Artist leaving residence

The artist leaves the building.
This time he is
wrapping up
his canvases, colors, and
hairy implements.

He loads and stacks,
lines and lays his tiles, some gently
until tightly packed
for transport.

Some of them,
he jams in just seeming
to fill in
any open spaces he sees.

His neighbor, the lady
living below him,
paints furiously-impressionism,
she is no artist.

She tries to finish
her own piece
before he is gone-
before all falls muted,

from above.
Heaven forbid,
the muse is moving on
to another scene, landscape

perch, set of white walls,
half empty canvases,
or another artistic
aesthetic altogether.

Painting by Thomas Prichard Rossiter, 'A Studio Reception, Paris' c. 1841,[CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Found art

Another day rolls by
                             and I
along with it
                             incubate.

I try
to focus
on a
single
spoke
           in the blur of spin
one catches
                    light,
and squeezes
it
into
sound
            high above
the audible range
            one carries a note,
and belts out
                      lashing with it,
create, wait, create, wait, create, wait
                      bare-backed
swinging both ways,

naturally
and only
                     through the gait
                     known distinctly
as your
body
and work
as an address.
                     
A watch swings alongside
reminding me of the beat.

It is time to hibernate.

I count the cat's eyes
           staggered and lining up
in the middle of the street
until the glare
broke
into poetic little pieces
like litter.





Artwork by Robert Delaunay [Public domain], 'The Tower and the Wheel' c. 1912-1913, located in the Museum of Modern Art.

Unfinished forms

The turned ankle
at this angle
a jaw line, the hip
parabola evocative of
obtuse angles and petals-
or leaves could be open
to holding light in colors

the movement blends
on the page, the note
hangs on the sheet-

precarious-
ly awaiting harmony
of echoes like blur and hum
where sound escapes crashing
into narrow canals, omitting any
consonants collected in the
folded corners

melt and fade under the sun
goldenrods spearing silver weeds-
maybe shadows will go there
and settle in

to stretching the fibers
into a conversation with object
and subject
interrupted by
chime and shape
to fit in

the picture would never

what it was
only what could be.





Image by John Singer Sargent, Study of Mme Gautreau c. 1884 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Exhibiting

Funny thing is
like love,
and other sudden
appearances

One is easily taken up
with the obvious Now
and yet indescribable
Then
and
That

feeling of
reconciliation
along with a benevolent
contentment
arisen
impromptu

That is
the feeling
in the right place
at the right time
to see
differently

As in the gallery
where windows were mirrors
and so the first
reflection where I recognized
myself

captured and mute
yet framed this way,
in the best light
there was Time.



Image credited by BurgererSF [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons.

Summary of a shadowed moon

Struck with a new Idea,
I held onto it like a treasure map,
rolled up,
with the lines inside.

I carried it around
so long, wrinkles
were inevitable,
weathering and what not
made it fade.

After revisiting this place
I am lost a little,
afraid to start
wrong,
I fear it will not become
as I thought I remembered...

No mark would be made,
no footstep
impressed,
unless
anywhere I begin becomes
a starting point
that vanishes...

which made it obvious
to fill the space,
flooding it in white
so I could build it
by taking away.


Photograph credited by Jon Sullivan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Treasures of a culture

Fire and glass reflected as smoke in mirrors.

A fork in the road, litter, like this wrapper, bottle, vessel, hand tools.

Artisan: colored ink, in part cursive curls, heartfelt loops, and snares,

we wrapped, and rapped, enrapt and bound ourselves.

Every opening begins with Roman squares, agoras, and edges

worn blurry and thin by so many eyes through ages, brittle

print-finger smudges to be dusted and all the while,

porous rocks erode into grainy pixel flashes, storage

boxes stack up, clouds let go, and by marrow

calcification holds together

bricks of pressed clay
                                     -for shelter is always a wall.

Supporting para-graphs, columns, and beams-by

lighted button codes:
green, go, yellow, slow, red, blood, blue screen of death,

only to touch here, like plucked strings
of stereocilia stimulating

goosebumps in sound waves that wash over us in wet streams.

Eye contact, nerve endings, radiant warmth from a mortal smile,
laser focus, photography un-posed, unprepared, ad-libbing and adding

depth of perception, this is us-

Totaled and broken down to the smallest things

in order to count the time more accurately

in minute fractions of eternity,

Well, this is why we bury things. 




Photo credit By Max Peronius (1907-1946), Tankavaara c. 1934 in[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Passages

Time

takes the toll,

giving change for our large bills

and admits passage 

but offers no return policy.

Make Time to Meditate.

Who makes time? I have an order. 

Empty. Thoughts.

Does one miss arguing with oneself

until none win?

The walls are over-crowded with imagery.

It was me-I put the elephant in the room 

who is 

holding a candle on a cloud, 

his shadow is only flat. 

Tell me again-

What is mine is ours-

With these words-

Let no thing

remain behind but a poem

After thought 

and plane shadows on clock faces. 

Bare Essentialism

When we speak of

Ars Moriendi

You and I are finally getting somewhere,

beautiful.

