collage

Back to the Garden

ears eyes words blk s

The NaPoWriMo prompt for Day 6 asked us to be a voice from inside Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights”.  Although I did a voice from outside the painting last year–On Seeing Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” –for NaPoWriMo, I couldn’t write anything from inside of it that didn’t seem too depressing for me today.  So I chose another piece of Bosch’s for my Ekphrastic review.

The_Trees_Have_Ears_and_the_Field_Has_Eyes_by_Hieronymus_Bosch s

I found the drawing above titled in 2 ways–The Trees Have Ears and the Field Has Eyes and The Hearing Forest and the Seeing Field. Both are true.

as if you could fly s

the eyes talk–
have you heard them?
they breathe music
of earth stars–
light opening everything
as if you could fly

breathe music s

And now I’ll visit Joni’s garden

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Self Portrait #14: More Man Ray (Revisited)

man ray head shot comp

I started with a question, as I so often do:  what kind of alive am I?  A black and white head resting on a mélange of pattern and color—my mask, the face I offered to the world, was meant to be unnoticed.  Fade to grey, merge with the background, don’t draw attention, don’t stand out.  Could I change?

Alas, my clothing choices have remained much the same since I questioned them in 2016.  Black, black and more black.  A brightly colored scarf, perhaps.  I still wish to remain unperceived as I make my way through the world.  But now I wonder:  is alive only visible on the surface of things?  Or can we gift the world with rainbows from the inside out?

unseen waves absorbed
reflected transformed singing
colors dancing light

head shot close up s

For Kim’s dVerse prompt:  Snapshots of our Lives.  You can see the original post with the complete self-portrait collage, as well as the Delmore Schwartz poem that inspired my original poem, here.

My 100 Self-Portrait Project is still stalled at #21.

ghostlight

ghostlight shadows s

that picture in your mind–
where does it go?
inside the mirror

the memory projects
the future looking at the past–
that picture in your mind,

that dislocation of now,
that reversal of an ending–
where does it go?

who will reap
what was shown
inside the mirror?

Michael_E._Arth_-Moscow_Metro-_oil_painting,_1980

For Jane Dougherty’s Words and Pictures poetry challenge, above, a painting entitled Moscow Metro by Michael E. Arth.  She suggested a cascade poem.

ghostlight close up s

As my collage box is fairly bare in my new location, I had no children to incorporate into my collage.  I improvised with a Michelangelo sculpture from a reference book I bought at a library book sale, and cut outs from the New York Times, which comes to my door, if irregularly, these days.

Still enamored with shadows, I photographed it first with my plant shadows on top.

ghostlight s

 

as morning returns

as light returns 1s

as morning returns magnetic

I consulted the Oracle while considering Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above.  This morning I was up as the sun was rising and even though there are no trees nearby I could hear the birds waking the day as they do every spring.  It was a welcome sound.

as light returns bkg a

I did a lot of fiddling myself with the art–first I painted a soft background, and then I did some more intense stripes on a separate piece of paper.  I cut those up and tried a number of arrangements.  It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I started, but satisfying nonetheless.

as light returns 3s

as light returns 2s

as morning returns

light fiddles with sky
mist, the thousand green forest
languages, blue wind

whispers of pink moon gardens–
dream shadows swimming through time

as light returns 4s

are we not what we are

magic-is-afoot-s

my dream is magic rising
my dream calls spirits
cosmic bridges
wishes joined to starry wings
wings singing songs into the air

the spirits dance their circles through the portals of the clouds

we are but voices sailing
the ancient shores of secret galaxies

A quadrille for dVerse where Linda asks us to think about magic.  My quadrille is a cento, composed of lines from poems that pop up at my blog with my friend Nina, MethodTwoMadness, when I search “magic”.  I did have to add one word to bring the total number of words to 44, but otherwise the art, the title, and all the lines are taken from my old poems.

magic-is-afoot-close-up-s

Obviously it’s a subject I consider frequently.