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The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.

quote by James A. Michener
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The mother and the artist

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of wonderfully emollient freshness; every
unfurling instant of impregnably magnificent existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of spellbindingly undefeated innocence; every
unfurling instant of symbiotically pristine existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of timelessly unconquerable truth; every unfurling
instant of bounteously magnanimous existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of unfathomably unfettered creativity; every
unfurling instant of timelessly burgeoning existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of royally triumphant resplendence; every
unfurling instant of unconquerably majestic existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of eternally exhilarating vivaciousness; every
unfurling instant of redolently insuperable existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of unbelievably ameliorating optimism; every
unfurling instant of marvelously benign existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of brilliantly liberated camaraderie; every
unfurling instant of iridescently inscrutable existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of unshakably virgin righteousness; every
unfurling instant of beautifully untainted existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of uninhibitedly heavenly frolic; every unfurling
instant of tantalizingly sensuous existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of compassionately humanitarian friendship; every
unfurling instant of magically mitigating existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of miraculously everlasting freshness; every
unfurling instant of invincibly coalescing existence,

A mother might bear just a single child in 9 months; but an artist blossoms
into an infinite children of pricelessly ubiquitous oneness; every unfurling

[...] Read more

poem by Nikhil Parekh
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Lisbeth and the Artist

Lisbeth stands watching
The artist as he prepares
To sketch. Her elder sisters
Stand in shadows whispering.
Her younger sister plays
With her doll on the floor.
Their father said to do as
The artist instructed and
Don't misbehave or be rude.
The artist stares hard his
Dark eyes searching their
Every move and expression
And body gesture. The elder
Girls mutter in shadows
Their hands over their mouths
Their blue eyes like shallow
Pools. Ready? The artist
Asks putting charcoal to
Paper his fingers blackening.
Lisbeth says just as we are?
The artist nods. His grim
Features express do not disturb.
The youngest sister plays
Ignoring the artist her eyes set
On the game at hand. The girls
In shadow turn their profiles
Set to mystery their hands on
Their abdomens like guardians
Of virtue. Lisbeth wonders as
She watches the artist's stiff
Moustache and beard the slow
Movement of his mouth as he
Mouths words and stares hard.
The last artist employed some
Year before younger and less
Brutal in expression and manner
Had drawn them each in private
Rooms and set them down on couch
Or bed and kept their images inside
His head. He was dismissed and the
Drawings destroyed and nothing said.
Lisbeth had thought it just a game
Something done as lover might in
Private corners or lonely spots on
Quiet nights. The artist sketches.
His blackened fingers move and
Made their mark. Their images
Captured. The scene set. One sister
In the shadows yawns the other
Stares in still contempt. Lisbeth

[...] Read more

poem by Terry Collett
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Cruelty

Standing on the top of the world (4x)
Standing on the top of the world
Standing on the top of the world
Standing on the top it's a long way down.
It's too easy to feel conceit
Its too easy to feel elite
The propaganda that you're fed.
Don't think you can count on it
When you judge yourself.
Supremacy means there's no conscience here
Supremacy means there's no compassion here.
Tradition rules
Despite the rotten truth.
Despite the atrophy
Despite the waste and greed.
It's too easy to feel conceit
Its too easy to feel elite
The propaganda that you're fed.
Don't think you can count on it
When you judge yourself.
It's a risky thought reinforced from youth.
Everything's a resource that's fit for abuse.
Tradition rules in the hearts of stubborn fools
Tradition rules no matter how cruel.
It's just their arrogance
Arrogance that fuels their cruelty.
Arrogance
Arrogance that fuels their cruelty.
Arrogance is stupidity
When its surrounded in our frailty
Arrogance is stupidity
When its surrounded in our frailty
Knock them down

song performed by Sick Of It All from Yours Truly
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Fifth Book

