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All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid.

quote by Chuck Close
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The Terrorist

I lived in a block of service flats
Right next to a power grid,
The endless hum made my mind go numb
And infected all I did.
I couldn't sleep as the hum grew loud
At night, in the wind and rain,
Even the walls vibrated, and
They rattled the window-panes.

I pulled the pillow up over my head,
I tried sleeping upside down,
I rammed thick towels under the doors
Lay wide awake, and frowned.
I tried complaints to the Power Co.
Who laughed, and said, 'We'll see...
If anyone else complains, we might
Build a whole new facility! '

He grinned, and I took a poke at him
Right over the counter top,
They called the guard and he tossed me out,
And threatened to call a cop.
My life was falling apart by then
I staggered back to my pad,
I hadn't slept for a month or so,
I thought I was going mad!

I'd just got back to the balcony
When I stopped myself, mid-stride,
For out from the next door flat, a man
Peered out, then went inside,
He slammed the door in a hurry then
As soon as he saw me there,
I heard him whisper as I walked by
In Arabic - I declare!

A swarthy man with a big black beard,
Dressed in a chequered shirt,
There'd never been anyone living there,
I knew that for a cert,
I wondered if he was squatting there,
Remembered to lock my door,
I didn't want midnight visitors calling
Waiting for me to snore.

Late that night I heard his footsteps
Out on the balcony,
I peered on out through the blinds, and saw
He stood with his back to me,
But in his hands was a strange device,

[...] Read more

poem by David Lewis Paget
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I Will Not Paint Those Paintings

I used to see paintings in my mind's eyes
I used to dream scenes amazing paintings
I used to dream paintings in sleep sight
paintings in details I had never seen before

paintings which stopped heart in sight shock
I knew canvases were awkward hard to carry
to travel with poems is only paper and pen
paint your paintings inspiring I write poems

I will not soul carry paint those paintings

poem by Terence George Craddock
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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

[...] Read more

poem by Jonathan Robin
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Maybe I am looking at Eve

Two paintings
look back at me:

The one girl is shy
and stripped to her middle
with auburn hair
covering a breast

and the other
hanging round and firm
tipped by
a pink brown nipple.

The big eyes of the other
are greener than grass
and laurel is wreathed
through her auburn hair

hanging in strings
of a fairy like girl
whose complexion
glows pink and alive

and she’s dressed
in big green leaves
holding some purple lavender
in a unseen hand

and I like to think
that both paintings
shows the same girl
and maybe
I am looking at Eve.

[Reference: Keys to your heart and Fairy Queen by Mandi Engelbrecht. (These paintings belongs to me.) ]

poem by Gert Strydom
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Voyage around the Square Root of Minus One

I often heard
that while the sciences concern themselves
with objective truths
the arts deal with subjective phenomena.

Many years ago I held the same view,
but later came to the conclusion
that this is just a well-combed popular myth.

It is an untenable credo
because the sharp separation
of the arts and sciences is a rigid
and arbitrary mandate, full of holes.

Although all subjects have their specificities,
at the same time they also share
many common traits with each other.

There is art in science and science in art.

Artists, for example,
apply geometry to represent
a three dimensional scene in a painting,
which is a two dimensional surface.

By using ‘objective' geometrical perspective,
Renaissance artists, among them Alberti,
Brunelleschi, Uccello, Leonardo and Dürer,
developed in Europe the ‘subjective' illusion
of perceptual realism.

Later, in the Dutch Republic of the 17th century,
Johannes Vermeer applied expensive pigments
to the canvas and conducted
pioneering research in optics that enhanced
the supreme quality of his work,
imbuing his paintings with sublime,
otherworldly light.

In the 19th century
the Romantic painter John Constable
prepared detailed studies
of the landscape and weather conditions
of England, before transcribing them
into images of stunning accuracy and grace.

Following the closing of the Weimar Bauhaus
by the Nazis in 1933, the artist Josef Albers
moved to the USA, where he worked at
Black Mountain College and at Yale University.

