“The Pastels, the Liquids”

“The Pastels, the Liquids”

The pastels, liquidity in the glass are given sight
In purest motives from the richest reds,
Blues, or better yet, outrageous magenta shreds,
Cobalt indices within the tincture. The slight
Is, for the moment, intended, frozen, then released
In lucid translucent turbulence held captive by seals
Between the wards as ever-churning shapes reveal
The signs of bailiwick again.  The artist, her fragile ovulation, speaks
In stains, then thoroughly intoxicating flames, and then is gone. She’ll appeal
To hearts in refraction, a natural reaction in framed compassion.
Stationary, held inert, or in the running freely, stasis rationed
Rarely if at all, she invites movement along with zeal
Induced by pure delight in candlelight in the dance
Of elvish fingertips upon the eyelids, no smile left to chance.

“She Holds Herself in Deftness”

She holds herself in deftness, a dandelion misplaced
From time to time in God knows what the pot.
She uses moments skilfully, and what she’s got
She shares in rooms she’s peopled, spaced,
Designed the more or less in compositions
Spelled, apart from one another, rearranged
And blocked as on a stage to take advantage
Of the light, its tasteful wise proximities. Competitions
Ruled, measured, revised, advised, and set
According to a notion or a rule
That she’s devised may not be
Science, but something more, perhaps, than chance, an ease
Akin to art, and expended squarely on a single fool.
No one seems to notice where it is she goes
Between the scenes nor what it is she knows.

…electronic painting by Wim Wenders…

“And When I Pack It In”

“And When I Pack It In”

And when I pack it in at night I think
About my day and turn my thoughts to Him,
And feel more than ever that the hymn,
Sweet Hour of Prayer, is more than just a link
To chains within my mind to what I know is true:
Deeper, deeper, yes, than breath itself. The only time
I find I am alive affects the single call, the stolid rhyme
Between what He is and what I am, the simple clue
To what I’ve seen and gleaned and what I am about
To see, a reason far beyond the air I breathe: He
Is, I am, and He becomes for me
The Question as well the Answer, the Mount
Of Olives whereon I hear my voice,
And, in the end, it’s He who makes my choice.

“Kuan Yin”

“Kuan Yin”

Power in the youthful spirit―less
Than perfection and ubiquity by a hair,
Still more than merely hubris, a flair
For outward verbal, visual, and the rest
―This Kuan Yin places both hooves tied
And even, polished in the stirrups, firm
And purposed for the ride. She will learn
Of course that undertow in tides
Is dangerous and that not all imaginings act
Along the grain when divined from the sky,
Ancient planes which may have had a fly
Or two derange the serviced instruments―a fact
That more than must and many learn from time
To time―but spirit? Yes! as she relates to the sublime.

“The Signal”

“The Signal”

The signal, then, attracts attentions, bright,
A single aim, perhaps a company
Of one with two quite simple melodies
Against the backing of a richer, darker light
And punctuated with the same in words.
Some momentary spark of thought
That concerts in itself has caught
The virus and subdues the viewer on the curve
Of things, with nothing overwhelmed; relief—
Yes! no cul-de-sac within itself—and in the end,
With nothing said, nothing done, is sent
The whole to some passers-by with quiet bye-your-leave’s
Sufficient to address but not embrace,
Allowing intimacies, true, but at a restful pace.

“Compassion”

“Compassion”

Compassion solicits slowly here so as to free
And not to frighten those who would be taught
What mother’s brought them, long ago forgot—
Though neither wholly nor completely; the deed
Is sown within the lady’s vision lightly placed
Before the battered, shredded consciousness
Of all that is omission, pounding mounds of history precious,
Stilled, surmounting seas within the eye, tears effaced
For more than moments in the brightness of pending days.
She gently offers peace through words that pray,
And gesture, upward visioned, honed, revealing stasis best betrayed.
And we to this kind woman’s loving sighs may give pause, and pay
Respects, for remembrances freely given through her cries
Against hypocrisy, all warlike hubris and shame that distance hides.
Yes, he knew Ophelia, so he thought, singing sodden in the rotting reeds
Before her robes, engorged, grew heavy with their drink;
Her streams were lost within his waters: phantoms sink,
But souls will rise, and she in her distress, seeds
At once with weight and resignation calling found their depths.
Her mind, but fear; her heart, but fire; her body, haloed hair—
Such glories slight eternity, hasten near naked lust and care.
“And, are you honest?”, “Are you fair?” he asked (integrity is kept
From such as do possess them both), and she was struck,
Smitten—what page in what Book of Hours had she read….
Sings he, “Believe the none of us!”, while in the index she,
“You never cared!” and lay they both a while among the weeds,
He upon the bank and she with garlands bread
From woven woes unwieldy; thraldom, not at all well
Disposed, drew up her robes and locks before she fell.

