Poem up at The Ekphrastic Review

My poem, Number 7, inspired by the Anne Ryan collage of the same name, is up at The Ekphrastic Review, along with eleven other varied and interesting poetic responses. My thanks to Lorette Luzajic for selecting and posting my work, and for providing a wonderful forum for ekphrastic poetry and art.

The mandala, above, was also inspired by Anne Ryan’s art.  You can read more about her and see more of her work here.

October 2018 Currents

 

circle stops, becomes
a point that reappears, falls
evasive, rilling

dancing with currents, a leaf–
pausing on the patterned wind

It took me quite awhile to do my monthly grid.  I wanted to do very tiny squares, but I kind of lost control of the amount.  I intended a small piece of work, but my intentions and results often have different ideas.  Also, I never realized how much uninterrupted time it takes just to go through my bins of cut up paper and decide what to use.  At any rate, it was conveniently finished in time to do a tanka for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday, poet’s word choice.  I will pick rilling for one, and then currents.  That’s October 2018.

I could have spent a lot more time messing around with these images in Photoshop, but unfortunately, or luckily, I didn’t have it.  So: two versions of October’s circular grid.  The first is done from a scanned image, the second from a photo (the entire collage wouldn’t fit in the scanner).  The color and texture are totally different. Light has many ways of changing what we see.

Linked to Open Link Night at dVerse

 

Poems and Art at “the song is…”

Marianne Szlyk, at “the song is…” has posted 3 of my poems with accompanying artwork as part of her tribute to musicians born in the 50s.  The Prince and Police-inspired work appeared on the blog, but the Stevie Wonder-inspired art and poem are new.

She also has some wonderful musical links at the bottom of the post (as she always does), and I’d just like to quote from Stevie, first from the song “As”, and then from his words, spoken before he sang that song at Aretha Franklin’s Homegoing service.

“Change your words into truths
And then change that truth into love”

“Let’s make LOVE great again”

Thanks, Marianne, for featuring my work, and for your continuing support of music, art, and words.

You can see the post here.

 

September 2018/Leaf Koan

almost dusk—color
deepens and rustles insect song–
thick light frosts the wind.

For Colleen’s 100th Tanka Tuesday celebration, she asked us to choose our own words for our poems.  I consulted the magnetic Oracle in two ways for my September leaf grid–the online one, and my refrigerator one, which is currently filled with Zen words.  Two very different views of the season.

between finding out
and insight lives the whispered
silence of why not

 

Severed Synapse

I wear myself inside out. My mask is hidden; my thoughts scriven mysteriously in code.  Sleep returns me to my origins.  I fall, resisting, afraid to let go.

I get up and it’s yesterday, dreary and inexact. Memories come together and instantly fall apart.  I am unbuttoned from the brain down.

All those rituals, the names and places, surrounding me lost and confused. No one can count them.  No one can say when or how they disappeared.

completely unfilled,
outlines stand centered between
never and not now

For Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday, a haibun using synonyms for sad and write. The top artwork is actually part of the stitching for a totally different project.  It’s done on iridescent plastic paper, and the scan makes it look brain-like I think.  The collage above I did awhile ago, but it also seemed to fit.

The mind is a delicate balancing act, always.

Pulling Colors from the Sky

Belonging to nothing
spare and straight
in stillness
constellated

Spare and straight
like dusk falling
constellated
listening for the stars

Like dusk falling
on a butterfly
listening for the stars
across whispered air

On a butterfly
wandering
across whispered air
beyond desire

Wandering
in stillness
beyond desire
belonging to nothing

A pantoum for Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above.

 

Abundance

Fruit decays
and becomes its seed,
abandoned,
earthcovered–
in departing it arrives,
abiding, waiting,

becoming–
is it a choice? Who
chooses which
seeds take root?
Is it a random journey
sleepwalking, rising

into orbed
skies, into flowers,
into green
and wildness,
reaching outward reaching through–
bequeathed into self?

For Sue Vincent’s photo prompt above.  In my default form, shadorma.

The Other Side

The sky beneath the stars–
earthbound orbit
shadowed by the night,
divided by itself.

Earthbound orbit
always pulled away,
divided by itself,
vast and gravitating.

Always pulled away–
completely boundless ancient
vast and gravitating
dark, dissolving.

Completely boundless ancient
held by threads that sail–
dark, dissolving
tides of wing and air.

Held by threads that sail,
shadowed by the night,
tides of wing and air–
the sky beneath the stars.

This collage was done originally for a Sue Vincent Photo Prompt.  I’ve posted the art again, with a new poem, in celebration of the publication of Marianne Szlyk’s book, “On the Other Side of the Window”, which uses it for the cover illustration.

I was delighted when Marianne asked if she could use one of my crow pieces for her book of poems.  I know her from her wonderful blog of words, art, and music, “The song is…”, and was pleased also to be able to meet her at the New York Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island a few weeks ago.

Also linked to dVerse open link night , hosted by Lillian. And yes, yet another pantoum.

 

 

Beautiful piece by Kerfe

I bought this piece by Kerfe a few years ago and recently rehung it. It’s not a great photo (reflections in glass) but it’s a gorgeous piece. So many individual pieces cut out and glued to create this piece.

It is titled “Divine Embrace” and is dated 2014. Just thought I’d share it on this rainy/sunny first day of August.

August 2018

Sun fractures my sight–
eyes squinting—landscape breaking–
fevered, tense, thirsting

Elemental oasis–
shifting from was to will be

Back to my monthly grid and another collage.

The world indeed seems to be in retrograde right now.  Perhaps the tide will turn soon…