core
James Joyce’s score
‘strange-eyed whore’, Nora –
jibdoor obscene
Letters unclean
to be seen, shown,
his keen mind blown
gifts to atone
she alone knew
his moan’s timbre
Written for Form for All at dVerse Poets Pub on Than Bauk http://dversepoets.com/2012/11/08/formforall-than-bauk/. James Joyce and Nora Barnacle’s erotic letters were the inspiration for this piece. A jibdoor is a door made flush with a wall without dressings or moldings and often disguised by continuing the finishings or decorations of the wall across its surface.
Abstract Picture 1990 Oil on Aluminum Gerhard Richter
for Gerhard Richter
everything is superimposed
on aluminum’s slick surface
an archeology of abstraction
your staggering oeuvre of
somatic/chromatic interactions
explicating tragic materiality
or sublime interiority
we can’t seem to decide
maybe neither can you
special effects concoctions,
of layered and lifted pigment
[art undergirded by ambiguity]
nonrepresentational artifacts
yet you speak of angels and ideas
of painting what cannot be seen
patterns, enigmatic marks,
squeegee scrape obliterations,
multifarious and complex
accidental processes
inconsistent/inconsequential views
untangle an idea of art
incoherent, absurd, disorienting
your ontological exploration
like the image in a mirror
is subtly duplicitous
exposing the artifice
to reveal the truth
Abstract Picture 1997 Oil on Aluminum Gerhard Richter
as if in tracing
a nonexistent line
you traverse past
an abyssal reflection
at the storied end
of your inner night
where is there to go
but onward?
perhaps painting has never
painted anything but itself –
what art is powerless to do
chance may intervene to manifest
is the image in the mirror you
or what you imagine about yourself?
Abstract Picture 1997 Oil on Aluminum Gerhard Richter
Linked to dVerse Poets Pub, hosted by Joe Hesch http://dversepoets.com/2012/10/09/open-link-night-65/
Magnolia Blossoms by Anna Montgomery
For Immanuel Kant
I persevere
in this shallow depth of field
art of perception
keeps me anchored,
floating in the halation
of your poetry
in the Japanese tea garden
I traverse the half-moon
bridge to nowhere
sublimity of the formless
blurred image becomes
my method of loci
memories of belonging
to you, to the world
through my embodied perspective
surround me
fingertips trace your shadows
phantoms cast in my peripheral vision
sensitivity amplified
to unbearable heights
all sounds are blown mute
left with complex silence
eidetic imagery of you
like the sun ghost
burning beneath closed lids
ephemeral spaces alight
in the tinted ambiguity
nuances of hue illuminate
this interplay of epiphenomena
as if an absence of psychology is possible
specificity of time and place diffuse
opposites now lose focus through erasure
circle of confusion defines my
travel without passage
aporia breaks the logic of identity
into a deep, silent wonder
no longer aware of my limitations
philosophical puzzles denature
self engulfs grand sensation
I am a boundless magnolia
celestial body, fertile,
[untranslatable]
without a cipher
ever distant/ever close
your immersion ignites
heat flushes my face
a sweet release
mystic union
encountering the limits of language
a border kissing the initiation of bliss
encompassing all, alone/together
as I was then, as I often am
seeing anew:
moral freedom is gained from conquering fear
here lies the hunger and the nourishment
heartbeat within and without
creative impulse and its fruition
I am forever mutable
melting in the presence of beauty
Posted in response to Claudia’s truly inspiring Meeting The Bar prompt on Beautiful Solitude: http://dversepoets.com/2012/09/20/meetingthebar-beautiful-solitude/
city kids huddle and chatter
uncertain on their first trip
into the wilds of Colorado
50 miles away from the light pollution
still visible on the horizon, a mimetic sunrise,
home where stars are mere points
human ingenuity competes
with constellations – they look skyward,
importing a perception shift
in daylight they used a compass
at night they are lost silhouettes,
lit by faintest moon,
soon to walk alone
flashlights extinguish,
vestiges of the city lights,
as counselors walk away
single file, at intervals,
becoming touchstones on the path
I’m the last one to leave, ‘look up’
Andromeda, Mensa, Cassiopeia,
Eagle Nebula and Butterfly Cluster
‘find your own star,
a focal point in the night sky,
one bright enough to find
when you return home . . .
wait until your eyes adjust
listen, I’ll call you to me’
there’s palpable tension,
faint traces of fear
ripe predecessor to awe
clouds of hot breath
infuse the air
feet shuffle –
an eternity
first student steps toward me,
tentatively, he tilts his head
‘Oh, it’s real, there –
Ms. Anna, I see it!’
everything is new
in the light of awareness,
an encaustic imprint
on the wax structure of his heart
expanding the possible,
intimating the existence
of his redemptive self
23 years later, a millisecond,
a fleeting thought
in the timespeak of the universe –
I float on the dark side of the mountain,
viewing our Milky Way
remembering his first time . . .