AURORA LEIGH, be humble. Shall I hope
To speak my poems in mysterious tune
With man and nature,–with the lava-lymph
That trickles from successive galaxies
Still drop by drop adown the finger of God,
In still new worlds?–with summer-days in this,
That scarce dare breathe, they are so beautiful?–
With spring's delicious trouble in the ground
Tormented by the quickened blood of roots.
And softly pricked by golden crocus-sheaves
In token of the harvest-time of flowers?–
With winters and with autumns,–and beyond,
With the human heart's large seasons,–when it hopes
And fears, joys, grieves, and loves?–with all that strain
Of sexual passion, which devours the flesh
In a sacrament of souls? with mother's breasts,
Which, round the new made creatures hanging there,
Throb luminous and harmonious like pure spheres?–
With multitudinous life, and finally
With the great out-goings of ecstatic souls,
Who, in a rush of too long prisoned flame,
Their radiant faces upward, burn away
This dark of the body, issuing on a world
Beyond our mortal?–can I speak my verse
So plainly in tune to these things and the rest,
That men shall feel it catch them on the quick,
As having the same warrant over them
To hold and move them, if they will or no,
Alike imperious as the primal rhythm
Of that theurgic nature? I must fail,
Who fail at the beginning to hold and move
One man,–and he my cousin, and he my friend,
And he born tender, made intelligent,
Inclined to ponder the precipitous sides
Of difficult questions; yet, obtuse to me,–
Of me, incurious! likes me very well,
And wishes me a paradise of good,
Good looks, good means, and good digestion!–ay,
But otherwise evades me, puts me off
With kindness, with a tolerant gentleness,–
Too light a book for a grave man's reading! Go,
Aurora Leigh: be humble.
There it is;
We women are too apt to look to one,
Which proves a certain impotence in art.
We strain our natures at doing something great,
Far less because it's something great to do,
Than, haply, that we, so, commend ourselves
As being not small, and more appreciable
To some one friend. We must have mediators

[...] Read more

poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
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Eighth Book

ONE eve it happened when I sate alone,
Alone upon the terrace of my tower,
A book upon my knees, to counterfeit
The reading that I never read at all,
While Marian, in the garden down below,
Knelt by the fountain (I could just hear thrill
The drowsy silence of the exhausted day)
And peeled a new fig from that purple heap
In the grass beside her,–turning out the red
To feed her eager child, who sucked at it
With vehement lips across a gap of air
As he stood opposite, face and curls a-flame
With that last sun-ray, crying, 'give me, give,'
And stamping with imperious baby-feet,
(We're all born princes)–something startled me,–
The laugh of sad and innocent souls, that breaks
Abruptly, as if frightened at itself;
'Twas Marian laughed. I saw her glance above
In sudden shame that I should hear her laugh,
And straightway dropped my eyes upon my book,
And knew, the first time, 'twas Boccaccio's tales,
The Falcon's,–of the lover who for love
Destroyed the best that loved him. Some of us
Do it still, and then we sit and laugh no more.
Laugh you, sweet Marian! you've the right to laugh,
Since God himself is for you, and a child!
For me there's somewhat less,–and so, I sigh.

The heavens were making room to hold the night,
The sevenfold heavens unfolding all their gates
To let the stars out slowly (prophesied
In close-approaching advent, not discerned),
While still the cue-owls from the cypresses
Of the Poggio called and counted every pulse
Of the skyey palpitation. Gradually
The purple and transparent shadows slow
Had filled up the whole valley to the brim,
And flooded all the city, which you saw
As some drowned city in some enchanted sea,
Cut off from nature,–drawing you who gaze,
With passionate desire, to leap and plunge,
And find a sea-king with a voice of waves,
And treacherous soft eyes, and slippery locks
You cannot kiss but you shall bring away
Their salt upon your lips. The duomo-bell
Strikes ten, as if it struck ten fathoms down,
So deep; and fifty churches answer it
The same, with fifty various instances.
Some gaslights tremble along squares and streets
The Pitti's palace-front is drawn in fire:

