Eternity imprinted in the spiraling twist
Heritage of pain and love
Your unique expression
Dark flowers in winter
Half glimpsed illuminations
Survivor of the crucible
Soul polished by hard rock
The patterns the same
Look closely
Deep into the variegated petals
The glory of its art revealed
Yes, mother, I will seek to understand
You have given me sight-
Breath-
A living heart…
Crossing the threshold
Between dream and reality
A hypnopompic state
Orienting to a more stable country
Yet still present to resonant images
Of the internal space
The artist is a liminal being
Caught between the muse and a self
Venturing out even in daylight
An avatar in a virtual world
Disoriented by its double life
Artists require apotropaic magic
To make it back intact
Whole and capable of translation
Dangers faced by mystics,
Long lost in ecstasies –
A logorrheic tongue
The dreamer never wakes
We set a time and place
Compass points in
an unending universe
It seems an easy thing
Finding you
Finding anything
The key is to be specific
Terra Firma
Objects in space
An embodied individual
But perception tilts,
The round world spins
What if string theory is only a beginning?
The shifting known
The ever present unknown
I believe in this future
One event after another
To keep a fragile mind fixed somewhere
They tell me there is no central intelligence
No consciousness observing,
overseeing the multifaceted psyche
No woman in the theater of the mind
Watching the movie of my life
So limited by my senses –
On second thought, it may be a miracle to meet you
On any road, anywhere, at any time
If I rejoice you’ll forgive me
These simple, containable plans
Go marching into the wild
To the deepest unknowns.
We were standing in the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Here are painters who want to communicate
They show up on their canvases
Emotive, sensual, engaging,
Pouring over the edges with ideas
They are Hydrogen, capable
Of the complex chain of reactions
Required to fuel a galaxy
Rauschenberg, Mitchell, de Kooning
All Hydrogen molecules
Dancing, spinning, arguing
Contrasting the inert gasses across the hall
Nonreactive as Krypton,
From kryptos, “the hidden one”
It is actually a skill,
This art of invitation
Creating works capable of fusion
Viewer, artist, and painting,
Conspiring toward explosions
A dangerous, naked,
And frightening proposition
Can you blame the countless artists,
Hiding behind flat surfaces,
Incapable of combustion,
Unable to make the invitation?
I’m an Executive Director with a doctorate in education, a consultant, painter, photographer, composer, poet, and vocalist.
Chromapoetica 