When the Poet dies-finally-

The poem is freed.

The libertine line advances

meaning, perspective.

Morals are not the main characters,

plot is where we were going,

a scene made, is setting,

is a container, set and broken down,

a frame to hold all the pieces

to gather in one assemblage

and enable anyone to walk around.

Implicating exclusion by category, genre,

red and not read,

unbounded through decohesion, 

letting leaves fly-

Well

we must determine-

To finish or decompose.

After all This

Art is all that remains after speech,

after thought, in memoriam,

the pictures point and the words paint

only where there is

Life. 

We recognize these reflections

and find them beautiful. 

Painting by William Orpen, Reflection in mirror c. 1917 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

kindling

Dirac asked Oppenheimer,
how in the world he could practice physics-
theoretically and simultaneously pen poetry
when one is aimed at the succinct center,
the concisest way
to phrase the nature of things
in the most approachable,
graspable way....

It could have been rhetorical or figuratively
proposed in such and such a way as Dirac
may say 'applicable',
and Oppenheimer might reply by
giving him an apple, alleging
he is the fairest of all
that are ripe.

These translations into a broader spectrum
of greater visibility from the sides, specifically
and beneath, the poet speaks in waves of ultraviolet
and enunciates his infrared best
when he said
experimental imagery was everything that
could be hypothesis-like this...

And making up metaphors as a means
to sight ones sources makes
Science sing
the song of itself in harmony
when it silences the man interrupting
the synesthesia
with perceptive interference.


Photo credit By ENERGY.GOV (HD.4G.028), J. Robert Oppenheimer in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

I was framed

Words wouldn't come
so I went with paint,
but the body was too thick
and the primaries screamed
even when kept apart

Those threads I cannot read
through
the prepositions and problems
drama and canvas scenes

in media res, centripetal
room at the edges
so bubbles don't pop
as tempting as black is

Purple pretends perception
like lines of sight
the same lines that bind
up brains and I's
omnisciently we see,
underneath it was red,

with light
become plane as day,
in a literal sense.



Arttwork By Michael Sevier (illustrator) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Post Art-i-fact-o

What happened in here?

They All asked

they made Art

with what they found

with new found Purpose

They said

let us try to Make

something of This

you See more than many

Depth, behind or beyond Being inside

your Time

Frame.

What happened was-All reaction,

I’s further upon reflection,

absorb color theory, insistent as Form,

stole shape of an idea and Acts upon it.

It happens.

not all see it.

that way more for us

to take in and make out. 

Painting by Władysław Malecki (1883) (cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Miss Agnes Martin

And Agnes spoke.

After all she had seen 

                            and failed to portray accurately

“It seems to me, I am a greater destroyer than creator.”

The inspiration more reverent in potential than intellect

She suffered it seems.

The quiet part 

                                 a-part 

from the living with her art.

Agnes assembled some reason,

with color and line, like us, listening for the tone.

A message was delivered via postage stamp imagery, 

she found this in the box with the red flag

                                           too tiny to see.

So she was required to extrapolate 

and re-scale 

to make larger

than the letter

addressed to Resident.

Perfection, as though always made the same-

This one template mistranslated 

                                                 in the corners.

The migration from idea to ideal,

lost in most blending, space, silence, room, makes too much

semblance, geometrically so much more than medium.

All that

depends upon a nail, a red wheelbarrow and leaf capacity and

a multiplicity of task or cause.

Yes, Agnes knew her arithmetic.

And Agnes tried to forget rules, axioms, theorems

and the half charged radii she never saw as encompassing.

Less can be greater than

too much inspiration.

Agnes said the envelope was empty

but she received the message.

I know, I sent it. 

Hand me downs

I never claim to know is mine, 

                                                     alone.

Perhaps it is a preference of plagiarism,

a nose for improper prose,

an insatiable appetite for 

all ilks of altruistic anthema

I could not think 

of a better wheel design.

We have learned.

Where there is smoke was once

                                                    on fire.

Needs and devours

as borrowed without interest.

Solutions are simple echoes, 

                                                   echoes

what you said you heard

and comes back if it hits the right note

accord.

You know how others wrought words 

                                                    work

more harmonized than mine, 

in truth themselves together 

as wording that works

for real-ity-itty-bity life-like

                                             Projects

and Practice.

By stretch of imagination or by the life-

span of a metaphor

                                                    by suspension 

and leaps

abound archaic and built to last

for a time-as taut truth

entwined in tension.

Look 

out. 

Given eyes 

                                                    to see, 

Only art may remind us why

color is requisite to sight.

And why white space is free 

breath. 

To covet a glance, off the top 

take without change 

of rubberized opinion

or overcharge for overdrawn spirituality

                                                    from a paper One.

I imagine 

remembering clearly-

                            some scattered lines of poetry

in tangled threads, 

rags over-stiched spines, 

poets opine over each others

dead bodies doing it wrong

turning the soil, lying there

and re-cultivating the Garden of

                                                   I Will

re-Discover.