[...] Read more

poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
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A Nude Artist

A Nude Artist

he says he is a nude artist
because he is naked when he paints

such nakedness has
nothing to do with being a nude artist

a naked artist who paints a cat or a chicken
is not a nude artist

there is no nude cat
thyere is no nude chicken

just paint a naked woman
and he will be called a nude artist

an artist is not an art
he must know that

- Frog Mantra, Accents Publishing,2012 -

poem by Suchoon Mo_
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Peace

Artist - somebody didn't hear me
(What'd he say?)
Artist - formerly known as Prince
You gotta get your peace on
Peace, whoa oh
Peace
That's what we're here for
And not to war
When the war upon people of color thru needles
Designed to disease instead of relieve
When it ceases
I'll be a man of peace
(Say what)
When this mask of vendetta
Like tears on the face of Coretta
Roll down and go away
I'll be happier
(Happier)
I'll be a man of peace
Everybody say!
Peace, whoa oh
Peace
That's what we're here for
(That's what we're here for)
And not to war
When the time that we spend
Watching TV depends on
Whether or not it destroy or transcend
Then I won't need
(I won't, I won't)
Won't need a warranty
When the power of the hour is not yours but is ours
And the faces we see reflect all that we be indeed
There'll be a jubilee
Everybody say
Peace, whoa oh
Peace
That's what we're here for
(That's what we're here for)
And not to war
Bass
(Talkin' about freedom)
The rewards that we share will be based on what's fair
And not the curliness or the thick of our hair
Real competition, if you dare!
Music is our middle name
And we don't wanna play your game
So when the mergers you make are with us
And you take a fair slice of the cake
That we bake then you break

[...] Read more

song performed by Prince
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Value Fever Pitch: An Artist’s Time

Bhoman F Jamhari said

'I am an artist - This does not
mean I will work for free.
I have bills just like you.
Thank you for understanding.'

Polite and to the problematic point.

Anyone who thinks believes
an artist’s time is worthless,
is definitely a person an artist
should avoid; such individuals

cannot comprehend
or remotely understand
aesthetic value of art.

Art takes time to produce.

Vision and artistic skill takes
even longer to realize to attain
expanding horizons. Time costs.

Artists of differing genre value
appreciate each other and art
which suits their temperament.

To create art
is the life blood
of an artist.

The air we breathe
is the home of art.

Creativity is our fevered mind songs
we sing in a legacy of image visions.

What kind of a con artist wants
to steal bread from an artist’s mouth;

therefore limiting the quality quantity
of future works of art, to be produced
by that artist. Answer an enemy of art.

poem by Terence George Craddock
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My Ever Profound Inspiration

My Ever Profound Inspiration
Is a fortress in my romantic garden
With rounded eyes filled with rage
And a heart that never harden

I don't know him personally
He doesn't know me as well
But he is My Ever Profound Inspiration
The man to whom I fell

My Ever Profound Inspiration
Is my every day morning dew
He is the bitterest nightmare
My sweetest dream that won't come true

He'd been my only one
All throughout these years
My Ever Profound Inspiration
Had bring me lots of tears

My Ever Profound Inspiration
Is now lost in nowhere
I don't know where he is
And this is hard to bear

I know someday we'll meet again
Perhaps he can already give me affection
Be his woman, his bride
His Ever Profound Inspiration

poem by Pink Butterfly
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Hymns Of The Marshes.

I. Sunrise.

In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain
Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main.
The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep;
Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep,
Interwoven with waftures of wild sea-liberties, drifting,
Came through the lapped leaves sifting, sifting,
Came to the gates of sleep.
Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep
Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep,
Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling:
The gates of sleep fell a-trembling
Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter `Yes,'
Shaken with happiness:
The gates of sleep stood wide.