[...] Read more

poem by Paul Hartal
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Kahlo-Christ Conjunctions - Sacrificed Flesh, Broken Bread, Emmaus Vision

[The curious or, better, interested reader may view the images alluded to in this essay at this website: http: //falconwarren.blogspot.com/2011/01/kahlo-christ- conjunctions-sacrificed.html]

Kahlo Strophes

As with love, also the bellows.

Calavera*, the Future stands
hand to mouth, fingers to forehead
unfolding before still instatic shapes.
Hold desperately to frames before
these quaking perceptions.

She could not stop there,
had to flare out, dry paint,
and the dryer flesh peel down
to bone, a sexless esqueleto**,
skull no longer mustached,
a calavera, nothing more,
curved calcium reliant forever
upon canvas, what is congealed
there to fan and burn,
a 'cauda pavonis'***.

- the author, from the text below

*Skull
**Skeleton
***Peacock's Tail (an image in alchemy) .

'Poetry such as this attempts not just a new syntax of the word. Its revolution is aimed at the syntax of the mind itself. Its structuring of experience is purposive, not dreamlike. We are dealing with a self-induced, or naturally or mysteriously come by, creative state from which two of the most fundamental human activities diverge, the aesthetic and the mystic act. The creative matrix is the same in both, and it is that state of being that is most peculiarly and characteristically human, as the resulting aesthetic and mystic experience is the purist form of human act. There is a great deal of overlapping, today especially, when art is all the religion most people have and when they demand of it experiences that few people of the past demanded of religion....A visionary poem is not a vision. The religious experience is necessitated and ultimate.' - Kenneth Rexroth, World Outside the Window, the Selected Essays of Kenneth Rexroth, pg.255-256

Rexroth's words are pertinent to the images used in this essay, Kahlo's painting above is visionary, Grunewald's are religious, and several photos are both, and all are 'aimed at the syntax of the mind itself.. Its restructuring of experience is purposive, not dreamlike.' The images included in this essay, which is more a prose poem than regular prose, are meant to convey equally or more, at least as as much as, the words in their incantatory formations which may induce entrance into 'imaginal' spaces where word and image meet in a practical magic, inspire a felt understanding and perhaps gain a view or actual entrance into what ecstatic poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, calls 'the Greater Relation.'

I've decided to publish this piece-in-progress as it unwinds in spirals 'aimed at the syntax of the mind itself...its restructuring of experience' with the understanding that it may later appear in greatly altered form. In a real sense this writing writes itself; I try to heed, copy, then hone to the bone what might be wanting to be sung, for what is below, and often what I write, is more akin to music, a vocal/verbal lilt beyond a particular solid tilt of view of a world absolute, static logos.

Heraclitus noted thousands of years ago, 'All is flux.'

To this I would only add, and perhaps this is what all of my writing amounts to,

'All is reflux.'

Selah. WF

NYC,1/31/11

[...] Read more

poem by Warren Falcon
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Waves

Kind of thunder from my heart
Flooding my eyes
Kind of armies marching
Through my head
Sombre soldiers
From nowhere
Kind of someones
Moving out of me
Have no fear
Going somewhere
Ship is leaving right on time
Empty harbour, wave goodbye
Evacuation of the isle
Cavemans paintings drowning
Famous last words on the air
I stay here and you are there
While our city softly sinks
Cavemens paintings drowning

song performed by Alphaville
Added by Lucian Velea
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You were told how much space so it was a matter of whether you could send in two paintings or three paintings, you know, pending where the show was being held. You did submit work to be accepted. Once you were accepted that was it. You did your own selection of what went in.

quote by Lee Krasner
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I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason.

quote by Jasper Johns
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I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings.

quote by Balthus
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Up until 35 I had a slightly skewed world view. I honestly believed everybody in the world wanted to make abstract paintings, and people only became lawyers and doctors and brokers and things because they couldn't make abstract paintings.

quote by Frank Stella
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Divine

Poems after poems
Painted love as divine

Songs after songs
Hug and wet kiss
Are treated as eternal bliss

Paintings after paintings
Soft touch and sex
Are depicted as ambrosial

Heavenly things are in this world
Worldly things are in the heaven

Then, no difference
Between this world and the world after?