                                          Know only 

slowly may one go

to pull open space we need

vacancies never free, but insist

on appearance and flow from Others 

Currents

pulled into time by tide. 

                                           Drifters

we are all sifters, thieves 

of sureness,

presenters of possibilities,

tailors 

                                           of time-

space,

altering whose in whose

reality-one time, 

rerunning reminiscences

and savoring our own essence

familiar

in-decadence in fortitude

never mine in any time-frame

                                           alone.

Image By Charles Robinson (The Happy Prince and Other Tales) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Squiggly lines

Draw the wind for me

                                             That is a line

This is a wave

                                             It is a cloud

it is not raining

                                             It is floating

It doesn't resemble energy to me

Because it can fall or disappear

If I cannot see it, it is not there

                                             What do shadows show

Movement

                                   You must move-first to see 

I see stillness, yes

                                   this second, do I breathe

Alive, you must Be.

Not imagine

                                   show me the difference

where water and air masses separate 

conglomerate as clouds 

                                   demonstrating the movement

of nothing.

No thing                     that floats.

Now your turn to draw the water

                              well are not those tears 

Artwork By Вера Владимировна Хлебникова (1891—1941) ([1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Escher the MC

From up here
you can tell where you are
by referencing a point
from the angles and eaves,
the director boomed in-
action, following my line
Alice watches her head
so she misses the low
hang-over and re-echoes
shown here as shadows
shaking in the corners.

It's all the same, anywhere
you begin, there is no easy out.

Canvas the scene, he challenges
placement and position for Pandora
in an artists annex, up in the Atticus
where the finches have nested,
the view is the same slanted
song with its linear lyrics,
stacked and overlapping
shingles, evermans jingles
trading timberline
for roofscapes
envisioned as eternity.

It's all the same anyway
you look at it.




Photo by Danilo Škofič, taken 2/10/1961 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Canvassing the scene

Perhaps it is only when we paint
that we can taste each dash of color
on our palette.
Like when we listen
to silence
and find none.
And where we see
almighty vistas
and are awed in a splendor,
agape at the sheer place
of our infinitesimalness.

If you close your eyes and exhale-
notice, the black dissipates...
The volume condenses
to more than a sense
of some thing.
And when you look again,
it is evermore,
 the first time you've seen
this way.
That is
a work of art.




Painting by Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Alpha-betting on-Omega

All whole words are concocted symbols
lines scrawled to convey meaning
not unlike painting,
sweeping strokes of generalities
whet form into abstract impressions
desist and seize definition.

A collector of rare words
admires antiquated articulations
and such-and so forth
forms thought into projections
as aroma refuses to go unnoticed
inoculating ideas, contagion cures.

To say the words aloud, incant
taste the tone on the tongue, palatable
digesting the dreams of others
does wonders.
Look (it) up.

It is alchemy really.
If you have dined around
the periodic table, you know
letters combine
to become more than themselves,
explosive elixirs
of ionic interpretations.

I get the Impressionism
and I objectivist
for surrealism, cubed.
Post-pop abstracted
Neo-classical characters,
re-defined and framed
a sentence for Life.




Image of artwork By Coles Phillips [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

After All Art (Tanka)

Make haste with your art
Make it say what you cannot
utter, honestly
hurry-I worry we won't
make it-we won't, after all.













Image of painting by József Borsos,The Dissatisfied Painter (Crisis in the Life of a Painter), 1852 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The possibilities of a fractal

The way I see it-

art contains real magic.

Like blinking, or like an automaton,-always on.

Projecting its wizardry when no one’s there to see it.

A child is a miracle-

of busy blurred lines.

Making it difficult for others to focus on them directly,

blinded by their angelic buzz of innate electricity.

Art is the grandchild of God-

or whatever grand-father you Believe in.

It’s immaculate conception and delivery are born proof,

of a source, the straw that was pulled, the ignition point.

We are the ghosts of our grandchildren.

Now.

We have to pave the way, clearing our Karmic path

to Here.

Art arrests shape-

holds it captive-

to represent-

likeness-ness.

Our family tree,

rooted in our orchards of History,

bears ripe fruit of juicy inspiration,

tastes like sweet familiar childhood in the shape of a fractal.

Image By Randomness (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons, 'Fractal face of Beauty, 2008'.

After all

After doing some research

               in Philosophy and Being-

I came to conceptualize,

               thinking is pro-verbial.

After looking closer into,

                and reflecting upon what is Beauty-

I came to see,

                I bear no resemblance.

After debating what is Truth,

                the subjective and absolute,

I came to understand-

                people don't like its sound.

After feeling lost-

                from seeking and pursuing Happiness,

I came to find-

                it's a place that cannot be found.

After digging deeper into History,

                beneath the surface, between the lines-

I came to discover

                the past is exactly where it was supposed to Be.

After searching for the meaning

                of art, music, and goosebumps-

I knew,

                no definition was required.

After pondering all these

                baffling banalities and easily explained enigmas-

I realized,

                the art that is poetry is unexplainably the most beautiful music after all. 

Image by Antonio de Pereda, (c.1636) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. "allegory of Vanity".