I have waked, I have come, my beloved! I might not abide:
I have come ere the dawn, O beloved, my live-oaks, to hide
In your gospelling glooms, -- to be
As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh and the sea my sea.

Tell me, sweet burly-bark'd, man-bodied Tree
That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know
From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow?
They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps.
Reason's not one that weeps.
What logic of greeting lies
Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?

O cunning green leaves, little masters! like as ye gloss
All the dull-tissued dark with your luminous darks that emboss
The vague blackness of night into pattern and plan,
So,
(But would I could know, but would I could know,)
With your question embroid'ring the dark of the question of man, --
So, with your silences purfling this silence of man
While his cry to the dead for some knowledge is under the ban,
Under the ban, --
So, ye have wrought me
Designs on the night of our knowledge, -- yea, ye have taught me,
So,
That haply we know somewhat more than we know.

Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms,
Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms,
Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves,
Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves,
Oh, rain me down from your darks that contain me

[...] Read more

poem by Sidney Lanier
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Joseph's Gloss On God

When Joseph tells his brothers: “I
am not God, ” he perhaps implies
that unlike God he sometimes lies,
and unlike Him, is doomed to die.

The words that Joseph never said
are wrong, as we find out when burned;
God often lies, a lesson learned
from history, and God is dead.

Inspired by a review by Paul Buhle of R. Crumb’s The Whole Book of Genesis, in Forward, October 10,2009 (“In the Image of God: The Ambition of R. Crumb’s Graphic Genesis”:

