Creativity

Mirror Image

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Mirror Image
(on seeing the outline
of a painting on the reverse side
of my painted note-book page)

What price these corkscrew lines,
reversed, seen through a glass, darkly,
the wrong side of a tapestry,
all twisted threads and imaginings,
no clear pattern of thought
or design, as if designated by an errant
hand and signed by a man with a mission
to bewilder, confuse, muddle, shock,
turn inside out, back to front, upside down
all our notions of what is what,
and who is when, and why, and where?

Yet there is meaning to this madness,
a sense of a blind man trapped underground
in the labyrinth of his darkened mind
with only a thin thread of belief
to guide him, upwards and outwards,
away from the torrid torment of doused flames,
the damp spark’s midnight glow,
the search for substance in a new world,
insubstantial in a neologism, whirled
through inner spaces and spun, guileful,
out of the back of the hand to spin,
this way, that way, who knows which way,
according to the moment of delivery,
the angle of acceptance,
the untrained brain of the recipient,
tottering on the brink of a world
with a definite end: the suicide of logic.

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Dalí ‘s Clock

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Dalí ‘s Clock
Salvador Dalí

A clock, a sheet hung out, strung out,
on a canvas washing line. No wind,
no pegs, soon to be sun-bleached, dried,
then folded in on itself, corner to corner
the sheet, and the watch, how will it fold?

Face to face, in half circles, perhaps, or
back-to-back with time cut in half, a tick
without its companion tock, a stutter of time,
halved, then quartered, then in an eighth,
a quesadilla of broken springs and tiny
wheels within wheels, all disjointed,
with glass fragmenting, shattering.

While we watch, our clockwork universe
disintegrates before our eyes, in a tiny
explosion as all chronological creation
implodes into a logic of carnival, absurd
our words and world, devoid of meaning,
a pocket-watch going over a waterfall,
a timepiece soon to break into rusty pieces,
painted by a man who dreams he isn’t mad.

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Hollyhock

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Still Life with Hollyhock
for
Geoff Slater
the inventor of line painting

How do you frame this beaver pond,
those paths, those woods? How do you
know what to leave, what to choose?
Where does light begin and darkness end?

Up and down: two dimensions. Easy.
But where does depth come from?
Or the tactility, the energy, water’s
flow, that rush of breathless movement
that transcends the painting’s stillness?

So many questions, so few answers.
The hollyhock that blooms in my kitchen
is not a real hollyhock. It is the painting
of a photo of a genuine flower that once
upon a time flourished in my garden.

A still life, then, a nature morte, a dead
nature, portrayed in paint and hung alive,
on display in this coffin’s wooden frame.

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Man of Glass

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Man of Glass
After El Licenciado Vidriera
(Miguel de Cervantes)

“I am made of glass,” I said.
“You can see right through me.”

But the harder you looked,
the less you saw.
You claimed
there was nothing there,
just empty air.

“Your glass is an illusion,” you said.
“It’s not half full
and it’s not half empty.”

“Glass is fragile,
I break easily.
Drop me, I shatter;
hot and cold will
make me crack.”

“Your fragility is in your mind,
not in the fact of your existence.”

“When light passes through me
I break into a million colors,”
I said.

“You are a prism,
the colors that you cast
change you and rain
rainbow lights
that change others
too.”

“That’s because,” I said,
“I’m made of glass.”

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International Book Day

23 April 1616 > 23 April 2021
International Book Day.

Today we celebrate the anniversary of the deaths of three great writers: el Inca Garcilasso de la Vega (Comentarios Reales, Peru), William Shakespeare (poetry and plays, England), and Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote and so much more, Spain).

Our hibiscus decided to issue its first official blossom of the year, just to help us all celebrate this day.

Fire

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Fire

Fire
a double-edged sword

Fire
the beginning
and fire the end

Fire
the means of forging
the Omega and Alpha
that surround us
day by day

Fire
surrounds us
but leads us
nowhere

we must create
our own path through
Fire
to the life beyond
Fire

so many things
to save from
Fire

so many things
to be consumed by
Fire and flame

only a fiercer Fire
will free us from
will put an end to
Fire

Potholes and Portholes

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Potholes and Portholes

My poems are drawn from my life,
not from the lives of others.

I live my words,
drawing them wriggling
through the holes
punched by others in my flesh.

Pot-holes,
portals to the underworld,
so many cars
slithering in spring’s freshet
melt of tarmac and metal flesh.

Portholes:
so many ships,
leaving port,
sailing away
into unknown seas
well beyond my ken.

Golden Angel


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Golden Angel

He stands beneath guardian trees,
his saffron garments glossed with gold.

Hands cupped, body bent,
he softly swells as he dips
beneath sun and rain.

He speaks to me:
wild prophet from an ancestral book
that I believed in when I was a child,
but no longer read or understand.

I try to interpret the aroma of his lips,
his slow, small growth of gesture.

His winged words are traps
tripping my tongue, clipping my wings,
preventing me from flight.

Shape-shifter, she changes before my eyes
and takes on her earthly disguise.

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Charles Baudelaire

A butterfly perches on Les Fleurs du Mal.

Charles Baudelaire

He walks past the Jesuit Church
where the shoe-shine boys store
polish, brushes, and chairs overnight.
He walks past the wrought-iron bench
where the gay guys sit, caressing,
asking the unsuspecting to join them.

Nobody asks Charles for a match,
for a drink, for charity, for a walk
down the alley to a cheap hotel.

The witch doctor is the one who stops
the hands on all the clocks at midnight.
He’s the one who leaves this place,
and returns to this place, all places being one.
The witch doctor sees little things
that other men don’t see. He reaches out
and flicks a fly from Charles’s nose.
“I too have lost my way,” it sighs.

Charles thinks he knows who he is,
but sometimes he wonders when he shaves,
rasping the razor across his chin’s dry husks.
The witch doctor, his lookalike, his twin,
stares back at him from the bathroom mirror.
Three witches dance on the waning soap dish.
One spins the yarn, one measures the cloth,
one wields the knife, that will one day sever
the thread of all poor creatures born to die.

Oh hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère.

Northern Lights

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Northern Lights

Old man looks out of his window.
Falling leaves twist like they did in his childhood.
They spread bronzed carpets across the lawn.
His granddaughter stands by the flowerbed,
squeezing fall’s last blossoms,
turning them into perfume.

Dandelions clutter Old Man’s lawn.
Last summer he lost the strength and will
to stoop down and root them out.
In dreams, Old Man’s spirit tries to escape
and wander through celestial pastures.
For a moment, stars shine brighter
as a new spark adorns the sky.

Walking through the Aurora Borealis,
he understands the way to weave rainbows
from ribbons of color and floating light.
Old Man knows he must share this knowledge.
One day he will share his secret with this child.