The following drawings were made in preparation for the publication of Clouds, leaves, waves., they are dated 1996 and there are differing sizes in 5 different sets, they are different media as ink, and flash acrylic on arches, also pencil.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Clouds, leaves, waves. 1992
1992
The Villa of the Sun
The Villa is in the setting sun.
The sublime comes down, to this--
a blank in our eye,
refusing.
a cycle of frescoes
the remembered pieces, in broken
thoughts...
thoughts...
the sublime comes down--
to this
to this
bread
and wine, a few scraps scattered
and wine, a few scraps scattered
The seasons of an idea, the weather
changes, a different mix,
off into the distance
Haunting memories of
Pompeii, in the sun
(a certain quality, a special red
pigment fading)
reminds one of
our loss
of the sacred.
of the sacred.
flaking paint, the grey grid
restored, then disintegrating--
the fragmented broken pieces.
The hardened crystal, signaling
some Supreme Fiction!
drifting, beyond
to be created anew, Land for Sale!
maybe, go out ‘west’--
Crispin sings the credence
the moment
the moment
somehow grasped!
the very sun’s extinguishing...
Sapphires flash in the central sky,
An affair of places.
Out west, start over, having failed.
Needing the sun out west,
I think I’ll go out west.
Getting out of the car to make a picture of this.
The degeneration or heightening
of a thing, to a metaphor.
A distance from immediate hope
of being-- in the moment
The crystal seeing--
the being in the sun, experiencing
the things as they are--
heightened-- through thought
then, the realization of loss
and wanting to build out of memory
a revisioning, ordering, abstracting --
From what is always
changing, dying--
changing, dying--
that abstracting distance
from any original.
Shade toward a dreaming, the floating idea
to be rebuilt, (the Villa idea)
refurbished in some mythic distance
Love, is a yearning
to be one,
with a separation we feel
we are fallen from,
a search for connection,
forestalling death, loss
between ourselves and nature
a hopeful reason, for Art--
In a whirl
a rope, swirl
pots, the flowers burnt in the sun
pots, the flowers burnt in the sun
swallowed up into the sky
a grid appearing, the wall flaking
crumbles, starts to fall--
fail
fail
A fiction composed upon the wall.
The wall breaks
loose,
loose,
The space opening--
LOOK-- alone, shh!
there!--
a ROSEate Spoonbill bird Ahh...!
My fellow, a god to me!
Absurd!
A mirror. I look into
realizing
our endangered... minds.
How dark we have, become
It’s late, we’re naked and
We have no home to love.
in a paradise, we’ve lost
there, in the distance--
A desire,
At this late hour.
At this late hour.
Clouds, leaves, waves. 1991
1991
The Singer of the Sun
the waking surface of reality
stain
reaching
toward a surface.
in some transcendence felt--
Our mind’s shape
structuring language,
painting, a stain--
toward a surface, becoming
song of the Sun
blinking,
a thought
brought into an idea
held up to the sun
then, continuing a circle--
4.
The Romantic campaign
enacting a horizon.
The heartened hero’s tour
bringer of new reality.
You presented to me, you--
You, fish-shaped island,
Paumanok.
A flower, a shell.
suns and planets
life and death.
a world, revolving-- objects
past and futures
constant merger, into day.
leaving down a fairy trail.
dreaming the earth.
unequaled poet,
the supreme lover of the earth.
We exist in a dumbfounding abyss
between ourselves and the object--
this is our un-navigable sea.
The poet in the sun,
the central poet
I and means kind-- human kind
heightened, a Supreme Fiction,
noble rider sounding words,
the Real Me in the sun
reclaimed for earth,
music of the things
a part of one’s world,
16.
The giant, the hero revealed
as we, the Real Me, the Imagination--
the other self strolls,
Painting sunflowers,
rereading Van Gogh’s letters
(Vincent was reading, Whitman
as he painted starry nights
and sunflowers by day.)
Walt wrote poems here by the bay
where sunflowers were painted,
Vincent and Walt, singing and
drawing by eye,
planting sunflowers, the way
across America.