To say this book is a remarkable volume or even a landmark volume in comic art is somewhat of an understatement. It doesn’t hurt that excerpts of the book appeared during the summer in the New Yorker and that the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is opening an exhibit of the original drawings from which the book’s contents were adapted. “The Book of Genesis, ” Robert Crumb’s version, nevertheless stands on its own as one of this century’s most ambitious artistic adaptations of the West’s oldest continuously told story.
No comic artist has been more influential than Crumb. In terms of sales, his work is dwarfed by the superheroes and, in comic art prestige. Art Spiegelman, and a short list of others including Alison Bechdel and Marjane Sartrapi may have displaced Crumb. But Crumb’s influence abides and endures in his occasional LP/CD covers, in his volumes of collected work (16 volumes so far and counting) , his artistic prizes and a generation of artists who have incorporated his particular view of humanity.
Surprisingly, his best work in 20 years has actually been in the genre of adaptation, specifically an adaptation of Franz Kafka, dating to the mid 1990s. On that highly curious point, any consideration of this “Genesis, ” as a highly personal comic art, properly begins. Notoriously, Crumb is a gentile who fled from his deeply dysfunctional Delaware family to the Cleveland neighborhood of Harvey Pekar and the arms of the first of two Jewish wives. “Crumb, ” the 1994 film documentary, was in many ways about emotional pain (including a brother doomed to suicide) and his craving for a certain kind of woman, who, although possibly any female with a bemuscled backside, was in fact most likely to be Jewish. She, reality and image, was his consolation. The strips that he drew of Jewish-American life, nevertheless, reworked stereotypes, some funny (he visits Florida with his second wife, and holds a tiny grandfather on his knee) , and some, doubtless, insulting to many readers.
In the pages of “Introducing Kafka, ” Crumb became his fictional protagonist with such depth of insight into the logic of the doomed writer, as well as of Kafka’s famed works, that many readers were simply astonished, this reviewer among them. Kafka is the exemplar par excellence of a type of ambiguous, tortured mittel European Jewish personality as it hovered between faith and uncertainty, shortly before the Holocaust. Not Spiegelman, not Ben Katchor, nor Sharon Rudahl, nor others who drew historical or quasi-historical strips about Jewish history, had taken the characterization as far as Crumb. An earlier escape from Middle American culture had propelled Crumb toward his satirical protagonist Mister Natural, a Zen-like, robed quasi-prophet of the 1970s-80s. Three decades later, Crumb’s robed prophets are far from Zen.
Crumb’s “Genesis” is then perfectly serious and the author wants us to know it. As he says on the cover, “Nothing Left Out! ” Every “beget” from the King James Bible can be found here, along with plenty of scenes censored from previous graphic adaptations. And more prose, in the final “Commentary” segment of the book, than non-writer Crumb may have put on the page anywhere, aside from his published letters. More striking for anyone but the seasoned Crumb fan: unlike previous Biblical comic adaptations, including some published and drawn by Jews, Crumb’s characters actually look Jewish, the women even more than the men. The contrast to the classic work, EC Comics’ “Picture Stories from the Bible” (1945) in that respect is most illuminating. But more recent works like the best-selling “Manga Bible” (2000) are not much different (nor was the “The Wolverton Bible” by one of the strangest of comic artists Basil Wolverton) . Close readers will see Crumb’s wife Aline Kominsky, to whom the book is dedicated, again and again, in various guises; perhaps only Chagall drew his beloved wife so often and with such varied imagination.
Not only are the characters Jewish here, they are all ages and sizes. If, for instance, there are more drawings of Jewish elders in any single volume of comic art anywhere, I have never seen them. The women here are beautiful when young, heavily busted with large, muscular thighs. The men are strong, their beards full and noble. The deity has a really big beard and retains his notoriously bad temper, as well as his commanding presence, and absolute demand for loyalty. The animals of Genesis (in Noah’s ark and elsewhere) may be where Crumb is most similar to earlier comic art adaptations of Biblical texts, but they are drawn, like everything else, with such loving care that they are special and demand repeated viewing.
In those extensive notes at the end, Crumb comes as close as he is ever likely to revealing the sources and depth of his commitment to the text. He had been puzzling, no doubt under a wave of feminist criticism, about the gender struggle, until Torah scholar Savina Teubel’s “Sarah the Priestess” (1984) gave him new insight: a matriarchal background, female deities and actual female power, in a society turning toward patriarchy but retaining some elements of women’s prehistorical strength and centrality to the direction of early civilization. If anything is reinterpreted purposefully in “Genesis, ” it is in gender, and Crumb does so not by scoring points but by rearranging the visual subtext. Gender issues also help him reframe somewhat the class dimension of tribal society, which endures not through brute force but because of the strength of its women.
The commentary on his visual choices and his broader interpretations explores and explains his few intentional deviations, not only in the name of narrative clarity but artistic intent. Mainly, his notes drive home how he struggled to interpret the text in suitable graphic form, chapter by chapter, sometimes even character by character. There is no doubting the artist’s integrity or hard work, in no small part because he redrew again and again, trying to find historically accurate clothing and scenery. The Old Testament of cinematic Charlton Heston, so to speak, became the Genesis of lived and perceived experience, socially real and super-real. Clues are provided with translations of specific Hebrew names within the visual text, essentially metaphorical in meaning. These clues may be the closest to footnotes that Crumb has ever provided.
Comics scholar Jeet Heer, has noted in “Bookforum” that Crumb’s biblical characters, with the exception of the deity, have no internal lives: only the deity has depth and personality. As with the original text, much more is implied in Crumb’s visual text than can be stated, because scenes rush by so fast and because the artist forever works out, pen or brush in hand, a unique meaning that escapes easy interpretation. Even closer to the mark, Heer argues that above all, this is a book about bodies, the natural expression of an artist whose work has, possibly more than any other master of comic art, been concerned with body structure and expression.
And offending the deity? Crumb treads with a caution all the more remarkable for an artist, who, short decades ago, allowed himself the full run of his imagination, heedless of the consequences. Crumb’s innovation might be summed up in his characterization of Joseph, brilliant in subjugating Egypt but weary of his own powers. In the final phrases of the book, the artist suggests a radical view several thousand years previous to Jewish Karl Marx. “In the very last chapter, when his obstreperous brothers fling themselves at this feet and proclaim, ‘Here we are, your slaves, ’ he says to them, “I am not God, am I’ Joseph has learned a much finer humility than the fear-driven kind shown by his barbaric brothers.” So says a humble Crumb.

