Unmasked

This face is not the one I wore yesterday. Recast as abstraction, it chases illusions that will pilot my borrowed dreams.  Today I am a galaxy of song, light, color and dance.

If I turn around
will I recollect myself
or pass myself by?

A haibun for the dVerse prompt of Mardi Gras, using synonyms for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday words “follow” and “lead”.  The collage is based on a Cajun Mardi Gras mask.  I also made the haibun a quadrille of 44 words after being inspired by Jane and Merril’s use of this very short form.

I address a photo from 1955

You are less
than I remember,
and more than
I forget–
I superimpose myself
like a mask of light.

I’m not really sure this satisfies the dVerse prompt to write a letter, but I immediately thought of the stitching and Photoshop layering I had done using some childhood photos, trying to make a composite of is and was.

 

Year of the Dog

Every dog
has its day—top dog,
shaggy dog,
dirty dog–
everybody and their dog–
going to the dogs.

In dog years,
it’s a dog’s life.  Put
on the dog,
hot dog, hot
diggety dog.  Tail wagging
the dog.  Lucky dog.

Walk the dog
and call off the dogs.
Teach the old
dog new tricks.
(on the internet no one
knows you’re dogging it).

I’m going with the prediction that this Brown Earth Dog year of 2018 will see a rise of social consciousness and environmental awareness, and the return of generosity and feelings of fellowship and community.

Our language is filled with phrases that include the word “dog”.  I had fun stringing some of them together with a multi-patterned dog mask as accompaniment.  And you can see my original post about Bliss, the dog pictured above, here.

Kaleidoscopy

Opposite is what? See mirrors
of waters shimmering beyond borders,
forming visions.  Images shatter.
What are realities?  Here is there–
nowhere to go but around.  Circles.
Time changes light.
Light changes what is unseen.
The answer will echo and move
between.  Always and both,
particle and wave, wave and particle,
both.  And always between.
Move, and echo will answer.  The
unseen is what changes light.
Light changes time,
circles around.  But go to nowhere–
there is here.  Realities are what
shatter images–visions forming
borders beyond shimmering waters of
mirrors.  See what is.  Opposite.

dVerse challenged us to use one of Sharon Knight’s beautiful landscapes to inspire.  I used her photo “Kaleidoscopy”, above.  Perfect for a Rorschach painting and a palindrome poem.

This is my original painting; the top one is “enhanced” in Photoshop.  My favorite way to spend time–playing with colors, shapes, and words.

You can see more of Sharon Knight’s work here.  And visit dVerse to see how others have responded to her wonderful work.

 

Streaming

clouded brain
which system opens your head
upload stars and create streams
of spacelight

I’m a bit late consulting the Oracle this week.  I found this collage I did awhile ago, which for some reason reminds me of the televisions we had when I was a child, and the Oracle was insightful as to my brain at that point in life (or maybe even now…)

Can you tell my printer has been ill?  It works for this poem, though, I think.

I know you’ve been missing Nina, she’s on a much needed vacation and will be back soon!

 

The Door is Always Open

“…that what you fear the most/could meet you halfway…” –Victoria Williams, “Crazy Mary”

The horns that
make you.  Tell me what
endures:  you,
masked with fear,
burning life to ashes, the
ender?  Or the most
wild transformation that could
be?  We meet
face to face.  But you
pause.  Halfway.

Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above, was the inspiration for my junk mail collage and poem.  For some reason, it reminded me of the song “Crazy Mary” (it’s true, everything seems to remind me of a song); and I wrote another shovel poem.  Although Victoria Williams wrote the song, I’m partial to Eddie Vedder’s version.

I was reading recently that many scholars think the Devil is really all the horned gods of pagan religions turned into pure evil by the early Christian church.  Gods inspire fear as well as reverence.  Whether Devil or God of Fertility–both know the ways of the snake.

Unmasked

Lines that quote
the face, the hair, the
reign of years
first captured by sculpted earth.
Copy as copy copied.
Serial disguise.

I went to the Met to see Max Beckmann (excellent) and ended up drawing masks, as usual.  The one above is French, from the 1800’s, sculpted on a vessel of some sort.

I drew this Mexican “twisted face mask” (dated 600-900) twice, because it looked very different from each side.  It reminded me of Jack Davis’ artistic attempts to define his relationship to his autistic brother Mike.  It must have been based on a member of the community, providing a link to the long-standing effort of humans to consider and include those who fall outside the spectrum of “normal”.

This grinning monkey from the Ivory Coast also caught my eye.

The poem uses the Secret Keeper’s prompt words this week.

I’ll be here a bit irregularly for awhile as I have some projects I need to finish…

Draw a Bird Day: Red Rooster

“Watch out strange kind people
Little Red Rooster is on the prowl”
–Howlin Wolf, interpreting Willie Dixon

This embroidered painting was inspired by a Mexican Carnival mask and the blues, and also in honor of the Year of the Rooster.

Red as a rooster. Red
as a heart that bleeds with
fire.  Red as the rose
that blooms inside the heart’s desire.
Red as the anger that
is trapped inside the flame.  Red
as the burning blood that
saturates the vein.  Red red.  Red.

The poem uses the red rooster as a starting point.  I finally managed to do a quadrille properly:  44 words.  The rhymes just happened.

Happy Draw-A-Bird Day!

At the Hawk’s Well

In 1916, W. B. Yeats wrote a dance play, “At the Hawk’s Well”, inspired by Japanese Noh theatre (to which he had been introduced by Ezra Pound) and Irish folklore.

The Japan Society recently had an exhibit of UK artist Simon Starling’s commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Yeats’ work, along with some of the art that inspired both him and Yeats.

I watched the beautiful video of the hawk dancing several times

and then I drew masks until my hand cramped up and my legs hurt from standing.

When I looked at the drawings, it struck me how humans have always struggled to understand and live their lives well.  We are united in both sorrow and dignity, all cultures, throughout history, all over the earth.

 

Mask of the Galaxy (inspired by Nina’s skull mask)

searching bloodlines
for resemblances
light and dark
collecting dust
into faces present yet
progressively veiled

Nina’s painted skull mask inspired me to do a collage mask–I haven’t done one in quite awhile.  I bought some books of space photos at a library sale, and I’ve been using them quite a bit for my collages, as you may have noticed.  Except for some blue sky, all the colors in the collage come from space photos of the great beyond.

The poem uses this week’s words from the secret keeper, and thoughts from reading about the Egg Nebula.