…paintings by John Singer Sargent…

“So, Were You Sleeping?”

“So, Were You Sleeping?”

So, were you sleeping when the pain sat down;
The mudslides in the Guatemalan hills;
The still uncharted horror in the chill
Of night in Bangladesh where the many towns
And villages pass beyond
The realm of passion and no one now responds
With wizened words or notions while along
The warring Afghan border the shriller mourning songs
Are raised above all heads, and outraged legions rush to save
The thousands who are trapped
In momentary mercy-pockets strewn throughout but newly rationed maps;
Footprints of an ancient waking titan felling caves,
And silent roads, and drawing more, the precious life and blood
That dwarf the recent boring views of yesterday’s New Orleans Flood?
And just how strong can nations be so viciously attacked
By multiple morbidities set in dread against endemic  gloom?
There follows yet another, still a second, third, and soon
A daily fourth, to either keep a fragile surplus sacked
Or give support to those for whom there is no peace.
The world stood firm enough in time in Indonesia;
Faltered in the Mississippi outback;
drank denial dulled by strange amnesia
Storied closely by the press and several presidents:
no grace, nor is there ease
For governors. Lo! Someone blinked
and Haïti’s mountains truly roared
In syllables of pain and treatises of all the world’s disdain
While just above the Yellow Sea’s Pacific corridor
Come tired familiar natural spears to Honshu.
Between the Yucatan Peninsula and western shores
Of Cuba, yet another future Grendel this way broods?
No. Much worse, his mother’s greater form of infamy,
And while our Hroðgar’s fast asleep, his people drown in misery.

…talon sculpture by Michele Bruce-Carter…

“Notions of the End”

Notions of the end come willingly
at the hour of knowing
Greaters than the sum of minutes,
An art of instrumentals within the limits,
Fractal fountains, residues of all points flowing
Naturally as when in a fresh encounter, a bolder plan,
A greater announcement, the future itself arrives and even if t’were
Already placed within her pantheon of gods, perception errs,
Perhaps not so much by deception as conveniently deferred, the élan
Of what it means to override possession and play the compliment:
The joy of it, the subtle stroke, the nimble, self-conscious act of doing
What must be done, a supra-natural ruing
Of identity—no hands, she stands—beyond what comes to pass as sacraments
To common passion. Remembrances and souvenirs sustain to no avail.
This, my friend, is what it means to own the gift of mortal life and wail.

…painting by Qiang Huang…

“There, the Monoliths”

“There, the Monoliths”

There, the deeds of monoliths, the majesty of steps
Atop vast titanic Canadian tests,
The Northerlies and Zephyrs of Wests, these hoary floral vests
That bind and buttress the North American backbone; ancient streams that jet
Across the brow of cyclops, tresses monuments cropped downward, plains
Discovered long before Columbus preyed upon, and fell
To ravenous feast, infesting shores of hapless naked islands, knelt,
Mistaken, gorging on the land, bare himself with earnest pains,
To claim for both their novice Catholic Majesties, the Spanish monarchs’
Claim, and access to mysterious Easts. There rise amazed retreats
And mountain trolls, the ample warning sentinels of God’s creation, feet,
His imprint on the pastures’ hollows, valleys hewn, arched
In all directions, girdled by the precious lichen wastes
Where bison were, these survivors set now both fores and afts, and wait.

…digital painting at top by Browen on DeviantArt…, below by an anonymous cave man…

“A Sonnet for My Father”

My father fought as a pilot in the United States Navy in the Pacific Theatre of the Second World War and in Korea. . . for my mother, and for me, and in the name of justice for the entire world! He was the greatest man I ever met in his generation. From my father, the light of justice; from my mother, the fire of love.

“The most important thing a father can do
for his children is to love their mother.”
~~Author Unknown

And was it my own mother loved so greatly,
“No, no woman should,” she said, “love anyone
As much as I loved him!” And as his son
I knew him first because he gave me
Cherished gleanings of the name of justice
There above the love my mother bore
And brought the two together well before
They introduced me to the world. It was right
That she be loved by one in whose eyes light
And honour both to God and to His name,
The promise of his country, and its fame
Lay not so much in victory or in the glory of its might,
But kneading hope for human dignity with yeasts of truth renewed again
That set my mother’s eyes ablaze and far beyond the gaze of other lesser men.