(the sound of dripping)

The night was
percussive, breathing
bellows that
mimicked the
humming of the wind, leafless
branches clapping hands–

undreamed hours
counted in measures
unsigned, un
requited,
unoblivioned—sounding
still with unsilence–

doubled bass
drumming in discord,
thundering
dark into
unarranged song–restless air
on endless replay

NaPoWriMo Day 16 asks us to think about playing.  The weather is definitely playing with me today.

When I walked into my work room I was greeted by the sound of dripping…all over my drawing table, all my work and scribbled notes there soaked.  Not surprising that the roof would leak…the wind and rain in the last 12 hours are worse than all the nor’easters we’ve had this year combined.

Not surprising that the internet is cranky, too, but at least the computer didn’t also get wet.  I’ve passed through anger and despair to resignation.  They say they will come and look at the roof when it stops raining.  In the meantime I cranked up the heat and there is paper spread out everywhere…

Home

The crows have followed. The blue jays.  The cardinals.  Voice calling to attention as footsteps sound toward and away from doors.  Penetrating closed windows and the background hum of the construction at the end of the block.  Dark shadows transforming into silhouettes on bare branches not yet convinced of the imminent arrival of spring.

Where is the hawk?

new streets and sidewalks–
winter lingering, chilling–
robin’s morning song

I recently moved 10 blocks north, a whole new blank slate to fill.

People think of cities as not-nature.  But the birds and trees tell me I’m home.

For NaPoWriMo Day 12 haibun prompt, and linked to dVerse prompt Urban Renewal.

Is That a Human Voice? (after Toshikazu Yasumizu)

Mountains circle a city
of women dancing like feathers.
Mountains circle a city
of women dancing like feathers.
Silence embraces the flowing.
Silence embraces the flowing
patterns, bending with the wind.
Turning, repeating, transforming, rising–
silence follows.

Bending with the wind, turning.
Where are the birds?
Repeat and follow.
Bending with the wind, questing.
Opening, questing–
repeat and follow.

Embrace these wings, bending with the wind.
Turning, repeating, transforming, rising–
silence follows.

The NaPoWriMo prompt for day 5 was to take an untranslated poem, pair it with a photo, and make a poem referring to both.  I chose to use one of the artworks I did for this month instead of a photo, and I used a Japanese poem by Toshikazu Yasumizu, “Is That a Human Voice?”, partly because I love the title.  You can see the poem and the translation (which works well with my embroidery also) here.

The embroidery is once again based on a painting by Joan Mitchell.  The calligraphic nature of Japanese writing reminds me a lot of the marks of stitching.

I’m also linking to dVerse open link night.

Accumulations

Praise be
to the tangle,
the dance unraveling
the ending to begin again–
Praise be
to branches outing from deep roots,
the threads that multiply
and intertwine–
Praise be

A butterfly cinquain for Colleen’s tanka Tuesday words, honor and growth.  Also a little carryover from the SpiritSong of yesterday’s post.

And maybe partially on prompt for NaPoWriMo day 4.

In case you’re wondering how I did this piece of art so quickly, 6 months ago I decided to start making art to use for NaPoWriMo.  This is the very first one I did.

All of my artwork for April is based on/inspired by the work of Joan Mitchell.

 

Multiples

Shedding my compass
in the Valley of Shadows,
I wonder:  what is

cast by fragments now falling
directionless, unfound?

Late for Day 1 of NaPoWriMo, and using Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above.

The art is a monoprint that was cut into strips, rewoven, and embroidered.

Pathways

my wild roots wander,
longing to breathe blue into
green, seed into wind,

beneath the moon growing full–
yearnings climbing air and light

I consulted the Oracle with Colleen’s words this week in hand.  I tried to go in one direction, but, as usual, the Oracle knew where she wanted to go, and went there, taking me along.  The art is part of a larger piece “in process”–but it seemed to fit the words.

 

That Which Hath Wings

“Curse not the king, no, not even in thy thoughts, and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber; for a bird of the air shall carry thy voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.” –Ecclesiastes 10:20

Black is for nothing
waiting—shadow bird, mirrored
particles of air

of skies that open
wings, hold inside the absent
voice that shatters all

which is, which becomes,
which hath grown darkness—veiled words
becoming matter—

Nothing is waiting,
nothing sings but the silence.
All is black on black,

formless, flying on
feathers’ breath, and all shall be
now and forever

nothing nothing no
thing nothing nothing nothing
nothing nothing no

cries no conjuring–
every thing zeros falls in
to black as black is–

Frank Tassone’s Haikai Challenge this week is “Raven”.  I have many a crow poem and many pieces of crow art in some form of completion, and this is a poem I’ve been worrying for awhile.  I changed its form recently from a series of shadormas to haikus.  I think the shorter stanzas are better.  But it’s still a work in progress.

Yesterday I was walking on 153rd Street, which borders Trinity Cemetery, and I heard some crows–then many many crows–looking up, a murder, circling and calling against the blue sky.  I haven’t seen that in the city before.  And I thought, well, I have artwork for that too.

What it signified I don’t yet know.

More Crossed Letters

Well the rain rain falls
all morning up on the roof
out of mind (mind) (mind)

You may remember that Claudia McGill and I did a collaboration with writing, and I said I would do some stitching over the final project to add another layer.  After a delay with running out of the embroidery floss I was using and my generally slow pace of stitching, the results are above.  I took Claudia’s words from her deconstructed poem and made a kind of haiku from them, and then cross-stitched most of it on the writing.

I really like the way the “wrong” side of cross-stitched makes mysterious patterns in an unknown graphic language, so that’s the side that shows up over the writing.  But it looks nice on its own as well (as you can see, I used the back of a paper from an old sweater design for my original letter–no paper goes to waste in my artistic pursuits!)  Here’s how it looked before I stitched it:

Nina and I are both overwhelmed with life at the moment, so we are again suspending our posts until we can actually make a regular creating time.  But I will still be checking in when I can to see what everyone’s up to.

 

on the brink

 

Headline Haiku: in which endings are both lost and multipled (War is Not Healthy #3)

Silence weeps
and eyes refuse sight.
No questions
can be posed,
nor answers given. Light is
erased. Dust and blood.

The news we see now is overwhelmed with US–our own politics are so chaotic and overwhelming that what is going on in the rest of the world seems almost to have disappeared.  This Headline Haiku was done by me months ago, from what seems to have been a different lifetime of everyday concerns and headlines.

But people are still dying in, and fleeing from, Syria.  And the world still seems paralyzed in response.

My two previously posted Headline Haikus about Syria are currently appearing in the exhibit “We the People: Political Art in an Age of Discord” at the Barrett Art Center, in Poughkeepsie, NY.  All the work in the show is posted online here; Trump is definitely there, but not always front and center.

Out of sight
eyes and ears closing
refugees
out of mind
desperate lost abandoned
Is this will divine?

Politics is local, but we are connected in humanity and survival with all the peoples of the world.  We should not forget that.