My Barcelona Neck, ...land for sale.
26.
The trouper, afoot with fancy,
diamonds glinting, jangling bright
the Big Dipper climbing
the hump of Barcelona Neck.
What wine does one drink?
What bread does one eat?
shells are strung on a rope
gathered at the shore,
stringing together,
picks up a shell, arranges a flower--
staring at the white wall.
this still life, altar of flowers,
finds shells on the shore,
reads the poetry of life and death
in the sunset, red, passing
how does one stand to behold
this simple sublime, descending--
red reality oranges, greener grass,
purpling clouds to black
idea in summer.
The poem, the self, the same
passage into Autumn
into the Sun itself.
Arcturus blinks.
Clouds, leaves, waves. 1990
1990
The Seasons
cycles flash--
repeating the round,
There is reality where
memory of life and the moment
are one, looking forward.
a turning point,
through seasons
Is there a height
possible? maybe a geographic move
to the outside,
this subconscious-- a crutch?
framing the present with
the past and future
Spring through Winter
clouds, leaves, waves-- shells
gather, swirling in clouds, circling
through leaves, passage...
the journey
the wind of time
in reeds, gyres of...
repeating a mantra
coming towards one,
bang-- the day
a colored classic, up front
close, living now!
the still life tumbles
shells, sunflowers, circling rope
the vase breaking, change and
decline from
the immediate moment
Autumn, the fall-- the comedian leaving
winter’s dreams and wandering
Crispin self,
Sunflowers on his breast,
incarnations of an inner frost
are hidden. The mask
summons a shield,
imagination-- suggesting
red diamonds set in yellow sun.
Stop!
vertical gasp, creates a height--
possibility
of a returning idea
as the earth each day, returning
from night into light.
now arise
tripping
through the day, seeking Sun--
diamond’s sun and the
spiraling shells-- tumbling
the waves continue
unfolding this day,
a sunflower in the blue sky.
the windy weather
filling differences.
Shell twirling cosmos
receding
dreaming
the future’s Ideal form
always beyond
this surface of Reality held
in elasticity between
the Dream and the Ideal,
a Fate-- Freedom-- and Power
revolving.
propped in dream
between the what one
(thought) that happened
and the Ideal that might--
A troubadour in the sun, afoot
riding the crest of day!
two figures walking through reeds,
the wind picks up, leaves,
shells, dream designs, circling
a vase looming, beyond.
16.
A Joker, spirit Sun
trickster joking, eyedazzling--
Harlequin of cubism!
striving, but broken--
the end of painting
the end of nature
a still life, set
to bridge a gap
we feel,
The modern, a gimmick
always past in our hearts,
that fiction, created to disguise
our failure. Living in this
rubble of concrete boxes, housing
we’ve named it, this separation
from nature or God, a lousy story
retold in outworn shape.
Climbing, again.
A painting-- of still life
in our climate
(of sad ecological disaster)
no need for ironic subterfuge.
“like a blindness cleansed”
I lift my hat to that fish-shaped island, Paumanok.
This friend of birds,
sees snakes with rings,
hears wood-peckers laugh,
jays, squawking their raucous
thought in pines, as
crickets scatter before bells
jingling on cautious feet.
blank upon the sand
his staff aflame,
the black oldsmobile horn’s blare.
Exchanging presence for distance
Achilles merging with Crispin,
then, as Walt,
“...this book is a man.”
all the birds have died.
A sparrow fights a starling,
a cowbird
raids another’s nest.
no rescuing spaceships
out there, seen, still
the tragedy, of the planet.
afoot with vision
Chaplinesque, a picaresque saint
a friend of birds, as St. Francis
in Giotto, holding Sunflowers
for Vincent and Lilacs for Walt,
the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance,
over which a figure, returning
awakening from sleep, Pierrot!
A jar overturned by the spring
wind, sprinkling seeds, to the air
a black rope interwinds and weaves
a string of shells
dragged behind, sunflowers
darkening...
a book of poetry, upended
at the tide line,
wading off into the pink
translucence, at the end
of that summer’s day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)