#8, 1991 The Singer of the Sun

#8, 1991 The Singer of the Sun

You presented to me,

You, fish-shaped island,

Paumanok.

A flower, a shell.

Clouds, leaves, waves.

Red and yellow diamonds,

a dazzling wayfarer

on a romantic voyage, through

suns and planets

life and death.

A still life representing

a world, revolving-- objects

given meaning in their use.

Shells, Sunflowers, Vase.

The diamonded acrobat.

The shells are strung on a rope

gathered at the shore, 

stringing together, representing 

universes of circles, and 

the patterns of design,

in broken moments, 

strung to bind

death to life, 

juggling the cycle’s circle.

On the beach, barefoot

the perspective lines sharpen--

to a blank, blinking

the wanderer turns, on what?

picks up a shell, arranges a flower--

staring at the white wall.

The Knight of the road, arriving

sets up this still life, altar of flowers,

finds shells on the shore, 

reads the poetry of life and death

in the sunset, red, passing

“...no man shall see the end.” 

the reeds, the rock like island

arches, as the Dipper arcs ‘round

blinking the finality, 

through the silhouetted reeds.

The mythic form gives way to a narrative . I rocked back and forth from this narrative to more symbolic. Still do.

#7, 1990 The Seasons

#7, 1990 The Seasons

29.

Looking for Sun!

Walt Whitman’s, Paumanok island

he came to own on afternoons 

patrolling

different coves and bends,

a fish-shaped island.

Walking, blank upon the sand

a staff aflame,

the shadblow blooming in April, 

as the mockingbird,

our feathered friend from Alabama,

arrives!

by night on the beach.

Strolling, alone in a thought,

the lilacs by the porch,

a song of the soul, singing 

in a straw hat, picnicking 

on the beach in the hot August sun,

fish roil down the shore, gulls

in laughter recoiling, in northern

winds, arriving.

How about a sailboat to paint from

and explore?

...clam and fish?

Making a still life, a poetry 

on the bay, where Walt had walked...

33.

The hero, 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

Suns and Planets.

Singing the praises in the sunset,

a staff aflame, 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.

I had started going out to paint still lifes by the bay each summer again as I did in early seventies.

In this activity I saw the constant change.

The Seasons were the myth, of this present constantly passing, which I sought to explain.

 The narrative here is in it's beginning stages.

#6, 1989 "...surrounded by choral rings..."

#6, 1989 "...surrounded by choral rings..."

10.

Telephone poles march 

down the road, into the distance.

Grackles, flash up from feeding.

Desiring already, again

to put it all together,

some order

to that moment, seen.

A clear

moment

in the flower,

here!

a gross being alive

a thrown wave, 

green and warm--

22.

Painting this still life,

the shells on the beach

the sunflowers against the sky

a rope weaving circles to bind

a candle as time, a knife 

slicing the space through--

a bucket like the universe’s vessel

a little boy peeing in bronze--

the vase, friezes all of this

in the failing sun.

Clouds passing overhead

the narrow islands weather,

the difference between 

bay and ocean mind,

bells ring on swells.

Everything is broken,

a man in black turns--

washing my brushes, “I’m done.”

the reeds 

blaze red, in silhouette.

I  found as I painted a still life that summer, that each day the lily died as another bloomed each day. This direct experience of cycle lead me from the inner black and white to a door opened onto the outer world once again. I became interested in that transition or juxtaposition.

#5, 1988 "...like the leaves themselves turning..."

#5, 1988 "...like the leaves themselves turning..."

A surface hardened by repetition

becoming by shade

meaning less, distanced like Art.

14.

going over the shapes

of our minds, forming 

the world,

what we can see.

The merging of mind and object,

to fall into

the privileged moments,

as spots of time,

becoming part of, parcel,

a transparent eye, seeing--

the flower becomes one with the stars.

 I had visited Italy that year and made watercolors each day in the sunset. Sunset colors quivered 

with unresolved wonder, elegiac of a time of a possible resolution.

#4, from clouds, leaves, waves. 1987 Zuni / Goya

 #4 from clouds, leaves, waves. 1987 Zuni / Goya

...surging upward

breaking the surface

the prize grasped in his teeth!

