Spirit of Boo
So, I can’t draw dogs, nor people, nor reality. But I can draw spirits, and moods, and emotions. This is NOT my neighbors’ dog. It is the spirit of their dog: energy, joy, happiness, and total and complete love. What more could a doggy want or an artist, however useless, do.
Boo: I salute you.
Woof!
Original drawing, dated 9 August 2014, can be found in my drawing notebook of that year. I used it as a model for the painting, was completed on Tuesday, 30 November 2021.
Art from the Heart
Just out today, thanks to my good friend Jared who turned a difficult task into a simple one. And yes, this is my first art book, though there are two more, at least, to come. Thanks to Patti too for the delightful portrait of the author as a flower-child. That was some time ago. This is a very limited edition. Best friends only – BFF. NB The photos are rotten. I apologize for that. However, the cartoons are very special. Here are the two on Climate Change, much debated, sometimes denied, but all too true for this poor snowman.
Climate Change
aka
“I won’t believe in climate change until April or May.”
April May be Too Late.
Again, the book is fine.
My photos are shaky!
Song without Words
I wanted to sing you a song
to keep you alive
but you slipped through my fingers
and fled from my sight
I still sense your presence
but no longer know
the shape of your face
your voice on the phone
unique unforgettable,
a voice without face
voiceless and faceless
fleshless yet graceful
just what you were
a presence a spirit
a force in my life
a grey fleshless shadow
a mist in my mind
I know I never knew you
two different worlds
a world without music
a song without words
my love song to you
however absurd
Remembrance Day
Memories deceive me with their falsehoods, flashing
shadow shapes, shifting with a move of the fingers,
dog into man, shift, man into a frightened mouse,
squeaking, like the ungreased iron-rimmed wheels
on a farm-cart with its load of hay and snapping dogs.
Watch out for the horse’s sideways kick, for the sting
of the farmer’s cruel whip, for the dogs’ white teeth.
What magic lantern now slips its subtle slides
across night’s screen? Desperate I lap at salt-licks
of false hope that increase my thirst and drive me
deeper into thick, black, tumultuous clouds.
My grandfather in the trenches, drenched in a gas cloud,
groping, choking, invalided home, returning, so brave,
to face that gas grave again and again, only to cough up
the last of his tortured lungs thirty years later. I remember
him bent over the table, struggling for breath, balancing
his hesitant life against an immanent death. Today it is
so different. A pandemic storm lays waste to memories
that dog my mind. At night a black dog hounds me, sends
my head spinning, makes me chase my own tail, round
and round. It snaps at dreams, shadows, ghosts of family
members who drift, slowly fading, through my mind.
I try to track them through Ancestry, through Tarot Cards
and Tea Leaves but they are all lost in a Mad Hatter’s
illusion of a dormouse adrift in a teapot in an unkempt
nursery rhyme of a tail within a tale and hunter home
from Caer-Filthy hill, I return to find my house empty,
my deserted body devastated, my future a foretold mess.
Night and Day Dreams
Someone stole the nose from a sacred statue.
He placed it on his face and I watch it
as it crosses the central square.
A moving shadow: zopilote flies high above.
I talked to him once on a midnight bus.
He begged me to fold his wings
and let him sleep forever.
The balloon lady sells tins of watery soap.
Children, newly released from school,
fill my days with enchantments.
They blow soap bubbles, tiny globes,
circular rainbows, born from a magic ring.
The voices in my head slip slowly into silence.
Some nights I think they have no need of me,
these dreams that arrive in the early hours
and knock at my window.
When morning comes, I watch them fade
and then I know they cannot live without me.
When I am gone, they will go too.
Click on this link for the original poem.
https://wordpress.com/post/rogermoorepoet.com/23643
Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Night and Day Dreams
Striations
There are striations
in my heart, so deep,
a lizard could lie there,
unseen, and wait
for tomorrow’s sun.
A knot of
sorrow in daylight’s throat;
the heart a great stone
cast in placid water,
each ripple
knitted to its mate.
Timeless,
the worm at the apple’s core
waiting for its world to end.
Seculae seculorum:
the centuries
rushing headlong.
Matins:
wide-eyed
this owl hooting
in the face of day.
Somewhere,
I remember
a table spread for two.
Breakfast.
An open door.
“Where are you going, dear?”
Something bright has fled the world.
The sun unfurls shadows.
The blood whirls stars
around the body.
“It has gone.” she said. “The magic.
I no longer tremble at your touch.”
You can drown now
in this liquid
silence.
Or you can rage against this slow snow
whitening the dark space
where yesterday
you placed your friend.
The silver birch wades
at dawn’s bright edge.
Somewhere,
sunshine will break
a delphinium
into blossom.
Tight lips.
A blaze of anger.
A challenge spat
in the wind’s face.
High-pitched
the rabbit’s grief
in its silver snare.
The midnight moon
deep in a trance.
If only I could kick away
this death’s head,
this sow’s bladder.
Full moon
drifting
high in a cloudless sky.
A Golden Oldie
Click on this link for the original post
Worm Squirm
I have been revising lots of mss. but haven’t done anything new, apart from revisions and paintings. Very little has appeared on my blog recently and this is the first post after an absence of five days. Oh dear. Facebook has been barren too. Still: can’t be helped. Better days are on the way.
Here’s Worm Squirm. It’s part of my series of Pocket Paintings / Peintures de Poche, so-called because they all fit neatly in a pocket. They are easy to carry around and yes, I have something bright to look at, even when the skies are grey. Inner grey or outer grey, there’s nothing worse than a grey day. Everybody needs a spot of painted sunshine to brighten a grey day when it dawns.
It’s been a great year for painting foliage, too. Nothing better than to carry a pocketful of painted leaves to remind you of the natural beauties of our picture province. So make it a sunshine day, even if the skies are grey!
Songs of Praise
Who has seen the early spring wind drifting
its thought-clouds across the grass, moving
shadows over the lawn’s green, thrusting spikes.
Sometimes, I speak my thoughts aloud, hoping
that nobody can hear or see them as they leave
migratory footsteps across my mind.
Autumn now and I watch the wind twist
leaves from the tree. Yellow and red,
they flee from me. I do not understand
their reluctance to stay, their urge to tear
away and leave. The birds must leave for they
cannot bear the cold, cannot stay without food.
At night, when I close the garage door, I sing
hymns to the trees and to him who always hears.
Each note forms like a pea in the pod of my throat
and launches itself skywards, migrating upwards,
in a feathered flock that celebrates in songs.
Words, migrant birds, their flight unplanned,
will not stay still, will neither perch, nor gather,
nor feed from the outstretched hand.
Late Fall
Late fall with falling leaves,
trees stripped wind-blown bare,
and winter drawing close.
The huntsman, the archer,
the Cerne Abbas Giant,
Hercules and his club
walking high in the sky, a dog
forever at their heels, ever faithful,
ever true. Star-jewels line his belt,
where the star-sword swings,
the bow, and all his magnificence
displayed before us.
Bow down before him and rejoice.
The year is turning,
or has turned and we are turning
with it. Back to our pasts,
on to our futures, or else we stand
here, gazing skywards,
our feet mired in the present,
minds locked, nowhere to go.
Pierre & Blanche
They are not as inanimate as you might suspect. This is where I found them this morning. [up] This is where they started out last night. [down] Don’t ask me, I know nothing about it.
