shadorma

anomalies

phantasma
goria exposed
by shadows
dissolving
into borrowed wings eclipsed
by casting out light

11 surrealist women artists take centre stage for the ...

I’m behind a few weeks on posting my contributions to the Kick-About, but this is the most recent, a collage inspired by Sheila Legge’s Phantom of Surrealism, above. Masked in roses, she was photographed in a white dress and gloves, surrounded by pigeons in Trafalgar Square, a performance inspired by a painting by Dali.

Woman with a Head of Roses, 1935. By Salvador Dalí ...

I was drawn to the statuesque quality of the photo, particularly given the location, and I can never resist using birds in a collage.

And of course we all don our own masks–some are just more obvious than others.

Twenty Years

I had written my own poem earlier in the week, but since the anniversary of 9/11 is on a Saturday, I also consulted the Oracle. We are both feeling the shadows and the ache.

ghosted, these
ruins—shadows left
imprinted
on this day–
each returning resurrects
the ache of absence

beneath blue skies
death shows up
raining red

the day lives raw
our dreams ache
with rust and blood

language is shadowed
as if love
will never be recalled

music whispers
on the wind
through still light

shadorma/liala

the landscape
pauses, quiescent–
waiting on
the edge of
movement—no time passes here–
framed in memories

Colleen’s #TankaTuesday prompt this week was an interesting one–

  • First, choose your favorite syllabic poetry form. Write your poem.
  • Next, give your poem some different characteristics to make it something different. You can change the syllable count, rhyme scheme (add or get rid of it), anything you want to create a new form. Write this poem.
  • Give your new syllabic poetry form a name.

I chose shadorma. How to change it? I had noticed before that all the lines had odd numbers of syllables, so I added one syllable to each line, to make them all even.

landscape pauses,
quiescent, waiting on
movement’s edge—no
time passes here–
a stilled photograph of silence–
time framed in memories

Thinking of a name was difficult. Shadorma seems to be totally made up, although several people noted the similarity to the word shadow. So I decided to pick a name with a beginning from light. I ended up with Liala, because I like the sound of it and the repetition of the a ending. It’s evidently a girls’ name but I could find no meaning for it.

There is a subtle difference between the odd and even syllabled poems, but I’m not sure which one I like best.

The photos are cropped versions of panoramas composed by my older daughter from photos she took in the mountains of Arizona where my father requested that we spread his ashes. My mother did not make any request except to be cremated, but we managed to find the very same place to spread her ashes years later after her death.

scattered dreams

sleepless I
reach deep skyward, wish
ing for wings
to appear–
my hand pauses, empty, catch
ing only moonlight

Colleen chose me to provide this week’s #TankaTuesday image, and I sent one of my artworks, above. I always enjoy reading what others see in what I’ve created. I haven’t done a shadorma in awhile.

I went back to the original post with this image, which was in 2016, to see what I had written (a san san based also on another poem), and used it as a starting point for what I wrote.

POPO 2020 part 3

rooted red
the colors spill out
confettied
above ground
dancing towards the sun singing
a chorus of blooms

Last year I participated in POPO the August POetry POstcard Fest–where the challenge is to send a different postcard with a poem you’ve composed for each day in August, 31 in all. I meant to post 2 cards every few weeks and finish up just before POPO 2021. But in my usual fashion, I’m only now posting the third pair.

I decided to do shadormas, as they would fit easily on the back of a postcard, and to connect them through repeating part of the last line of each poem to the first line of the poem for the next day. The last line of the poem from day 4 was “visible, rooted”

a chorus
of absurdity
reaches for
the empty
mind to fill it with visions
of nothing at all

I did not have a theme for the actual postcards I made in 2020, but this year I’m going to continue with the moon photos I did for the Kick-About. You don’t need to make or alter your own postcards, though–at least one I received last year was just a post office postcard with a poem on it. Or you can just buy 3l postcards and write a poem on the front or back or both.

A number of people last year expressed interest in participating this year, so here’s the link if you want to sign up. It’s not only a fun creative challenge, but you end up with 31 interesting postcard poems from all over the United States and the world. Twenty days until registration closes.

https://popo.cards/

And here’s my original post with a photo of some of the postcards I received. They actually trickled in for several months afterwards.

Carapace

Carapace—
who speaks?—carapace—
dream landscape
indigo
blue paths going from nowhere
into nowhere else.

A shelter?–
a support?–cosmic
tree growing
up and up
with turtles all the way down
to infinity…

green sea turtle s

Sarah at dVerse asks us to consider the word blue. I did have a dream with a disembodied voice repeating “carapace”, and used it as inspiration for the shells I painted for the Kick-About prompt “Museum Wormarianum”. The dream was saturated in blues.

Both Nina and I have painted and drawn and photographed turtles and tortoises many times at memadtwo. They are wonderful–and need I say? endangered–creatures, believed by some cultures to hold the earth, and all life, on their backs.

And here’s some classic blues performed by the Turtle Island String Quartet.

close your eyes

I did have the NaPoWriMo prompt in mind today when I visited the Oracle. At least in terms of a song. My things are mostly in boxes, not drawers, at the moment–this is my third move in the last 18 months so it’s all junk now. I was also thinking how much I would like to just take an entire day and do nothing but sleep. Which led me to James and Joni. And the Oracle obliged.

all I want
is to sleep beneath
a still sky–
a shadow
of whispered light on water
moondreaming the wind

rampant grace

“You were once wild here.  Don’t let them tame you.”
–Isadora Duncan

presence, breath,
the mystery of
the body–
here and now,
never once upon a time–
wild eternity

full of what
is—translating and
transforming
each step through
the labyrinth that is you–
synchronal, alive

This is a Kick-About prompt (the quote from Isadora Duncan) that I never posted. I had an idea to do collage illustrations, but the photos of Isadora dancing made me want to try to capture them in gestural drawings.

I haven’t used pastels in a long time, but I can see why Degas chose them so often to render his dancers. The body becomes transformed by dance, lighter and more transparent. Otherworldly.

For NaPoWriMo, and also linking to the dVerse prompt from Grace, The Body & Poetry.

contexture

“But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle.”
–E B White, “Charlotte’s Web”

how the sun
multiplies dewdrops
hovering
on nearly
invisible threads tiny
iridescent pearls

scattered on
paths that cross woven
in waves that
whisper with
the breeze leaving sparkling trails
like a fairy’s wand

releasing
the magic of stars
to the light
connecting
sheltering enabling this
miraculous life

Today for Day 6 the NapoWriMo prompt says: Go to a book you love. Find a short line that strikes you. Make that line the title of your poem. Write a poem inspired by the line. Then, after you’ve finished, change the title completely. I chose “Charlotte’s Web” which has many many good lines to choose from.

Another shadorma chain, with art from the archives.

interpolated

some days seem
to go nowhere—hours
surround, merge,
a mass of
waiting—you can feel the weight
on your chest inside

heart slowing
barely breathing your
skin sweating
density
as your body disappears
your mind wandering

caught without
contingency—all
locations
remain un
named, uncalendared, unchecked,
suspended, untimed—

a structure
of vast hidden plans,
dimensions
flattened in
to absence, its contents left
carelessly behind

A shadorma chain for the NaPoWriMo Day 4 prompt, to use as inspiration a photo from @SpaceLiminalBot. I chose the photo above.