10/22/09

poem by Gershon Hepner
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Eurydice

I

So you have swept me back,
I who could have walked with the live souls
above the earth,
I who could have slept among the live flowers
at last;

so for your arrogance
and your ruthlessness
I am swept back
where dead lichens drip
dead cinders upon moss of ash;

so for your arrogance
I am broken at last,
I who had lived unconscious,
who was almost forgot;

if you had let me wait
I had grown from listlessness
into peace,
if you had let me rest with the dead,
I had forgot you
and the past.

II

Here only flame upon flame
and black among the red sparks,
streaks of black and light
grown colourless;

why did you turn back,
that hell should be reinhabited
of myself thus
swept into nothingness?

why did you glance back?
why did you hesitate for that moment?
why did you bend your face
caught with the flame of the upper earth,
above my face?

what was it that crossed my face
with the light from yours
and your glance?
what was it you saw in my face?
the light of your own face,
the fire of your own presence?

[...] Read more

poem by Hilda Doolittle
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Suzy Greenberg

Little Suzy Greenberg, with her head caved in.
Soon to let me drown beneath the undertow.
Aughta put that woman in a looney bin,
Cause you know I'd really like to be a part of her show!
Suzy is an artist - she paints quite a lot.
An artist she may be, but a genius she is not.
She says she wants to be a sociologist,
But she better first get checked by a neurologist.
Chorus
Suzy, Suzy, Suzy, Suzy
Suzy, Suzy Greenberg
Suzy, Suzy, Suzy, Suzy
Suzy, Suzy Greenberg
Suzy's 'bout as faithful as a slot machine.
Pays off once in a while, then she robs you clean.
She's always afraid that she's not sure what she's worth.
She's out of her mind, and she's not of this Earth.
Woman walks the streets like she's queen of the town.
Doesn't talk very much, she's very profound!
Little Suzy Greenberg's always playing a game.
Since the day we first met, she's probably forgot my name!
Chorus x2
Little Suzy Greenberg, with her head caved in.
Soon to let me drown beneath the undertow.
Aughta put that woman in a looney bin,
Cause you know I'd really like to be a part of her show!
Suzy is an artist - she paints quite a lot.
An artist she may be, but a genius she is not.
She says she wants to be a sociologist,
But she better first get checked by a neurologist.
Chorus x2

song performed by Phish
Added by Lucian Velea
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Weekend Love

[Queen Latifah]
Weekend love
Gonna spend a weekend love
Weekend love
Just a case of weekend love
[Queen Latifah]
Have you been misled
Anything I said
Didn't mean to turn you on
The bite is oh so strong
You got things to do
But I have got things too
So I'll catch you on the weekend
Mondays to Fridays I don't see you then
[Unknown Reggae Artist]
A W-E-E-K and a E-N-D
And a L-O-V-E we were meant to be
A W-E-E-K, a E-N-D
L-O-V-E we were meant to be
[Queen Latifah]
Weekend love
Gonna spend a weekend love
Weekend love
Just a case of weekend love
[Queen Latifah]
Seems it's been so long
Since you thrilled me with your charms
I tenderly imagine me
Resting in your arms
You've got things to do
And I have got things too
So I'll catch you on the weekend
Mondays to Fridays, I don't see you then
[Unknown Reggae Artist]
Because we're sorry when we part
And we love when we meet
I know we only do that ?
Once in a week
Sorry when we part
And we love when we meet
I know we only do that ?
Once in a week
[Unknown Reggae Artist]
I know, you know
We all occupied
From our own love life
This has been denied
Many feelins high
Many tears of pride
But by the weekend

[...] Read more

song performed by Queen Latifah
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Creative Perceptions

Artist appropriate palette prepares
as poet intuitive channels and shares -
perceptions highlighted in paint or in rhyme,
on screen, paper, canvas, [b]rushed, touched outside Time.
Each reaches out writing, foresighting, prepares
stalls [f]rigid for music of spirit sublime.
But few can interpret the talent they praise
in the style of an artist in true paraphrase.