poem by Abdul Wahab
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Euphoria

Kind of thunder from my heart
Flooding my eyes
Flooding my eyes
Kind of armies marching through my head
Sombre soldiers
From nowhere
Kind of someones moving out of me
Have no fear
Have no fear
Kind of someones moving out of me
Going somewhere
Going somewhere
Ship is leaving right on time
Empty harbour, wave goodbye
Evacuation of the isle
Cavemans paintings drowning
Famous last words on the air
I stay here and you are there
While our city softly sinks
Cavemens paintings drowning
Drowning
Drowning...

song performed by Alphaville
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A Brush With Genius

Before the brush was in his hand,
The artist said a prayer!
For all his friends across the land
With whom he planned to share...
Lions, tigers and bears, oh, my!
The artist sketched them all,
So expertly, for by and by,
Each one would grace his wall...

Each canvas like a photograph,
A treasure to behold,
As if that wasn't quite enough,
Each one was framed in gold...
Each masterpiece was well received
And prints were sold worldwide,
As tributes to what he'd achieved,
Of which he should take pride...

And yet here was a humble man,
Self-taught and yet what skill,
Yet when we do the best we can,
There's bound to be a thrill...
Release your hidden genius
And God will bless you, too!
Like Stephen Gayford can bless us
With paintings old and new...

Denis Martindale, copyright, December 2011.

The poem is based on the magnificent paintings by
artist Stephen Gayford of gayfordgallery-dot-com

More Stephen Gayford poems here:
denis-martindale-dot-blogspot-dot-com

poem by Denis Martindale
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Something Wonderful And Beautiful

:
:
A poem about the wildlife artist, Stephen Gayford

The artist stood with brush in hand
And prayed God would be kind
Enough to help him understand
The secrets he could find...
Then he began to paint away,
Each layer gently laid,
All expertise, all skills in play,
So he could pass the grade...

To pass the grade and then excel,
Until no more to do
And only then, bid it farewell,
When it was sold to you...
You thought it something wonderful
And beautiful to buy,
Majestic and adorable
And pleasing to the eye...

The artist smiled with heartfelt joy
While holding back his tears,
His expertise you could employ,
Financing all his years...
Success began with you, my friend,
We each owe you a debt,
Because you helped to start a trend
That no-one could forget...

From that day on, the artist stood
With paintings left and right,
To be the best, not just the good,
To reach the highest height...
Perfecting here, perfecting there,
Enhancing light and shade,
So paintings looked beyond compare
Thanks to the prayers he prayed...

Denis Martindale, copyright, March 2012.

The poem is based on the magnificent website
gayfordgallery-dot-com where we can visit and
enjoy wonderful artwork meant for one and all.

More Stephen Gayford poems here:

[...] Read more

poem by Denis Martindale
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Six o’clock on a Friday morning

It’s six o’clock on a Friday morning
and I wait for my bus
and across the street,
the lights are burning cheerful and yellow
in the square and dome shaped windows
of the state library
and I wonder what documents are kept there

Street hawkers sell newspapers and sweets
in front of the Pretoria News,
while passengers are already
catching busses in rows.

There’s an icy chill
that hangs in the morning dawn light
and there’s a skew pointed obelisk
that is in front of the high court chambers
and a newspaper heading
talks about the recession
that is blowing hot and cold,
but it’s freezing
and the cold even eats
right through my leader jacket.

On the east side of Vermeulen Street
the sky becomes a light yellow,
while the blue of the heaven
folds open all over the rest
and streetlights stand in a long row
up the street past traffic lights.

Schoolgirls dressed in blue
are watching school boys with red jerseys
and young women
stand and shake
from the cold and I wonder,
how the old red delivery bicycle
behind the pillar
are not getting stolen
where it stands every morning on its place.

There’s a street sign that points to the Pierneef museum
into the L te Groen Eureka factory building,
but it’s still too early
to go and look at paintings
and I wonder how
the Pierneef paintings inside looks.