Lights shine, mandala spins

all into one

a crystal light

flashes!

“This is the Truth!”

Coming from the darkness

still quite dim

we mutter, no--

stand up and shout,

this is it!

this Truth!

...naked, looking down at

tatters 

the wind, the burning bush in

swirls of stripes,

a flashing flag signals, Here!

From despair, to a recognition of a cycle which seems to contain some truth in between, or in the juxtaposition of ideas.

#3, from clouds, leaves, waves. 1986 Woman with Clothes Blowing in the Wind

 #3 from clouds, leaves, waves. 1986 Woman with Clothes Blowing in the Wind

12.

Chumash Indians in the Sierra 

Nevada, at the time of Goya

painting, Women with Clothes 

Blowing in the Wind--

tumbling through Sierras in Spain

a dry warm wind of inclusion, 

swirling, whirling gyres of winding 

reeds, generators of thought

and shells transmitted

through a projectors beam,

shadows of figures

on the tent’s walls

20.

The old woman’s clothes

blown in patterns like shells

thrown through beams of light,

whirling in a wind that

rushes through reeds,

Swoosh--

the stain of purple paint, 

peering into the layers

the striping wind in the mind, 

equating our thoughts thrown

on walls, gathering skirts

against the universe, 

on the high hill of an older time.

 It is interesting to me going back this far in time as I can now see more what I was thinking. Generally I was still wondering after my Mother's death 10 years before, what was going on. My philosophical pondering is finding it's relation in my investigation into the space of painting.

#2, from clouds, leaves, waves., 1985 "...like a dream vaguely remembered..."

“...around every circle another can be drawn,

that there is no end in Nature,

but every end is a beginning... and 

under every deep a lower deep opens.”

A figure in the landscape working.

13.

The works and days 

upon a frieze,

between the heavens and hells

inherent in our minds,

the longed for lands--

this toppled vase,

gathering the pieces,

I was surprised to see how early the circle, representing some kind of organic origin and whole idea appeared.  An environmental despair was already pervasive.

towards a selected Poems. #1, 1984 Achilles / Tent

I wondered if I might end up with a collected poems or a book of extracts from my long poems.

#1. 1984 Achilles / Tent

from the book, clouds, leaves, waves. 1996

Greek pots like nuclear shapes

the earth a broken vessel,

tossing the shards,

a pessimism growing

beyond good and evil, 

our hearts--

are of this darkness.

Striding the beach...

peeling back the canvas, 

entering the tent, falling to tripod,

exhausted downward weight-- 

“the wrong doing of Agamemnon!” 

black eyes melt the wall,

sinking-- Achilles tumbling,

gasping at round about horrors.

a thought of --Thetis! Arriving, 

a hand to his head

and release, to peaks of tent--

universe and stars, shining.




This is from the beginning of clouds, leaves, waves., a poem from 1996. The reference is from the Iliad I was reading back then, but I have never been able to find the exact part this refers to. I suppose I dreamed it in this changed version. It is all going downward and the Thetis touch to the head releases, it to the peaking.

I've been tweeting my poems.

I have stopped. Realizing I was dominating some followers feeds.


https://twitter.com/GregoryBotts



It was been a way for me to polish them to their finish though. I'll look for another way.


I finished He'd filled it uP.

from Notes from 2004 to 2006, finished October, 2013.



I'm continuing through, from 1998 to 2000,  All One, revolving.


Another from 2001 to 2003, Back 2 the StudiO.


Working on Road Movie, now, 1995 through 1997.


Each poem was about 100 pages.



They are obtainable here on the right side menu.

He'd filled it uP and Part twO

He'd filled it uP and Part twO



He'd filled it uP, was handwritten at NYU Library in Feb 2009 from Journal entries starting Oct 2004,

He'd filled it uP, was composed from the first 100 of those hand written pages from Oct 2004.

The Computer version was begun around Jan 2011.

April 30 2011 was one of the edit dates of the Computer version. Feb 2012 it seems computer edit was somewhat completed.



The whole of the Journal notes for these two titled poems goes from Oct 2004  through 16 Nov 2006.



Part Two computer version from handwritten notes was started Feb 2013 it starts at Journal notes roughly at May 2005 and continues up to around Nov 2006 date.