(24 September 2005 robi03_1306)

Bridgework
Artists palette, paints, prepare,
poets channel insight rare.
One canvas fills, one paper inks,
imagination interlinks.

Each respective stream compares
perceptions, self-respecting, thinks
perspectives sensitively, shares
intuitive fruition, links
symphonic patterns, well aware
individuals everywhere
sense beauty way beyond time's brink -
horizons widen, never shrink.

Images accompany
free originality.

(7 May 2008 variant of As Artist, Poet robi03_1396_robi03_0986 16 February 2002 robi03_0986 and also variant of Creative Perceptions
24 September 2005 robi03_1306_robi03_0986)

As Artist, Poet
As artists palette, paints, prepare
so poets channel insight rare.
One canvas fills, one paper inks,
the foremost and the least of links.

Both tune respective streams, compare
perspective, sensitively share
where, true to self there neither sinks
as each through intuitions thinks
the way to harmony, aware
that perfect strangers anywhere
may beauty sense beyond time's brink -
horizons widen, never shrink.

Both pictures form, accompany
creative thrust with spirit free.

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poem by Jonathan Robin
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The First Artist and Author.

The first artist painted the sky with colors, such beauty,

Look at those sunsets, and the mountains, such reality;

The mountains, have shadows, of splendor that only the Master can do,

Yes! It's God who was the first Artist, and He also taught me too.

The first great artist painted the colors on the sea,

Blues, greens, aquas, Only one could do this you see;

And when there is a storm near, the sea goes so dark blue,

Yes! God is the first great artist, to paint it for me and you.

The first great Artist, loved to teach David to write poetry,

And also king Solomon, writing words of such beauty;

Oh such magnificent works, of color and in each word,

Yes! There is only one who could do this it is the Lord.

Then. We see in every rainbow, and in each shell as well,

Look at the colored sands, and in every bird, it does tell;

Then look at each animal, and also the petals of each flower too

Then as you look at these, , give Thanks for doing it for me and you.

poem by Margaret Haig
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When is a Painting Finished?

I paint.
On my easel
pictures in oil and acrylic grow
like stalagmites in limestone caves.

I think that painting is a magical act
that transforms invisible thoughts
and feelings into visible colors
and forms.

But I never can tell
when is the work finished.
After all it is always possible
to change a line, a hue, or a color
or even the whole composition.

Painters have different opinions
about this.

Some say that when the artist
successfully planted
all the details onto the canvas
the image expresses itself
as a severed autonomous entity,
which frees the painter from
the task of continuing to paint.
From then on the painting gains
an independent inner life of its own.

However, abandoning a work of art
involves a moral decision
ripened by the stiffening tension
between skill, creativity and integrity.
At what point does the polished image
meet the artist’s expectations?

And then, even if it does,
no single image can express
all that an artist wants to show,
and consequently his muses
compel him to carry on with his work
and create more paintings.

Hence the oeuvre of the artist
evolves as a set of different images
of the same single thrust and grind.

Many years ago I was wandering
through the countryside
of southern France in Provence.

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poem by Paul Hartal
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Resignation Pt 2

But what in either sex, beyond
All parts, our glory crowns?
'In ruffling seasons to be calm,
And smile, when fortune frowns.'

Heaven's choice is safer than our own;
Of ages past inquire,
What the most formidable fate?
'To have our own desire.'

If, in your wrath, the worst of foes
You wish extremely ill;
Expose him to the thunder's stroke,
Or that of his own will.

What numbers, rushing down the steep
Of inclination strong,
Have perish'd in their ardent wish!
Wish ardent, ever wrong!