On the side of a building
I am amazed at the Tswane sign,

[...] Read more

poem by Gert Strydom
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Paintings by fliss

Colours vivid
Colours bright
Texture livid
Radiating bright

Cottages rural
Pen and ink
Not done as a mural
Shaded as the sun sinks

Autumn leaves
So vivid and right
Oh let me please
Hold them so light

Abstract art deco
Grace and whirls
Lucid memories echo
Canvas covered swirls

Beach scene
Evoking holidays abroad
Laid back and serene
Paintings on board

Sunflower so warm
Head in full bloom
Sit and look until dawn
Paintings so rich, warmth filling room.

poem by Robert Green
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The (quiet) ornament of Jakarta

What are belongs to a major city?
Besides of any busy interrupting reverie
At each stop along the sidewalk
There are going to say hello but did not
Above the height of the horror
Phobia looked at the cars passing by
Wind perched atop, the penthouse and a flying heart
Your own!
At the wizened, big cities have always wanted to look pretty
The streets are perforated faces but always returned
Tuter sirens and the hum of cars endlessly
'How would budge, when traffic is just a marker, a symbol
of the metro's and loneliness,
of ignorance? '
Is that a convoy of official cars
or is there a fire?
Common people always serve the extraordinary people
Buildings replacing the peaceful forest clusters
At most, I found a
paintings of the forest impresion
Alexandre-Hyacinthe Dunouy in a GKBI suite
Or minimalist forests paintings of Rusli in Cultural House
It's all just be a display
Decoration of loneliness
and again I found the fossil of humankind
in the TIM (Taman Ismail Marzuki)
who now lives empty benches
Since you stay away..

(May, 2010)

poem by Imam Setiaji Ronoatmojo
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Thigh Ignition

Ms Grimslee?
Have you had too much to drink?
When I said I enjoy the fresh approach,
You use to deliver realism to your artwork.
I meant that.
Did you misunderstand me?

I said, 'I enjoy sniffing your paintings! '
Not your 'panties'.
Is this the private viewing you wanted to show me?
Would you put them back on.
Let's join the others where your paintings are on exhibit!

~Forgive me!
Will you please keep this between us!
This is most embarrassing.~

I am still interested in purchasing, 'Thigh Ignition'
What scent is that did you use?
It reminds me of tuna!

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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0021 Under the bridge of time

Oui, c'est beaux, le jardin... at this time of year;
mais... for myself,
a little too overgrown – but Monsieur
prefers it that way… you see him down there
by the lily pond, the nymphées?

He’s nearly blind now, yet he’s out all day
and nearly every day. He draws life from the garden,
je crois; and though there are some who laugh
and say, his paintings are now
mere daubs, when I see them
and then go out into the garden,
there’s a truth there, beyond what we see…
what passes, what floats serene and unaffected...
what floats on time itself...

You may find this fanciful, but I’ve watched Monsieur
over the years: first he had the garden made,
when he could afford it, and the bridge and then the pool
that slows the river… then he painted the lilies which we planted,
floating on the water, all the colours
of sunshine as you see it through a prism…then he painted
the sunlight on the water… then
he seemed to paint the flow of the water
as it passed… and then he seemed to be painting
time itself, passing under the bridge
where we’re standing here, as if
outside time… and now,
qu’est-ce qu’on dit? I think
he’s painting the philosophy of time –
Monsieur Bergson le philosophe
agrees with me – in paint; perhaps
one might say, painting
the future of painting…

yet, the flow of time and death came first, they say:
Monsieur began to paint his water-lilies
after he had seen the photos of the solemn river
of corpses in the trenches
in that terrible war; even, it's said,
the same colours of the unburied dead who putrify
are the same colours that he sees
in the water-lilies...c'est étrange, n'est-ce-pas?
a sort of redemption in the painter's palette...
this, I feel, gives these pretty paintings
the vision that drives Monsieur
to find beauty in its opposite...

but it’s cooling now; Monsieur
likes to enjoy that glowing light of early evening,

[...] Read more

poem by Michael Shepherd
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