Written for Fred’s excellent Poetics prompt at dVerse Poets Pub on what else could it be but first times: http://dversepoets.com/2012/09/15/poetics-first-times/
Miyamoto Musashi Killing a Giant Nue by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
‘I have not followed the paths of other men. I have lived without the benefit of a teacher and by my own devices I became master of myself and thereby master of the sword and the brush never differentiating between any of these arts.’ – Musashi (1584-1645), Japanese Kensei, author of the Book of Five Rings
Fierce Shout: Before battle to unsettle the enemy!
Book of Earth
No man is invincible
there is only honor and dishonor,
his death written in the calligraphic ink of his study
Endeavor to know all things
becoming more aware of the world
an essential strategy to defeat the enemy
The work is more important than the worker
you are the spiritual conduit
become one who sees what cannot be seen
Book of Water
All life is the battlefield, focus your intent
the brushstrokes and strikes of practice
are not separate from their execution in life
Man and brush have one purpose
communion with the spirit of the thing, this is the
way of the warrior, sword embodying the soul of the samurai
Be as falling leaves, with no preconceived notions
Stab the heart with your expansive mind
Extend your spirit above the enemy
Fierce Shouts: Each time you strike, to maintain your resoluteness of spirit!
Book of Fire
In mortal combat you must fight to win
mean what you are doing, otherwise
you are performing tricks
Always control the enemy
keep him on the defensive, draw him to you,
be stronger in spirit and resolve
Cross the ravine with the courage of your convictions
impress your attitude upon the world
force imbalance, taking others by surprise
Book of Wind
Clever people do not understand
temperance of spirit, their tricks and false attitudes
are very dangerous to the uninformed mind
Do not be afraid to get in close
attack with power not strength
with quickness not speed
Your attitude at all times is to attack
practice with the spirit of killing the enemy
meditate on this way of strategy
Fierce Shout: In victory to honor the spirit of the thing itself!
Book of Mu (No-Thing)
The spirit of the universe is an emptiness
which is no-thing, man can have no
understanding of this place
Everything is revealed
to all men as they desire it to be revealed,
by their own definitions alone
True no-thing-ness is Mu,
the universe in relation to your art
and your art in relation to the universe
Everything is within, everything exists,
seek nothing outside yourself,
you are the spirit of the thing itself!
Tomb on Mount Iwato
‘With every note
of the mountain temple
sunset bell
sorrow arises as
day turns dark’*
*Japanese Woman Poet,
10th Century
Connected to the best pub on the web for poetic delights: http://dversepoets.com/2012/09/04/open-link-night-week-60/
For Sainkho Namtchylak and Claudia Schoenfeld
Experimenting mystic
at the junction of Cyberia’s culture
two notes/one sound
imitating nature’s call
Tuvan Khöömei youth
encounters Soviet Union
classical music education
creating a Lamaist jazz mantra:
I am the shaman of my life
rumbling spirit timbre emotes
through a seven octave range
the space of meaning and feelings
beat drives the insistent vocalizations
like wind echoing in Artic skies
forming the transformative art
of an intoned sense
groaning, guttural sound
grandmother city dweller
revisits the tundra of childhood
‘tender bird of timelessness
touches me with her wing’
intuiting secret sounds
that would not be taught
‘hidden chords of thought’
woman on the outside
even when looking within
bodhisattva cries as
‘my sleeping pulse awakens,
trembles in front of my eyes’
how can I keep from singing
resonating frequencies that pierce
illusory aspects of the self?
‘artificial addendum of the human voice’
making sense in this divine game
‘aural quintessence of the spiritual world’
giving voice to the sacred fire
developing the capacity to imagine
fullness arises from emptiness as
‘absolute harmony is born into silence’
*All quotes are Sainkho Namtchylak’s; Cyberia is the name of one of her albums
I find myself in a rage
Inhabiting the mythical sincerity
of a murdered poet (run over & over),
once seen as calculating and insincere
like a youth who doesn’t know anything about himself
Sides with the party but isn’t a member,
posits policemen are the true proletariat –
haunted by a father who saved Mussolini
except that he is new and rants against the old world.
Tries to express the viewpoint of the believer –
finds it hard to escape the self reflection
of the inner bourgeoisie, really, who wouldn’t?
Buys a castle in Viterbo, north of Rome,
illuminating the coprophagia of consumerism
in a film based on Sade’s 120 journées
I don’t hide this state of mine:
Poetry reduces to defense, compromise,
renunciation, naïveté that shrivels prestige –
how much reality can there be?
I never have peace, ever.*
* Pier Paolo Pasolini (Director, Poet, Philosopher)
Chromapoetica 