'Tis resignation's full reverse,
Most wrong, as it implies
Error most fatal in our choice,
Detachment from the skies.

By closing with the skies, we make
Omnipotence our own;
That done, how formidable ill's
Whole army is o'erthrown!

No longer impotent, and frail,
Ourselves above we rise:
We scarce believe ourselves below!
We trespass on the skies!

The Lord, the soul, and source of all,
Whilst man enjoys his ease,
Is executing human will,
In earth, and air, and seas;

Beyond us, what can angels boast?
Archangels what require?
Whate'er below, above, is done,
Is done as-we desire.

What glory this for man so mean,
Whose life is but a span!
This is meridian majesty!
This, the sublime of man!

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poem by Edward Young
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Paradise Lost: Book 02

High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
To that bad eminence; and, from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught,
His proud imaginations thus displayed:--
"Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heaven!--
For, since no deep within her gulf can hold
Immortal vigour, though oppressed and fallen,
I give not Heaven for lost: from this descent
Celestial Virtues rising will appear
More glorious and more dread than from no fall,
And trust themselves to fear no second fate!--
Me though just right, and the fixed laws of Heaven,
Did first create your leader--next, free choice
With what besides in council or in fight
Hath been achieved of merit--yet this loss,
Thus far at least recovered, hath much more
Established in a safe, unenvied throne,
Yielded with full consent. The happier state
In Heaven, which follows dignity, might draw
Envy from each inferior; but who here
Will envy whom the highest place exposes
Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's aim
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share
Of endless pain? Where there is, then, no good
For which to strive, no strife can grow up there
From faction: for none sure will claim in Hell
Precedence; none whose portion is so small
Of present pain that with ambitious mind
Will covet more! With this advantage, then,
To union, and firm faith, and firm accord,
More than can be in Heaven, we now return
To claim our just inheritance of old,
Surer to prosper than prosperity
Could have assured us; and by what best way,
Whether of open war or covert guile,
We now debate. Who can advise may speak."
He ceased; and next him Moloch, sceptred king,
Stood up--the strongest and the fiercest Spirit
That fought in Heaven, now fiercer by despair.
His trust was with th' Eternal to be deemed
Equal in strength, and rather than be less
Cared not to be at all; with that care lost
Went all his fear: of God, or Hell, or worse,
He recked not, and these words thereafter spake:--

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poem by John Milton
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Anchorless and Engulfed

Two who each other barely knew -
though both drew down delinquency
some streets apart, are past, and few
shall etch sketch wretched memory.
Two travelled on lines parallel
while wheeled real reel of history,
banned reel ran out span's tocsin bell
tolled once to tell eternity

‘Bonjour, ma mie, je t'aime, adieu! '
The mocking bird of Destiny
nests but a moment. All falls through
before each earth-bound entity
grasp pain's pain glass a second, spell
life's sensitivity to see
things in perspective ere Death's knell
engulfs hopes in Styx misery.

Confined upon Earth's ark our zoo
builds up its bars too readily.
Why all the fuss and bother to
paint rosy hues enticingly
when threescore ten years pass pell-mell,
too few attain vain century,
and those that do weak souls would sell
for one more week's dichotomy.

Upon Life's cruise a motley crew
free choice demands, yet few feel free,
awash with superstitious spew,
how few refuse to bend the knee?
The ‘finger writes' and then farewell!
A door to which there is no key
was ever veiled when curtains fell,
'and then no more of thee and me.'

'Time out! ' Reflection's hard to chew
in context where modernity
accelerates change [st]range most rue,
soon redefines autonomy,
confines empowerment to brew
disinformation debility,
losing second thoughts' review
of truth till last breath's verity
renders verdict curlicue
on humankind's inanity.

Climate out of kilter new
climactic catastrophe
prepares, ice-melt sends shockwaves through

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poem by Jonathan Robin
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